Double Cross

Chapter 90

IN MANY WAYS, I felt like I was leading a double life-probably because I was. After Sandy Quinlan’s appointment that morning, I had Anthony Demao on deck, figuring I’d squeeze him in for as many sessions as possible following his meltdown. I still didn’t know how things stood between the two of them since the scene that I’d witnessed in my waiting room.

So I was relieved when they ignored each other on her way out that morning. Sandy looked uncomfortable; Anthony just seemed uninterested. I was glad, because this wasn’t a hookup either of them needed. It just felt wrong.

As soon as Sandy was gone, Anthony’s demeanor began to change. He was clearly agitated and seemed shakier than usual. Despite the heat, he’d worn long trousers and a camo jacket, the latter held tightly closed as he walked inside my office and plopped on the couch.

Then he stood again and began to pace around the room. Anthony was walking rapidly, hands jammed into his pockets, mumbling to himself.

“What’s going on?” I finally had to ask. “You seem agitated.”

“You think so, Doc? I had another dream, couple nights in a row. Dream about Basra. The fucking desert, the war, the whole nine yards of bad shit, okay?”

“Anthony, come and sit down. Please.” He had tried to tell me about Basra before but hadn’t said enough for me to understand where he was going with it. I gathered something terrible had happened to him in the war; I just didn’t know what it was.

When Anthony finally slumped down onto the couch, I spotted a lump under his jacket. I knew what it was, and I sat up straight, my blood pumping.

“Are you carrying?” I asked.

He put his hand over the bulge. “It isn’t loaded,” he snapped. “Not a problem.”

“Please give it to me,” I said. “You can’t have a gun in here.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I said it’s not loaded. Don’t you believe me? Anyway, I have a license to carry.”

“Not in here, you don’t.” I stood up now. “That’s it. You have to go.”

“No, no. Here, you take it.” Suddenly Anthony reached under his jacket and pulled out a Colt 9. “Take the damn gun!”

“Slowly,” I said. “Two fingers on the handle. Put it on the coffee table. Keep your other hand where it is.”

Anthony stared at me in a new way, as if he’d just figured something out. “What are you, a cop?”

“Just do what I asked you to do, okay?”

He laid the Colt on the coffee table. Once I had checked that it was empty, I locked the gun in my desk. Took a breath, let it out slowly.

“Now, do you want to talk about your dream?” I asked him. “ Basra? What happened to you there?”

He nodded. Then he began to talk-and to pace the room again. But at least he wasn’t armed.

“It started out the same… the dream. We got hit, and I made it to a trench. Like I always do. But this time I wasn’t alone.”

“Are you talking about Matt?” I asked. We had gotten that far in the dream before.

“He was there with me, yeah. Just the two of us. We got separated from our unit.”

Matt was a buddy of his I’d heard about. They had worked on the same munitions truck, but I didn’t know too much more than that.

“He was ruined, man. Both his legs like hamburger, shredded to shit. I had to drag him by his arms. It was all I could do.” He stared at me for help.

“Anthony, are you talking about your dream or what really happened that night?”

Now his voice went down to a whisper. “That’s the thing, Doc. I think I’m talking about both. Matt was screaming like he was some kind of wild, hurt animal. And when I heard the screaming, in the dream, it was like I knew I’d heard it before.”

“Were you able to help him?” I asked.

“Not really, no. I couldn’t help, couldn’t do anything at all. A medic couldn’t have helped Matt, the condition he was in.”

“Okay. So what happened next?”

“Matt starts saying, ‘I’m not gonna make it. Not gonna make it.’ Over and over like that. And this whole time, there’s fire coming from every direction. I don’t know if it’s our guys or the ragheads. There’s nowhere the two of us can go-not with him on those shot-up legs and losing his insides like he was. And then he starts saying, ‘Kill me. Do it. Please.’ ”

I could see that Anthony was into it now, the dream, the horror of what had happened that night in the war. I let him keep going.

“He takes out his own gun. He can barely even hold it. He’s crying ’cause he can’t do it, and I’m crying ’cause I don’t want him to. And mortars are going off everywhere. The sky is lit up like the Fourth of July.”

Anthony shook his head, stopped talking. His eyes were welling up with tears. I thought I understood: there were no words he could use to describe this.

“Anthony?” I asked. “Did you help Matt kill himself?”

A tear rolled all the way down his cheek.

“I put my hand over Matthew’s, and I shut my eyes… then we fired. Together.” Anthony stared at me. “You believe me, don’t you, Dr. Cross?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and there was anger in his eyes. “You’re the doctor. You should know the difference between bad dreams and reality. You do, don’t you?”