Awakened

Nathan stumbled across the sand, falling to his hands and knees and dropping the revolver in the sand. He retrieved it, shaking the sand from it and shoving it into his jacket pocket. The car, half buried in a dune behind him, the tires kicking loose sand in the air, the roar of the motor overlapped the sounds in his head.

Explosions. Screaming.

Take cover!

Automatic fire titter-tattered into the distance. Bullets snap through the air.

Corpsman!

Stop, stop, please make it stop...

He scrambled to his feet, hands clutching his ears as he ran and fell and ran and fell and ran again. With the motor fading behind him, the breaking of the surf rising, he reached dark, wet sand. Falling into a sitting position, the wet cold seawater soaked into his jeans. Tugging at his shoes, he flung them away. He stripped his jacket off, rolled to his feet, lunging into the cold surf.

Red clouds stretched out over the dark water, broken occasionally by whitecaps as the waves rose and rolled towards him, breaking on the beach. He struggled forward, his feet slipping in the cold sand until he fell to his knees.

"Nate, where you going? You okay?"

Doc Tran sat on an empty ammo crate in the sparse shade of the tent, a book in his hands. He wore a white armband with a red cross. A pack of cigarettes rolled up in the opposite sleeve.

The sand was hot. It burned through the soles of his boots. Nate shuffled over, plopping next to the corpsman, cradling his rifle in his lap to keep it out of the fine, clinging sand.

"I need a cig."

Tran unrolled the pack, shaking one out for Nathan. Lit it with a red Bic. With a shaking hand, Nathan lifted the cigarette to his mouth and drew the smoke into his lungs blowing it out with a shuddering breath.

"You gonna be alright?"

"Yeah, I'm..." Nathan said, stopping himself when Doc raised a brow. "No, fuck no, Doc. Nobody's okay with this. I'm sick of this shit. The Hajis don't want us here. They just want to kill us." He took another deep puff from the cigarette. "Anderson, Ramirez, Vance..." He stopped, choking it back. "They had families."

"Haji has family too."

"Really? No shit? I thought they just rose up from the fucking camel shit with an AK hanging from their neck."

"We're all the same underneath," Doc said. "We all come from the same place."

"Fuck that, Doc. We ain't them."

"No, really, listen to this." Doc picked up the book, flipped through the pages, folding back a dog-ear. "This changed my outlook on everything. It changed my life, man."

He cleared his throat.

"When a wave realizes that it is water, it loses all fear and sorrow. The wave does not need to die to become water. It is already water."

Nate snatched the book from Doc's hand.

"And what the fuck does that even mean?"

Holding it up, he read the cover.

"No Death No Fear." He stumbled over the next words. "Thick Nate Hand. Who the fuck is that, some kind of Chinese philosopher?"

Doc snatched the book back, smoothing the cover reverently.

"Pronounced Thich Nhat Hanh, you dumb Jarhead," Doc said. "And he's Vietnamese, not Chinese, but I guess we all look the same, right?"

Nathan sighed, leaning back against the tent.

"Sorry, Doc. I didn't mean that. I just can't do this shit anymore."

He sank into the sand. The next wave crashed against his chest, soaking his shirt. The sky was afire with the sunset. The last sunset. How will it feel? Will it hurt once the cold, salt water filled his lungs? He never learned how to swim, but he faked it well enough to get through basic. He sucked a lung full of air and held it. What would it sound like when the water covered him? He imagined a muffled rush of cold, churning liquid, bubbles, choking, straining for a breath, lungs burning.

Nathan released the breath, gasping.

It will probably hurt.

He reached for the handgun, but it wasn't there. It was in the jacket pocket lying far up the beach, close to the screeching car. Just like that, he knew what he wanted. He knew what he needed. The pain. The agony of liquid-filled lungs. His body spasming for air. Death hurt. Why would he deserve to be spared that?

He fought his way upright, staggering into the crashing surf. The sea rose to meet him relentlessly hammering his body, slapping his face, salt stinging his eyes like fire. The ground vanished beneath his feet. A wave slammed into him, swallowing him whole. Water filled his mouth, his lungs, his world. He thrashed, breaking the surface in a fit of coughing and sputtering, desperate for air. Then another surge struck — stronger, colder — tumbling him end over end, dragging him down into the dark, roaring chaos.

Thick, acrid smoke everywhere. No sound but a ringing in his ears. His eyes burned. He felt for the rifle, his hand groping the hot hard-packed sand. Nothing. He remembered a ditch to the side of the road. He crawled, dragging himself over the blistering ground, rolling over and over until it gave way beneath him. He dropped hard; the impact jarring his ribs. The ringing faded, replaced by muffled voices, shouts, and the harsh stuttering of a machine gun.

"Corpsman up!"

He pried one eye open, catching the blur of desert camo, a white armband with a red cross, med kit in hand, the diminutive figure of Doc Tran running to the front.

Then came the second detonation, the one that tore his eardrums and gave him the brain hemorrhage that would keep him in the hospital for months. Debris, rock, and sand fell around and on top of him. The ringing in his ears was so intense he thought his head would explode. He waited, his face buried in the sand, inhaling the choking smoke and cordite.

He rolled onto his back, gazing up through a break in the dust and smoke. A bird circled against a crystal blue sky. His hand flopped to the side, falling on something not sand. His fingers curled around the object instinctively. His rattled thoughts telling him it was just his rifle, but it felt wrong, like rubber, pliable to the touch. He dragged it closer, pulling it to his chest. He lay in the ditch until the ringing faded, and the bird flew off.

Rolling to his side, he tucked his knees and sat up, still holding the rubbery rifle against his chest. The air was thick with swirling dust. Somehow, he made it to his feet, clutching the rifle in both hands. His head pounding, he struggled up the embankment into the gloom of dust and smoke, his scattered thoughts focused on the image of a white armband and red cross.

The smoke cleared, and he was standing on the road next to a blackened, smoking crater. A Marine approached, his eyes flicking between Nates' face and the object he held in his hands. Reaching out, his lips moving soundlessly, the Marine pried the object from Nate's hands. It was clothed in desert camo and encircled at one end by a tattered white band bearing a red cross.

His head broke the surface, gasping for air. He was on his knees on the soft, sandy bottom. A wave crashed, pushing him further up the beach until he could sit in the shallow water coughing up salty brine.

He gazed out at the gray swells back-lit by the glowing sunset. Each wave rose, cresting for but a moment before collapsing into pale foam. Each one seemed to be separate, yet they were all the same ocean. The same water.

"This isn't you," Doc said, tapping Nathan's chest with his fingers. "You are more than this body. You're consciousness. We're all connected through that consciousness. It's like the ocean. It connects the waves. They rise, peak, fall, then rise anew."

"I want to go with you," Nate whispered.

You're already here, the water said.

He wasn't the Marine.

He wasn't the survivor's guilt.

He wasn't the man sitting on the beach watching the surf.

He was the ocean. He was all these things.

A gull flew by and called out to him.

The wind blew, and he shivered.

In the sound of the surf, he heard Doc Tran laughing. He heard the voices of Anderson, Ramirez, and Vance sitting around a small table in the desert playing cards, laughing and talking about what they would do when they got home.

They were all here.

They were the ocean.

Rising anew.