Rocky Adams shook his hand to loosen the pain of the impact.  Two large and jagged cuts webbed their way across his large hand, now speckled with several smaller cuts, all of which had already begun to well with blood.  The room was filled with hand-me-down knick knacks and the echoes of Rocky’s outburst.  If Mrs. Lucile Adams’ eyes were made up of the same crystalline material in the cheap mood rings her husband had bought her when they were kids, they would have flashed red, then cooled quickly to orange. The pink would flow in like honey, smoothing over the rage like a cool blanket.

Wordlessly, because words never did them any good, she wheeled Rocky into the kitchen and toward the sink that the Wounded Warriors people had funded.  Lucile pressed the down button and waited as the sink descended to Rocky’s level.  She remembered the day the special sink was installed.  She’d had to throw out the shards of her mother’s glass dinner bell as well as Rocky’s cracked toolbox that day.

Still, Lucille took Rocky’s hands in hers and shoved them under the cool water, minding his wounds, but involuntarily infusing the steel of her frustration in the action.

She tried to focus on the cool fluidity of the water and its chilling presence on the wings between her fingers, letting its chill cool the sandy bits of red and swirls of orange.  Her eyes crossed as she stared at the pillar of falling water, turned translucent with speed and bubbles, in the center of her vision.  She urged the image of the heavy stream of water to speed up the entrance of the slow moving pinkness of her love for the broken brute whose hands she held.  She tried to imprint the calm image upon her mind and conjure images of smoothly rolling oceans.

Yet she could not completely rid her mind’s eye of the image of shattered ceramic on the floor.  The cool blues and purples of the painted designs were cut apart crudely.  They pushed fire into her veins that the accompanying image of her dead mother’s gentle face could not extinguish.

It wasn’t until she began bandaging his hands at the kitchen table, which he had made for them before his second deployment, that either of them spoke.

“You love me.” Rocky said it like one might say “Our couch is blue.”

Lucile put the antibacterial cream back into her first aid kit and dug around for the gauze and scissors.

“I don’t see how,” Rocky continued, speaking steadily.  “When I joined up, good ol’ Papa Adams was glad to see I’d finally joined the patriotic Adams’ tradition.”  The “but” to that statement was written in the furrow of his scarred brow.  Lucile tried not to think about the past life that Rocky had run from when he was first deployed.  Rocky’s angry refrain that he directed at all the pitying visitors was, I didn’t lose my leg because I was brave, I lost it hurrying into the woods to take a piss.

Lucile imagined the bath she would draw herself to get past this latest outburst.  She wanted this night to end so that the next could begin, but Rocky wasn’t done yet.  “I’d like to say there is something that I do in this house that is good or useful, but really, I just mess shit up,” Rocky shifted his weight in the wooden chair.

Lucile’s eyes never left the gauze she was wrapping around his hand.  His words hurt her too.  The truth of them was cutting.

“Every day, I tell myself today’s the day I do something.  Do the fucking laundry or finish the mailbox.  Make you laugh again, just once.”  Rocky’s hand jerked, as if he was about to slam the table before he remembered that his wife was holding onto his injured hand.

Drops of salty water appear on the gauze on his knuckle.  When a drop lands on his finger, he laughs.

“But instead, I bring you to tears.”

Lucile continued pinning up the gauze.  She’d known Rocky since childhood.  It was never an easy relationship.  Everyone had told her to stop giving him more chances.  But she knew him.  And he knew her.  She lived a constant cycle of oranges and pinks and could never relinquish the pink to be rid of the orange.  They’d held hands through so many life turns and merged their body heat through all the emotions on the ring’s heat-sensitive spectrum.

She curled her fingers through his once more.  She sighed.  Kissed his hand. I love you, she thought.  Words never did them any good.

 

Works Used

Almasy, Steve. “The Toll of War Now Includes More Amputees – CNN.com.” CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.

“Handicap Accessible Kitchen Remodeling – Accessible Home Living.” Accessible Home Living. Genesis Framework, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.

“How Do Mood Rings Work? – HowStuffWorks.” HowStuffWorks. InfoSpace LLC, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.

Military InStep. “The Psychological Concerns of the Soldier Amputee.” Military InStep:. Amputation Coalition, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.

“PTSD: National Center for PTSD.” Partners of Veterans with PTSD: Common Problems –. Military Advantage, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.

“Wounded Warrior Project.” Http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/programs. Wounded Warrier, Inc., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.