When HEROES don't come HOME

Chapter Eight – Watching Windows

The days had blurred. A week since the hospital, a week since she pressed her hand against the empty place in her abdomen and whispered a promise into the white ceiling. A week of staring at the folded flag on the table, of counting the brass shells, of replaying every voice that told her to stop.

This morning, the sky hung low, clouds swollen and gray. Emily stood at the window of her small apartment, arms folded tight around her ribs. Below, the street stretched ordinary—cars parked, children wobbling on bicycles, an old man walking his dog. Ordinary, except for the sedan idling too long by the corner, and the figure she had noticed yesterday leaning against the bus shelter without ever boarding a bus.

She didn’t tell herself she was paranoid. Soldiers learn the difference between paranoia and pattern. This was pattern.

Sofia clattered in the kitchen, the sound of mugs and spoons, the hiss of water in the kettle. She had been staying with Emily since the collapse, refusing to leave her alone. A presence that filled the silence, sometimes soothing, sometimes suffocating.

Emily kept her eyes on the sedan. She spoke quietly, more to the glass than to Sofia. “They’re watching me.”

Sofia appeared in the doorway, mug in hand, eyebrows drawn. “What?”

Emily gestured with her chin. “That car. The man by the bus stop. They don’t change shifts smoothly. Sloppy.”

Sofia peered past her shoulder, then shook her head. “You’re seeing ghosts. Everyone looks suspicious when you’re grieving.”

Emily’s jaw tightened. “I know the difference.”

Sofia sighed, walked over, pressed the mug into her hands. The tea’s heat seeped into Emily’s fingers, grounding her. “Even if you’re right—what are they watching for? You’re not doing anything.”

Emily’s mouth pressed into a line. She didn’t answer.

Sofia studied her. “Em… it’s been a week. You don’t sleep. You barely eat. You stare out this window like the truth will walk up and knock on your door. Maybe you need to let it—”

Emily cut her off, voice sharp. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me to let it go.”

Silence swelled. The tea cooled slowly between her palms.

Finally Sofia’s tone softened. “I just mean… you’re hurting yourself. It still hurts even to think about him, doesn’t it?”

Emily’s throat closed. She nodded once. “Every minute.”

Sofia leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching her. Then she said something Emily didn’t expect.

“You and Daniel… you loved each other, but it was always a romance stretched thin. A marriage of distance.”

Emily blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“You were apart more than together. Training, deployments, shifts. Letters and phone calls. Even when he came home, you weren’t used to each other anymore.” Sofia’s voice was gentle but firm, like a doctor pulling a bandage. “If it had gone on like that forever… divorce would have been obvious.”

Emily flinched. The words landed hard because part of them was true. She turned from the window, set the tea on the sill. “We fought. Over nothing. Dishes. Bills. The way he folded his shirts. I hated how quiet he got after arguments, like silence was a weapon. And I… I always had something sharp ready to throw back.”

Sofia tilted her head. “You were lonely, Em. You learned to be alone while he was gone. And then when he came back, it felt like invasion.”

Emily’s eyes burned. She tried to blink it away. “Sometimes I even thought he was cheating. Calls he didn’t explain, nights he didn’t come straight home. I told myself it was duty. But part of me wondered.”

The admission sat between them, heavy, like ash.

Sofia crossed the room, touched her shoulder lightly. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t love him. It just means the army stole most of your marriage. And maybe that’s why you need to step away now. Stop letting them steal the rest of you.”

Emily’s eyes flicked to the flag on the table. “Step away?”

Sofia nodded. “Leave the service. Apply at the hospital again. You were good there—steady hands, quick decisions. Patients trusted you. It gave you life.”

Emily let out a hollow laugh. “Hospitals give you life?”

“You know what I mean. You saved people there. Not paper. Not protocols. People.”

Emily sank into the chair by the window, her body folding. “And what happens when I quit? When the only thing I’ve known since I was eighteen disappears? When I wake up and realize Daniel died in uniform, and I couldn’t even stand beside him at the end?”

Sofia crouched so their eyes met. “Then you live. You take the pain and you do something with it that doesn’t kill you too.”

Emily stared at her. Outside, the sedan drove off, replaced twenty minutes later by another car she didn’t recognize. Proof of the pattern. Proof of her cage.

She whispered, almost to herself, “They’ll never let me go.”

Sofia squeezed her arm. “Then walk before they drag you. Don’t wait until the army chews the last piece of you. Because, Em… they will.”

The words lodged deep. Emily looked back at the window, the world blurred through glass, and felt the weight of choices pressing like the muzzle of a gun between her shoulder blades.