This is Just a Dream

Chapter 11

The room was no longer just an apartment; it was a pressurized chamber, the air sucked thin by the sheer, crushing weight of the words Garrett Hanson had spoken.

KIA.

The term had always been a military abstraction to Eden—a cold, clinical acronym she’d seen on the news or read in books. It had never been a heartbeat. It had never been the way Adam laughed when he was trying to grow a beard, or the exact temperature of his hands when they were cold. Now, the acronym had swallowed him whole.

Eden remained curled on the sofa, a fragile, hollowed-out shell. She was staring at a singular, microscopic speck of dust dancing in the beam of the desk lamp, her mind trapped in a recursive loop of denial.

This is a dream, she thought, her internal voice sounding distant and detached. Any second, the alarm is going to go off. I’ll roll over, see the calendar with the red ‘X’s, and realize I fell asleep while studying. Adam is going to call, and he’s going to tell me about the heat, and he’s going to ask me if I ate dinner, and everything will be exactly as it was.

She blinked, waiting for the scene to shimmer and dissolve. But the apartment stayed stubbornly, cruelly real. The smell of the old books, the hum of the refrigerator, the sight of Garrett Hanson sitting on the edge of the armchair—he was the harbinger of this nightmare, the proof that the world she cherished had ended.

Garrett didn't move. He hadn't moved for nearly an hour. He was observing her with a detached, professional vigilance, his own grief locked behind a wall of granite. He had seen this look before—the dissociation, the way the eyes clouded over as the mind desperately tried to negotiate with an intolerable reality, a means to protect the psyche from breaking from grief.

"Eden," Garrett said. His voice wasn't the bark of a commander; it was the soft, practiced tone of a man trying to talk someone down from a ledge. "I know this is a lot to process. But I need you to focus on me."

She looked at him, but her eyes didn't seem to see the man in the uniform. She saw a ghost. "He’s coming home, though. Right? He said he was coming home."

The question was so small, so devastatingly hopeful, that Garrett felt the cracks in his own armor widen. He had been there in the dust. He had seen the life leave Adam’s eyes. He had seen the photograph.

"He loved you," Garrett said, his voice straining. "He talked about you every single day. Even when he was at his absolute limit, when the mission was at its worst, he was thinking about the house with the porch. He was thinking about you."

Eden let out a shuddering breath that sounded like a sob, but no tears came. She couldn't cry. Crying would mean accepting that the tears were real, and if the tears were real, the loss was real.

"I’ll wake up," she whispered to the dust speck. "I’ll wake up."

Garrett stood up then, his movements purposeful and quiet. He knew the logistics of death—the paperwork, the notification procedures, the crushing mountain of bureaucracy that followed a soldier into the grave. He knew that for Eden, the nightmare was only just beginning. He walked to the kitchen, his boots silent on the floor, and started the coffee pot. He needed her to be conscious. He needed her to be able to hear him when the military liaison arrived tomorrow.

He worked in the kitchen for a few minutes, the sound of the water and the brewing coffee the only movement in the room. He felt a profound, aching sense of responsibility. He hadn't just lost a soldier; he had lost a brother-in-arms, and he had failed the man who had asked him, in a silent, desperate way, to look out for her. He kept count of all the men he lost. His own personal weight he carried as a leader.

He poured two cups and brought them back to the living area. He set one on the desk, then sat on the ottoman in front of the couch. He bent down and scooped Eden from the floor, there was no way she was able to stand after being in the same position all night, crumpled on the floor. He sat her on the couch in front of the ottoman and the coffee cup.

"I’m not going to leave you," he said. The declaration was flat, a simple statement of fact. "I have orders to assist with the notification and transition. I’ll be here until your family arrives. I’ll be here until everything is settled." He didn't know that Adam was all she had, she didn't have family. Her and Adam left that toxic life behind, that is why they had promised to fight so hard for a better future for themselves, for the children they would never have now.

Eden finally looked at him, really looked at him. She saw the lines of exhaustion etched into his face, the graying at his temples, the way his knuckles were white as he gripped his own knees. He wasn't just a stoic machine; he was a man who was hurting, too.

"Why you?" she asked.

Garrett hesitated. "Because I was there. Because I promised him I’d look after you."

The honesty of the admission hit her harder than the news itself. If he was there, he saw it. He saw the end.

"Was he in pain?" she asked, the words forced through a throat that felt like it was filled with glass. Her eyes searching his in desperation.

Garrett looked down at his own hands, the hands that had been bloodied in the wadi. He had to be careful here. He had to be gentle, but he had to be true.

"He wasn't thinking about the pain, Eden," Garrett said, his voice low and steady. "He was thinking about you. He held onto that photo until the end. He was wounded beyond help, but he was... he was peaceful."

It was a lie, or at least a highly curated version of the truth, but it was the only mercy he had to give. Adam hadn't been peaceful; he had been torn apart in a chaotic, screaming hellscape. But the why—the reason he stayed, the reason he held on—that part was the truth.

Eden slumped back into the cushions, the reality beginning to flicker at the edges of her mind like a dying lightbulb. He was thinking about me. He was thinking about me.

The loop began to shift. It wasn't I’ll wake up anymore; it was He thought about me. He thought about me.

Garrett watched her, his professional detachment slipping. He felt a phantom weight on his chest, the same weight he had felt when he stood over the body in the sand. He was the survivor. He was the one who was supposed to be hardened, the one who was supposed to be the Monster. But the cost of this—the sheer, unvarnished tragedy of it—was beginning to seep into his own defenses.

He thought of the photograph in his pocket. He thought of the way Adam had looked at it, the way the light in his eyes had dimmed.

"Do you want me to call someone?" Garrett asked, reaching for his phone. "Your parents? A friend?"

Eden shook her head. "No. We didn't have anyone, we just had us. I just... I just need to sit here. I need to be here, where he was. Everything is still here, Garrett. His clothes, his books. Everything is still here."

"I understand," Garrett said.

He stood up and began to walk around the apartment, his eyes scanning the room. He was doing what he did best: assessing the situation, securing the environment. He saw the notebook on the desk, the one with the 'X's on the calendar. He saw the small, wooden box where she kept stacks of letters.

He didn't touch anything. He knew that for the living, the remnants of the dead were sacred.

"You need to eat," he said, his voice regaining some of its military crispness, a way to focus on the immediate, tangible needs. "I saw a delivery menu on the counter. I’m going to order you something."

"I can't," she whispered.

"You have to," he insisted. "You’re going to be expected to function tomorrow. You’re going to be expected to talk to officers, to coordinate with the funeral home, to handle arrangements. You cannot do that on air and grief alone. I am here to help you, Eden, but you have to allow me to."

She looked at him, and for a fleeting second, the wall between them vanished. She saw the man behind the uniform, the man who had watched his soldier die, the man who was now standing in the wreckage of a life he had helped to guard.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Garrett nodded. He went to the kitchen and dialed the number, his voice low and efficient as he gave the order. He was handling the logistics, the mundane, necessary, crushing logistics of loss. He was the one who would navigate the phone calls, the transport, the paperwork, the cold, hard facts of a life extinguished.

He returned to the living room and sat back down, watching her.

Eden had shifted her gaze to the desk, to the textbooks she had been studying. They looked like artifacts from a civilization that had been destroyed. The psychology, the child development, the future—it all felt like a joke. A cruel, cosmic joke.

"I was going to be a teacher," she said, her voice hollow.

"You still are," Garrett said, his voice firm. "You are still going to be a teacher. Adam would have wanted that. He talked about it, remember? He talked about the life you were going to build."

"He won't be in it," she said, the words hitting the room like stones.

Garrett didn't try to argue. He didn't try to offer a platitude. He knew that in this moment, the truth was a sledgehammer, and the only way to survive it was to be broken by it.

He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees.

"He was the best soldier I ever commanded," Garrett said, his voice thick with a genuine, raw pride. "He had a work ethic that was beyond his years. He had a heart that was too big for the things we do. He didn't just fight for the mission, Eden. He fought for you. Every single second he was over there, he was fighting for you."

Eden closed her eyes, the tears finally, inevitably, starting to track down her cheeks. They weren't the silent, burning tears of shock anymore; they were the hot, jagged, release of a heart that was finally, finally letting itself break.

She cried for the porch. She cried for the ring. She cried for the children she would teach, and for the life that would never be. She cried for the boy who had walked into the desert and the man who had died in the sand.

Garrett sat there, his head bowed, his hands gripping his knees. He didn't move. He didn't try to soothe her. He simply bore witness. He was the sentinel of her grief, the guardian of the memory, the man who had brought the news and now, the man who would help her survive the wreckage.

The night stretched out, a long, dark, and hollowed-out expanse. Outside, the world continued to turn, the city lights flickering, the traffic moving, the indifferent gears of humanity spinning on. But in the small, cramped space of the apartment, the world had come to a complete, final, and devastating halt.

Adam was gone.

And as the night bled into the early, pale gray of dawn, the reality began to settle over them, not as a nightmare, but as a permanent, immovable truth.

And as Eden wept, Garrett Hanson—the Monster, the man who had lost his humanity—found himself fighting back his own tears.

Eden finally stopped trying to wake up.

She looked at Garrett, her face pale, her eyes red, her voice barely a thread.

"Tell me what I have to do," she said.

Garrett nodded, his eyes clear, his voice steady. "We’re going to handle this, Eden. I’m going to be right here. We’re going to take this one step at a time."

The wait was over, but her future was gone. And all that remained was the hard, soul wrenching, and necessary work in order to say goodbye.