Chapter 6 - THE GHOSTS OF THE ARABIAN SEA
Sleep didn't come easily in the weeks following the trial.
Every time I closed my eyes,
I heard the screech of twisting metal.
I saw the orange glow of the fuel fire reflecting on the dark water.
I felt the heat against my skin,
the way it felt like the world was melting away.
The doctors called it PTSD,
but to me,
it felt like unfinished business.
I went to the naval hospital to visit the three sailors I had saved.
They were in the burn unit,
their lives forever changed by my father’s greed.
One of them,
Petty Officer Miller,
was still in a coma.
I sat by his bed,
holding a hand that was mostly scar tissue.
“I’m so sorry,”
I whispered,
the words feeling inadequate.
“I should have caught it sooner.”
“The valves...
the money...
it wasn't worth this.”
His mother was sitting in the corner,
a woman who had lost everything but hope.
She looked at my neck,
then at my eyes.
“You’re the one,”
she said softly.
“The Lieutenant who wouldn't leave them.”
“I’m the one,”
I said.
“And I’m the daughter of the man who did this.”
She stood up and walked over to me,
taking my hand.
“You aren't your father,”
she said.
“You’re the light that brought them back.”
I left the hospital feeling a new kind of weight.
It wasn't the weight of shame,
but the weight of responsibility.
I realized that my scars weren't just a record of what happened to me.
They were a record of what I had survived for them.
I spent the afternoon at the National Cemetery,
standing before the markers of the two sailors we couldn't save.
The air was quiet,
the grass a brilliant,
painful green.
I took off my promotion bars and laid them on the stone.
“This belongs to you,”
I said.
“Because you paid the price for the lies I finally exposed.”
As I walked back to my car,
I saw a figure waiting for me.
It was Camille.
She looked haggard,
her designer clothes wrinkled,
her eyes red from crying.
“He’s going to prison for twenty years,”
she said,
her voice trembling.
“The lawyers say there’s no way out.”
“There shouldn't be a way out,”
I said,
not stopping.
“He killed people,
Camille.”
“He’s our father!”
she screamed.
“And you’re the one who put him there!”
I stopped and looked at her,
feeling a profound sense of pity.
“He put himself there the moment he decided a profit margin was worth more than a human life.”
“You chose his image over my reality.”
“Don’t come back here,
Camille.”
“There’s nothing left for you but the truth,
and I know how much you hate that.”
May you like
I drove away,
leaving her standing among the graves of better men.
