Forty-four: Bosky soldier

I was cleared to leave the hospital a few hours later with a bag of simple painkillers and some vitamins. The nurse insisted I take the heavy, useless flowers with me.

It was hard not to think. So many things had happened recently that it was hard not to remember and let them get to me. I had to be strong, but I was only a girl. A grown up girl, but still a girl that had little support and was alone in the middle of a war. I wanted to go home. I wanted my Mummy and my Daddy.

I wished the Boskies had never come. That they'd stayed aloof away in their hills and mountains as they had for the past few centuries. What had made them attack now? Why now? Why did they have to come and interrupt my life? What was it for?

Not needing people to see my tears, I stopped in a park and hid behind some bushes, hugging myself. I sobbed quietly into my knees, feeling my heart aching with all my wishes and longings. I cried for my powerless position that led me to have such little control over my life.

Fiction stories of this kind always had feisty girls in these difficult situations that fought against their circumstances. They rebelled and took a stand for their rights, no matter what trouble it brought them. They were larger than life characters with a boldness and confidence that I lacked. Compared to them, I was a coward. I was nothing. I couldn't fight, had no connections and wasn't that much of a talker. Which meant that if anyone ever read my story, if I ever wrote it down, they were going to be terribly disappointed and bored. Who wanted a heroine who only tried to accept her situation and bear with it? One who ran from the conflict and hid in corners to cry? I'd certainly never read any stories like that, but perhaps that was where those stories and my life differed.

They were just stories after all. Figments of some author's imagination. And this, this was real life. How does anybody deal with their real life besides grin and bear it?

Rocking myself back and forth, I whispered to myself over and over again.

"You're okay. You're going to be okay. You're okay."

Hopefully nobody would see me hiding here, half under a bush, rocking and talking to myself. They might think I'd gone mad. Who knew what my watchers thought of me. Why should I care? I just needed this moment. This moment to myself.

"Are you all right?" my Bosky soldier's voice interrupted my sense of privacy. "Don't turn or look around. I'm on the other side of the bush pretending to sleep under my hat. Just talk quietly into your knees."

"How long have you been there?" I wiped my eyes and surreptitiously peeked under the bush to see him sprawled out in the grass, a cap covering his face.

I couldn't help but remember that moment where he had helped me in the toilet. My guts twisted themselves into knots and my face blazed with embarrassment and shame at the memory. I did not want to see him. Did not want to talk to him. Why did he have to be here?

"Long enough," he said. "What were you in hospital for?"

"How did you know I was here?"

"I followed the ambulance when I heard you were in it," he said. "I didn't catch what happened. Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said in a low voice that meant anything but. Why did he care, anyway? Who was I to him? He was nothing but an enemy to me. One I was powerless against and couldn't get rid of. Besides, I didn't believe he didn't know what had happened. "I'm fine."

"You aren't really fine, are you?" the Bosky soldier sounded understanding. See, he did know what had happened, the liar. "You will be though. I have confidence in you. You're tough and smart. You can get through this."

"Why are you following me around?"

There was a long moment of silence and I had to peek again to make sure he was still there.

"Mostly because I'm lonely," he admitted, "and I can talk to you relatively freely. You know who I am."

"All I know is that you're a Bosky soldier who invaded my city and now I can't go home. You've been following me around, purposely making my government suspicious of me, thinking I've been helping you. You've been using me, you liar. You said the other soldiers had gone back over the border and that you were stranded here alone, but that's not it at all, is it? You're all still here trying to help your people take over this half of the city as well. You're a spy. I don't know you at all. I don't even know your name."