Hell Bound

I couldn’t breathe through the pounding of my heart. I tried to steady it by doing what I’d been taught. “Count your heartbeats, Hayes,” my commanding officer would tell me, gently guiding my hand to my chest. “Even if you can’t feel them. Put your hand over your heart and count to four. Over and over until it’s steady again.”

My hands wouldn’t move now. They were preoccupied with clutching the rifle I had across my chest. My sweating fingers slipped over the heavy, deadly machine. I knew that gun better than anyone. I’d spent countless hours pulling it apart and putting it back together again. Just to learn how it worked. So I could never be caught off guard. But at that moment, I couldn’t bear the weight of it in my hands. I wanted to throw it aside, afraid of what it could do. Of what it could make me do.

“Something’s wrong,” I said as I followed my commanding officer toward the sound of gunfire. Captain Russell was a broad man with ebony hair and equally black eyes. I trusted him with my life. He was the one person who believed me when no one else did. Ohio born just like I was. Rough around the edges, but warm with compassion. This team was everything to him. And he loved each and every one of us. Even if he was a little bit softer for me than the others.

“Just follow my orders, Hayes,” he responded.

His tone showed me that he wasn’t as afraid as I was. When I spoke, the words tumbled out of my mouth, shaky and terrified. He was as steady and calm as a mountain. This was just a usual mission for him. He didn’t feel like this would be his last. Not like I did.

“No, I mean—it’s not fear. Something is wrong. Call it—intuition.”

He was the one who taught me to always trust my gut. He claimed the brain had ways of noticing things before people could process them. It was science, he said. Not a magical sixth sense. And it had gotten him out of more scrapes than he could count.

Right now, my intuition told me I was being stalked by Death. I didn’t know if it was mine or someone else’s. Shots had already been fired, so the feeling was probably natural. But it felt more than that. A nagging in my brain that something was wrong. Like a dark little shadow of a creature burrowing into my memories. As if eyes were tracking me as I followed my Captain through empty back allies.

He turned back around to face me, hearing the urgency in my tone. The rest of the team had scattered as soon as the first gun fired. He told me to stick with him, and we’d snaked through the back streets in silence as the gunfire grew louder and more violent. Now he turned his dark eyes to mine. They were almost black usually, but I could see the deep brown color with the midsummer sun shining on his face.

“What is it?” he asked. My fingers trembled. I’d never had any issues with that before. We’d been on other missions—some more dangerous than others. Sure, people didn’t usually die on them, but there was always a risk. This mission was obviously more serious than I was accustomed to, but the situation wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. I’d been doing this long enough to not tremble at the sound of gunfire.

“My ears are ringing,” I told him, speaking the only words I could form at the moment. My gun rattled in my hands. I could hear it tapping against the metal on my chest as my hands shook. “It feels like—something else is living in my mind. The shadows are too long. I can’t breathe.” He reached out to put a comforting hand on my shoulder. Something about him didn’t feel right. But I couldn’t place it.

“You’re just scared, Hayes. You’ll be fine. We’re all going to be okay. I’ll do whatever I can to ensure we get out of this, alright?” I shook my head. It was a lie. I knew somehow that it wasn’t true. Something was wrong. It was something unexpected and unnatural. As if I’d heard a breath in a dark room when I was supposed to be alone.

“I’m not saying figuratively. I’ve been scared before. This is different. This isn’t fear—this is—something more.”

Even if I could explain it in a way that made sense to him, he was too distracted to listen. Of course he’d blame it all on fear. I was the smallest and physically weakest in the squad. The only woman in a group of rough and burly men. It was the whole reason he’d asked me to stay with him instead of sticking to the plan. I was a liability.

My skin was crawling with unease. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as if I was missing something I should be noticing. There was something in the air I didn’t remember feeling. Like an electric charge right before a lightning strike. This was going to go wrong. All of it. They’d all die, and I’d have to watch.

And I realized my fingers weren’t shaking from fear at all. They were trembling as I fought the urge to point the gun to the center of his forehead and pull the trigger.

But as soon as I thought it, my hands raised, and the gun was pointed at the center of his chest.

My breathing went ragged as if I’d just run a marathon. He was armored, and the bullet wouldn’t kill him. But at this close of range, it would definitely knock him out. Probably break a few ribs. I could hurt him, and I didn’t think I wanted to. I cared about this man. But something was wrong. Something was off. And I couldn’t stop the feeling of my finger over the trigger. I shook as I told myself not to do it.

“What are you doing, Hayes?” he asked, suddenly focused entirely on me. I looked toward his face, desperate for an explanation.

“There’s something wrong,” I repeated. “Who are you?”

I almost pulled the trigger. And if I’d been given a few more seconds, I probably would have. But I heard footsteps on the cobblestones behind me.

“Captain? Captain!” a voice called out. The voice of my friend. He couldn’t see what I was doing yet, and he’d never get the chance. I knew what would happen before it even did. He’d die in this alley, and I’d watch.

I spun around and pulled the trigger.

The light left his eyes, and his body dropped to the stone street with a sickening thud. That wasn’t right. I hadn’t killed him. Had I?

A bomb ignited a street away. The foundation beneath my feet shook, and I lost my balance.

“Hayes, give me the gun!” Russell shouted over the sound of falling debris. I couldn’t do it. I’d never meant to kill Tran. He was my friend. His wife had just given birth to twin boys. I’d never wanted to kill anyone. I didn’t know why I did it. I had no memory of doing it before this. But I couldn’t risk doing it to someone else. I had to get away before I hurt the people I cared about. So I clutched the gun to my chest and ran off down the alley.

“Johanna,” I heard.

But it wasn’t Russell’s voice this time. I was somewhere else. Somewhere closer to home. I blinked and brought myself back to the present. I wasn’t on the battlefield anymore. I wasn’t murdering my friends. I turned to the woman seated on the chair before me. She was smartly dressed in a comfortable (if clinical) office. She had a kind face. Open and welcoming. But I found it difficult to trust her. The last time I’d put my faith in a shrink, they’d been someone else entirely.

“Where are you?” she asked, knowing I was miles away while sitting right there in her room.

I looked down at the fingers in my lap. They were no longer trembling, but I could still feel the memory. The way the gun vibrated through my bones as it fired—the warm spray of blood on my face as I shot one of my closest friends in the face.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. It was an honest response. I recognized the memory but couldn’t name the place.

She gave me a soft (if slightly condescending) smile anyway. Her office was flooded with warm yellow light, despite how cold and gray the city looked through the windows. It was always friendly and welcoming there, but I still couldn’t get comfortable. There was a chemical scent in the air. Everything felt too clean. Carpets too hard. Metal too shiny. Lines too sharp and angular. A doctor’s office disguised as a friend’s living room.

“I know it will take time for us to develop trust,” she said, stating the obvious but acknowledging my discomfort. “I know you feel betrayed by what your last doctor must have done to you. I don’t expect this trust to be built overnight, but you pay me a lot of money to sit with you. So you may as well make it worth it.” I nodded and picked at my fingernails. “We can talk about anything you want,” she suggested.

I had been back in DC for a total of one week. My sister Clara only let me out of her sight under the strict demand that I immediately set up an appointment with a therapist. Of course the last time I’d seen a therapist, it turned out she worked for Hydra and had been feeding all my personal and most intimate thoughts with them for years. Likely taking advantage of the relationship Clara had developed with Tony Stark. But this woman worked for the Veterans Hospital. Clara, Tony, and even Sam said there was a slim chance she’d betray me. But anyone could be bought with the right price. And I still couldn’t get myself to open up. There was always a nagging “what if” that kept the walls in place.

“I used to have a lot of dreams,” I finally admitted. Struggling to push through my mental defenses just to get the words out. I focused on my fingernails so I didn’t have to make eye contact. I hated when people stared too long. Like they could read things I didn’t want to show. “About that day. When everything went wrong. I used to dream about the little girl who died in my arms. My friends. Colonel Talbot taking a shot to the leg. What it felt like to dig my fingers into the wound to try and pinch the artery before he bled out.” I shook my head. “I still have them. But something is different about them. I see things I didn’t see before. Instead of watching them die—I’m the one that’s killing them….” I tapered off, and she waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, she took a deep breath.

“You see yourself as responsible for the deaths of your squadron?” she questioned. I nodded. “That sounds like survivor’s guilt, Johanna. It’s a natural response to a traumatic event like this. You blame yourself on a subconscious level. It’s manifesting in these dreams.” I nodded again slowly.

“They feel so real, though,” I explained. “It’s like I’m really there again. I can feel the sun, sweat, and the fear.”

“Of course it feels real while you’re experiencing it. The same way a vivid dream feels real while you’re dreaming. It’s only when you wake up and remember all the unusual or extraordinary things that you realize it can’t be true. But what you see in your nightmares seems plausible to you in a waking state. But plenty of false memories are created this way. They’re still being drudged up by your subconscious. You can’t dream memories accurately. It’s only your subconscious trying to process the experience.” I didn’t believe that. My dreams had always been sharply real.

“This is healthy, Johanna,” she said after another long pause. “Dreams are our way of making sense of our waking lives. Of sorting through information and feelings. Processing experiences. Your mind is just trying to make sense of what happened. You told me you’ve had recurring dreams about this event before. That was your mind refusing to let it go. The dreams are changing because you’re working through a new stage of the grieving process. This is just the guilt you refuse to acknowledge in your waking state.”

“I know. It’s just—with everything that’s happened this year—and all the blank spaces in my memory—sometimes I’m afraid these dreams might actually be real. What if I really did kill them?”

“There would be a record of it, wouldn’t there? I don’t know how it correlates to what happened to you earlier this year. We’ve only discussed your time in the military. And even then, only briefly.” I pinched my lips shut, my mental defenses locking back into place. “You’re not ready to discuss it yet. I understand. But I’m here when you’re willing to talk. In the meantime, we can talk about anything you want. Tell me about your house. How are you handling the move back home?” I shrugged my shoulders. The fresher wound jolted with a painful ache.

“Fine, I guess,” I told her. “Stark had everything taken care of. I barely had to do anything myself. Feels almost back to normal now. I’m just not sure if I really wanted to go back to normal. Or if I just really wanted to get away from my sister.”

“You don’t get along with your sister?”

“It’s not that. We get along now that we’re adults. We just have different lives and goals. I don’t want to drive a wedge between her and Stark. I want to be my own person. What she thinks is best for me isn’t always in line with what I want for myself.”

“And you’re starting your new job today, aren’t you? Are you looking forward to it?” I shook my head and then laughed. I turned my attention back to the window where I could see the newly rebuilt parking garage across the street. Most of it had to be reconstructed after a bomb took out part of the roof. And destroyed my car. The rest of the city seemed calm, windy, and gray.

“I don’t think I’m ready for it, to be honest,” I admitted. “I don’t feel like I’m cut out for this line of work.”

“Why not?”

“It’s more your thing, don’t you think? I have no training. No experience. I’m just a fill-in for Sam anyway.”

“Maybe not, but this job doesn’t require much training. It’s more about understanding. That’s more valuable than formal education in this setting. It’s more than most people can give.”

“But how am I supposed to stand there and help people rebuild their lives if I can’t even do that for myself?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t look at it that way,” she suggested. “Your job isn’t to help anyone rebuild anything. You’re just there to lend an ear and lead discussions. The only requirement is that you’re sympathetic and understanding. Lives are rebuilt brick by brick. You’re just providing a tool. Having someone around who understands your trauma is sometimes just what a person needs to move past it.” That sounded uncomfortably familiar.

“I had that once. Or at least, I thought I did. It didn’t turn out so well for me.”

“What happened?” I’d led myself right into a trap. I took a deep breath and let it go slowly.

“He shot me.” She nodded.

“Are you ready to tell me about it?”

“Not really, no.”

“When you are….”

“I should probably get going, actually. I still need time to set up before everyone arrives.”

“Of course. And I’ll see you on Thursday afternoon, correct?”

“Yeah, I’ll be here.”

I nodded, and she followed me back out into the waiting room. Even though our session was over prematurely, she set a comforting hand on my shoulder and offered me a professionally trained smile.

“It isn’t real, Johanna,” she assured me. “I know it feels real, but it isn’t. You can’t trust your subconscious to be accurate. And if you need my help, call me. I can’t guarantee I’ll always answer. But leave a message. I’m here for you.” I nodded.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“And I can’t wait to hear about your first day of work.” I smiled awkwardly and pulled away from her. Then I headed out of the office without another word.