Page 28 of Wings
"You're overcomplicating it," I said without thinking, then winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean—"
"No, you're right." He leaned back, not offended. "I do that. Get in my own head, make things harder than necessary."
I noticed the small details then. Tiny star stickers on some of the folders—gold for completed, silver for pending, red for urgent. Smiley faces drawn next to successful supply runs. Color-coded tabs that followed no organizational system except what made sense in his brain.
"Your system is . . . sweet," I said carefully, not wanting to trigger whatever had happened this morning when he'd called himself that.
He actually smiled, small but real. "The stickers make it easier to process information when my brain gets scrambled. Helps me focus."
"PTSD?" I asked softly.
"Among other things." He slid a sheet of stickers across the table. "Want to mark the critical supplies? Purple for antibiotics, gold for pain meds?"
We worked in comfortable quiet, the kind that didn't need filling. I sorted physical inventory lists while he updated digital records. Occasionally our hands would brush reaching for the same pen, and neither of us pulled away.
Without conscious thought, I started doodling in the margins of his notepad. First just a tiny unicorn in the corner—nervous habit from years of lectures and meetings. Then another, slightly larger, with more detail in the mane. A rainbow connecting them. Tiny clouds.
"You still draw," he said, watching my hand move.
"Just doodles." I added wings to one of the unicorns without thinking. "Nothing like before."
Before. When I'd filled sketchbooks with dreams and butterflies and beautiful things I thought the world might hold. Before reality had taught me that beautiful things were just easier to break.
"I kept one," he said quietly. "Of your butterflies. Carried it through two deployments.It was my good luck charm. This little monarch with blue and purple wings instead of orange. You'd written 'dare to dream' underneath in tiny letters. Then it got destroyed. And my luck ran out."
He gave a tired smile.
I remembered that butterfly. Drawn the night before his going-away party, when I'd been trying not to think about him leaving. I'd given it to him impulsively, pressed it into his hand when Alex wasn't looking, told him to stay safe.
"I'm surprised you kept it," I whispered.
"It reminded me there were still beautiful things in the world. That someone thought I was worth wishing safety for."
The weight of that admission hung between us. I focused on my doodle, adding more details to distract from the ache in my chest. Before I realized it, I'd drawn tiny wings next to hisname on the volunteer schedule. Not butterflies—actual wings, detailed and careful.
If he noticed, he didn't comment. Just slid another list my way, our fingers brushing again in the exchange.
"Tell me about the medical stuff," he said, offering an escape from the emotional intensity. "What do we lose most? What's hardest to source?"
Grateful for the redirect, I launched into explaining antibiotic resistance, shelf lives, the difference between what expired legally versus what actually lost potency. He listened with the same focused attention he gave his spreadsheets, asking smart questions, making notes in margins I'd already decorated with tiny rainbows.
"You're good at this," I said, watching him reorganize the chaos into something manageable. "Making sense of complicated things."
"Had to learn. In the field, good organization meant the difference between life and death. Knowing where your medical supplies were, how much you had, what you could stretch in an emergency." He paused, a shadow crossing his face. "Lost too many people to preventable things. Don't want that happening here."
The weight of his experience, his losses, settled over the table like a blanket. I wanted to reach out, to offer comfort, but didn't know if I had the right. Instead, I added another unicorn to his notepad, this one with a tiny crown.
"For what it's worth," I said softly, "your system's going to save lives. The organization, the tracking—it'll make everything more efficient. Safer."
He looked at me then, really looked, and something passed between us. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition of shared purpose. His hand moved across the table, not quite touching mine but close enough I could feel the warmth.
"Thank you," he said simply. "For helping. For . . ." He gestured vaguely at the decorated margins. "For making it less clinical."
I smiled, the first real smile I'd felt in days. "Anytime you need unicorns, I'm your girl."
The words hung in the air, heavier than I'd intended. His fingers twitched like he wanted to close that last inch between us, but he didn't. Just smiled back, soft and a little sad, and returned to his spreadsheet.
The atmosphere shattered like spun sugar when Mia appeared in the archway. She wore unicorn pajamas—not the ironic kind adults bought as jokes, but soft purple ones with a hood that had a horn and ears. Her feet were in fuzzy slippers that looked like clouds. And she was skipping. Actually skipping.
