Phoenix Rising

Fiction by Evelyn Fletcher Symes. "She conceals her horror when she sees the charred remains of who he was. With brusque determination, she acts as though nothing’s changed. But everything has."

This story first appeared in our latest issue, Volume 17.2

“The debridement was worse this time.” He blinks awake. In his dreams about the burn unit, he hears his old voice: commanding, forthright, vibrating low in his chest, a voice the men in his squad claimed opened women’s legs for him.

He turns away from the mirrored closet doors before the early morning light can throw back his reflection. In the unit, there are no mirrors. There’s enough pain without inflicting more.

His sister bought him the townhouse during the year he spent in the burn unit after Afghanistan. She conceals her horror when she sees the charred remains of who he was. With brusque determination, she acts as though nothing’s changed. But everything has.