A peek on the inside***UPDATED***

I am a little (OK, a lot) stressed and distracted today. K called me last night as I was riding bikes with AJ. We had only ridden 2 miles of the 30 we'd planned. I was able to talk to him for about five minutes. It was 2:30 a.m. there, so he couldn't wait and call me back when we'd be finished a couple of hours later. He said he'd get some rest and call me the next morning, which would have been about 12:30 or 1-ish last night.

In the five minutes that we were able to talk, I asked him about some attacks I'd gotten an email about from the family group. He had mentioned them to me in an email himself. He had said there had been some deaths, but that everyone we know was OK. He had never used wording like that before, which made me a little more anxious about the attack than usual. When I asked him about the attack, he said, "Which one?"

That wasn't the response I'd expected. I asked him if there had been more. He said yes. I asked if his base had gotten attacked. He gave a nervous I-don't-know-if-I-should-tell-you-this laugh before slowly saying, "Yeah."

He said the attack had happened during some bad weather earlier that day. It was raining pretty hard, so the bastard insurgents knew there would be less people guarding at that time. They chose to attack by air. Luckily, what K told me about the insurgents' lack of precision proved to be true. The explosion occurred outside the walls of the base, but still ...

This is the third time since February -- and the second in only a few weeks. If logic told me the second time that an attack would happen again, this third one leaves me with no doubt that more will come.

You've probably guessed by now that I didn't hear from K last night. It could be for a number of reasons -- he could've had a meeting that ran late; he could have had something else come up preventing him to get to the phone; the lines to get into the call center could have been really long (especially since the communication blackout had just been lifted from the last attacks) ... or there could have been another attack with more injuries and/or deaths, thus resulting in another communication blackout. And honestly, none of those are the worst-case scenario.

Until K is able to call me again, I probably won't know which of those was the reason. I'm sure he is fine, but it's still stressful.

I mentioned the quick phone call, the lack of a return call and the attack K had told me about to Brit when I saw her at work earlier today. I didn't realize quite how bothered I was by all this until I caught myself fighting back tears as I told her about them. Luckily, she was too busy preparing her lunch to notice.

It's frustrating walking around work all day with my mind elsewhere, feeling completely distracted. I have to carry on like everything's normal, like I'm not a huge ball of stress inside. I have to walk around like it hasn't been over a week since I've really gotten to talk to my husband, like he didn't tell me someone tried to drop a bomb on his head yesterday, like I don't have my phone attached to me at all times, and like I'm not carrying a prioritized list of things to tell him next time we really do get to have a conversation.

And I have to do this for 10 more months.

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UPDATE

I heard from K at about 7:00 tonight. It's ER's birthday, and I was juuuust getting to the restaurant to meet her and several others for dinner when K called. I was able to talk to him for a little under 15 minutes. He's doing well.

And now, I am too.