“Yet General Wade believes this is the best course of action?” asked Mile Williams, the National Security Director.
“If our forces stay on defense, then they will be assaulted and be in a constant state of reacting to the Russians, rather than forcing the Russians to react to our attack. The Pershings are an incredible offensive weapon, but remaining still has made them sitting ducks against the MiG40s.” Branson showed some images of Pershings that had fallen prey to the attacks of the MiGs before he continued, “The General wants to get them into the war where they can do some good, rather than continue to lose a steady stream of them daily to high altitude bombing runs.”
The President knew his military commanders were chomping at the bit to go on the offensive. America had been attacked mercilessly the last nine months and had suffered some horrendous losses-not to mention the nuclear bombs detonating in New York and Baltimore. However, the military was stretched incredibly thin right now. With the new offensive happening in Alaska, it was going to be difficult to contain the Chinese there, let alone keep an offensive line in both the Middle East and Europe replenished with fuel, munitions, food, equipment and replacement troops. The country was still retooling for war, and it was going to take time to draft and train a several million-person military from scratch.
“General Branson, I understand the issue facing General Wade and his forces in Europe. I appreciate the effort that went into developing these plans and the effort that has been made to position forces for this trap. However, I want General Wade to keep his offensive on hold. He may conduct limited offensive operations as needed to keep the Russians from penetrating his lines, but nothing more. Right now, we cannot afford to take a chance on losing most of Germany. The EU countries need time to continue to mobilize their forces and the Germans need time to crank out their new battle tanks and other military vehicles. We simply do not have the resources available to support his offensive right now,” the President explained.
He continued, “With the operations going on in Alaska, nearly all of our new soldiers coming out of training and our equipment coming from the factory floors is going to General Black’s forces. That said, I do want General Gardner to continue with his offensive against the IR. Unless Director Rubio is able to work out some sort of deal with their military leadership, General Gardner should continue as planned and move to occupy the country. What additional forces do we have available to send him right now?” asked the President.
General Branson looked through his tablet and pulled up some information. “We have three divisions completing their final train-up and equipment loadouts. We were going to send them to General Black’s group in Alaska. One is a tank division while the other two are mechanized infantry divisions.”
“What forces will General Gardner need most right now for his offensive?” asked the President.
“Presently, he has the needed forces for his offensive; if we send him additional reinforcements, it will help him during the occupation. I recommend sending him the two mechanized infantry divisions. He has armor but he’ll need more infantry if he is to capture and hold territory,” Branson explained.
“Then redirect those two divisions to the Middle East and get that tank division to Alaska,” the President directed before continuing, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve kept everyone here long enough. Please execute your orders and be ready to provide an update tomorrow at the same time.”
With that, the meeting ended.
Dr. Travis Perino had a home in Baltimore before the nuclear attack. If he closed his eyes, he could still picture the beautiful view of the harbor during the summer (he would often walk there with his dog after a long shift). When the bomb was detonated, he had been on vacation in Jamaica, so he had survived, but his condo, his co-workers, his dog… everything was destroyed. It felt strange to him to not be able to go back and see it for himself; he understood that the radiation was dangerous and that “closure” was probably not the best reason for him to grab a HAZMAT suit and head to ground zero, but still, he wanted to mourn what was lost in a better way than watching news coverage of the event.
As a psychiatrist, Dr. Perino felt that he had something to offer to those that survived this horrible tragedy, so he left his tropical paradise on the first flight out and headed to Richmond, Virginia, which was one of the major hubs where the injured were being taken. Many were clearly in a state of shock, so overwhelmed by their experience that they couldn’t even function. In such cases, Travis would sit by the patient and calmly reorient them to where they were; he did have a way of speaking to people that would bring a sense of peace, and he didn’t rush any of the patients that were unable to speak. They would begin to recover with time and reassurance.
He worked with the nurses to lower the stimuli in the rooms for some of the more distressed patients; all of the beeping from IV machines, lights and general noise from so many people rushing about was quite distressing. Like many who enter a “caring” field, he poured himself out for those around him, never stopping to think about his own needs. It was only at the end of the day, when he was all alone in a hotel room and everything was quiet, that he would fall into a pool of his own grief.
Months later, he was still caring for those who had been affected by this terrible tragedy. He had stayed in Richmond to set up his own practice there; now those he was seeing were mostly dealing with the ongoing effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The signs were obvious: recurrent flashbacks or nightmares, insomnia, a heightened state of alertness/guarding, and triggering events that caused the person to go into “fight or flight” mode. His father had been a veteran of the second Iraq War, so he had seen it all firsthand. It was actually part of what had made him want to become a psychiatrist in the first place.
Back then, his Dad had been treated by doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who basically just shoved him full of pills and sent him on his merry way. However, those medications were not without their side effects, and his father would often complain of headaches or seem to space out in the distance, unable to focus on the people in front of him. Sometimes, the VA would mess up his medication shipment and he wouldn’t get his pills in time; those medicines aren’t meant to be stopped cold turkey, and his father would lash out like someone who is a mean alcoholic. One day his mother had enough of the whole thing, and the two of them split.
Dr. Perino wanted to be a different kind of doctor. Yes, psychiatrists can prescribe drugs to help heal the mind, and he did, but he would also work with his patients on other forms of therapy as well; eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) was probably the most useful treatment, but he also did cognitive behavioral therapy, taught coping strategies, and would generally do whatever it took to help get the patient back into a normal life again.
Listening to all of these stories of horrific experiences around Baltimore was taxing, however, and Travis had to do a lot of work with himself at the end of the day to let go of everything he had heard so that he would not hold on to it and carry it like a stone around his neck. He hadn’t always been a runner, but he took it up to help himself de-stress. When the breeze was blowing and there was a steady swish of his feet, he could almost entirely block out all of the tragic things that he had heard about. Otherwise, he usually had to have on some music or television shows of some kind to drown out the scripts of the truly awful things he heard from the survivors.
He almost hated to admit it, but he was glad that the U.S. had responded with all of those nuclear weapons. While he knew cognitively that resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will get hurt, he was truly angry over this unprovoked attack that had shattered the lives of so many. When he heard another story of a mother who lost her child in the blast while she went to work ten miles away, he wanted the IR to pay for their sins.