And the nightmares—waking up screaming every fucking time I closed my eyes. Nobody so much as blinked. The nurse just came in, shook me awake and handed out some more sleeping pills. Night terrors were nothing when just about every guy in the place had PTSD.
Apart from seeing Caro trying to hide the pity in her eyes, the most painful part of my treatment was the fucking shrink sessions.
I tried to disappear when it was time for my appointment, but one of the orderlies always found me. I’d hated it from the very first day—talking about fucking feelings.
“Come in please, Hunter. If you’d mind sitting over there.”
The woman pointed to an empty space on the far side of her desk. At least she hadn’t asked me to take a seat. Ha-fucking-ha.
The bitch of an orderly wheeled me into position and locked the brakes on the wheelchair. Nope, I wasn’t going anywhere; I was having fucking therapy whether I wanted it or not.
“My name is Captain Banner,” said the doc. “I’m from the Army Medical Corps and I’m also a qualified psychologist. However, in my office there are no ranks: you can call me Judith or doctor. What do you like to be called? Sebastian? Seb?”
I tried to shrug my shoulders, instead sending a wave of pain through the left side of my body that made me nauseous. I decided that having her call me ‘Sebastian’ would be too weird—only Caro used my full name.
“Seb,” I muttered when I felt I could talk without biting off my own tongue.
“Good!” She gave me a professional smile. “Our sessions are about helping you come to terms with everything that’s happened to you. Acceptance precedes understanding. I’m told that your shoulder injury is healing well with only limited loss of function, so you should be able to wheel yourself soon; and your other injuries are also making progress.”
I could see she was choosing her words carefully. I watched her face, wondering what her angle would be.
“You’ve also had a traumatic brain injury—being that near to an explosion, the brain experiences a shockwave inside the skull, and it can have serious effects.”
Was I supposed to agree? She was the fucking doctor.
She looked down at her notes again. “The nursing staff tell me that your sleep is disturbed by nightmares most nights.”
Every night, I thought, but I didn’t say that.
“Can you tell me what you dream about?”
I looked away. It was bad enough dreaming about seeing Chiv and Jankowski get blown to pink mist every night, parts of their bodies raining down on my Utility Uniform, so I didn’t see how talking about it to some shrink would help, going over it again and again.
She sighed and pushed her notes to one side.
“I have been out to Afghanistan,” she said. “I do know what it’s like.”
I nearly smiled. “Yeah?”
Her face brightened. “Yes. I was based at Camp Leatherneck for six weeks.”
Six weeks. Try six months, or a year.
“How many times did you go outside the fence?” I asked casually, already knowing the answer.
“Excuse me?”
I met her gaze. “How many times did you leave the compound at Leatherneck?”
“Oh,” she said, momentarily off balance. “I didn’t because…”
That’s what I thought.
I looked away. “Next question.”
So she moved on: question after fucking question. How did I feel? What was I thinking? What outcomes did I want from sessions with her?
To get the fuck out as quickly as possible.
I stared out her window and refused to answer. I could do this shit all day long.
Eventually, she admitted defeat. Time-was up—onto the next exciting appointment in my busy schedule: more physio.
An orderly came to wheel me out, but Doctor Spock had the last word.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at fourteen-hundred hours, Seb.”
Oh, the fucking joy.
Physio was at the gym most days. I didn’t mind that, even though it was fucking painful. It reminded me of boot camp—being yelled at to try harder, push through the pain, get over the mental wall. I could do that. Maybe it was because I was a competitive motherfucker, or maybe it was because I was one of the least injured guys there. One kid, Lance, had lost both legs and his right arm. He shrugged his good shoulder when I talked to him.
“Rather me than my buddies,” he said.
I didn’t know if he meant because he didn’t want to see his friends injured, or because his friends were dead. I didn’t ask. We were put on the same team for a game of sitting volleyball, one-handed.
It was pretty funny seeing a bunch of cripples try to reach for the ball as it came crashing over the net.
Lance nudged me in the side and nearly fell over doing it. “Isn’t that your fiancée over there? She’s hot.”
I tensed up immediately. I really fucking hated Caro seeing me like this, and right now I was sitting on the floor, knowing it would take me a full 30 seconds to climb back into my wheelchair. I didn’t want to see the compassionate look on her face while I did it.
Lance was still studying her, and a part of me wanted to punch him for it.
“Lucky bastard,” he muttered. “Do you think any girl will want to have sex with me now? Maybe one of those weirdoes who goes for amputees, or maybe one of those Wounded Warrior groupies? What do you think?”
“Just take your eyes off of my girl,” I snapped.
He laughed and went back to the game.
When I looked at Caro, she waved quickly, then left the room. Yeah, I was sick of me, too.
It was the third week and my fifth session with Captain Shrink, and to say we hadn’t hit it off would be an understatement.
She kept pushing me, picking at my scabs, refusing to let me put everything behind me until I’d ‘talked’ about it. Instead I’d yelled at her.
“I want you to accept that without being me and being where I’ve been you have no way of knowing what will actually help,” I sneered.
Of course, she hadn’t left it at that.
She sat up straighter in her chair and I could tell she was itching to pull rank, but she didn’t.
“I want you to accept that you need help, then for you to ask for help, and for you to make a decision to choose that help. You do accept that there are trained professionals who can help you?”
I laughed at her. She wasn’t happy about that.
“You’re not the only one who has been training since the age of 18,” she said stiffly. “Although unlike your job, the equipment I work with doesn’t come with a user manual.”
Yep, definitely pissing her off.
Then came the sucker punch.
“I talked to your fiancée.”
She saw the flicker of fury on my face, and the fact that she’d seen it made me even more pissed. I could feel the rage building inside of me, and if I’d had the strength, I’d have wheeled myself out of there. But unless you’ve got one of those electric wheelchairs, you can’t work an ordinary chair with one hand, or you end up going in fucking circles.
Why the fuck had Caro been talking to my shrink? I felt betrayed. The only defense I had was to look away.
“Miss Venzi is a very interesting woman,” continued the doc. “She seems fully invested in working through the … changes … in your circumstances.”
My veins felt like they’d been filled with boiling tar. Caro had been talking behind my back? I didn’t want to believe it.
“She thought you might consider taking a different sort of job in the Marine Corps.”