Home Front

You’ve got this, Jo, she thought desperately. You can handle anything. Just don’t look away. The first time is the hardest. But that was the old Jo talking, and her voice was quiet, easy to ignore.

He unwrapped the elastic bandage slowly, so slowly she knew he was giving her the time to readjust with every motion. He lifted her leg a little, unwrapping the back, then moving across the front.

She thought she was going to be sick. Hold on, Jo. Hold on. Her fingernails bit hard into her palm. She felt herself starting to sweat.

He pulled the last of the bandages away, set them on the sheet beside her good leg. All that was left was a soft, gauzy dressing. Through it, she could see the discoloration of her swollen, bruised skin. She closed her eyes.

“Jo?”

“I’m not looking,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

“Keep breathing. Just listen to my voice. I’m going to massage your leg, okay? It’s good for circulation. When you’re ready, I’ll teach you how to do it.”

When his hands touched her skin, she flinched, felt a ripple of revulsion. She couldn’t help herself; she made a little whimper of sound.

“Breathe, soldier girl.”

She let out a heavy breath.

Slowly, she felt his fingers moving, massaging, releasing the clenched muscles, and it was a kind of magic. She felt her shoulders let go, her fists open. Her head lolled forward the slightest bit.

“There you go,” he said at last, and she had almost fallen asleep. “You can open your eyes now, Jolene.”

“Is it covered?”

“Yes. You’re covered.”

She heard the slight emphasis he put on the word, and she lifted her head slowly, opened her eyes.

The elastic bandage was back in place, wrapped more tightly now, the tiny silver closures angled in a pair, almost like officers’ bars.

“Thanks,” she said. “That helped with the pain.”

“You will get better, Jolene. Trust me.”

“I didn’t used to be such a bitch.”

He came back up to the head of the bed, stood beside her. “You’re not a bitch. You’re just scared. My wife, now she’s a bitch.” He smiled. “And I love her like a crazy man.”

“I didn’t used to be scared, either.”

“Then you were lying to yourself. We’re all scared sometimes.”

To that, she had no answer. She had lied to herself about a lot of things over the years, lied or looked away. It had been the only way she knew how to survive. And she’d been right to do it—this fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he’d unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed.

Nerve endings; he’d said they were the problem. Things that got cut off, that ended abruptly or died—like parents and marriages—kept hurting forever.

She knew he expected her to be stronger, to try harder, to believe she could get better. But she didn’t want better. She wanted her old life back, her old self back, and both were gone, amputated as cleanly as her leg.

“Just try. That’s all I ask.”

Try. It was another word for believe, and she was done with that.

“Go away, Conny,” she said, sighing, closing her eyes.

OCT.

It’s raining outside my window. All I can see is tears. There’s something seriously wrong with me, and it’s not a missing leg.

I’m being weak, falling into this pit of self-pity, and it embarrasses me, but I can’t help myself. Conny comes into my room, wearing this big-ass smile, and he says all I have to do is try. He shows me pictures of women playing tennis on artificial legs, and I get the point, really I do. I just can’t seem to make myself care. What right do I have to walk when Tami is lying in a bed, fighting for her life, and Smitty is buried in some box deep in the earth, never to smile again, never to say, Heya, Chief, you wanna play cards?

I’ve been here eight days, and Michael has visited almost every day. I pretend to be asleep when he comes. I lay there, listening to him breathing beside my bed, and I keep my eyes closed. What a coward I’ve become. He hasn’t brought the girls to see me again. I know why. They’re afraid. They see me and they know I’ve changed and it makes them wonder if their world will ever be the same. I yelled at Betsy when she hit my leg. I didn’t mean to, but what could I do to change it? I know it’s my job to comfort them, but I can’t. It’s just not in me. Every time I think of them I want to cry.

Maybe if I could sleep, I’d be okay. Or better, anyway. But my nights are full of nightmares. I hear my crew screaming for me, over and over and over. I see Tami reaching for me. It’s getting so bad I’m trying not to close my eyes.

Michael sat in the plush leather chair in his office, staring out the window at a bleak October day. It was 10:42 in the morning, nine days after his wife’s return.

She would be in physical therapy now, trying to learn how to do things she used to take for granted.

His intercom buzzed. “Michael. Dr. Cornflower is here to see you.”

“Send him in,” he said, rising.

Chris walked into the office.

“Chris,” Michael said, trying to get his mind back in the game. “Hello. Thank you for coming.”

Chris tucked a straggly strand of hair back into his messy ponytail. Today he was wearing a black tee shirt, a fringed suede vest, baggy cargo pants, and black plastic clogs. An expensive leather messenger bag hung across his body. He took it off and burrowed through it, pulling out a green folder, which he set on the desk. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Keith is suffering from an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder and probably was in a disassociative state when he killed his wife.”

“And you’ll testify to that in court?”

Chris sat down, crossed one leg over the other. “I would.”

“In a suit?”

Chris smiled. “You’d be surprised how well I clean up, Michael.”

“Good. So tell me what I need to know,” Michael said, sitting down behind his desk again.

“I’ve included a detailed report that you can study, so I’ll just go with the highlights here. First let me explain how we diagnose. We start with questions designed to determine whether the patient witnessed or experienced an event involving serious injury or death. Some of the events in combat most likely to lead to PTSD are being attacked or ambushed, receiving incoming rocket or mortar fire, being shot at, being responsible for the death of a civilian or an enemy combatant, and seeing or handling seriously injured Americans or their remains. Obviously, many of these are heightened when one is talking about seeing a buddy die or get hurt. As you know, Keith’s unit saw some of the worst fighting in the war. The insurgent gunfire and mortar fire was almost nonstop. Sixty-four soldiers from his brigade died in his first year’s tour. What you don’t know is that Keith was often on ‘bagging’ duty, which means he was charged with picking up body parts. Friends’ body parts.”

“Jesus,” Michael murmured.

“I think the trip to the public market triggered him. The crowds and the movement made him hypervigilant, put him in attack mode. He started drinking to calm himself, but it didn’t work. When the homeless man approached, Keith reacted as he’d been trained. He attacked. He has no substantive memory of what happened at home, but I theorize that another trigger—a loud sound, a flash of light, something like that—caused him to flash back to the war. In this dissociative state, he reacted as he’d been trained—he defended himself and killed his wife.”

“In a dissociative state of this kind, can a person think rationally at all?”

“If you’re asking me if one can form intent, my answer is no. Further, it is my professional opinion that Keith Keller specifically was incapable of forming the intent to kill.”

Michael sat back, thinking.

“He’s a good man, Michael, a man who saw and experienced things his mind simply couldn’t handle. It would be a tragedy to compound his—and his family’s—tragedy by locking him away for life. He needs residential treatment.”

Michael opened his own file. “You know the Department of Veterans Affairs deemed that he had a ‘slight anxiety disorder.’ They did not diagnose PTSD.”

“The VA,” Chris said, shaking his head. “Don’t get me started on the government and its failings with regard to our soldiers. It’s criminal. The military tends to equate PTSD with weakness or cowardice. But they’re going to have to get on board, especially because troops are doing multiple tours. We need to make the VA and the government start addressing the needs of its soldiers at home. We need to shine a light on this and erase the stigma. This case is important, Michael. Maybe you can help another broken soldier and save some lives.”

“We haven’t found a case to date where PTSD was argued successfully.”

“There has to be a first time.” Chris smiled.

Michael nodded, looked out the window, where a steady rain was falling, in threads so thin they were like gray silk, blurring the sharp steel edges of the buildings. Like tears.

He understood suddenly what this case meant to him, why it mattered so much. “My wife,” he said slowly. “She lost a leg over there. One of her crew was killed. Her best friend is still in a coma. Anyway, Jolene just got home and she’s different. She was reserved with our kids—angry and edgy, really—and she adores them. I want to help her, but I don’t know how.”

There was a pause; in the silence, Michael could feel Chris studying him. “She’s an army helicopter pilot, right?” Chris finally said.

Michael turned to the doctor. “Yes. Does that mean something significant?”

Chris smiled. “You’re such a civilian. It means your wife is tough, Michael. She’s a strong woman who has spent a lifetime getting what she wants from a system that really doesn’t want to give it to her.”

“That’s Jo.”

“A woman like her won’t ask for help easily.”

“She keeps pushing me away.”

“Of course she does. That’s the army way, the military mentality. Be strong, do it all yourself, finish the mission. Don’t let her push you away. She needs you now, even if she doesn’t know it. And watch out for PTSD symptoms. Nightmares, lack of sleep, hypervigilance, sudden bouts of anger or depression or apparent numbness.”

“Thank you, Chris,” Michael said.

This time, the doctor stood. They shook hands.

The doctor walked over to the door, opened it, and looked back. “Polyester or corduroy, by the way?’

“What?”

“For my suit.”

“I can get—”

“Hugo Boss it is,” Chris said, grinning as he left the office.

Twenty

The next day, Michael woke early, exhausted after another sleepless night. He stumbled out of bed and tried to reanimate his sluggish body with a hot shower, which only made him more tired. He dressed for work in the clothes from yesterday, which he’d left lying over the back of a chair. It was easier than going into his closet and starting fresh. As usual these days, his clothes were strewn everywhere, hanging on chairs, folded in heaps on the floor, draped over the bench at the end of their bed.