Rock Paper Tiger

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I WAS LUCKY. My leg was totally busted up, multiple fractures, shredded muscles, lacerated blood vessels, but I didn’t lose it, even after the post-op infection and complications from blood loss; they did skin grafts put in an intramedullary rod and five titanium screws to hold it all together. I had broken some ribs and fractured two vertebrae too. I had a major concussion but no long-term brain injury, at least that’s what they said. At first they weren’t sure, because for a while I had a hard time putting sentences together, and I’d get these headaches that were so bad I’d want to die. That made them wonder if some of the psych symptoms I exhibited were organic, as opposed to just me being crazy. But they cleared me of any permanent brain injury.

I know I was lucky. I told myself that every time I saw some of the guys in the hospital. The guys with “polytrauma.” That’s what they call it when you have more than one serious injury at once, usually an amputation combined with head trauma. The guys who had to learn to both talk and walk all over again. The guys who couldn’t get that far. Who would never be able to hold a real job, because their brains just wouldn’t work right any more. Smart guys, funny guys, with chunks out of their skulls, indentations like somebody’d taken an ice-cream scoop to their heads, who’d smile sometimes when they couldn’t keep up, like they knew they were missing something, but didn’t know what. The guys who were worse than that. The ones who weren’t really there at all any more, who needed tubes to breathe and tubes to suction out their mucus and tubes to pump liquefied pudding into their guts and take away their piss and what passed for their shit. I’d go by those rooms on my crutches, the pain in my leg so bad that even through the haze of narcotics I’d have tears streaming down my face and not even realize I was crying, and I’d see families in there sometimes, sitting around the bed, holding the guy’s hand, telling him how he was going to get better soon, and they were going to take him home. He’d be home, and it would all be better.

People kept telling me how brave I was. I didn’t get that. I mean, how brave do you have to be to get blown up? But I’d smile and nod anyway. I just did what I was told. Walk to the end of the rail; lift your leg; tighten your belly; four more times; come on, you can do it; pump, pump, pump! I worked my ass off, like a good little soldier.

But the first time I really saw myself in the mirror, when I was finally able to go into the bathroom with the help of an attendant, no more bedpans and catheters, I could hardly believe the face that stared back at me. I’d lost something like twenty-five pounds, and I hadn’t been heavy to begin with. I looked like a little old man. Some shriveled-up circus monkey. My eyes were sunk into their sockets, surrounded by bruised, black lids, black holes that were going to swallow me up inside them.

“Hey,” I said to the attendant, this Haitian guy who was built like a statue. “Hey, I look like shit, don’t I?”

“You don’t look so bad,” he said, resting his heavy hand on my shoulder. “You’ll get better. Don’t you worry.”

I was in the hospital for over a month. After the first two weeks, my mom had to go back to work. She said she could come and see me on the weekends, but I told her she should save her money. As much as a part of me wanted her there, wanted my mommy to stay and take care of me, another part of me wished that she hadn’t come. Because I could see how much it hurt her to see me like this, her little girl, how painful it was for her. I could see her eyes fill with tears as she looked at me, when she didn’t turn away in time. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

Trey couldn’t stay long either. He had to get back.

I’d wanted to wait and have a real wedding, that whole princess fantasy, me all in white; but Trey had more sense about this than I did.

“No,” he said. “We should do it now. Just in case.”

“Don’t think that way,” I said.

“Ellie, we have to think that way. If something happens to me, you’ll have my benefits. That’s not much, but it’s something.”

I finally decided that he was right. That it was practical. Or maybe I just wanted to please him. It was what he wanted, after all. And I wanted to make him happy.

A chaplain came and married us, me lying in my hospital bed, Trey in his dress uniform, my mom and his parents standing by. This was the first time I’d met his parents, naturally, and in my morphine-addled state it was hard for me to form much of an impression of them, except that I could see Trey in them both, distorted, fun-house mirror versions of Trey anyway. They smiled a lot. They seemed tense.

“You just let us know if you need anything,” Trey’s dad told me. He was an executive in an insurance company.

“We just want to welcome you to our family,” Trey’s mom told me. She sold real estate at the time.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks very much.”

Trey’s mom clasped my hand. “Such a brave girl,” she said.

THE NIGHT BEFORE Trey had to report, he brought dinner for me. Mexican food. I’d been saying how much I wanted some decent Mexican food, because nothing at the hospital tasted good, and I never felt like eating. I needed to eat. I’d lost too much weight, and I needed to eat, everyone kept telling me, to get my strength back.

If I could only have some Mexican food, I was sure I’d feel like eating.

So Trey went out and got all these dishes from a local restaurant-enchiladas and burritos and chile rellenos-and served them to me on the plastic tray that swung over my bed.

I pretended it was great, but it wasn’t. Soupy red sauce, too much sour cream, and guacamole that only vaguely tasted like avocado.

“If you need anything, just call my folks,” Trey was saying. “They really want to help, so don’t feel shy about it.”

“I won’t,” I said.

I was having a hard time swallowing. The enchilada seemed to stick in my throat. I had the idea, suddenly, that the food was getting stuck on all the words down there, the words I wouldn’t say, and that was why I couldn’t eat.

I was pretty high from the morphine at the time.

“That stuff,” I said. “The stuff we did. Are we going to get in trouble?”

Trey’s fork froze halfway to his mouth.

He took the bite. Chewed. Swallowed. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quietly.

“We didn’t?”

“Things look different from here,” he finally said.

He put his hand on mine. “Look, most people aren’t going to understand. They weren’t there.”

“I don’t know, Trey.”

My eyes teared up. That happened a lot. I couldn’t control it. Sometimes I didn’t even think I felt sad.

“Ellie. You can’t talk about it. This is about OpSec. You violate that, you’re putting the mission at risk. You don’t want to do that. Right?”

He spoke so soothingly. Like I was a child. And I was. Helpless. Needing to be fed. Tuck me in, Daddy.

“No.”

“Good.” He leaned over and gently kissed me. “Just get better, Ellie. That’s all you need to think about right now.”

I SAW A shrink a couple of times. That was standard operating procedure. They had this rhetoric about how the sooner you start treatment, the less likely you are to develop major psychological problems. But this was more of an evaluation. A cover-your-ass move. I got the usual questions: “How are you feeling?” “Are you experiencing any intrusive thoughts?” “Any nightmares?” “Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Fine,” I’d say, which of course was a big fucking lie, considering how much pain I was in. But the pain drove out most intrusive thoughts (as did the narcotics), and I wasn’t having nightmares. Not then. Those started later.

The only question I’d get stuck on was that last one: Anything you’d like to talk about? “No,” I’d say. “I’m okay.” But I knew what was hovering at the edge of my thoughts, wanting to push its way in, and every once in a while I’d get this flash, this vision, like a snapshot, of Sneezy chained to the floor of the Admin Core, of Greif flashing her tit. Of me and Trey fucking in that horrible little room.

I guess those were intrusive thoughts.

I’d push them all away. I could do that then. Sometimes I could hardly remember anything about those times. I’d had this strange interlude on the other side of the planet, but it was over, I was home now, and I could forget about it.

I just had to get better, that’s all.

The shrink, this middle-aged major-looking back, he wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe I should have talked to him. I wonder, would I have gotten better if I had?

But I couldn’t talk about it, could I? Not about what happened in the Admin Core. I’d get in trouble. I’d get Trey in trouble. They wouldn’t understand.

The third and last time Major Shrink saw me, after I told him I wasn’t having any intrusive thoughts, no nightmares, I was okay, he leaned back in his chair and pushed his glasses onto his forehead.

“I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling good, Ellie,” he said. “You’ve been through a really rough time. Just because you weren’t in combat doesn’t mean you didn’t experience a significant amount of stress. Now, you’re a medic, so I think you’ll understand what I’m going to say. These kinds of symptoms can take a while to develop. Three, four months; it’s not unusual.” He closed his eyes for a moment and tapped his pen on the edge of the desk a few times. “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling good,” he repeated. “Just keep in mind, if you have any problems, there are resources available that can help you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Appreciate it.”

I wonder now, how did he know? Could he see it in my face? In my eyes? Was it something he understood because he’d been there? Or was this just his standard-operating-procedure CYA line of bullshit? “Patient was informed of treatment availability. Patient reported no significant symptoms and declined further treatment.”