The Ajax Protocol

CHAPTER 15

Nick had always thought counseling was an admission of weakness. A man ought to handle things on his own had been his dominant thought almost as long as he could remember. Even so, it had finally come home to him that he had to do something about his PTSD. It gave him nightmares and headaches. It was driving a wedge between him and Selena. It interfered when he was in the field.

He'd chosen Dave Milton from a short list recommended by other vets. Milton had made Major in Special Forces, no mean feat. He'd lost an arm in Afghanistan. Those two things gave him a lot of credibility with Nick. Now he was back in Milton's office.

The doctors he'd talked to when he'd come back from the war had told him his guilt about the child was misplaced and that it wasn't his fault. That feeling guilty just made the stress worse. That was like telling him the sky was blue. Intellectually, he already knew that. But they didn't really understand. They hadn't been there. They didn't know what it felt like, but Milton did. That was the difference. Nick trusted him.

Milton was a black man, about Nick's height but a little heavier. Today he had on a blue shirt and a tie. The left sleeve of the shirt was attached with a gold safety pin against his shoulder. Milton was the kind of man who seemed at ease with himself, a man who knew who he was.

They'd been talking for a half hour. Nick told Milton what had happened at Bethesda, in a general way. Milton's clearance was good, but it only went so far.

"You're keeping something back," Milton said.

"What do you mean?"

"You just got through telling me someone tried to kill you. Again. In a parking lot here in the US, where those kinds of things aren't supposed to happen."

"You know I can't go into all the details."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"You haven't said one word about how you feel. You told me what happened. You didn't tell me anything else."

"How do you think I feel? How would you feel if someone started shooting at you?" Nick could feel himself tensing up.

"If you don't want to tell me how you felt in that parking lot, why not tell me how you're doing with the dreams?"

"Better," Nick said, "but the headaches are starting again."

"You remember what you discovered the last time you were here?"

"Yeah. I can get killed like anybody else. But I already knew that. I'm not sure it has much to do with the dreams or PTSD."

"It was more than that. What was the word you used, to describe how you felt? Do you remember? It's important."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"Damn it, you're doing that shrink thing."

"What shrink thing?"

"Throwing questions back at me. Answering a question with a question."

"Would it do any good if I told you what I thought?"

"That's why I'm here."

"No it isn't," Milton said. "You're here because you want to stop the nightmares and the rest of it. Me telling you what I think isn't going to help you solve anything. You have to figure it out yourself."

Every time he'd been here, Nick had wanted to get up and walk out. Now he wanted to do it again. He thought about the last time he'd been in this office. He'd been talking about Afghanistan, about the day he'd almost died. About the grenade. About the child he'd killed who was trying to kill him. The scars on his body began throbbing as he thought about it. What was the word he'd used?

Helpless.

Milton saw it register on Nick's face. "Stay with it," he said. "Stay with the feeling."

"Helpless," Nick said. "Helpless is the word."

Milton was silent.

…the grenade comes toward him, a dark, green shape tumbling through the air…everything goes white….

"How the hell do I deal with that?"

"How do you usually deal with it?"

Nick laughed. "More firepower."

Milton smiled. "Okay, but what else?"

Nick thought. "I get headaches," he said. "Nightmares."

Milton nodded. "Because…?"

"I don't know."

"When we have a nightmare over and over again, it's because our unconscious mind is trying to get our attention. It's a way to get a message through to the outer mind."

"What message?" Nick asked.

"What do you think?"

"There you go again," Nick said.

Milton waited.

"The only message I get is that I almost died."

"That's right. You almost died. How do you feel when you have the dream?"

"Damn it, you know how I feel." Nick was getting angry. "Helpless. Frightened. That good enough?"

"So why do you have the dream?"

Nick took a deep breath. He wanted to punch Milton. He wanted to leave the room. He felt like he was on the verge of something, some discovery. "All it does is remind me."

"Of what?"

"That I feel unprotected. That I could die."

"Yup. Does it work?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do the nightmares keep you safe? Protect you?"

"Of course not."

"Right. It's a failed strategy. Now you know what the issue really is."

Nick felt a surge of adrenaline. "Survival?"

Milton nodded, pleased. "At the most basic level. Life and death. Now that you know that, you don't have to get headaches and nightmares to remind you."

"It can't be that simple."

"Maybe it's a little more complicated than that but that's the foundation," Milton said. "Think about it some more and we'll do something a little different next time to defuse whatever is left."

When he walked out of the office, Nick felt that something had changed. What had Milton said? That since Nick knew what the issue really was, he didn't need the dreams to remind him. He remembered the feeling, like an electric jolt running through his body, when he realized the issue was survival. It was more than knowing it. He'd felt the rightness of it, felt the energy and truth of it ripple through his body, like touching a live wire.

It wasn't the first time he'd thought about getting killed. It wasn't the first time he'd thought about personal survival either. Hell, he had years of practice surviving in situations where others died. Where he could have died. Knowing that survival was the big issue couldn't make any difference.

It couldn't be that simple.

Could it?