Post-traumatic stress disorder.

One in eight soldiers will return home with it after deployment. It’s not new, I’m not the only one who has it, and I refuse to let it beat me, even after all these years.

Since I was discharged from the army, I’d been somewhat of a free spirit. Being caught up in a roadside bomb had given me this need to keep moving, to not stay in one place for too long. I guess in my gut, I was scared that if I did, I might be caught out again.

Or that maybe death would catch up to me instead.

“Eagle?” I looked up to see Dana focused directly at me, her eyes bright and encouraging. “You want to say anything to the new people in the group? Anything you think might be of help?”

Dana had been my psychiatrist after the army. She’d been one of the most positive influences in my life when I was really struggling and at times considering whether life was actually worth living with that much pain every day.

She’d encouraged me to keep going, to visit friends, to find things that I enjoyed and to focus on those. That was how I ended up finding the club. I’d decided to make a visit to see Leo. He was my best friend, and while we kept in touch every other day, I thought it might make me feel different if I could see him in the flesh.

Leo had just started prospecting for the club, so he took me around, introduced me to some of the boys, and I felt an instant connection with them. Leo and I had lost our entire team that day. We’d been the only ones to survive. And while Leo had come out of it better than I had, there was one thing I think we both knew we were missing—being part of a team, having those people who you could rely on, who would have your back at the drop of a hat.

Given I only had one family member, I was drawn to the club and the people in it. My little brother Jake followed me into the army a few years back and was quickly picked up to be a part of a Special Ops team. They often went off the grid for weeks, sometimes over a month, in search of terrorist leaders and members of the cartel who were a threat to the nation.

It wasn’t often they came back empty handed, taking however long to secure their mission. This time had been the longest stint so far, and I hadn’t heard from him for close to two months.

It only took me a few days to decide to join the club. I did my time prospecting in Alabama with Leo, but when I got my full patch I opted to go Nomad. I could feel those nerves sinking in again, the feeling of being trapped with nowhere to run and with no escape.

So since then, I basically moved between clubs every few weeks or months and would go where I was needed.

I’d spent a few months at the Brothers by Blood MC Chapter in Athens, Alabama recently. I had to admit—with the boys and the families that were there—the more time I spent there, the more it drew me back. It was starting to feel like home, and it was where I was about to return to so I could help out with a charity run to Dallas.

“Eagle?” Dana called again, and I shook my head, trying to focus.

“Sorry, what?”

She grinned at me. “Any words of advice for these guys?” she asked, sweeping her hand around the room, indicating to the ten to fifteen men and woman who were seated around me. Group therapy classes weren’t really my thing, but they worked a lot better for some people than others.

The people in this room all had some form of PTSD. They weren’t all from the army because that was the kicker with PTSD, it didn’t discriminate. It didn’t care about your background, your mental history, what your job was, or the color of your skin. It was merely the result of a traumatic event in your life. And then this twisted part of your brain decides that it wants to make you relive that shit moment, over and fucking over again.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not gonna tell you some magical fucking cure for what you’re going through because there isn’t one,” I said sincerely. A few of their eyes widened in shock, but I even saw a couple of people relax as if relieved to hear me say those words. “Do something you enjoy, visit people, do whatever you want that makes you feel good again.”

I came back once every six months to see Dana privately, I still struggled myself with memories, nightmares and what I call ‘episodes.’ And every single time she made me stick around for these group meetings like I was going to have something amazing to say and help them through.

I didn’t have anything amazing to say.

There were a few times where I’d just said fuck it, and hadn’t even come because I needed to take a plane to get here, given that the brothers didn’t have a club here in California, and I didn’t really enjoy staying somewhere without family at my back. It was on the agenda, though. There were a few brothers eager to move over here and start something up, but that also took a lot of effort and planning, and it wasn’t at the top of the list of things to get done.

It was the plane flight that mainly kept me from making the effort, though. And I knew it was a stupid excuse. The plane made me feel trapped. Being that high in the air with no place to escape wasn’t my idea of fucking fun. It often took me a couple days afterward before I started to feel normal again, and like I wasn’t going to rip someone’s head off when they accidentally brushed up against me or said the wrong thing. As it was, I could already feel my stomach turning at the thought of the three-hour flight back to Alabama.

When the group meeting came to an end, I sat and waited for Dana to say goodbye to her clients and usher them out the door before coming back and sitting down. “Just as enlightening as always…” She chuckled.

I snorted. “I don’t know why you make me do these meetings, there’s nothing I could say or do to help them. Especially since I still struggle every single damn day, too. Remember?”

“Mmhmm.” She nodded. “And that’s exactly why I bring you here. Because these people in particular, they have friends and family out there who have to drag them from the house and bring them to these meetings because they don’t want to leave their bed, or their room, or their house.”

I frowned, my stomach churning as I remembered what it was like to be like that for the first few weeks.

“They need to see someone who’s still going through what they’re going through but is still living their life like a normal person. Some of them might take no notice, but there might be one person in that group that says… hey, it’s possible.”

I folded my arms across my chest and sunk down in the chair. Dana laughed as she moved to the whiteboard and started wiping it down.

So maybe she was right. And I fucking hated when she was right because it was all the damn time.

“You know, I’ve been seeing you for so long now, that I honestly can’t wait for the day that you walk in here with a girlfriend or a wife. Maybe even a couple kids.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled, I could tell it was genuine. This lady no matter how much she pushed my buttons, she had really pulled me through some bad states.

I got out of my chair and headed for the door. “Keep dreaming, Doc.”

Her laughter followed me out of the building.

Sure, kids were something I could see myself having in the future, but I was honestly sick of these women who saw me as this broken man and were determined to fix me like some fucking wounded bird. Some ran when they got a first-hand look at my nightmares. Others got frustrated when I refused to take the pills to try and stop the episodes because the pills made me feel like a fucking zombie.

I didn’t need that shit.

I would rather be fucking me, and deal with the flashes of pain than just be completely numb to everything. How would that be living? Didn’t I owe it to the friends and team members I lost to remember them and live for them?

I spotted a cab and raised my arm, he immediately pulled some seriously crazy maneuvers to get across to me—horns blasting, people slamming on their breaks, the screeching of tires.

A freezing feeling filled my hands and traveling up my arms. I fought it, glaring at them, knowing that although it felt like I’d just stuck my hands inside a freezer and shut the door, that it was just my mind—my memories—creating the sensations crawling up from my fingertips and taking over my body.

 

My ears were ringing, it was so high pitched it was fucking painful. I tried to scratch at them, but my body wouldn’t respond to what I was telling it to do. I needed to keep breathing and try not to concentrate on the pain.

There was more.

My head, my stomach, could I even feel my legs? I actually wasn’t sure.

I needed to get out of here, please let me get out of here.

 

My jaw clenched so tightly, I wondered whether this time I might break a tooth. My fingers curled and uncurled, cutting through the pain and gently bringing me back to reality. My breathing was stilted, and I placed a hand on my chest as I fought to take in a deep breath.

“Where to man?” the driver of the taxi asked out the window with a grin.

Finally, I managed to inhale and fill my lungs. “Airport…” I told him, before adding, “… and don’t drive like a dickhead or we’re gonna have issues.”

“No problem, fair warning, though. I heard it’s gonna be a bit bumpy up there today,” he replied happily as he pulled away from the curb.

“Fucking awesome.”