January 2014
I JERKED AWAKE FROM a nightmare of the last ride in the Humvee my spotter and I were traveling in with our interpreter and a fresh-faced young driver—a young man who, unfortunately, would never bless his family with his youthful optimism again.
I tried to catch my breath and slow my heart down before it had my nurse running in again. I squeezed my eyes closed to try to stop the tears and to erase the sightless eyes of the interpreter and our scout from my vision. I covered my ears, as if it would block the screams of my spotter, and best friend, from my ears. It seemed nothing could erase the coppery taste and crimson stains of the blood covering us all, and I relived it every fucking night. As the room slowly came back into focus after I opened my eyes, I felt like the air was different, like suddenly I wasn’t alone and something had shifted in the universe. I shook off the strange feeling and reached for my water pitcher by the bed.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d been told I was lucky to be alive. I didn’t know how they figured that. I hurt every day. I had nightmares every night. Mason and I had barely survived, but we lost two good men with families who loved, and now grieved, them.
Why did I survive when I had no one? It didn’t make any fucking sense. Why me, God?
I had my doubts there even was a God. How could there be? No God should allow people, with so much to live for, to die and allow someone with my sins, and no one to mourn me, to live.
I had been at BAMC—Brooke Army Medical Center—for about a month since the IED explosion along a seemingly deserted road in Afghanistan. For the first several weeks, starting with the initial stabilization by the flight medics, then the transfer to Landstuhl, Germany, and then to here was a blur of semi-consciousness. I remembered hearing screams and not being sure if they were my friends or my own. I remembered blackness. But most of all, I remembered the blonde hair, blue eyes, and gorgeous warm smile of a girl who had kept me going through everything. I clung fiercely to those memories. I couldn’t believe how one night had embedded her so deeply in my psyche that she was forever etched in my heart. I didn’t even know her name because I was a selfish, horny bastard who only cared about sex that night nearly a year ago. Back then, I had told myself there was no need since I would never see her again.
God, I was stupid. Such a conceited, self-righteous fuck. I hated myself more every day.
I reached down beside me, searching through the blanket for my phone, which now sported a cracked screen and what I repeatedly told myself were mud splatters on the back each and every time I scraped one off. I opened it up to the picture she had taken that night of the two of us. It was after one of our mind-blowing rounds of the best sex I had ever experienced. The pale blue sheets were tucked up over her breasts, and we both had flushed cheeks and ridiculous smiles. There was such happiness captured in that brief moment in time. It seemed fitting that the crack in the screen ran right between the two of us. I wasn’t good enough for her before, and I certainly wasn’t now; scarred and broken, both physically and mentally. But just the thought of her body held close and intertwined with mine, the smell of her hair, the feel of her lips against mine, and the look of complete satiation on her face kept me intact during moments that would have driven some men over the edge of sanity. For that, I would always hold her in my heart and love her like no other. Love? Shit. What did I really know of love? Maybe I shouldn’t even say that shit.
The accident happened in December. Mason and I had spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital—me, pretty much in a constant haze between drug-induced unconsciousness and surgeries. His parents had come down over the holidays and stayed in the Fischer House, kind of the military’s version of the Ronald McDonald House. I vaguely remembered them visiting my room with Mason. It was now mid-January and the world outside my window looked as bleak as I felt. I would almost give anything to be back in the drug-induced haze I had been in then.
Better to feel nothing than what I felt now.
I reached up, touching the scar that ran from my temple to my lower jaw. It was still thick and jagged. The doctors told me it would get better with time, but it would always be my reminder of that day.
It wasn’t just my face that was scarred or disfigured in the explosion though. I had suffered nerve damage, fractures to my skull, left arm, three of my left ribs, and my left leg at the thigh and lower leg. My left leg now sported enough metal to ensure I would set off every metal detector in the airport for the rest of my miserable, worthless life. A rod took the place of the center of my femur, and I had enough plates, pins, and screws in the bones of my lower leg to build a parking garage. They said I was lucky they saved my leg.
Fuck them.
The daily therapy pissed me off. I hated the pain and the fucking optimism of the stupid fuckers that pushed me to walk and use muscles that I would have been happy to let die.
Mason had healed up pretty well, all things considering. His left side caught the brunt of the explosion as well, but the shemagh scarf he was wearing as a dust mask, prevented the facial lacerations I suffered from. I was thankful for that because he was always such a happy fucker and, of the two of us, the outgoing one. He was a good-hearted guy and deserved to be able to have a chance at happiness. He did, however, suffer a Traumatic Brain Injury and minor burns and breaks to both of his lower legs, but had since healed, and he used them to walk in my room and pester the shit out of me every day of our recovery. He had chosen not to re-up when his window opened and was now on terminal leave. The faint scruff growing on his face did little to hide the boyish face that still remained despite going through hell with me.
He talked non-stop about going home and prospecting for some motorcycle club. I tried not to roll my eyes as he went on about his excitement to see his family and begin the hang-around and prospect journey. I was supposed to be out of the Army in a few months as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they extended me because I was still stuck here in this worthless shithole and would have therapy for a while. The doc said, if everything went well with the scans and tests they ran today, I should be discharged soon and moved over to the Warrior Transition Unit barracks to finish up my treatment on an outpatient basis. I didn’t have it in me to stay in anymore. I wanted out. I had failed to protect the soldiers under me. I had seen more senseless deaths than I could count. I had killed more piece of shit hadjis than anyone else on my team, and yet I still felt like it didn’t make a difference. They seemed to multiply like fucking rabbits to keep killing as many of my brothers and sisters as they could. I hated those motherfuckers.
Even though air entered and exited my lungs, machines continued beeping around me, and the pain throbbing through the left side of my body all told me I was alive, I felt dead inside. I had not a single thing to be alive for. I was a waste of pathetic space in this fucked-up, hate-filled world. I was hate filled… rotting from the inside out from the empty blackness of my soul.