I stood up against the beige wall in the beige hall and leaned on the beige rail. People with nametags walked by me, always friendly, and they always asked me if I was being helped. I wasn’t, but it’s hard to explain sometimes that you’re just waiting. I could have went into her office and sat down in one of her chairs. I could have leaned in the doorway. But I could see trouble brewing.
He sat there with that same dipshit haircut everybody keeps for a while. He was too tanned and too in shape and when he turned away from her to talk to the floor, you could see his goatee was not more than month or so old. She was asking him questions it is not polite to ask a stranger, and I could tell when she hit home. That’s when he would talk to her desk or to her floor. Or to the ceiling. It was boring, in that hall, but it would be escruciating in that room. This is what they do, now. You show up here, and they make goddamn sure you are aware of just how batshit volatile you are. It’s part of their new commitment to service. It is also because attrition of my kind to suicide when we come home is higher than in any theater on Earth. I think it’s due to the horrification index. If you never saw a head blown open or a violently undignified corpse, then making yourself an ugly, bloody mess seems unthinkable. But if you’ve been horrified enough for long enough, it just doesn’t matter.
But I’m bored, and hanging out only with my conscience. We were discussing the merits of my run times recently. 10:42 for a 1.5 mile run is good, but only relative to the fact that I have no standards anymore. So, me and the conscience haggle. I trade beers in the afternoon, at least on days that do not begin with T or S for shaving only fifteen seconds off that time by June. It is a reluctant and bitter agreement, but we don’t argue much anymore. Our negotiations are boring most of the time.
So we turn our attention away. To the guy staring down at the floor, approaching some point inside himself that he doesn’t want to see. He can’t yet accomplish a good Heinleinian grokking yet. So he’s trying to hide it. The nice, official, and empathetic lady he speak to doesn’t understand, but she may know. She may be able to tell it’s getting to him.
So, says the conscience, How long before he cries?
Oh, I bet when she tells him about counseling being available.
I bet it’s when she talks about family support.
I bet you a new spare tire to a patch on that hairline in the radiator that it’s before that.
You’re on.
And she asks him about his drinking. About his nightmares. About his ability to focus. About his panicking startle response to damn near everything. She tells him he can get several services through the VA and I feel victory approach. I’m ready to collect from that chiseling bastard in my head. Get ready for a new tire, fucker, I tell him. He puts on a stoic face, one off of those terminally boring poker shows. We wait.
“And if you need anyone to talk to, we have counseling here, or, you know, some people like the less formal setting over at the VetCenter on Patterson…”
He mumbles Excuse me into the carpet and stands up. He asks where the restroom is at in a clear voice, but there’s an urgency to it. She points him down the beige hall to the teal hall to the gray hall to the door on his right and he bolts. He walks by me and we share a nod. I watch him walk away and he walks straight and normal to the end of the hall and turns. Out of sight.
Hey, hon, I say. And she knows me. I just need to drop off a clipboard with some random info and another screening for craziness. So I do. And the room still has the tension of a man about to explode, but she doesn’t know it.
If she was a stranger in a strange land, she may get it. But she’s never been water brother to another and never had to make that last shitty, deadly deployment. The one where they give you a piece of paper and a plane ticket. No weapons. No gear. Just your own life, or what you have left of it, and your own mind, what you have left of it.
I think I’m alright. I think that guy imploding there will be alright. But I have friends who couldn’t do it. Friends who live along rivers. Friends who are homeless and hurting and commiting a slow seppuku one quart in a paper bag at a time. Or the one who turned to a bigger bore gun. Or the one who has the coke problem and social services come and took his daughter away.
When I walk back down the hallway, I push the wheelchair of a man who said his arms are tired. I wheeled him down the gray hallway to the pink hallway and to the cafeteria where he offers to buy me coffee. I declined, I hope politely. And he said something about the Navy always talking shit and never being able to drink. And I said something about Jarheads talking a lot of shit when they’re still getting rides from the Navy. And we shake hands. And I leave.
I got that new spare hanging on the tailgate. And I bought the epoxy stick for the radiator. And nothing lasts forever.
