Denial (27 page)

Eliminate “it”? Is there some memory still buried, which he is not ready to reveal? I do not ask. Later, I will wonder if the mem
ory of the aftermath of the explosion evokes in him the pain of some other event, some other “liability” that got “eliminated,” or perhaps the opposite—a “liability” that did not get “eliminated asap,” and an American soldier died.

“That's how you get collateral damage,” he continues, with pained features. A wise boy. General Sherman's words come into my mind now: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

“Later I found out they buried propane tanks. They buried two of those under the road…. They can use anything to set them off. They could use a key like that one,” he says, pointing to my electronic car key on the table between us.

My mind is so involved in managing this scene that I've forgotten I have a car key, or even a car. I am surprised that Erik is able to shift gears like this.

“Then the medic came over. Did his medic job. Stopped the bleeding the best he could. They called in a life helicopter.”

I ask him to explain. “It's a Black Hawk with an ambulance. They medevaced me out to where the military surgeons were. They rushed me there, took me straight into surgery.”

But he is not done with the scene of the explosion. I wonder if he will ever be able to expunge that scene from his mind's eye, to stop the tape of the sounds in his head.

His words are even more jumbled now. “When I was lying there right after the explosion. I can start to remember. The medic saying I'm giving you a dose of morphine. Not enough to put me out. Hooked me up with an IV bag. I guess to keep me from passing out from the pain. Still in a lot of pain. I didn't really understand what was going on. My buddy who was with me. I remember he was holding my hand. He said, ‘We're gonna have a beer when I get home.'

“I was in Iraq in surgery, not even a day. They stopped the bleeding. Got me to the point where it would be okay to fly.

“A bunch of generals came. You know, the people who don't
do anything,” he says, conspiratorially. “They tried to shake my hand, told me I did a good job. They don't even know my name. They say, ‘Good job,' and move on to the next injured guy. ‘Good job,'” he repeats bitterly.

“I can't see him. My jaw is wired shut, no one told me why. My eyes are swollen shut. I ask for a phone. I asked to talk to my parents. They called. I talked with my mom. I don't remember what she said or what I said. My commander flew in on a chopper to see me. Out to the base. Then I woke up in Germany,” he says.

Once again his story is somewhat out of temporal order.

“They put me on a plane,” he explains. “It's a cargo plane. They had me on a stretcher. There were nurses and doctors. I don't remember taking off or landing. The only thing I remember is the nurse saying you're in the operating room now. It's cold, the bright lights. They go, ‘You're going to be okay.'”

“Did you think you were dying?” I ask.

“I wasn't happy. I knew something was wrong. But I didn't think I was dying. There were people like you. I knew I was in a safe place.”

A sense of relief floods my nervous system. I have been so worried about retraumatizing this boy. I am moved, nearly to tears, that he sees me as a “safe place,” even though I'm witnessing his recalling of the moment his life hurtled in an entirely new direction. He continues, apparently unaware of the effects his words have on me.

“Once I came out of surgery, they weaned me down. Off the drugs, the painkillers. That's when they told me what was happening. I had a dozen surgeries in four days in Germany. And then they sent me to Andrews Air Force Base and then back to Fort Bragg. Then I went to the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, to get the skin graft. I was there for four days. By that point my parents were there, my sister was there. They stayed with me.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“When was this?” I ask.

“The date of all this is March 27, '07,” as if all these events occurred on a single day. “That is when I got blown up. I got discharged on April 13 of '07. After that I needed to get occupational therapy. So I went back to Fort Bragg. I spent a full year learning how to use my arm again.”

I see now that the order of his recollections does not follow a timeline, but a system of referred pain. He is walking me from scar to scar.

Now a man walks up to our table. I have a vague recollection of a heavyset man in a red lumber jacket and gray sweatpants. But it is as if I were looking at him underwater. He walks right up to Erik. “I just want to thank you for your service,” he says, respectfully. And then, more softly, as if he doesn't want to impose too much, he adds, “You're a great American.” I watch the man walk back to the table next to ours to gather the leavings of his late-morning snack.

I had no idea that this man had been sitting next to us. For how long? I am following Erik's story so closely that it is as if I have become him. But I seem to be feeling more emotion in response to his story than he is. The words flow out of Erik like water flows, even if he gets stuck, occasionally, at bureaucratic dams. For me, there is friction, burning, pain.

The appearance of this lumber-jacketed apparition reminds me that I am not in Iraq, not in a hospital, not training my mind to communicate with the muscles of my arm. I feel a great sense of relief to remember where we are, to see that at least one American is prepared to thank this young man.

A small smile plays on Erik's lips. He seems to allow himself to feel the faintest possible fleeting pleasure. But in less than a second he gets right back to work, to the story he is ready to impart.

“I can feel myself touching myself, here,” he says, rubbing the
meat of his right arm, which is now safely covered by a moss-green sleeve. “But not like this hand,” he says, touching the other arm. “You lose sensitivity.

“I got on the list to see a shrink. When you go through the MEB [medical evaluation board] process, it takes a long time. I wanted to get evaluated for PTSD. I had to wait for a full year.

“By that time, it's really too late,” he says. “Things get deeper and deeper. It's too late,” he says, bitterly.

No, it's not! I want to shout. Somehow, I see the ember of anger in the corners of his eyes as a very hopeful sign. He is not resigned, I am relieved to see. He is angry, even if not angry enough. Suddenly it seems to me that anger can be a lifeline.

“A friend of mine who had gone over in a different unit, he lost a quarter of his skull. He would say to me, I notice that you've changed. He noticed things about me that I couldn't see about myself. I used to be, like, la-di-da about everything. But after my injury, I was easily aggravated. I got angry all the time. I couldn't stand to be in loud places or congested areas. Even something like this,” he says, pointing to the nearly empty coffee shop, now that the lumber-jacketed apparition is gone. “I wasn't like that before. Before my injury I liked to go out.”

I ask him whether fluorescent lights bother him, wondering if my strange aversion to these lights is more broadly shared.

“Bright light bothered me a lot. I had extreme sensitivity to light. That went away,” he says. I find that hard to believe. He doesn't like being where he is right now, in the light.

“But there are still some things I can't handle. Multitasking,” he says. “Forget it.

“They knew I would be medically discharged because the surgeon who worked for the military filled out the paperwork. ‘This soldier has been hindered due to wartime accidents,'” he says, apparently reciting official language. “That means they should be responsible for my medical care. It means that if my arm
starts to fall off, I can go back to the government and get it sewn back on. But I had a brain injury. Studies show when a bomb blows up next to your face, you have issues. That is why I started the MEB process. There is only one shrink at Fort Bragg who is authorized to evaluate us for PTSD. There were six hundred people all waiting to talk to him.

“It's retarded,” he says angrily. “You wait and wait. You have no family and no friends there. My unit was still in Iraq. They let me go home for two months to be with my family, to heal. But then I had to go back to Fort Bragg, to sit and wait. They still make you come to formations. I couldn't sleep. I was having nightmares and flashbacks. They gave me drugs for pain, drugs to sleep.

“I was wondering if I would live,” he says, a statement I find startling. When he really might have died, he wasn't afraid. But depression and this state of nothingness he felt, which he calls boredom, were nearly unbearable.

“I was stressed, and I was alone. I don't think this is a good thing to do to soldiers with brain injuries, make them wait that long to see a shrink. But I didn't have any option. Once you start the MEB process, there is nothing you can do but wait. It's mentally torturing people. This went on until April of '08. Finally I get to see this shrink.”

“How long did he talk to you?” I ask.

“Half an hour,” he says. “He tells me that I'm fine, that I'm stressed out because of the MEB process. His recommendation was ‘Deal with it. You're not the worst of the worst. You're fine.' I'm having flashbacks, and I'm having nightmares, but he says, ‘It sounds like you're anxious to get out of the military.'”

I ask what he means by flashbacks.

“If I'm in a crowded area and a bang goes off, I'm jumpy. I was having nervous attacks. I wasn't diving behind things, so it could have been worse,” he explains. “I'd be out with a couple buddies.
If there was too much noise, too much going on, I would just say, I'm leaving. I'm done. I need to be quiet and alone. That is what I learned to do. I knew to leave a crowded area. I knew to go home.”

This need to avoid crowds—I know all about that. But I was a shy child, so it was easy to attribute my own dislike of crowds and noise to a personality quirk—and it probably partly is. Still, I am not ready to accept that we have the same syndrome, the same changes in our brains. His symptoms are so much more understandable, so much more justified. His story is so sad, while mine, it seems to me, is all about shame.

“Road rage,” he says. “People were always in my way. I yelled at people, cursed at them, ‘Get the fuck out of my way.' So easily irritated…I was never like that before. I would honk at people, shout at them, ‘Why the hell are you going so slow!'

“I can be at work. Someone will say something that I think is ridiculous. I'll say, ‘Man, you're an idiot….' I just can't deal with things the way I used to. I get stressed out, anxious. Nervous.”

“What do you dream about?” I ask.

“In all of my dreams, everyone dies and I'm the only one who lives. Or vice versa. It's always the same. Two weeks ago I dreamed I was on a boat. Everybody falls overboard and they get chopped up by the propeller and I live…. Another one, I'm at the bottom of a hill and a boulder is rolling toward me. I'll wake up drenched in sweat, my heart rate going through the roof. I'll be so thirsty. I never had dreams like this. Very violent. He was wrong,” he says, referring to the psychiatrist.

“So you told the psychiatrist all this, and he said you didn't have PTSD?”

“Yep. I talked to him for half an hour, and that is what he said.”

“Did the psychiatrist prescribe medication?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

I am uncertain what to say. Should I reveal the horror I feel at hearing this story? Would that make him feel better or worse? Is this boy's body and mind considered expendable? Is a soldier's spirit, which he put on the line in the service of the country, too expensive to repair?

“The worst is, I get really spacey. I can't focus. I can't talk on the phone very long. I start to get light-headed and dizzy. If a conversation lasts too long, I'll start sweating and get stressed out. I forget everything. I have to have yellow stickies everywhere. That is why I needed you to e-mail several times about when and where we were going to meet.”

I, too, cannot bear speaking on the phone. I, too, get light-headed and dizzy if a conversation lasts too long. I am astonished to hear all this.

“Do you get lost a lot?” I ask, wondering if this personality quirk of mine might also be a marker of trauma.

“It's not that I get lost more easily,” he says. “But if I get lost, I cannot find my way back. I just don't know how to handle it. I don't even try to multitask. I can't do that anymore. If the phone rings and I'm doing something else, I won't answer it. At work, I can only handle one order at a time. When it gets really busy, they know I can't handle it. That affects my job. They know me and understand. They can look at me, they'll know, Erik is down.”

I tell myself that the right thing to do is to tell Erik what I think.

“You need to take all this seriously,” I tell him. “PTSD creeps up on you. It can take years before you realize it. You need to get them to help you.”

But I can see, from the glaze in Erik's eye, that this is all he can take. “Are you dizzy now?” I ask him, gently. “Should I take you back?”

“Yes,” he says. “I feel a little light-headed. I'm starting to sweat.
I don't know why. We thought it was because of the medication, but it turns out it's not. I was looking at you earlier—and I noticed that the shape of your face got fuzzy.”

He will rest, he tells me, before driving back up north. He got one of those GPS systems, he tells me, to help with his problem of getting lost.

 

I know that the biggest danger for me, after an interview like this, is making it back home without getting lost on the road. I haven't yet bought one of those GPS things.

I take stock of my mental state. I am a bit fuzzy-headed, but I tell myself that once I get to the highway, it's a straight shot home. I rejoice, as if I've run a marathon, when I make it to the highway. No mishaps! But after several miles, I hear a tone indicating that the car will soon be out of gas. I get off at the next exit where there is a gas station nearby. I know, of course, to discipline my mind to memorize the route from the highway to the service station. Right at the exit, then up a small hill to the left.