Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

Sarah glanced around the circle. “Does anyone know if Will had any VA appointments? Maybe some difficulty with his ride?”

Fergusson roused herself. “His father brings him after dinner. It could be Chris was running late.”

“Okay. Well, I don’t want to waste any more time. Let’s get started, and he can catch up when he gets here.” Sarah looked at McNabb and Stillman. “Last week, Clare and Eric opened up about some of the ways they’re expressing their emotions or not expressing their emotions, as the case may be, and we all talked about some strategies for dealing with those difficult moments when the pain or the anger or the fear breaks through. I want to explore those healthy responses further, but first we need to go back to hear from Trip and Tally about their reasons for attending therapy. Trip, we didn’t have time to get to you last week. Will you start us off?”

“Well.” The doctor fidgeted in his metal chair. “I’ve been under a lot of stress since I came home. Some of it’s the usual-my practice, a surly teen in the house, my older daughter’s financial troubles. Some of it’s been new. A death in the family, problems with-” He clamped his mouth shut. After a moment, he said, “I’ve been having these migraines.”

A pager went off. Fergusson started. She put her paper coffee cup on the floor and dug into the pocket of her ankle-length black skirt. She pulled out her cell phone and read the display. “Excuse me.” She rose. “I have to take this.” She vanished into the hallway.

Stillman sat there. “Migraines,” Sarah prompted. The doctor touched his forehead. There was a small white scar threading across his skin into his bristle-brush gray hair. “I sustained a head injury when a clinic I was working at was blown up by insurgents.” He lapsed into silence.

When nothing else seemed forthcoming, Sarah asked, “Was this the forward response station you were posted to?”

“No. No, this was a civilian clinic. Part of the mission was to treat as many Iraqis as we could. We were supposed to have an actual, honest-to-God reinforced building with a generator and a sterile room, but that never materialized, so we had to make do in whatever facility we could set up shop in. We were in a local medical clinic school when this happened.” He rubbed his scar with his forefinger.

“Mortar fire?” Eric asked.

“Yeah. We had an escort, and marines patrolling the town, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.”

“Where was this?” Tally asked.

“Haditha, in the Anbar. It was the closest population base to our FRS.”

The hall door opened. Clare strode in, fastening the top two buttons of her black shirt. Beneath the room’s fluorescent light, she looked sickly and washed-out. “That was Chris Ellis. They’re in the hospital. Will tried to kill himself.”

Surprisingly, Sarah and the others arrived before Clare. Tally had stood up, said, “Let’s go,” and gotten her jacket off the hooks on the wall. The men followed her without comment, as if it were simply expected they would all reconvene at the hospital. “Maybe we should wait,” Sarah said, but it was already too late. Nothing to do but get in her car and force herself to drive toward the ultimate verdict on her fitness as a therapist: a client’s suicide.

Attempted suicide, she reminded herself in the ICU waiting room. The pills Will Ellis had swallowed by the handful had been pumped out of his stomach. Now they had to see if that would be enough. Through the archway leading to the hallway and nursing station, she heard a soft ding. The elevator opened. Sarah caught a glimpse of Clare Fergusson, a white collar around her neck, a long satin scarf-thing draped over her shoulders, a black leather box in her hand. The satin flapped around her knees as she strode up the hall and out of sight.

Tally, who had taken the chair kitty-corner to Sarah’s, leaned forward. “Was that Clare?”

“Yes.”

“Geez. I guess she really is a minister.” Tally leaned back. “You’d think if you put that much faith in God, you wouldn’t need to be in counseling.”

“No. Well. God’s not big into talk therapy.”

Stillman rounded the archway, his eyes on his PalmPilot, scratching something with his stylus at what looked like a hundred words a minute. He sank into the chair opposite McNabb.

“Did you find out anything?” Sarah asked. He didn’t look like the bearer of good tidings.

“His respiratory and circulatory systems are collapsing, and he’s experiencing serious bradycardia.”

“What’s that mean?”

Sarah was feeling desperate enough to be glad Tally asked the question, allowing her to look at least marginally competent.

“He’s got what we call combined drug intoxication. He apparently took all his painkillers, his antidepressants, a bottle of cough syrup, a whole lot of acetaminophen, and then washed it all down with booze. Simplified, his system is shutting down. His heart’s pumping too slow, his blood isn’t circulating, and his lungs aren’t working.” Stillman glanced at his PalmPilot. “He’s damaged his liver, too. How much, they won’t know until and unless he survives.” His face was bleak.

“God.” Tally sat for a minute. “Do you think he meant it to work? Or was he just, you know, crying for help?”

“He made a pretty credible attempt.” Stillman rubbed his knuckles hard against the scar on his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t see any warning signs.”

That same phrase was chasing itself around and around in Sarah’s head. “Why would you?” Why didn’t I?

“I’m seeing him for his amputation follow-up. He’s doing PT at my practice.”

“And I was his therapist.” Sarah stood. Walked toward the archway. If she could, she would have stepped right out of her skin and kept on going. “If anybody should have recognized that he was potentially suicidal, it should have been me.”

“You guys are forgetting something.”

Sarah turned toward Tally, who spread her hands. “He’s a marine. You don’t think of it, because his legs are gone, but he’s still a marine. You know, the jarheads, they do what they gotta do. Maybe he just woke up this morning and realized his body was the enemy.” Tally rubbed her jeans over her thighs and knees, as if trying to feel what Will must have felt. “And you know, he knows what to do with an enemy.”

Eric left first; he had a wife and kid at home, after all, and had to be at work the next morning. Stillman was next, after several short conversations with Will’s red-eyed, lank-haired mother. Tally hung around, whether through curiosity or empathy Sarah didn’t know. Sarah couldn’t leave, couldn’t push herself forward to talk to the parents, couldn’t ask anyone, once Trip Stillman took off, what Will’s prognosis was. She was ready, if approached, to describe her impressions, show her notes, pass on anything that might be useful. She was ready, but she couldn’t bring herself to volunteer. Her thoughts and self-recriminations chased themselves around and around in her head like disease-raddled rats on a rusty wheel.

She didn’t realize she had sunk into a reverie until she heard Tally say, “Major. I mean, Reverend.” Sarah opened her eyes.

Clare Fergusson collapsed onto the chair opposite McNabb. “What are you still doing here?”

Sarah’s heart turned over in one slow despairing beat before she realized Fergusson was speaking to Tally.

“I dunno,” Tally said. “No place better to go, I guess. My husband’s away gambling for a few days.” Her voice made it clear she thought games of chance were a monumental waste of time. Unless, Sarah thought, it was that the husband wasn’t alone at whatever casino he had fled to. “How’s Will doing?” Tally asked.