by Paige Wetzel
I didn’t want to cheapen or shorten Josh’s grieving process, but after about two weeks of navigating feelings and just trying to find strength to get out of bed, I decided that Josh needed to lean on the new friendships of the other amputees. I didn’t know anything about what Josh needed to do to feel whole again, but it would not happen in isolation. Evil would certainly take its place within him and would grow to such a malignant level we would never find happiness again. Distraction was the daily goal. Every now and then Josh would get to do something cool, like a new exercise in PT or meeting a celebrity like Gary Sinise or the Miami Heat. It was nice to update our supporters with photos of Josh chumming it up with famous people. It truly cheered Josh up, and I strongly believed it opened the eyes of the celebrities not only to the severity of war injuries but to how young the injured were.
However, when it was just the two of us, his emotions were unpredictable. We were circling back to embarrassing public outbursts and irritation over random things, but this time it wasn’t because drugs were messing with his head. His thoughts about his ever-diminishing platoon played on repeat in his mind, and his feelings about it could be triggered by anything. After an exhausting day in physical therapy, we went to the mailroom and picked up several packages. On our way to his room, the seat belt on Josh’s wheelchair fell below the seat and was banging against the spokes in his wheels. In a panicky voice, he asked if we could please stop and fix it. My hands were full, and I was trying to push his wheelchair, so I said we could fix it when we got back to the room. I could see him wringing his hands and sweat forming on his forehead. I pushed him inside and put all my things down to help him with the seat belt. Before I could turn around, he had leapt out of his chair onto the floor and was ripping the cushion out of the wheelchair. I asked him to calm down and let me help him, but he wouldn’t even slow down. Violently untangling and tightening the straps of the seat belt, he finally slammed the cushion back into the seat and pounded it in place with his fists. With his adrenaline pumping, he tried to get into his chair from the floor, a transfer he couldn’t do without my help.
After his third failed attempt, I lifted him into his seat. He sat back in his chair, panting, sweating, and crying. In my bewilderment, I just stared at him, my body language demanding an explanation. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and he stared at the floor and said, “I just need you to do that kind of stuff right away.” I tried to explain that I couldn’t just drop everything in the middle of the hallway or the sidewalk and fix a seat belt, but again he violently shook his head and repeated, “I need you to do that stuff right away,” his hands flat and parallel like a drill sergeant pointing at me, sharply emphasizing his words. I apologized just to ease the tension of the situation. I leaned in to hug him and he just turned his wheelchair around and almost ran over my toes. He locked himself in the bathroom for about thirty minutes. When he came out, I asked if he was okay and all he said was, “Yep.” Well what else can I do?
JOSH
The Afghanistan nightmare just wouldn’t end. I talked with a therapist when I first got to Walter Reed, and I had come a long way since my injury. I was beginning to see that people were inspired by me, and that kept me going. Juan’s death set my mental health back further than where I was when I first began at Walter Reed. This was so much worse than any nightmare about Afghanistan. Those nightmares were scary, but they were always about me, and I could wake up and remind myself of the reality I lived in. I couldn’t wake up from this actual reality. Whether I was waking up from surgery or trying to fall asleep, the demons that haunted me now spoke words of guilt and shame about Juan and Barrera. Nobody could convince me that this wasn’t somehow my fault. I just crawled back into my shell and stopped talking about it.
Paige and I began to function under two extremes: the smiling, steadfast dream team and the frustrated, grieving couple behind closed doors. I had gotten to the point in therapy that I didn’t struggle talking about issues as long as they were issues I was willing to bring up: pain, bad dreams, and general amputee frustrations. Paige brought up the outburst I had about the clicking seat belt, and I had reluctantly agreed to mention it to my therapist. Anger had been building inside me. Anger and fear. I was losing control, and I couldn’t even find corners to grasp to take hold of my grief. Anger wasn’t my usual stance. I was more angry at myself for not being there at Juan’s side than I was at the guy who built the IED that took my legs. Paige kept telling me that anger was part of grief, but she also couldn’t predict my scale tipping from simmering anger to full-blown rage, fear, and anxiety wrapped with a bow—a gift I hated giving her time and again. Like the time I about crawled out of my own skin when we had been caught up in a group of no more than ten people walking on the hospital grounds. Paige could tell I was on edge, but I couldn’t communicate to her without losing it. Sweat trickling down my back, the sideways glances, and my short breaths were all Paige needed to wheel us away from the group. She just wheeled me around for a bit to calm down. I knew she was struggling with me, and while my fuse was short, I knew the aftershocks for her were long. I felt like I was always apologizing to her or whoever else was involved, and I felt like every day we just added more range to the no-fly zone.
Not dealing with reality had reached a realm of not just pushing my thoughts aside but adding distractions. Unfortunately, these distractions were present during the deployment, too. I had grown up so much during my time in the military, but in so many ways I was still the juvenile I was before I joined.
It’s hard to explain the threshold a soldier crosses after a long day of combat. During a firefight, the adrenaline and autonomy of my training was a lot like the sensation I felt when I played sports. The adrenaline from game day made warm-ups seem like they lasted for hours. Sometimes waiting on the fight was worse than fighting. When things finally kicked off, I was ready to start doing my job and eliminating the threat. Things changed when we got back to our COP at the end of the day. This was nothing like going back to the locker room after a game. I think we all did our best to act cool, but it seemed like everyone took at least a few minutes to just stare at the ceiling and try to bring our heart rates down. My impulse was to numb and ignore. Maybe that wasn’t entirely wrong. We faced life and death every day, and if any of us stopped long enough to absorb that, it could cause a split-second hesitation that could get someone killed the next time we went out. My mistake was choosing to distract myself in ways that compromised everything I was fighting for. And one day, while using my iPad, Paige discovered it all.
Figuratively closing my eyes and plugging my ears did not work for long, and I found myself seeking distraction outside of my marriage. This included conversations that married men should never have. Conversations that went from taking the edge off after a long day of fighting to opening the door to adultery. Conversations that went from just catching up with a friend to photos and dialogue that I knew would break Paige’s heart. Conversations that I planned to never bring up with Paige because I vowed to never let it happen again after God gave me the second chance at life. As Paige held this in front of me, I realized it didn’t matter how much I wanted to change if I wasn’t willing to face my mistakes. With proof in hand, Paige confronted me: “How could you do this? Why would you think this was okay?” But I had nothing to say for myself. I couldn’t even explain why because I personally didn’t understand why. With what little free time I had, why did I choose that? At this point, I could only think that no one would find out, and now that I had been given another chance at life, I would never make that mistake again. Thus, there was no need to volunteer the information. But as I sat there silent and guilty as charged, I realized that other people were drowning in the wake of my decisions. I felt so stupid for not having more to say, but I had my own system shock when the truth was audible coming from my wife’s mouth. I didn’t know how I could just go into autopilot with something so harmful.
Paige asked me, “Josh, what if you had died? What if I fo
und all of this out after you were dead? Can you imagine carrying on with your life learning something like this?” She brought up a valid point, but I just didn’t think that was going to happen. It was an amplified example of what I had always done. I didn’t worry about skipping my college classes because I didn’t like to think about failing. Then I failed. I didn’t worry about partying too much because I didn’t like to think about how it could hurt my future. Then I ruined my future. War paled in comparison to the problems of an immature college student, yet I repeated the same self-medicating pattern. I fell into a temptation that in hindsight looked like the biggest betrayal of trust in my marriage, but in the moment it did what it was meant to do: numb, deaden, and distract. Numb people can’t think about consequences, which makes the chances of repetition impossible to avoid.
Paige said it felt like we were living a lie because we spent all of our time making everyone believe we were a team that was getting through this recovery together. I still felt like we were. I don’t know what I would have done without Paige advocating for me and helping me reach my goals. In a lot of ways, it confused us both. Since the day I met Paige, I have been in love with her. Even in my most selfish times, I never wanted to live life without her. But secrets like this looked like I didn’t love her at all. But I did! She was the single most important thing in the world to me on that deployment. As Paige paced around the room crying and barraging me with questions, all I could think was, I have never wanted to be with someone else. I have never stopped loving you. I just didn’t want to think about Afghanistan while I was in Afghanistan. But how could she believe that? It sounded stupid just thinking it. So, I just kept my mouth shut and apologized whenever I could. I didn’t know when I could have talked to Paige about it, but I wished so much that I had. I was angry at myself for allowing something like this to come up when I was trying to figure out life after losing a brother in combat. It would have been awkward, but I wish I would have just said something earlier. By trying not to ruin everything, I ruined everything.
PAIGE
I just felt trapped. I felt trapped in a bad marriage, a fake façade, and health care responsibilities to someone who was still critically injured no matter how bad his choices were. Not that there is ever a good time to have marital problems, but this was particularly untimely because we were on a waitlist to move to Building 62, an outpatient building across the parking lot from the main hospital. It was the next step in our independence. In Building 62, we would not be under the constant supervision of nurses and doctors, which would add the stress of me being in charge of allocating Josh’s daily medicine and blood thinner injections. Knowing the outpatient opportunity was approaching, Josh was pushing himself to hit benchmarks in physical therapy. He needed to prove proficiency in wheelchair transfers to and from the floor, the bed, the toilet, the car, and so on. Those things still had to be done despite what was going on between us.
But all the progress in physical therapy left little time for mental healing and even less time for the health of our marriage. How would we move from full-time care in a hospital to living on our own, I as an amateur nurse and he a double amputee suffering from PTSD who’s grieving the casualties of his platoon, when we were having marital issues? I spent quite a bit of time at the Fisher House thinking about our marriage and where to go from here. I have literally given up everything to be here. I don’t have a job anymore. I don’t have a home anymore. Where else am I going to go? What else am I going to do? Despite all this, I still feel obligated to be here. I still love him, but how are we supposed to focus on Josh’s recovery and deal with this? Therapy. Yep, Josh and I signed up to sit in a room twice a week with a counselor to talk about the ins and outs of why we hurt one another. The first two sessions were terrible. Verbalizing how it felt to work so hard to keep Josh from worrying about things back home and how I constantly stressed about his safety made me resentful. Josh, in so many words, expressed that his fear of this reaction out of me was a huge factor in not being more forthcoming. He feared my judgment, which made my love feel conditional. I scoffed at this notion (which validated what he said), so we spent several sessions arguing and crying. When the sessions ended, we put on our Miss America smiles and went back to being a war hero and a loving wife for family and followers. This was exhausting in itself and really wore on me as the weeks went on.
Our counselor allowed us to argue—mostly me projecting lots of anger on Josh while he meekly rebutted that he didn’t feel loved or accepted whenever he admitted fault. Our problems stemmed from all the things we didn’t say, and I think she knew that we were never going to find a solution if we couldn’t verbalize all the problems. When we had truly grown tired of arguing, I learned several big truths about Josh, things he believes that I didn’t know he believed. He also learned several big truths about me. I was amazed at what I learned about him in therapy. It might seem obvious that I didn’t know a ton of what he went through as a soldier simply because he couldn’t tell me, but I actually was pretty floored by aspects of his opinion on these topics. These big truths were all rooted in themes like respect, serving one another, forgiveness, building and breaking trust, honesty, and disappointment. There were things in Josh’s life that greatly disappointed him that I never knew about, while there were other things in his life that brought him great joy that I didn’t know he cared about. Sometimes memorizing Josh’s coffee order or knowing what brand of deodorant Josh prefers made me believe I knew who Josh was. Really, all that proves is that my husband is a creature of habit. Memorizing habits is not the same as understanding who someone is. I know some men aren’t great at providing information on how they feel, but this is why prayer is so important. Therapy showed us that we had no idea how to communicate with each other. From that point, I prayed God would grant me the discernment of a very best friend—knowing when to pry, knowing when to let something go, and knowing when to revisit when he is ready to talk.
Being in counseling uninterrupted by constant rounds of hospital staff, visitors, and appointments allowed Josh and me to get away from the chaos and make a recovery plan. While it was hard and embarrassing to confess our marital problems to someone, it was the first time we broke the cycle of being angry, going our separate ways, and reconvening when we were tired of being mad. The direction we received from a caring, third-party perspective was invaluable for breaking this cycle. Our therapist created a space where I was free to be upset and wounded without feeling guilty that I wasn’t physically wounded so I could walk out and face the rest of my responsibilities. I gradually learned that it would never be the will of God for me to bottle up feelings and resent my offenders. I was meant to grow and mature by getting to know what a bulletproof marriage could withstand. No, I didn’t let Josh off the hook, nor did I completely trust him for a while, but I did participate with the intention of continuing on in our marriage even though I didn’t think I had the strength. Neither of us was able to make those resolutions without help. What Satan schemed in the dark was brought to the light in this office. This help could not have come at a more crucial time as we pushed to earn a spot in outpatient housing away from all the distractions so we could really see how our marriage was shaping up.
CHAPTER TEN
HURRY UP AND WAIT
My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me.
—Psalm 55:4
JOSH
I sat in my chair glaring at Paige as she watched the nurse take my vitals. Lieutenant Rollins, the nurse at the desk, was caught in a battle of glares and sighs between my wife and me. That hot August night, we had gotten up to the fourth floor around 11:00 p.m. even though we were scheduled to spend the night in Building 62. We had already passed our trial run with flying colors, and tonight we were supposed to be checking out the room we might actually move into. Instead, Paige was strongly suggesting that I come back to the fourth floor. I was tired from a long night of speaking to my church on a livestream from the Fisher Hou
se, but I went upstairs anyway. As we came out of the elevator, Rollins asked why we had come back. Knowing I would sound more than just a little annoyed but deciding not to care, I retorted, “Paige wants me to get my vitals checked, but I know I’m fine.” They got a vitals machine and went through the routine I had become used to twice daily on the fourth floor: thermometer under the tongue, blood pressure cuff on the right biceps, stethoscope on the chest. I sat there and waited the forty-five seconds calmly. In fact, I was hardly sweating, even though we had just been outside in my wheelchair in the middle of August. The machine beeped and the nurse recorded my temperature at 100.2 and my heart rate at 145. Looking concerned, Rollins said, “Your heart is racing! Are you sure you feel okay?” I nodded encouragingly and asked for her to test me on another machine. On the second machine, my temperature was 101 and my heart rate was 149. What was going on?
I just wanted them to hurry up with these vitals so we could leave. Then Rollins said, “Josh, listen, I can’t let you guys go to Building 62 tonight. You’re going to have to stay here.” What? This is not a big deal! Surely I could just get some Tylenol or something. Paige just ruined our perfect evening at Building 62.
I couldn’t believe I was checking back in to my inpatient room for the night. It was just a little fever. There’s no telling how much longer they will make me stay here after this little flare-up. I’m never going to get off this floor, I thought as they were hooking me up to heart monitors and IVs and taking my temperature. Suddenly, I couldn’t see Paige because of all the people in the room. Paige shuffled to my bedside, and as soon as I was getting ready to tell her I was upset, she looked at me with that very fearful face that I had not seen in a long time.
PAIGE
The rapid response team doctor ordered cultures of Josh’s blood and urine as well as an EKG. The EKG showed a heart rate around 150 with a dropping blood pressure. The team bolused fluids and Tylenol into Josh’s PICC line, and around 1:00 a.m. everything seemed to even out. We were both exhausted, but Josh had to be awake to answer the same puzzling question: “Are you sure you feel okay?” The nurses were stunned that Josh showed no signs of stress. Shortness of breath, sweating, anything would have helped point the medical staff to what was going on. But he just sat there, even though the monitors said his heart was pounding out of his chest. As an extra precaution, they put Josh back on the heart rate monitor so they would be alerted if his vitals spiked again. I updated the immediate family that we were spending the night on the fourth floor instead of Building 62 but the meds seemed to be working. Everyone thanked me for making him go, and I assured them that we were fine. Exhausted, I wanted so badly to just close my eyes and wake up and everything be okay. But the anxiety washed over me repeatedly. I honestly didn’t know what to pray, because I knew Josh wasn’t okay. I knew he was too “well” to be feeling this bad again. If there was one thing Walter Reed taught me, it’s that sometimes pain medication actually just masks the symptoms; it doesn’t cure the ailment. We couldn’t place any hope in the fact that a few IV medications made his body calm down. Whatever this was would surface again, and it would be even stronger. Our process in all of Josh’s recovery was to hurry up and wait. We’d rush toward progress, only to wait on Josh’s body to catch up with his desire to move forward in life. With a hollow feeling in my stomach, I closed my eyes and listened to the beeping.