True North

by Allie Juliette Mousseau

  I smiled to reassure him, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the nurse staring in at us. “The nurse is going to make me leave soon.”

  “No, I don’t want you to go. I could talk her into letting you stay.”

  “Of course you could, Prince Charming, but you need to get rest and heal. We have our whole lives ahead of us. I’ll come back in the morning and I’ll bring a great book and Chinese Checkers. Maybe I’ll actually beat you for once.”

  “Doubt it.” A real smile hinted at the corner of his lips.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  His tone got serious again. “You can go through all the papers, but only with Jules. I can’t deal with the rest of my family knowing everything yet. But, Livie, there’s a lot of ugly shit in there,” he warned.

  “I can handle ugly shit,” I assured him. “I can’t handle losing you.”

  “You’ll never lose me, baby.”

  The nurse poked her head in the door. “Sorry, guys, time’s up.”

  Chapter 18

  “Rooster”

  Alice in Chains

  When everything you think about the world and the people in it spins out of control, you have a couple of choices: run away with your tail tucked between your legs or hang the fuck on.

  I chose the latter.

  I wasn’t really accustomed to fighting. Good grades came easy to me, so did my relationship with my best friend. My mom ran and never even bothered looking back and my dad had perfected escapism as an art form. I wasn’t going to follow in that DNA path.

  Jake was easy to fight for because I knew who he was and what he was before all this shit went down. What wasn’t easy, what was hard as hell, was fighting invisible demons that had wedged themselves so far into him that I knew they would never be truly gone. But maybe if we played it right, they could be quieted.

  “Liv, you should be in school.” Jake set a coffee cup in front of me.

  I had skipped my run this morning; we were having one of North Dakota’s famous early blizzards. And honestly we were taking it easy. I was wrapped in a blue throw, curled on the couch in what was now officially our apartment.

  “I am in school. I just dropped down to part-time. It’s really no big deal; I can make up the courses during the summer if I want to,” I explained.

  Jake nodded, but I knew he was blaming himself for his perceived demise of my education.

  He’d been home for a week now since the incident. The hospital had released him once he was out of harm’s way. After a full psych evaluation they deemed him not suicidal, but said that he was suffering from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They referred him to the local Veteran’s Association and a local, retired-military psychiatrist. The doctor said it was mandatory to see him as a stipulation for his release instead of being admitted into the psychiatric ward.

  Jake set a lingering kiss on my forehead. “I put a shot of Hershey’s syrup in it for you.”

  I smiled. Good man, bringing me chocolate and coffee.

  He sat on the other side of the couch, facing me. He was holding the folders. I just stared down at them.

  Was he ready? Really ready? I was so terrified that if he went back into it, into the memories and the land of ghosts so real they could steal your sanity, I would never get him back.

  “You deserve answers, Livie. And maybe now I want to tell someone. You’re the only one I’d trust enough. Just know the sequence of events might get choppy,” he warned.

  “I’ve got years, go at your own pace,” I assured him.

  Part of me wanted to know everything—every horrible, terrifying detail. I wanted to see what he saw and what lingered there in his mind because I felt like maybe—maybe—if I could see it, I could grab hold of it and yank it out so it couldn’t hurt him anymore. The other part of me was scared shitless.

  He put the folders in between us and sipped at his coffee. “There are things I feel like I should tell you, but at the same time I want desperately to protect you from it all. But obviously that hasn’t worked out real well.” He paused and I waited. “I’m just going to start throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks.” He closed his eyes and began in a quiet voice. “The first couple weeks in Afghanistan my unit acclimated to the climate and was fully briefed about what the real state of affairs was. You only get a portion of the reality from news sources. Very soon you learn your survival and the survival of others depends on you staying hyper-aware twenty four/seven, and you never come down from it. Not even when you try to sleep. It becomes a part of you, infused into your soul and bones. You exist in a perpetual state of hyper-vigilance.” He blew out a breath and ran his fingers over his scalp. His hair was starting to grow out and there was a good inch of chestnut brown. “So the stress never stops, there are no breaks in it. And if that off-guard, relaxed sensation comes into your consciousness it’s nothing but a death threat and you fight it.”

  He dumped the photos over my blanket and picked one up, a twinge of pain crossing his features. “I haven’t looked at these since I’ve come home. This was Thompson. He wasn’t much older than you. In our first fire fight he was shot by insurgents with an automatic rifle. He went down and none of us could get to him until we got the shooters”—his eyes lifted to mine for a heartbeat then went back to the picture—“under control. The bullets severed Thompson’s femoral artery. His blood jetted out through his leg like a fucking fountain. We tried to apply a tourniquet, but we were too late. I can still see it and hear it. His blood pooled all around him, seeping into the filth while he screamed for his mom.” He got a faraway look in his eyes for a moment and I could tell he was struggling.

  I wondered if I should try to stop him, to tell him we could do this another day, but then his look changed to one of determination. He wanted this. He needed this.

  “Our commander loved Thompson. He was like a kid to him, and for weeks he acted like he wasn’t even affected.” He shook his head. “I’ll come back to that.”

  Jake lifted another picture and set it in my fingers, which had started to tremble. The guy in the photo was burly and would have looked seriously dangerous with all his gear and weaponry on, but he wore a smile that lit his face because it was so full of life, much like Jake. It was the kind of smile that when others saw it, they’d smile too. I felt my own face want to lift.

  “This was Smith.”

  The way he said, “was” made a chill run down my spine.

  “Smith was blown to fucking shreds ‘cause he stepped closer to give a little Afghan girl a toy.” His calm commentary cracked. “A fucking, goddamn toy. The girl was probably seven years old and she was so poor, her clothes were rags. He was trying to do something good.” Jake released a shuddering breath. “He was there one second making a fucking joke about a whore and a priest … but when he saw her he shut his mouth.” Jake’s eyes stayed on the back of the photo as if he could see through it. “Sometimes we carried candy and shit to give out. Smith pulled his stash out of his cargo pocket and stepped to the side, reaching the gift out to her. The toe of his boot hit an IED—it means Improvised Explosive Device. He fucking splattered everywhere. Spraying us with his blood, bone, and flesh.”

  Oh, Jake!

  “Then we had to collect his pieces. Commander started retelling the joke Smith never finished.”

  I blinked the tears from my own vision and watched as Jake wiped his own over his arm. “Four days later our commander shot himself in the head. He left a note apologizing to the families of the men he’d promised to protect but lost under his watch.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The words were so inadequate … I put my hand on his leg and tried to toughen up and be strong for him but I was spiraling into failure.

  “These IED’s are all over the place,” he continued as he snuffed back his running nose.

  I got up and grabbed a box of Kleenex while he kept talking.

  “They’re hidden under the ground to blow up vehicles or people—and they don’t give a
fuck if they’re taking out soldiers or civilians. Actually insurgents strap the fuckers to themselves, walk into a busy market and blow the place and everyone in it to hell.

  “This twenty year old I met from a small town in Ohio—his name was, fittingly, Kidd—he was a combat engineer working route clearance … searching for roadside bombs to get rid of them. That job sucks. At first Kidd was like, it was the coolest fucking sensation ever—he said it felt like you were in a movie and you’d get high from it—literally. The ground underneath would crack apart and explode as if a Transformer monster was bursting from the ground to swallow your ass. He’d come back hopped up on adrenaline and never came down from it. They call it the most dangerous job in the Army. A lot of route clearance guys don’t make it home. So he started having night terrors and after a while couldn’t sleep at all. Someone hooked him up with junk—”

  “Junk?” I asked softly.

  “Yeah, shit drugs. Kidd had PTSD bad and his commander told him he was full of shit, to pull it together. He was sent home on leave and tried a bunch of times to kill himself while he was high. The Army was supposed to have his back, but they railroaded him out for misconduct. He gave some of the best years of his life to them, and they fucked him hard. He’d been in for over two years without so much as a blemish on his record. The bastard psych doc said the kid didn’t have anything wrong with him, no PTSD, only a drug problem.”

  I let my eyes drift to the window and watched the snow swirl outside.

  Why do humans fight? You’d think we would have learned something by now. Discovered some other way to fix our differences rather than sending our parents and children into war.

  “I need a drink, Liv. Just to take off the edge.” It was as if he were asking for permission. It would be the first drink he’d had since he got out of the hospital.

  “I’ll get it for you.” I was long finished with my coffee and, truth be told, I could have gone for a beer too. I grabbed two Heinekens.

  When he reached for the beer his hands were shaking badly, so I opened it for him.

  I was surprised when he kept talking. “Then there’s the guilt—guilt that your buddy died and you didn’t. What the fuck kind of fair is that? Then you feel guilty because you’re happy you didn’t die. And you watch the sunset come up over the desert and wonder if you’ll ever make it home to the girl you love, and you’re scared to death you might be next. You’re fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t. And there was no time to get the fuck over it before the next mission, the next hell, began.

  “After a while, I couldn’t go to sleep sober. Even when I could crush it while I was awake with diversions, it all came back in my dreams. Drinking was the only thing that quelled the freakin’ paranoia. I won’t forget, I can never forget, but at least when I drank heavy the screaming wasn’t so close, and the film reel in my head wasn’t so vivid. But my entire personality altered, I was angry all the time. I started provoking fights with loud-mouth shitheads I’d never liked. It felt good to hit, as if I was getting it out of me somehow. At the same time I wanted to be hit. I felt like I deserved it. It alleviated some of the constant, gut-fucking-ripping guilt.” He let out a shaky sigh, and I could see that guilt on his face now.

  I wanted to wipe it all away, to remind him that surviving was a gift, not a curse, but I knew that wasn’t what he needed right now. He knew it anyway. But right now he needed to remember. To explain it all.

  “I was reprimanded one too many times, and they sent me stateside for correctional discipline. It didn’t take, and let’s just say I got to know the MPs really well in Colorado. I was forced into a pysch eval and was told by my new acting commander, who I’d never even met before, that I was nothing but a pain in the ass and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He liked to taunt me by telling me that other soldiers went to war and held it together when they got back. That they weren’t weak, so maybe it was all in my head.”

  Mother. Fucker. Now I wanted to hit somebody! “Please tell me you know that isn’t true.”

  “I do now. That’s why I have all of these articles cut out. The wife of a buddy of mine had been fighting his command and the entire Army to get him the help and services they believed he needed. He came back fucked up all kinds of sideways. She started giving me copies of the research she’d been doing. That’s where all the clippings came from.

  “The stories sounded a lot like mine: watching out the windows, listening for every sound. I still hear the bomb blasts and gunfire.”

  “Like what happened when you threw me under the table at the club.”

  He nodded. “I got the bike ‘cause it was cool as fuck, but was glad I did because when I got back I was afraid to get into an enclosed vehicle. I’d seen too many explode.

  “You know, Livie, there’s so much more of this endless shit. I don’t know if talking about any of this with anyone else is going to help me at all. You’re my best friend and I trust you. But I don’t really see an end or a resolution … I mean what kind of outcome could there really be except for acceptance? Acceptance that that’s the way shit went down and there’s nothing I can do to change it?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.” I laid out the truth. “I’ve read about a therapy that has boasted a good success rate with PTSD victims. The VA is even using it. It’s called EMDR therapy. Maybe we could look into that. I don’t know what’s going to help or not help, I just know we’ll keep working at it. And as long as you want to, we’ll do it together.”

  “Together,” he mused and took my hand. “When I was sent out of the Army, I felt like a weak piece of shit that just got handed his balls. I hated myself, Livie, and I was so ashamed—ashamed I wasn’t going back to keep fighting with my friends still stuck over there, ashamed because I was so relieved I never had to go again. And so ashamed that I lost everything except the stigma and label of a misconduct ‘Other than Honorable’ discharge. I was drunk for two weeks before I forced myself to come home.”

  My heart broke for him. He didn’t deserve to come home feeling like that.

  “So, I didn’t tell anyone. I just acted like I was on extended leave and was going to figure it out from there.” He met my eyes. “I was trying to act like everything was fine … normal. Then there was you. I was all kinds of messed up, wondering if you were going to be there at that party, wondering if you were with somebody else, wondering how such an undeserving piece of shit like me could ever be worthy of you.”

  “Jake!”

  “Livie!” he mocked me back.

  “I don’t ever want to hear you talk crap like that again!” I said.

  “I failed the biggest journey of my life. Everyone was all like, ‘The hero has come home.’ I just wanted to fall into a hole,” he confessed.

  “I get it,” I said softly.

  “Some soldiers—scratch that—most soldiers don’t have wealthy parents to keep them afloat when they lose it all. I have a never-ending stream of money at my fingertips and there’s a security in that, which I’m entirely grateful for … but, Livie, I want to make my own way. I know I don’t want to work the ranch or the oil rigs, but I don’t know what to do now. Getting a job is going to be harder than hell with my discharge.”

  “Have you thought about school? I know a pretty good university.” I smiled.

  “I’ve thought about that.”

  “It hasn’t been that long, Jake. Maybe you just need some time and distance from the crap that happened to get your head straight. Maybe you can relearn how to feel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, like when you made me go rock climbing and eat shit I wouldn’t put into my mouth for a million … scratch that, guess I’d put it in my mouth for you, right? But something different, completely out of the box.” A smile spread across my face.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe after a couple of months of sessions with the doctor and when my semester is over … I don’t know, maybe we can take a serious road trip.” I formul
ated the plan as I spoke.

  “Road trip? It’ll be December in the dead of winter. Where will we road trip to?”

  “Sunny southern California? Travel the coast and the deserts for a few months—I’ve heard that Death Valley is most beautiful in the winter.”

  He studied my face. “You’re serious!”

  “Yeah, I’m serious. Think about it! An adventure like that could make you come to life again.”

  “Finances?”

  “Come on, Mr. Trust fund, there’s only the two of us, it would be easy.” I watched his eyes brighten. “You like my idea!”

  “I do like your idea. But what about school for you?”

  “Really? I can totally take a semester off—to be with you and help you heal and find yourself again, to travel … come on, son!”

  We both laughed.

  “Let’s do it!” He jumped off the couch and pulled me up to hug me. “How do we plan it?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted.

  “I was scared shitless telling you all of that,” he confessed.

  “I know. Thanks for opening up to me.”

  “Yeah. How about we watch a movie? Something stupid funny?”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  Chapter 19

  “Demons”

  Imagine Dragons

  I was startled awake for the sixth night in a row by Jake’s thrashing and screaming. They were frightening, blood chilling howls. It had been two months and the doctor still hadn’t found the right medication combo.

  I’d gotten the idea to play music and call his name to wake him up. Somehow it eased him back into the land of the living instead of me shouting and jostling him. We had decided on something melodic. We created a Daughtry playlist. Strong enough to wake him but calm enough to lower his adrenaline.

  “Jake!” I called calmly. “Babe, you’re just dreaming. Come on back to me.”

  He shook himself and sat straight up. “Fuck!”

  “I’m sorry,” I offered lamely.

  “I fucking hate this! What’s the fucking sense? I’m not out of it. I’ll never be out of it! I’m going to relive it for fucking ever!” He bounced off the bed and stalked around the room.