Because here’s the truth about us veterans: We’re not broken. We’re not all damaged. Some of us, a lot of us, make it through the day the same way people who haven’t seen combat do: minute by minute and hour by hour, as human beings. We don’t need fixing, or pity. Some respect would be helpful, though. Very helpful. Not that I’m expecting to find any here, in this place. For servicemen of my generation, the VA is the place you come if you want to be slotted into a folder, ushered into a seat, or helped into a room that has nothing to do with you, or where you belong, or what you need.
But I do need something, right now, badly enough that I had to come. I’m just trying to hold on to as much of my dignity as I can while I’m asking.
“Sir, I don’t want to take up too much of your time. But I need a . . . I’m here for a refill.”
Rafiq’s expression is unchanged: he’s broadcasting nothing but relief and delight at my presence. I don’t trust it, although I’m not sure why. Because he’s Pop’s friend, I guess. That’s the only real reason I can name.
“I’m glad you’re here, son. I didn’t sleep much last night, thinking about—” Here he holds his hands up, palms to the sky, and does a little puff of his cheeks that could be regret, could be helplessness, could be a lot of things but probably not anything useful to me.
“I didn’t get much sleep, either, sir.”
Rafiq nods, gazing at me meaningfully. “I was sorry to give you the news.”
“Yes, sir.” A short silence spins out between us. Into it, I lob a lame shot: “It’s not every day a guy learns he’s dying, although that probably sounds like a strange thing for a Marine to say.”
“Not at all strange. In fact, the least strange thing in the world.” Rafiq nods again, even harder. “Come sit,” he adds, and gestures to a pair of horribly uncomfortable-looking chairs in the corner of his office—an awkward little conversation nook, for those of his patients who need convincing that he’s more than just a desk jockey. I slide down from the corner of his desk and move toward where he’s pointing, feeling already as if he’s in the process of turning the tables on me. Whatever advantage I may have started with by surprising him here, in his place of safety, he’s already directing me down from my higher ground. “How do you feel this morning, Carter?”
“Like a bad road, sir.”
“Bad road. I like that expression.” Rafiq chuckles. In point of fact, I feel like a bad road through hell: the singing headache is back for its big encore, my old friend the gray corona has settled back into its customary spot around my center of focus, and while my face bears the distinctive signs of having been worked over by someone lacking a gentle touch, that’s nothing to how the rest of me feels. It hurts to inhale.
“Well. You should see the other guy, sir.” This makes Rafiq laugh louder. Even as I’m settling into his uncomfortable chair for an uncomfortable talk, I’m finding that it’s hard not to smile, a little bit, at how easily amused he seems to be. Every second this guy has lived since his refugee childhood, or since his years in the field hospitals, must seem like a goddamn gift to him. If the guy is overfull of horizon-sweeping joy, you honestly can’t be mad at him for it.
“I won’t quiz you about your symptoms today,” he promises, as if I looked worried. “I want to talk about other things.”
“I just came in for a refill, sir.” Sooner rather than later, I hope.
“Oh, I’ll prepare that for you, too, don’t worry. But Carter, as your father’s friend, I must tell you”—he leans toward me, locks his teddy-bear brown eyes on mine—“I am concerned.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hear from my friend. His son is home after more than two years. Possibly depressed, showing signs of PTSD. And then I hear from a doctor—excuse me, a Nurse Completionist”—it’s impossible to like the tone in which he pronounces Natalie B.’s job title—“who tells me that this boy, my friend’s son, is unconscious on her floor, and as his friend can I come to help him. Well!” Rafiq shakes his head, wide-eyed. “So I come myself. And what do I find? My friend’s son. My dear, dear friend from many years, who will always have a place in my heart even if years go by without our getting a chance to talk. My friend’s son is covered in blood. He is unconscious. He is desperately sick and cannot admit it even to himself.” Rafiq’s eyes are shining, his empathy is unbearable. His concern, his caring, it all feels painfully overwrought, like we’re starring in an ad on someone’s wearable. “And he is in a very dangerous place. How he got there I cannot say. But I find him in—how can I put this? One of the most dangerous places in all of New Chicago—for anyone who finds it, but perhaps especially for him.”
“Especially for me? Why?”
“We’ll get to that,” Rafiq says gravely. “Carter, I want to help you—you have no idea how much I want to help you. But I must ask, how did you come to be there, in that place?”
The more he says he cares about me and what happens to me, the more nervous I get. All I can do is stare at him. The thing is, he could be telling the truth—he could honestly want to help me—but I still wouldn’t want to tell him anything.
“Doc, I don’t mean to be rude. But could we get that refill?”
He smiles, gratified even though I’ve changed the subject—for the time being. “It worked for you, did it?”
“It did,” I acknowledge.
“I’m glad. I’ll get you a scrip, you can fill it downstairs.”
I was hoping he would give me another dose more or less as soon as he walked into his office—I’m feeling that bad—and I’m about to tell him as much, despite how it hurts my throat to think about asking, but then he changes gears, again.
“Every time I see a case like yours I’m reminded of how long it’s been, this war. Twenty-four years! My God. It started before me, and it will not end until after me, this much I know now.” He shakes his great bespectacled head sadly, slowly, lenses glimmering. “And here we are, still at war in the West. Why do you think that is?”
I can’t imagine what he’s gaming at with this question. My jaw swings a bit on its hinges as I try to think of an answer. “Well, H2.0, sir. That’s what the raiders want to blow up. They want to disrupt distribution to the New Cities. Or, if they can’t do that, they want to keep the military engaged, at least, so there’s something left to steal from over there.”
“Yes. Precisely so. And yet the materials, the facilities, the technologies that produce synthetic water, none of these have been reproduced on the other side of the mountains, eh? Or indeed anywhere near a New City—which would render H2.0 less expensive to produce and distribute. Yes? It’s almost like we want this war to continue.” He’s saying what everyone from op-ed authors down to dumb grunts like me all already know about the Second Wars. Gard used to rail against it like no one else I ever knew. “Like the oil wars of the decades before your father and I were born, the current wars are all about a resource that’s only extractable from an environment hostile to our interests.”
“Okay.” I offer a nod that’s half a shrug. The gesture does nothing good for my swimming head.
“But don’t you see, that’s why we’re still at war. That’s why, even after years spent—by your father and myself, among many, many good men—years, trying to clear and secure a massive, massive region of the country that has been declared unsafe and uninhabitable, there are people still there. Fighting. Poisoning. Detonating each other. For the sake of a train.” Major Rafiq leans toward me with a shrewd, insider’s smile. “And that’s what the men call some next-level bullshit. Have I captured your thinking on this issue, son?”
Now I think I know this game. If he, Wise But Uncondescending Senior Medical Officer, can demonstrate how well he understands me, Average Poisoned Grunt with PTSD, a type he’s no doubt seen in this very office many times before, he believes he can get me to open up and start talking.
“It’s what everybody thinks. It’s what anybody who sees the news thinks.” I am struggling to remain uprigh
t in my seat. “I don’t know if it’s what the army thinks, or the Marine Corps.” Exhale. Keep breathing. “Although the Marines aren’t exactly known for thinking.”
Major Rafiq nods hugely, leans back with a heavy thud into his chair. “Sure. Sure. Who knows. But here’s one thing I do know, son. I may hate the war—and I do hate it, I hate everything it’s done. But I love the army with everything in me. The same way I know you love the Marine Corps, despite everything that’s happened to you. Because the Marine Corps is not the commanders or the administration, or the Corps itself, the idea of it, the concept—although many good men love that concept more than their own mothers. No, you love the Corps because for you the Corps is your friends. It’s your men. It’s the men you’d die for. This is what I’m saying: your father and I, for each other, we are the army. The same way that for you, the Marines are the men from your platoon, from your company. That’s why even though you may have come to hate the Wars and what they did to you, you’ll never hate the Marines. You could no more hate the Marine Corps than you could hate your sisters.”
I don’t have any reply to this.
The major presses on. “To someone on the street in New Chicago or New Detroit or New Minneapolis, it seems like everything west of the mountains has been blowing up or falling apart for decades. The Wars are just an ugly idea, and the veterans who make it home are just the ugly men who lived inside it. They don’t have reason to care as long as there’s food and water over here—unless you’re young, of course, unless you’re in love.” He smiles sadly at me. “Then you’re in trouble. You can’t get married, unless you’re pregnant. And you can’t get pregnant, because of the infertility crisis. And we all know it’s down to the water we’re fighting for, of course, we all know it, but who can do anything about that?” Here is the helpless gesture again, the hands lifted toward the ceiling like they’re testing for rain. Impossible rain.
“I suppose someone in New City government could start by admitting it,” I snap at him. I’m tired; my head hurts; my everything hurts. I didn’t mean to engage with him, much less on this particular point, but it’s Fred I’m thinking of, I guess, and I don’t like how Rafiq’s tone seems to be making light of what’s been happening to her. And I really just wanted another dose, for God’s sake. For the love of all that is holy. For the pure sweet love of Christ on a piece of buttered toast can I please have that shot. “For some people it’s a real problem.”
“For all of us, for all of humanity, it’s a real problem!” Rafiq exclaims earnestly. “Who could deny it? After surviving all of this! The water scarcity! The climate crisis, the storms! The quakes, the fires! The flooding and collapse of our coastal cities, the evacuations, food shortages! To survive all of this, and then find the technology and the inner strength”—here he puffs his chest, although his eyes are shining as if he could weep—“to begin to rebuild, and to succeed, to come back so far! Only to find we might be doomed to collapse because of infertility!” The way he says the word makes it sound like it’s someone’s fault, and he’d very much like to take that someone by the shoulders and shake, hard. If it weren’t so laughable it would be sad. “For someone who’s seen what I’ve seen? Carter. Let me tell you. Humankind is an incredible, a beautiful force. It is destructive. It is not harmless or blameless. But by God it is worth fighting for, to the last man. The last man.” He nods, mostly to himself, and folds his hands in his lap.
My own hands are in fists, I realize. It’s all I can do to keep myself straight in the chair, which is just as uncomfortable as it looked. I need another dose of pain reliever, worse than I wanted to admit even when I came here this morning. But I understand where this Rafiq is coming from now, at least, as sentimental and self-glorifying as it is. And if he’s told me this much, he might be able to tell me a bit more—as much as I can stomach hearing, anyway.
“Doc, can I ask you a question?”
“If I can ask you one,” he responds, in a milder tone.
“Fair enough.” Carefully I unclench my hands and put them on my knees, where I can see them. “That medication you gave me. It worked. It really worked. And I’m grateful—it helps. But. I need to know, I guess, for my family’s sake . . . if there are side effects I should know about. Like am I going to be addicted to this stuff, for one.”
“No. One hundred percent no.” Rafiq has put his hands on his knees, too, deliberately mirroring me, it seems. “We have a policy against prescribing habit-forming drugs to our veteran patients. We’ve seen an elevated risk of abuse.”
“Okay. Okay. Good. I’m going to choose to believe you on that.”
“I hope you will.”
“One more question. Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t. But could this stuff cause . . . changes in mood? Like aggression, for example.”
“You’re asking does it cause mood changes?”
“I’m asking does it cause feelings of aggression. Specifically. Could it make you, you know, sort of violent?”
I see the merest flicker of unease in his eyes, behind the gold-rimmed round glasses. Abruptly, as if surprised I would even ask, he says, “No. Not at all.”
“Okay.”
“Now my turn, yes?”
“Sure. I mean, yes, sir.”
“You’re going to like this question”—he smiles—“because it will be familiar to you. The same question I began with. What were you doing in that place yesterday?”
“From what I remember, mostly a lot of bleeding and lying on the floor.”
Major Rafiq roars with laughter. He laughs so hard he has to produce a cloth from his pants pocket to wipe his face. This time, though, it’s harder for me to crack a smile in return.
“Okay. Okay. That was good. You got me,” he says, with a helpless, winding-down hee-hee-hee. “Listen, Carter. The reason I’m asking is because I want to help you. Will you let me do that for you?” He holds his hands out, palms up, again, in a gesture of apparent goodwill. By now I’m sure he means it. He really does want to help me. That doesn’t mean I can let him do it, though.
“Sir, I appreciate—”
“I don’t want to be just a source of medication once a week.” Once a week? The pulse in my neck does a pounding gallop. If I have to wait another six days for a dose, I need to seriously reconsider how I’ll be getting through the next fifteen minutes. A drink would help. I stand up. “Wait. Please. Carter, I want to be an ally, for you and for your family. That’s why I’ve taken the steps I’ve taken since I saw you.”
Steps? “What steps?”
“I want you to be honest with me, and that means I need to be honest with you myself.” Major Rafiq stands and moves between me and the door so gracefully I hardly have time to react. “Carter, I think I know what brought you there, to that place. The same reason it was so dangerous, so foolhardy, for you to go: your sister.”
My whole body freezes in place. I stare at him, feeling and probably looking capable of much more than I would ever want to do to this guy—not really, I would never hurt anyone really, but right now, right now. Right now I’m not even sure what I would or wouldn’t do.
Then he says, “The one who’s getting married this week. Fredericka, yes? Beautiful name. She’s pregnant. You’re worried. I understand. I even admire you, for wanting to help her so badly that you would go to a place like that.”
None of this is tracking—but he’s gleaming with the self-satisfied pride of Sherlock Holmes pronouncing a solve. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s natural for a young man to want to protect his sisters. I have sisters myself, younger and older.” He reaches out a hand to me. “One of my older sisters died on our way out of Syria, an infection. I’ve never forgiven myself for not being able to save her somehow. I never will. It’s why I went into medicine.”
“I’m sorry, sir, that’s terrible. I really am sorry. I’m sorry. But what—”
“Your sister is important to you, I can see that. I know it. It’s a noble thing, to
want to be a good man for your sister.” Again his eyes shine with a sentimental light—so heartfelt, and so completely at odds with what he says next: “But what you have to understand is that women are far, far better off not relying on ways to cheat the system. Care Standard exists for a reason. We must all help the women in our lives who are governed by it to live up to the spirit and the letter of Care Standard regulations. It’s for the good. It’s for the good of humankind’s survival—just as we’ve been talking about, here, now, this morning!” he adds excitedly, those tender teddy-bear eyes aglow.
“You think I went there looking for Fred. To try to help Fred.” I can’t tell whether what I’m feeling is relief or anger. In either case I feel like laughing. So I do. “Major, I gotta tell you, you’re an even worse detective than I am.”
Major Rafiq’s expression is somewhat hurt. “I’m not saying she was a client there. No, I did not assume that at all. But I did think: a young man’s sister is pregnant, and by her own father’s account she’s feeling a certain amount of pressure, a mountain of Care Hours, I think were his words, and her private business is costing her more in penalties than it’s earning her to run. A new life is in front of her, by anyone’s measure an easy one—and a joyful one, a worthy one. But she’s struggling to accept it. And this young man, home from almost three years of helping to secure the safety of his country’s most precious asset, hears about . . . a way he can help her. Not a legal way, not a safe way, but an effective way. Before he tells her anything, he decides to check it out, find out what’s true and what’s not. It’s what any right-thinking soldier would do—recon. When you think your mission is to help secure and protect something precious.” He shakes his head, smiles at me kindly. “I’m telling you I understand you. I don’t blame you, far from it. It’s a bit heroic. Misguided, you understand, but . . . heroic.”
This is all so off the mark I almost have to admire him for being able to fabricate it. “I wish I were the guy you’re describing, Major. I really do.”
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