Better Late Than Never

by Diva D. Wood

  Landon, as the platoon’s second-in-command, was last to approach Joe’s casket. His trident in hand, he hesitated just a split second before pounding it home. He saluted Joe’s casket for a long moment before feeling someone at his side.

  It was Danita, clutching the flag, tears streaming down her cheeks. Landon embraced her tightly. “I’m so very sorry, Danita,” he whispered, his own tears flowing again.

  Danita nodded. “That was something special, Landon,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Landon nodded back.

  “See you at the house later.”

  Landon smiled. There was nothing in Danita’s voice to indicate that this was a question. It was more like an order. “You bet,” he said. “We wouldn’t miss it. Give us a minute and we’ll be there.”

  Danita nodded with a brave smile and walked away, her two sons on either side.

  Desiree was at Landon’s other side. “Ready to go, baby?”

  “Yes,” he said with a firm nod. “Let’s roll.”

  “Outstanding work, Lieutenant,” Commander Santiago said, offering his hand.

  “Thank you, sir,” Landon replied.

  “See you on Monday, Lieutenant,” Santiago said as he turned to walk away.

  “Sir?”

  “You and the rest of the platoon have the rest of the week off, Lieutenant Stone. Any problem with that?”

  Landon smiled. “Negative, sir.”

  “I didn’t think so. Nice meeting you, ma’am.” And then Santiago was gone.

  Chapter 22

  Three weeks later

  Landon hesitated as he prepared to knock on the office door of Commander William ‘Willie’ Santiago, CO of SEAL Team One.

  “Don’t think about it,” Landon told himself. “Just do it.” He took a deep breath, exhaled, and knocked.

  “Come in,” Santiago called out.

  Landon entered quietly and closed the door behind him. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, sir.”

  “Not a problem, Lieutenant Stone. Anything for my men,” Santiago said as he got up from his chair and returned Landon’s salute. “At ease. What can I do for you?”

  Landon exhaled tiredly. “I don’t know quite how to say this, so I’m going to come right out and say it. I need help, sir.”

  “Of course you do, Lieutenant Stone,” Santiago said with a knowing nod. “My only question is what’s taken you so long to ask for it.”

  Landon hadn’t been prepared for his commanding officer to agree with him so quickly. “Thank you, sir,” was all he could muster.

  Santiago rubbed his temples. “We do a lot of good things in the Teams, Lieutenant Stone. But there are areas where we need improvement—a lot of improvement. This is one of those areas. Do you follow me?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  Santiago smiled. “I was afraid I was being too obtuse. Grab a seat, Lieutenant. We’re going to be here a while.”

  “Yes, sir.” Landon pulled out a standard-issue chair and sat down in it, feeling the fatigue of the past few weeks weighing him down.

  Santiago opened a red-bordered folder marked Top Secret and perused its contents for several agonizing moments—moments that seemed like an eternity to Landon.

  Finally, Santiago closed the folder and replaced it on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. He regarded Landon with a grim-faced look. “Your after-action report was especially vivid, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It must be your communications training.”

  “That and a lifetime of writing, sir. It’s a gift. When I was seven, I was writing swashbuckling stories of pirate days.”

  Santiago smiled. “Those must have been fun reading. I know how difficult it was for you to write that, Lieutenant Stone. Thank you for, as usual, going above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “It was exceedingly difficult to write, sir,” Landon replied. “But the only way for us to do better next time is for us to learn from what we did this time.”

  Santiago nodded. “The fucking spooks let us down again.”

  “Affirmative, sir. The mission was FUBAR from the moment we put boots on the ground.”

  “You ended up facing an enemy element three times as large as what you were expecting.”

  “Affirmative again, sir.”

  “And yet, you achieved the mission objective.”

  “I suppose, sir.”

  Santiago exhaled. “One KIA and two wounded is pretty remarkable for the clusterfuck you and your unit found itself embroiled in, Lieutenant Stone.”

  “I suppose, sir.”

  Santiago smiled sadly. “I sense you don’t share my opinion, Landon.”

  Landon smiled back. “I suppose not, sir.”

  “You aren’t required to, Lieutenant.” Santiago put the mission file in a drawer and slammed it shut abruptly, startling Landon. “The mission succeeded primarily due to you, Landon. I am currently writing a report that will recommend you for at least one medal and possibly more.”

  Landon exhaled. Fuck.

  “I don’t want any medals, sir. I was just doing my job. I didn’t do anything any of my men wouldn’t have done.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you wanted medals, Lieutenant Stone,” Santiago said with a steely glare. “I informed you that you’re being recommended for them.”

  Whoa, Landon thought, sound the retreat. “Yes, sir.”

  “That isn’t what we need to discuss at the moment, however,” Santiago said, fixing Landon with a less stern look. “We’re here today to talk about getting you some help.”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  Santiago leaned back in his chair again and sighed. “That mission must have been hell on earth, Landon. I wasn’t there, but your report made me feel like I was. You and your men are damned fortunate you made it out of there alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re the reason the unit made it out alive, Landon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Santiago smiled. “That’s more like it, Lieutenant. For a moment there, I was afraid you’d forgotten the vital military skill of blowing sunshine up your CO’s ass.”

  “Negative, sir.” Landon couldn’t suppress a roguish grin.

  Santiago’s face turned serious again. “What do you want, Landon? Or perhaps the better question is, what do you need?”

  Landon frowned. “Those, I’m afraid, may be two diametrically opposed things at the moment, sir.”

  “Explain, Lieutenant.”

  “What I want is to go back to my men and lead them the way they deserve to be led,” Landon said, his voice beginning to break. “I want to try my damndest to fill Joe’s size twelve combat boots.”

  “And what do you need?”

  “I need to be right in the head first.”

  “Agreed.”

  Landon rubbed his brow. “And the unmistakable truth is that I’m not in that place at the moment, sir. I’m not even in the same time zone as that place.”

  “Dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “Night terrors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Avoidance of stressful situations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pushing away the people in your life who love and care about you?”

  Landon’s thoughts immediately went to Desiree—whom he hadn’t called, texted, or otherwise communicated with in nearly a month. “I’m afraid that’s affirmative too, sir.”

  “Namely, Desiree?”

  Landon resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to roll his eyes, which he surmised would not have been received well by his commanding officer. Sure is nice for your personal life to be common knowledge, he thought sarcastically. “Affirmative, sir.”

  Santiago smiled. “Joe shared some information about your new life—on a need-to-know basis only, of course. He was quite pleased with his role in helping bring it about.”

  Landon smiled back. “I bet he was, sir. Although,
truth be told, it was mostly the queen’s doing. Joe did the grunt work, but it was on Danita’s orders.”

  “I sensed that.” Santiago opened his laptop and booted it up.

  The two men were silent for a few awkward moments as the computer beeped and ground its way through its startup procedure. Finally, Santiago entered a few codes and, staring intently at the screen for a moment, jotted something on a notepad. He ripped off the note and handed it to Landon.

  “I think the best thing for you going forward at this time, Lieutenant, is a thirty-day stress leave. I, of course, can’t authorize that. But Dr. Christina Perez over at the Naval Hospital can. Call her for an appointment as soon as we’re done here. Understood?”

  Landon frowned as he regarded the note.

  “Something wrong, Lieutenant Stone?”

  “A woman, sir?”

  “Affirmative. Is there a problem?”

  “Well…uh, don’t you think I should be able to talk to someone who can relate to what I’m going through?”

  “Of course, Landon. And Dr. Perez is that person. Trust me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Santiago leaned forward and fixed Landon with a compassionate look. “The military—and especially the Navy, I’m afraid—has done a pretty piss-poor job of dealing with PTSD and other combat-related mental health issues since the beginning of time, Landon. We haven’t done right by our warriors. But we’re going to do right by you. I promise.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Landon rose to his feet, snapped to attention, and saluted his commanding officer. Santiago returned the salute with a smile.

  Landon turned to leave, but hesitated.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Stone? Something else?”

  “What will happen to my men, sir?”

  “You let me worry about that, Lieutenant,” Santiago said, in a tone meant to convey that no further inquiries on this subject were necessary or desired. “You concern yourself with Landon Tiberius Stone for the foreseeable future. It’s finally time for you to take care of yourself. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Good. Dismissed. Good luck to you, Landon. I’ll be following your progress closely. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Landon turned to leave as Santiago picked up the phone to make a call.

  Landon was feeling better already as he left the SPECWAR complex and headed toward his quarters.

  Maybe everything was going to be all right after all.

  Chapter 23

  The next day

  Landon tried to read a year-old ESPN The Magazine as he waited for his initial appointment with Dr. Christina Perez. He checked his watch every two minutes, wishing he could just get it over with and get back to his unit.

  “Lieutenant Stone?”

  Landon nodded, putting the magazine back on the waiting room coffee table and following the receptionist to a corner office in the mental health clinic of Balboa Naval Hospital.

  “Dr. Perez will be with you shortly, Lieutenant.”

  Landon smiled as the nurse turned and left, shutting the office door quietly behind her. He glanced around the office, trying to learn as much as he could about the person who, at the moment, held the future of his military career—and by extension, his life—in her hands.

  Pictures of the doctor with two young children; a West Point diploma; a photo of the doctor with a Black Hawk crew in what was obviously Iraq or Afghanistan.

  Landon’s reconnaissance mission ended abruptly as the door opened and Dr. Perez entered.

  In a wheelchair.

  She smiled. “Pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Stone.”

  “Same here, doc.” Landon suddenly felt like shit. He hadn’t even known Dr. Perez was military, let alone a wounded veteran.

  Perez wheeled herself over to an L-shaped sectional couch and motioned for Landon to join her.

  Landon was struggling for words and still trying to wrap his head around the concept that his new therapist really was going to be able to relate to him. “Um…how…”

  “Was I wounded?”

  Landon nodded sheepishly.

  “Before I took this job, I was a Black Hawk pilot,” Perez began with a deep breath. “My helo was shot down over An-Nasiriyah in the initial push of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I lost both legs in the crash.”

  “Damn,” Landon said softly.

  “I made out much better than the rest of my crew, Lieutenant Stone,” Perez said, her tone steely and steady. “I was the lone survivor.”

  “I’m sorry.” Now Landon was really regretting prejudging this doctor. He surmised that Dr. Christina Perez was going to be more than able to relate to him and big, burgeoning PTSD issues.

  “Thank you. Now, let’s get down to business here. Your commanding officer has briefed me in writing and via phone on your situation. I’m here to help. We’ll get you back on track.”

  Landon nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. “My career means everything to me. And now that Joe is gone, I have an awfully big pair of shoes to fill. I need to be at my best, and I’m not there right now.”

  “Understood.” Perez glanced down at a folder and jotted some notes on a yellow legal pad. “So this is about living up to what somebody else would have expected of you.”

  “Negative,” he said. “It’s about picking up the flag for a fallen brother and carrying it forward. It’s what we do.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” Landon was feeling irritated.

  “Don’t get all defensive, Landon,” Perez said, with a hint of a twinkle in her brown eyes.

  “I’m not,” he said, trying mightily to keep up his tough-guy façade, but ultimately unable to suppress a smile.

  Perez returned to flipping through Landon’s chart. “This first appointment will be more of a getting-acquainted session. Tell me about yourself.”

  “I’m an only child,” he began. “Classic overachiever and all the attendant personality traits. My father left when I was four. I’ve never had a relationship with him.”

  “None whatsoever?”

  “None.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “It is what it is.” Landon shrugged. “Do I wish things would have been different? Sure. But they’re not. I seem to have turned out all right.”

  “That you have.” Perez nodded with a smile. “Top five of your class at Annapolis. Top two at BUD/S.”

  “Would you like to take a wild guess as to who was number one, doc?”

  “I’m going to say Joe Mawhorter.”

  Landon smiled as memories of his lifelong friend came flooding back. “I owe most of what I’ve done in my life to Joe. Especially graduating from BUD/S.”

  “Explain.”

  Landon shifted again on the couch. “We were in the middle of Hell Week. I had reached the end of my rope, and I was about to ring the bell.”

  “Ring the bell?”

  “Self-terminate. Wash myself out. Any class member can drop out at any time just by ringing the bell.”

  “Go on.”

  Landon smiled at the nearly twenty-year-old memory, one that had taken many years to become a good one. “My hand was on the bell. Joe got to me and put his hand over mine. He told me in no uncertain terms that I’d never quit anything in my life and I wasn’t going to start now.”

  Perez smiled and nodded knowingly. “I had a moment like that at OCS, and I also had a friend who kicked me in the ass and got me back on track. You miss him terribly, don’t you?”

  “Every minute of every hour of every day,” he said softly, reaching for a tissue on the coffee table.

  “And you feel responsible for his death.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Perez smiled warmly. “This isn’t boot camp, Lieutenant Stone. You can drop the bullshit military nomenclature.”

  Landon smiled. “Affirmative, ma’am.”
r />   Perez chuckled and closed Landon’s chart. She regarded him with a compassionate but firm gaze.

  “A lot of therapists will tell you they know what you’re feeling, Landon. Most of them are full of shit. I’m not.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I found a hand up out of the darkness,” Perez said, her voice unwavering. “That’s why I shifted gears and became a therapist. Well, that and the inconvenient fact that the Army doesn’t allow paraplegics to pilot Black Hawks.”

  Landon smiled. “I see.”

  “I’m here to pay it forward, Landon. And some day, you’ll do the same. It starts right here and right now. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You can drop the ‘ma’am’ shit as well. Dr. Perez will do just fine.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Perez.”

  “So, tell me about the issues you’re having,” she said. “Nightmares?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Do I have to?”

  She smiled. “If you want to get better, then yes, you have to.”

  Landon exhaled. “Most of them seem to be some combination of reliving the mission where Joe was killed. The circumstances of the mission are sometimes different, and sometimes Joe dies in a different way. But he still dies, and it’s still my fault. Always.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is it your fault?”

  “I think that’s pretty obvious, Dr. Perez,” he said. “The bullet he took had my name on it. He went in my place.”

  “I see.” Perez wheeled her chair closer to Landon. They were now just a few feet apart. “You realize that this is a sticking point.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “By that, I mean that this feeling is a major obstacle to your healing,” she said. “But it’s not an insurmountable one. We’ll get over it.”

  He smiled weakly. “Okay.”

  “I realize that you and your fellow SEALs are a cut above the rest of us military types,” she continued. “In a good way, of course. But you need to temper all that macho, alpha male bullshit with a healthy dose of reality. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  Perez smiled. “You will. That’s enough for today. Your CO recommends a thirty-day stress leave for you, and I’m going to approve that at this time.” She punched a series of keys on her laptop. “I’d like to see you again Thursday at seven. Are you available?”