Coming home seems like it would be the easiest part- but it’s often the hardest. Many of us here can attest to that personally. Part of what I try to do in my writing is to reflect real experiences of soldiers- both at war and coming home. Here is one of those- ‘Therapy’. Enjoy. -L
“Therapy”
Courtland, New York
October 14, 2253.
Ishi stood with his hands in his pockets staring across the street at the door of the dilapidated building. The sign on the outside said ‘UEA Veterans Administration Recreation Center-Cortland, NY’. He shivered slightly in the brisk fall wind and thought about skipping it. He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked again at the court order.
Under his breath, he muttered. “Shit.”
The voice of the judge echoed in his head. “This is it, son. Veteran or not, if you get picked up for being drunk in public again or get arrested for fighting, we’re sending you to the rehabilitation facility on Io and it’s gonna be a long, cold five years. This is your last chance.” The judge had stared hard at him, then scrawled something on a piece of paper. “You’re going to go to this meeting here. It’s a bit of a drive, in a little town south of Syracuse.” The judge had given him a hard look that seemed to bore through him, then added, “I think it’s what you need.” The judge looked at Ishi a moment longer, and then continued in a soft tone, “Trust me on this one, son. I know.”
“Shit.” He swore again, startling himself with how loud the word sounded. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and started across the street, not bothering to look. There wasn’t any traffic. There was never any traffic. Reaching for the door handle, he jerked it open and moved inside, feeling the sudden blast of heat making his cold numbed cheeks tingle. To his right, he could see an open set of double doors, and the wooden painted surface of a basketball court. He sighed and started to take off his coat. He knew what he would see when he rounded the corner. A circle of chairs, maybe a table with shitty coffee in a battered pot off to the side and of course, the obligatory hard stares at him from the older men in the groups. He’s been to these before and it was always the same.
He folded his coat over his arm and signed again, then entered the large basketball court. As he’d expected, there was the circle of chairs, placed around a worn table. Next to the wall sat another battered side table with the coffee pot and, he noted with some amusement, a box of donuts. There were already a dozen or so people sitting in the chairs, chatting in the low buzz of people that knew each other. He’d seen that before too. Everyone knew someone and he never knew anyone. A couple of the veterans nodded, in a friendly manner.
One of them, a sturdy woman with a thick Southern accent waved him to a seat and called out in a cheery voice. “Hey, ya’ll! Grab a cup and have a sit. We’re about to get started.”
Ishi nodded, and moved to the table, getting a cup of strong smelling black coffee. He moved to an open folding chair and sat, taking a sip of the incredibly potent brew and waited.
After a moment, the woman spoke, “Ok, let's kick this off. Introductions. Name, where you’re from, branch of service, what you did, when and where you served, if you want to tell. If ya don’t, well; that's ok too.” She smiled crookedly, half of her mouth not quite rising as far as the other, and continued. “I’m Michelle. I’m originally from Texas, and I was Army. Did two rotations as a mech mechanic. One on Desolation, and another on Solace.”
Next to her, a huge, hulking man with a horribly scarred face spoke in a heavily accented voice. “Dimitry, Novograd. Was an engineer on cruiser, was at Topaz.”
The remainder of the introductions started to blur together, and Ishi tried to pay attention but as always was startled to see everyone looking at him. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked at the faces looking expectantly at him, then spoke again, hesitantly.
“I’m Ishi, from Theta Indi A.'' He paused and swallowed, then spoke decisively. “Uh...I was...an intelligence analyst, with the Colonial Army. I...um. I served sort of all over.” He hurriedly took a sip of coffee to try not to meet people’s eyes. To his surprise, no one seemed too startled when he had made his statement. Most of the groups were UEA veterans, and many veterans had a deep distrust of the colonists, particularly after the rebellions in the colonies right after the war with the Elai. There had been some hard fighting and there was no love lost between the colonial militias and the Earth Alliance armed forces, despite their shared sacrifices in the war against the Elai.
The round of introductions was over, and Michelle was speaking again. He focused on her face. Plain but very pretty, even with the droop on the left side of her face. He concentrated on her words.
“So, today’s theme is expression. I’d like each of you to tell us something that you remember from your time in uniform that you’re uncomfortable with sharing, or that you think about frequently, and how you try to address the issue in your life as opposed to letting it consume you.”
She paused and then added with a gesture. “I’ll go first. When we were on Desolation, the sharkies cut the supply lines, and we were getting low on ammo to load in the Humpbacks.” She looked at the other veterans and explained. “Those were the precursors to the Warrior and Defender model combat mechs that came later, for those of you that don’t know.” She paused for a moment, seeming to look into the table surface in front of her and continued. “We tried to split the ammunition up as best as we could but it was so short, we’d have to cut the ammo loads. We’d tell the pilots when we could, but we didn’t always have time since everything was so chaotic.” She laughed, somewhat self consciously. “I know, intellectually, that there were internal ammunition counters and I know that the pilots knew how much they had on board.” She paused, then added reflectively. “I always worried that we under loaded them and that they went black in a firefight and got killed because of it. I worried for years about that because we lost so many mechs and pilots.” She smiled, and then added, “I finally found a solution, though! It occurred to me a couple months ago while I was in the shower, nearly a decade after it happened.” She laughed ruefully. “I could have left them a sticky note in the cockpit. Something to tell them.” She laughed again. “Here I am years later, thinking up solutions that might not have even made a difference to a problem that wasn't even a problem at the time.”
She looked around the small group and said compassionately, “Then, I realized that the problem wasn’t the ammunition or the counters or the sticky notes. It was me. I was holding onto that guilt. That I had come back and some of those pilots and gunners didn’t. It wasn’t because we didn’t get them enough ammunition, or that their ammo counters didn’t work. It was because it was war and the thing about war is that good men and women sometimes die and there is nothing you, or I or anyone can do about it.” She smiled sadly, and added, “Twenty-one year old specialist second class me didn’t understand. Hell, even thirty one year old me didn’t understand until I’d been doing this with you guys for almost four years.” She gazed steadily around the group. “I understand now that it wasn’t my fault, and at the end of the day, it’s not your fault. It’s not any of our faults.”
Ishi stared down at the battered wood of the basketball court and spoke without thinking. “Except when it is.”
Michelle looked at him compassionately. The big guy to Ishi’s right reached over and patted him gently on the back and spoke. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, brother, even if you think it was.”
Ishi looked up at the man, and his compassionate face. He then looked around the small group of kind, understanding faces. He shook his head slowly, and took in a breath and sat back in his chair and spoke. “No. This was. I am responsible for the deaths of thousands.”
Seeing the solemn faces around him, he sighed and started to speak.
“Like I said, I was in intelligence. Colonial Army, but attached to a UEA intelligence analyst unit.” He smiled briefly, “It’s what I get for being good at math. Some stereotypes never die, huh?” There was a chuckle from the group. Ishi continued. “Anyway. We were on a small stealth destroyer, and we happened to come across an Elai cruiser drifting and abandoned about a week after the battle of Desolation. I was one of the intel guys that went aboard to try to access her mainframe. There hadn’t been too many captured intact at that point in the war. None, actually.” He took a drink of the cooling coffee, grimaced at the acidic taste and then set it on the table in front of him.
He continued. “So anyway, long story short, we get this nav computer and somehow, I’m the dork that figures out the encryption. Yay, me.” He shook his head at the memory, “It got me noticed, a medal and a transfer back to FleetCom to work with a cryptanalysis team on Charon.” He laughed quietly, and added. “Unit Six Three Two , we were called. It was nice and generic so no one could figure out what we did. Real secret squirrel code monkey stuff.” He stared at the table for a moment, and spoke in a faraway voice. “We were good. Really good, maybe even the best. Within a month, we’d cracked the enemy database encryption algorithms. Within six months, we were reading most of their Naval Intelligence traffic.” His voice trailed off. His memories flooded back of the tight tunnels of Charon, the constant artificial light and gravity and frantic spent days and at the keyboards.
After several seconds of silence, he then resumed. “Through data analytics, we could see their attacks coming, sometimes days or weeks in advance. Through the numbers and data analytics, we tracked their convoys, watched them building their last three battleships, saw how truly desperate their situation was as the Army and Navy marched closer and closer.” He shook his head slowly. “We knew before anyone that they were losing the war, and saw their internal factions starting to split before their civil war started.”
He rubbed his temple with his free hand and closed his eyes momentarily then added. “We’d watch attacks getting ready to happen that cost thousands of lives, because if we did anything they’d wise up and shift their codes. We had to save our counterattacks for the big, war winning stuff.” He looked up and around the small group, seeing the sober faces. He spoke after a moment. “The counter attacks at Onyx? We saw them coming. There were ten thousand sailors lost there and we had to sit and watch.” Looking back down, he added. “Solace, Topaz, Ruby, Paradise, we saw data from them all but could do nothing.” He reached for his forgotten coffee cup, and was slightly surprised when the big man next to him silently refilled it.
Nodding his thanks, he took a sip. The raw taste of the black coffee was like a jolt in his mouth, startling him. After a moment, Ishi continued, “I never saw an Elai. Never got shot at. Never spent a night in the mud or was in any real physical danger. None of it. My war, and Six Three Two ’s war was waged from a keyboard and a conference room, right here in the Sol system.” He looked down again, then back up at the group and spoke quietly. “No combat, but of my fifteen person cryptanalysis unit, I’m the only one left alive.”
One of the women to his left asked in a hesitant, nervous tone, “What happened to them?”
Ishi shrugged and answered in a flat, matter of fact tone, “Everyone did something different.” He looked down at the table for a moment, then stated bluntly. “Mitch went out an airlock. Dana stuck a pistol in her mouth. Carlos went missing in his little boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Ansel drank himself to death. The lieutenant...Well. I don’t want to talk about her.” Ishi wiped his eyes and added, defiantly, “I loved them. They were my guys and we did our part in the war and they’re all gone, and I miss them so very much.”
He stared down at his hands again for a long moment, then looked up and forced himself to meet the eyes of the other veterans, sniffed and spoke. “This is usually when the other veterans in the other groups don’t want much to do with me, not being a combat veteran and all.” With a bitter laugh, he added. “In fact, the veterans administration classified us as just that: ‘Non-combat veterans’ and they were technically right. Not a single one of us ever saw the enemy.” He indicated the group with a gentle wave of the coffee cup. “I get told that we just couldn’t handle it, and if we’d seen *real* combat we’d have fallen apart.” He picked up the coffee cup, and added. “We were weak, they say. We were just rear echelon motherfuckers who had it soft, they say.” He lapsed into silence.
After a moment of silence, Michelle asked in a soft tone, “And what do you say?”
Ishi looked up at her and after a moment, replied. “I’d like to say that we gave it our best. We let some die so the war could be shortened. I’d like to say that we did what had to be done. I’d like to say that Six Three Two saved lives. That my friends, my brothers and sisters didn’t die for nothing.”
His face was streaming with tears now, and Ishi didn’t care. He roughly wiped his face. He heard a chair scrape and thought to himself. ‘Here it comes’. He looked up and the huge Russian with the burn scarred face was next to him. The huge man reached over to Ishi and picked him up bodily and swept him into a bear hug, sweeping him off of his feet, and squeezing him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.
After what felt like hours, the massive man set him back on his feet and spoke in his thickly Slavic accent “You. You did your duty, da?” Ishi nodded silently. Sergi pointed a finger in his face. “All that matters. Your friends. We could not save them, but they not die in vain.” His thick finger pointed to a slender, silver haired woman. “Anna. Assault infantry, set to drop on Elai homeworld. Projected 90% casualties. You save.” His finger stabbed at another man, with a dark complexion. “Amit. Drop shuttle pilot. Not blown out of space trying to hot drop Elai homeworlds. You save.” He thumped his own burly chest. “Me. Only so much radiation man can take in a broken starship hull. Many here and many tens of thousands more, you save.”
His thick arm swept the small group and then he continued in his thick accented voice “You maybe not fight in person. Maybe was easier on your body.” His thick finger tapped Ishi’s forehead and then his chest. “But what is body without a soul and heart?” He gestured to the others in the small group. “All of us lose people. All of us broken and hurt. We are too late to help your brothers and sisters. But not I think too late for you.” The small group murmured its agreement. The big man gestured around them at the small group. “You have new family here.” The big man gave him another crushing one armed hug and looking down at him, spoke in a gentle tone. “Welcome home, little brother.”
This story resonates deeply with me. In 2004, my combat support hospital was sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to support the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 12 months, I worked in the ICU alongside some of the finest soldiers I have ever known. We cared for the worst injuries you could sustain in war and yet still somehow be alive. We saw many, many broken bodies. We were also the first stop along the medical evacuation pathway that families could be present to see their injured loved ones. The only caveat was we only brought over families of soldiers that were still to sick to transport back stateside…or for wounded soldiers we knew were going to die despite our efforts. I watched the tears fall from the eyes of fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and children over that long awful year. The crying still haunts me, even now. The tears of a little girl who said “I want my daddy to get better” are seared so deep into my heart that my eyes water every time I play that memory in my head. Listening to a father cry for 3 hours straight at the bedside of his braindead son laid low by a landmine and vehicle crash. Watching a mother hold the hand of her son and cry those final tears as we withdrew life support. It was a rough year. Much like Ishi in your story, we never spent a single day in a combat zone during that mobilization. Yet many of us came home with deep emotional wounds we were embarrassed or ashamed to speak about. Not much later, myself and many of us in our unit found ourselves in Afghanistan neck deep in combat casualties for another long and turbulent year. It was only after that deployment that I felt I could talk about what happened in Germany, like I had finally paid some debt that I owed. It was faulty thinking. You don’t have be shot at or jump into bunkers to feel the full impact of war. That was a lesson I needed to learn in my life. Just like Ishi did. Thank you for this story Lucas. I look forward to what you share next.
-Shawn
Damn, Lucas.. I've enjoyed every one of your writings so far that I've read. You make your characters real people and ones I can connect with immediately. I've never served, but I've always had an affinity for military people, probably because my father introduced my to military history and fiction at an early age.