A Soldier's Journey

“We’re getting pressured to let you go now that your medical discharge has gone through. You’ll transfer to the Veterans Administration.”

“I’m losing you?”

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I didn’t like where you made me go.”

“Today is important, Andy. I’m not saying tomorrow is going to be easier. What happened today will happen again. You’ll see someone who reminds you of Jared. The anger will come flooding back. But it’s the beginning of taking your life back.”

She looked doubtful.

“Have you cried yet?” The question came out of nowhere. Or maybe not. He’d asked it a month ago.

She thought about lying, but what the hell. “No,” she said. It was unnatural. She knew it, but she hurt too much for tears.

“You can only keep them inside so long,” he said.

She only nodded.

He sat there studying her. “I have a proposal for you,” he finally said.

“What?” she said suspiciously.

“I wouldn’t have suggested it yesterday. You weren’t ready. You still might not be, but given the circumstances I think it’s worth a try.”

She waited.

“There’s a cabin in a small town in Colorado that’s available,” he said slowly, and she knew he was carefully choosing his words. “It belongs to a veteran who recently married. It was passed to another vet who no longer needs it. The town has a large number of veterans, and they look after each other.”

She hated his calm, reasoning tone. She didn’t want reason. She wanted to turn back the clock to a time before her world had fallen apart. And she didn’t want to go to someone else’s cabin.

Andy knew she didn’t have many choices. She had worn out her welcome at the military hospital. She couldn’t go home. She didn’t want to take her grief and anger there or be a burden on her family back home. Jobs were rare, if not nonexistent, in a dying coal town, especially for a surgical nurse who would start trembling uncontrollably at loud noises and who had a hand that didn’t work. Never mind the nightmares that made a night’s sleep rare.

She should be married now, making a home with the man she loved with all her heart, maybe even beginning a baby they both wanted. That dream was gone, and there was precious little left.

But charity...

A Stuart didn’t take charity. Never had, no matter how bad the times, and they had been bad most of her life. She never wanted to live in a small town again. She’d felt trapped as a child and later as a teenager. She’d been different. A nerd in a town where half the kids didn’t finish high school and most went into the mines, and, if they didn’t, they left as fast as they could hitch a ride out of town.

Her out had been the ROTC and a ROTC scholarship for a nursing degree. She was the first and only member of her family to go to college, much less obtain a four-year degree. The price had been ten years in the army, much of it in Iraq and Afghanistan field hospitals.

And now...now there was nothing. She’d sent most of her salary home to her mother and youngest sister in West Virginia. It would be a while, apparently a long while, before she received back pay and disability from the army. The backlog was as much as two years long. She was, in effect, the next thing to being dead broke.

“I don’t want charity,” she said again.

“It’s not charity,” he said, leaning across the desk. “You might say it’s meant as a way station for returning vets while they find their legs. It sits alongside a lake fed by the mountain streams, and there’s a large number of supportive vets, some of whom have gone through much the same thing you’re going through now.”

He paused, then added, “As for charity, you’ll probably be asked, but not required, to do something connected to the town. The last vet taught computer classes for senior citizens.”

“Where is he now?”

“He joined the police department there. He’s being groomed for chief.”

“What was he?” she asked, curious despite herself.

“A chopper pilot. Suffered a head injury that kept him from flying again. I have to say that he had the same reaction as you have but decided to try it. He’s very happy that he did. He said you could call him if you want.”

“You told him about me?” she said.

“Not you specifically. Not without talking to you first. I just said there was someone who could be interested in the cabin.”

“And no one wants to know more?”

“Nope.”

“I think it’s weird,” she said.

Dr. Payne smiled. “It’s a good kind of weird. But the vets are a close-knit group. They have a weekly poker game,” he said with a grin. Somewhere in all their discussions, she’d let it slip that she had become a good poker player during the slow times at the field hospital.

“All guys?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Doesn’t matter. They take care of each other.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of.” She feared she sounded like a child. She wasn’t going to admit that maybe, just maybe, she did.

“If Covenant Falls doesn’t work out for you, you can always get into a PTSD program in Denver. There’s a good one there.”

She looked at him warily. He knew her financial situation. In fact, he knew a great deal about her. She had been in a stupor for months after Jared’s death. He had tried to make her want to live again, to believe that was what Jared would want.

“Give it a try,” Dr. Payne said, obviously sensing victory. “You don’t have to stay. It’s not a jail sentence. If you’re uncomfortable or just don’t like it, I’ll find something else.”

“I’ll think about it,” Andy said. She really didn’t care where she was. And he was right. She wouldn’t have to stay.

“Do you like dogs?” Dr. Payne asked unexpectedly.

“Sure. Who doesn’t?” Andy replied, relieved to be off the subject. “Never had one. Money was too tight when I was a kid, then a dog doesn’t really fit into army life unless it’s military.”

“There’s several programs, including one near here that matches shelter dogs with vets who have PTSD. They’re trained to sense when a PTSD attack is coming and alert their vet.”

She hesitated. A dog? How could she take care of a dog when she couldn’t take care of herself right now? Dr. Payne waited, then said gently, “You would be saving a life.” He paused. “And I can probably win you a few more days here.”

He was trying to force her to make a decision, but the idea suddenly appealed to Andy. Loneliness was like a shroud around her. And a dog wouldn’t ask questions or give sympathy or question her choices. “Would the cabin owner approve?”

The psychologist grinned.

“He adopted a retired military dog with PTSD. The woman he married has four rescue dogs and, from what I hear, two horses, a cat and a son. He was a dedicated loner before he went to Covenant Falls.”

She couldn’t hide her skepticism. The loner probably hadn’t seen his fiancé shot down in a hail of bullets by one of people he was trying to help. “How much is a dog? I don’t have much money.”