48. Ryan
Ryan
I keep having flashbacks. I keep seeing Brody. I keep feeling the heavy, dead weight of him on my shoulders as I stumble back through the valley.
After they finally took his body from me, they stripped my kit and grounded me. Now I’m stuck here, staring aimlessly at the walls of the rear detachment barracks while my team goes back out into the field without me.
I’m just staring aimlessly at Brody’s empty bunk. They packed up all of his personal items—the cookies, the jokes, the man who saw me—and sent them back home to Anna and Cory. Fuck, why couldn’t I go with him?
The harsh desert sun shines directly over his empty mattress, and in this light, I can see the dust particles lazily settling on the bare cover.
I’ve gone over and over the explosion so many times in my head.
I replay every second, the deafening roar of the IED, the terrible stillness, the feel of his blood relentless against my palms as I tried to stop it.
I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t know how to save him.
My hands are clean now, but I can still smell Brody’s blood, and I still feel the awful pressure of his last words, “Look after Anna and Cory. Promise me.” I close my eyes and lie back on my bunk. I need everyone to just leave me the fuck alone.
They wouldn’t send me home for the funeral. Red tape, operational logistics bullshit, mission first. So while Anna and Cory stood back home, I was trapped on base, staring helplessly at a water stain on the concrete ceiling.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just let the coldness take over entirely.
To the medics and the therapist officers, I was completely flat-lined, a ghost walking through a secure compound.
They thought I was broken, a liability, so they benched me.
I let them believe it. It kept them from asking questions.
In the quiet, I can hear the gunshots and my screams over and over again. I hear the crunch of my boots on the gravel under his weight.