Chapter Ten
Hunter
Ireturned my phone to my pocket as I walked into the clinic. The VA waiting room always smelled the same, like stale coffee and hand sanitizer. The walls were a bland beige, the kind of color that made you want to disappear into them.
I sat in the hard chair, jaw tight, boot tapping against the floor.
Across from me, a guy I half-recognized from base years ago stared into space, eyes glazed.
Another rubbed his hands together so hard it sounded like sandpaper.
None of us talked. That was the unspoken rule.
When my name was called, I stood too fast, shoulders already squared.
The therapist’s office wasn’t much better. There were posters about breathing exercises on the wall, an outdated desk stacked with papers, and two chairs facing each other like a trap. I took the edge of the chair, hands clasped in my lap, posture stiff.
“So, Hunter,” she began, voice calm, practiced. “How have things been since we last spoke?”
“Fine” was my default. But the truth wouldn’t stay down, pounding against my ribs with the memory of crouching in that dark room, breath caught on a ghost.
Instead, I shrugged. “Busy. Work. Life.”
She tilted her head. “Any trouble with triggers lately?”
The word made my skin crawl. Triggers. As if I were a malfunctioning weapon.
I clenched my jaw. “Nothing new.”
She studied me quietly, waiting for me. And I hated it.
Hated the way she was trying to read me like I was a file on her desk.
Marines aren’t supposed to talk about feelings.
Marines push through. Handle it. The first thing drilled into us was don’t show weakness.
Don’t show cracks, that’s what gets you killed.
And I learned it long before boot camp. My dad had made sure of that. I could still hear his voice, sharp as a belt: Stop crying. Toughen up. No son of mine is soft.
So I didn’t cry. Didn’t talk. Didn’t break.
I locked it all down, carried it tight, because being a man meant control.
Except I wasn’t in control anymore. I could handle firefights, deployments, and missions.
But I couldn’t handle the sounds of the neighborhood kids accidentally throwing a ball against my window or a nightmare as I tried to sleep in the comfort of my own bed.
The therapist asked another question, but I barely heard it.
My thoughts were already with Camille, the way her eyes were on me as we played mini golf.
Or the small dimple she has when she allows herself to truly smile, thinking I wasn’t watching.
I’d rather sit with these thoughts; they were safer.
I hated this room, this chair, these questions. But more than that, I hated myself for thinking maybe she’d be better off if I just stayed away. Because if my own dad thought I was weak for feeling, how the hell was I supposed to believe she’d think otherwise?
The therapist prompted me again about “strategies” I’d been using when the nightmares hit. I shifted in the chair, staring at the diploma on her wall like it was supposed to mean she understood. Truth was, I’d been sitting in chairs like this since my last deployment to Afghanistan.
These sessions were mandatory. Something I’ve had to do since getting diagnosed with PTSD once I got out.
They awarded me monthly checks to compensate me for the bruises on my body and mind, but it didn’t make it better.
Neither did these box-checking exercises dressed up as concern.
We’d file in one by one, sit across from someone half the unit’s age, and nod through the same questions: Any trouble sleeping?
Any panic symptoms? Any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?
You learn quickly what they want to hear. Keep it light. Shrug. Joke. Let them tick the box and move on. Because if you tell the truth, if you say you wake up drenched in sweat, heart pounding like it’s still under fire - suddenly you’re “flagged.”
That second deployment left marks. The kind I don’t talk about. We lost guys. Good ones. And some nights I still see their faces when I close my eyes. I walked off that plane knowing I was never walking back into life the same. I carried more than just the physical scars of those four deployments.
And sitting here, across from this woman with her monotoned voice and clipboard, I felt it all over again, the uselessness of it.
Because she didn’t know me. Didn’t know what it meant to keep people alive under fire.
Didn’t know the weight of going home when others didn’t.
I glanced at her again, her polite patience, the way she leaned forward like she could coax me into spilling what I’d spent years locking down.
And damn if I didn’t think, not for the first time, that Camille would be ten times the therapist this girl was.
I was still getting to know her, but she spoke about becoming a therapist with such passion.
Camille wouldn’t press with clinical questions and head tilts.
She wouldn’t rush me. Wouldn’t try to fix me with a worksheet.
She’d just…be there.