“If you need to squeeze your balls, go ahead,” the petite, polished social worker said to Mike. “Sorry—I mean—” She gestured at the two purple latex globes on his lap, each labeled GRIPPER HAND STRENGTH PLUS. These were meant to relieve stress, they’d been told. To head off a meltdown. To get Mike some kind of physical outlet.
But if he noticed the double entendre, he didn’t show it. “It’s okay,” Ellen said, and offered the flustered young therapist a smile. She was desperate for any help with how to talk to him. Almost everything she said was wrong, set him off. Ellen knew the cause was his PTSD, but before this she’d stupidly assumed that would have meant flinching at loud noises—Vietnam-era shell shock. But no, all the psych people assured her: this anger of Michael’s was a primary symptom of what they were seeing now from combat trauma. If it seemed directed specifically at Ellen, well, then either that was her own paranoia, or it was reality—in either case, not much to be done. They were constantly tweaking his doses; they had to wait it out.
This was a first “family session” meant to draw Mike out, encourage him to share more about the bottled-up thoughts and feelings that were clearly tormenting him. Gently, for the past thirty minutes, the therapist had asked questions about what she called the incident—what did he remember from the street, the Baghdad CASH, the transport to Walter Reed?—while Mike sweated and dodged and answered in short vague phrases. That’s when she gestured at the stress balls. Mike picked up one now and the three of them stared at it, purple and round, on his open palm. Then he arced a perfect three-pointer across the room and—thunk—into the wastepaper basket.
“Good shot,” Ellen murmured. “Mike was a wonderful athlete,” she told the therapist. “In high school, he played—”
“Oh my God she doesn’t care! What are you, going to give her my highlight reel?” Ellen pressed her lips together. “Fuck’s sake,” Mike muttered.
“Let’s try something different,” the therapist said. “Can I ask each of you to close your eyes?” Briefly, Ellen and Mike met glances, and then did as they were told. “Now picture yourself in a safe space … Actually—” Ellen could hear the sound of papers shuffling. “Right. Bring to mind a happy memory. One that makes you smile. It can be from anytime in your life, just recall it in as much detail as possible: where you were, what was happening, what was so wonderful about it.”
Ellen straightened in her chair. She fought down critical thoughts—what was the theoretical background of this approach?—and hoped against the odds that Michael wouldn’t find this stupid or cheesy. Certainly there were dozens of happy memories of the four of them, back home in Madison. It was only a matter of his being comfortable enough to share one. Now, which would she choose? The time they took Wes out for a birthday dinner and Mike joined the mariachi band when it came around to their table, singing full-out in made-up Spanish?
“Michael, do you want to go first? What kind of happy memory are you thinking about.”
“Um. Okay. It’s not a big—just this time we took this boat, and—anyway.”
“No, that’s great.” Ellen heard pleasure and encouragement in the therapist’s voice. Behind her closed lids she was sorting through memories, confused. When had they been out on a boat? “Tell us more. Where were you?”
“Well, it was my buddies Troy and Benny, also this guy Tagger … we were at this pond one night behind Benny’s uncle’s place. Benny said his uncle had a boat tied up, we were gonna use it, but then there were these locks all over, like on the tarp and stuff?” Ellen listened in disbelief. There was a smile in Mike’s voice. “We’d had a bunch to drink—anyway, Troy swims out and unhooks this other boat, we don’t know who the fu … we don’t know whose. And we take it out, trying to be quiet but loud as hell probably. Laughing and stuff. Then we just … floated around, out in the middle of the pond. With a couple of bottles and some beef jerky.” He chuckled. “On some random guy’s boat, probably his pride and joy.”
Ellen held it in, how much this hurt her, and how angry she was at herself for being caught off guard and selfish. Why shouldn’t he remember a fun night with his friends? That had nothing to do with her, or Jane, or Wesley? Of course he wouldn’t think to include her in his choice of a memory, just because she was here; it was absurd, this disappointment. She held it in while the therapist praised Mike and told him to return to this memory, that night on the boat, anytime he felt overwhelmed by pain or anger.
But there must have been a remnant on her face, as the session ended, because she’d kept her eyes closed too long and when she did open them the therapist seemed surprised and Mike said what? when he happened to look over to where she was.
* * *
Mostly, they watched TV. A lot of TV. TV pretty much all day long and into the evening after his dinner, when Ellen would usually say good night and go back to her room at Mologne. She supposed he watched it all night too, or at least had it on while he slept in fitful stretches. Often she’d be back at the ward before he awoke, and the set would still be on. Mostly Animal Planet: he liked the shows where “animal cops”—Ellen still wasn’t sure what their exact authority was—investigate pet abuse and then bring the perpetrators to justice. “Soon as the camera’s off, I hope they beat those people to a pulp,” Michael muttered. Also ESPN, NFL Classic, and every live sports event, including golf, which she’d never thought he liked but she saw how it riveted him now: the pale green hills and flats of a Florida course, the hushed announcers and pressed polo shirts, and the barrage of unfathomable terms: bogey, under par, eagles and handicaps and scratches.
On this bleary afternoon, a dull-white winter day, they were watching a bad murder mystery from the 1980s, a TV movie with endless commercials for cat food, medical call buttons for elderly people, and toilet-scrubbing bubbles. Ellen sat in the one chair, no book or pens or anything, and Michael shifted around endlessly in bed—nearly every position made him ache, especially sitting upright—and they watched in near silence, although Ellen counted it a triumph the rare times they happened to chuckle at the same time, or even make a dull sound of recognition. The investigator’s daughter is part of the drug smuggling ring? Hm. Mm.
For once they had a break from prosthetic prep; over the past few days Michael had had constant visits from technicians at the Gait Lab. They made him wear shrink socks, which caused bleeding and itching on his stump, and tested out several custom-molded thigh sockets. All of this would lead soon—no one could say when—to the actual fitting of his new leg, to being upright, to the next phase. Ellen wanted to be excited about that, but instead she felt sleepy, disconnected from it all, as she sensed Michael did too.
As sometimes happened in these long stretches of TV time, she found herself carrying on an inner dialogue with Mike, even as they physically occupied the same space in silence. The heartache of not being able to talk to him, of trying to convince herself that it wasn’t true that he couldn’t stand her around, led to long stretches of giving free rein to all the things she had to say, which she couldn’t say.
How could you not use a condom? With my daughter? I let you into my house, I trusted you with everything … and this is how I’m repaid?
Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why was I left in the dark? All those times we talked, every one of those nights on the couch in the basement, watching TV or having a snack … you never once thought you should let me know that you and Jane were …
Well, so what were you? What are you two, to each other? God knows she won’t tell me. And I suppose you both laughed about it, sneaking around to be together right under my nose. What made it so hard to talk to me?
“Ugh, this is killing me. Where’s the Sonadryl? I didn’t take it yet. I gotta take it.”
“Don’t scratch,” Ellen said automatically. “You took the Sonadryl this morning, with the others. They’ll give you another tonight.”
“I don’t need it tonight, I need it now! Look at this!” Michael lifted his T-shirt—he was now wearing mostly regular clothes on top, with extra-large shorts below, to fit over his bandaged stump. Along the left side of his torso was a thick, bright red rash, laced with white streaks where he’d given in to desperate scratching. The burn was a reaction to a set of meds earlier in the week designed to relieve pressure in his bowels and urinary tract. Now he needed more medicine to counteract what they’d given him.
“Here’s the cream.” He wouldn’t let her put it on, so Ellen merely handed over the tube. Michael muttered about how fucking cream doesn’t do jack shit, which she silently agreed with, but he slabbed some of it on anyway. They returned to the show.
And now, a baby. She’s going to have a baby! What are we going to do about this, Michael? Because if the two of you weren’t exactly the best candidates for parenthood before this, how can you and she possibly manage now? How can you be a father? You barely made it back alive. But then what is it going to do to my beautiful stubborn girl when she has to raise this child, your child, on her own?
“What?” he said irritably. She must have made a sound, a kind of quiet moan, out loud.
“Nothing. I’m going to take a little walk.” Damn. Why did she have to use that phrase? Once she even said, stretch my legs. “Need anything?” He shook his head once, eyes on the screen up in the corner of the room.
In the hallway, Ellen said hello to the woman who stuttered, the one whose brother was also an above-the-knee. She peeked into the room on the corner as she passed, where a really young-looking soldier missing an arm sometimes fought loud and long with his teenage wife. Rosalie was at the nurses’ station, accepting a delivery from FedEx; she’d just become a grandmother for the third time, although Ellen guessed she was barely in her fifties.
A teenage boy, asleep in one of the waiting rooms with his headphones on. Too old for the Ward 57 family room, which was stocked with donated toys, art supplies, board games. Ellen always wondered how older kids made it work when they had to live here for some time. Did they try to keep up with the class? Did their teachers extend deadlines, accept late work? Could this boy even care about homework when his father had come home wrecked from war? Was his mother able to make arrangements with the school, did she worry about the effect on his grades, his education … or was she so overwhelmed she simply had to let it go?
Ellen quietly took a seat on the opposite side of the room. She scrolled through phone messages; it looked like Paul had called her back after she left him a message last night but she deleted his now. Their relationship, so easy back in Madison, was strained. Conversations were flat and low on meaning. He said the right things, he asked about Michael and her own self, but … something was missing. Ellen found herself unable to tell him what it was really like. Most likely, she had to admit, what they’d had wasn’t built to sustain an experience like this. They were turning away from each other.
But she needed to throw a line outside, to know that the world still continued. A brief longing for quiet, routine Madison in winter: the warmth of the reading room in Helen White; Maisie’s favorite snow-covered trail along Lake Monona; sun pouring through the windows of her south-facing bedroom, melting icicles. She made a call.
“I don’t believe it.” Serena’s voice rushed in before Ellen was ready. “I was about to call you.”
“I didn’t know if you’d be in class—”
“It’s Saturday, darling. We’re about to go meet Louise and Dan for a matinee and then early dinner on State Street somewhere. But I have a few minutes. Did you get the last box? I hope you don’t have to carry these anywhere yourself. Maybe I should lighten the load.”
“No, they’re fine. Very thoughtful. And thank you—I’m sorry I didn’t call.” Ellen couldn’t tell Serena that her weekly boxes of books were stacked unused in the corner of her room. When she looked through their contents, she felt nothing, even though it was apparent Serena was choosing them with care, with an eye toward what she imagined Ellen might want—might need. Novels mostly, heavy on the Victorian period. Collections of stories by contemporary writers, mostly African or Latin American. New issues of MLA, PMLA, The New Yorker, and any moronic interdepartment memos she thought Ellen might chuckle at, with infelicitous phrases circled and marked “!” Department Staff: Please attend today’s MANDATORY meeting about ID policies. If you cannot attend, please review the attached document. A sign it was Serena packing these kind, useless boxes: each one came with a notably leftist book or magazine, included without comment. To keep me honest, Ellen thought. Every few days she carried an armful of books to the giveaway shelves, except for the few she saved for Lacey.
Should she tell Serena to stop sending them? No, because it was the only way that Serena could believe she was helping. It was surely what Ellen would have been doing herself, if their situations were reversed. And no, because it would mean saying aloud the troubling, bewildering, but incontrovertible fact that she had lost all desire to read.
“Oh, stop. I’ll take any chance you have to talk, and don’t worry about calling. Now tell me the latest.” So Ellen did, as quietly as she could, although the sleeping teen’s music was up so loud it came through his headphones. She gave the facts about Michael’s most recent progress and setbacks: the nerve-recalibrating operation that went well, the gut blockages and treatment which hadn’t. She did her best to describe his mood swings, and did appreciate, if not fully connect with, Serena’s murmurs of sympathy. She tried not to fall back on automatic cheerfulness, or dip down too far into actual horror.
“And you don’t have any timeline for coming back?”
“Yes and no. I’ve talked to Jane and Wes about flying home for a few days as soon as Michael can handle things better. My friend Lacey said she’ll check on him as much as she can.” Ellen hurried on, afraid Serena would ask about Jane. Who she hadn’t spoken to since she left Walter Reed. Who was ignoring her calls, once again. “I don’t know when I can, though.”
“There’s got to be someone else who can stay with him. You can’t do this all by yourself!”
“Who? I sent a registered letter to his aunt, no response. I’ve tried to call her—nothing. Anyway, I hate to think what he’d do if she actually showed up here. His cousins have texted him … all the old girlfriends too. Cards and gifts come in, but … no, there’s no one else.”
“And what are the prospects for him going home? For leaving there, for good?”
The teenager tried to roll to his side, became tangled in his cord, and wrestled his way out with an exasperated huff. She flashed on what Michael would go home to: a rehabbed room on their first floor, no job and no leg, and Jane with their baby. “Too early to say,” Ellen said, covering her mouth with a hand. “We’re in true limbo here.” Limb-o, her ever-linguistic brain chimed in, obnoxiously.
“Well … I don’t know what to say. That you’re trapped there, that you have to go through this…”
“Tell me about school. How many dissertators?”
“Oh, you don’t want to hear about that. Really, I want to know about you.” Ellen opened her mouth but Serena went on. “What are you eating?”
She laughed. “Well, it’s a far cry from Jill’s famous spinach and quinoa gratin. In fact, the pickings are so slim that I’ve started drinking TPN shakes. There’s a nurse who took pity on me when she saw my lunch. Now she slips me one almost every day.”
“Do I even want to know? TP … what shakes?”
“Total Parenteral Nutrition. Michael hated them, but I have to say, the vanilla blend isn’t bad.” She wouldn’t mention they were the only thing she could keep down. Remembering all the dinners at Serena and Jill’s, all the times she’d had them over, Ellen missed her own kitchen with a fierce thump. She missed any form of cooking, big complicated messy menus or even the chance to boil a small pot of spaghetti and top it with a single fried egg, some toasted bread crumbs and parsley, a few red pepper flakes. Her longtime favorite solo meal, to be savored slowly at her kitchen counter with a glass of Beaujolais and a thick New York Times best seller checked out from the library that day …
“Oh, I know what I can tell you about. Shelby.”
“The reporter?” Serena’s voice perked up. “So what’s the story? Are you a whistle-blower?”
“I think I’d have to be an employee to be a whistle-blower, wouldn’t I? Anyway, I’m not even officially on the record yet. It’s strange … so far I’m still not sure what she’s reporting on, but it’s not a puff piece, that I can tell.”
“Absolutely. So listen. After you told me her name, I googled Shelby Levine. Ellen? She’s done front-page work from all over. Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Chechnya. What is she like? I feel sure she’s on to something big, related to the war.”
“What is she like? Well, she’s like … the best grad students or new colleagues you’ve ever had. Those once-in-a-lifetime, dedicated, brilliant women. The ones you know will get the fellowship, the TT job at Stanford. In fact, Shelby went there for her PhD in poli-sci.” So far Ellen had met with the reporter twice, once for coffee and once for lunch at Charlie’s Diner, one of the handful of businesses on Georgia Avenue one block north of Walter Reed. Each time she had tried to ask about the project, Shelby neatly deflected her questions and turned them back on her own experience, and Michael’s, and what it was like for them being thrown into this military hospital environment, all at once, for an unknown period of time. It seemed like, above all, she wanted to get to know her. And Ellen, quite frankly, basked in the attention. She hadn’t realized how much she had been missing that particular blend of warm conversation, rich with bookish ideas and allusions, the winding elegant dependent clauses, the expectancy of understanding.
“So she’s using you for access,” Serena mused. “To the administration, to some kind of higher-ups involved in Michael’s care. Maybe that gets her closer to whatever decisions were made to prosecute that blasted war. Or a cover-up! Something to do with how we never see these injuries, these deaths.”
Ellen rolled her eyes at using you. And at Serena, typically as blunt as ever. “Maybe. Although frankly she seems much more interested in who I’ve met here than who works here. My friend Lacey, for example.” Yes, Shelby asked a lot of questions about the women living at Mologne but soon zeroed in on Lacey when Ellen told her—maybe she shouldn’t have—what Building 18 looked like on the inside. Still, she rarely if ever wrote anything down, and as far as Ellen knew she wasn’t taping it. But at the end of lunch Shelby had asked if Ellen thought Lacey would be “amenable” to meeting her.
She wasn’t sure. Lacey would shift her eyes if Shelby went into raptures again about the most recently published journal of Susan Sontag, and she might storm out if the two of them disparaged all of Bush’s cabinet members as vigorously as they had. The image of Lacey even at that table in Charlie’s—in her too-tight jeans and too-blond highlights—made Ellen uncomfortable. Would Shelby perceive how funny and unique she was? Would she love her feistiness and New York attitude and staunch loyalty as much as Ellen did? And why was she so interested in her, anyway?
“I wish you were here,” Serena said. “I wish I could beam you here, even just for dinner. And I hate to run, but—”
“No, go. Of course. I’ll call again, sooner this time.”
“Happy New Year, darling.”
They hung up. Ellen sat in the waiting room a moment longer. New Year? She supposed that was right. Though how many days into 2006 they were now, she couldn’t say.
But then Ellen had an idea. The perfect way to have Lacey meet Shelby, and best of all, it could involve food, home-cooked food. The teenager started up in the sudden silence, as if her voice had kept him asleep. He was startled, suspicious; she gave him a small wave and saw recognition awaken in his pimpled face: Ah, fuck. I’m still here.
Now she hurried through the hallways back to Michael, buoyant with thoughts about her new plan and how to carry it out.
But even several doors down from Michael’s room she could hear the commotion from within. Others passing by stopped to peer in the window. Ellen’s heart lurched and she began to run.
“I don’t fucking care! You can’t tell me what I don’t know! Don’t touch me, don’t fucking touch me!” Michael yelled. His voice skittered up to a high range, and when she came in she saw he was backed up as far as he could go on the bed, using both hands to shove himself up higher on the backrest. He pushed with his only bare foot, fighting to get away. A man in blue nurse scrubs, hands raised, was trying to be heard above him, calling for him to calm down.
“What’s going on?”
“Get him out of here! Get out!” Michael seized a water bottle off his movable tray and fired it across the room; it slammed the wall, missing the nurse by inches. He grabbed for something else and knocked over the tray. Ellen came in as close as she dared. He was spitting and red-faced. She spoke a rush of low steady words, and his terrified eyes went from her to the man and back again.
“All I am trying to say is—”
“He was choking me. Had his fucking sand-nigger hands on my throat!”
Ellen whirled between Michael and the nurse, who was now backing out of the room. Others came in, including an aide named Rob Beers, one of the only guys Mike really liked, whose name was a never-ending source of delight. They helped Ellen talk him down, they sent a sedative into his drip. Mike sobbed, sometimes rearing up again in outrage. No one knew what he was talking about. Rob Beers agreed with everything he said, matter-of-factly, and retaped the catheter bag that had torn away. Ellen stroked Mike’s sweaty head, told him over and over that he was safe, he was all right, no one would hurt him now. As soon as he sank down into longer periods of quiet, Ellen slipped out into the hallway.
Several people looked up as she came out; one of them pointed to the nurses’ station. And there was the man in blue scrubs, leaning over the counter and using Rosalie’s phone. When he saw her approach he hung up.
“Look, it’s happened to me before. It’s all right. You don’t have to apologize.”
Ellen stared. “I came to ask you what happened. What made him so agitated?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” The man pointed to his name tag. MOHAMMED JEET. “He was asleep; I went in to do a vitals check, and he suddenly woke up and shoved me away.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Ellen studied the man’s smooth olive skin, his dark hair bundled into a topknot.
“My parents are Sikh from Punjab, but I consider myself only culturally so.” He seemed to expect some kind of response from Ellen. “In fact, I grew up in Austin, of all places. Texas.”
“He must have been having a bad dream,” she said stupidly. “Or a flashback…”
“Nah,” Mohammed said. “Just the usual; lots of guys react that way, at first. Not many go all the way into a total rage spiral like that, but hey! It’s better than depression and lethargy.”
“I know he doesn’t think that way. What he said. I mean, he wouldn’t ever speak like that if he hadn’t—”
“I get it. Anyway, I gotta go. I just stuck around to make sure you were okay. And tell you that you didn’t need to apologize, or whatever.”
“Thank you,” Ellen said, automatically. She wanted to ask if this was his usual route; he wouldn’t be back in their room anytime soon, would he? But Mohammed pushed away from the counter and sauntered off. Surely he wasn’t pleased to have provoked another Marine?
In the short time it took to return to Michael, Ellen fumed. Well, so what if this man was ethnically Indian, as opposed to Middle Eastern, was Sikh instead of Muslim? Was it such a good idea to send in guys named Mohammed to draw blood from Iraq vets with PTSD? Wouldn’t Lacey have a field day with this one. And how smug he was, carefully explaining to another clueless-mom-type his Texas origins, as if to rub it in more, the ugly racism from her son. Well, at least most of the other nurses and aides, the ones they usually saw, were white.
She froze in midstep. Shame coursed through her. What was happening to them here? Ellen made herself go back into the room.