Home
Warning: This story contains mature topics such as PTSD and violence that soldiers can experience when deployed.
If you read this story and find it applying to you, please know you are not alone. Please reach out and get help.
It’s bedtime, and the routine of it brings him comfort. His therapist was right. The rain storm outside looks like it’s getting worse, so he rolls over to the window to shut it and close the curtains. He hears his children giggling in the bathroom and smiles. He shuts the window and reaches over to the curtain to close it.
Lightning flashes before his eyes.
The thunder cracks behind him.
He gasps, but it doesn’t make it easier to breathe. He closes his eyes and opens them to a bright sunny day above him. He looks into the sky and screams. His ears ring and he can’t breathe. There is only pain.
There is red everywhere and he can’t hear his thoughts over the whine in his head. There’s a soldier on top of him, talking to him, but his voice is drowned out in nothingness. He fades to black with the world around him.
He opens his eyes and there is darkness. He screams again and this time he hears it as lightning flashes in front of him. His heart rate speeds up until he hears it as an erratic drumming in his ears. He jerks at the thunder – at gunfire – and he falls to the side. An IED goes off. His wheelchair makes a nasty sound as the metal scrapes. The jeep scrapes. He is thrown from the jeep’s side. His head hits the floor with a crack.
“We have to amputate the legs.” She says to him, but he can barely hear her over the gunshots outside. Doesn’t matter. She’s not asking, and he’s pulled under before he can respond.
He feels hands fretting over him, reaching for his hands. Legs, he thinks, I lost my legs. Stop the bleeding. Get to cover. It’s not safe. The person above him is talking, and there is more thunder cracking above.
“It’s okay, you’re home, you’re safe.” He hears his wife. He scrunches his eyes shut as he shakes.
Home. Soldiers in the sand, singing songs and making jokes. Talking about going home. He has to go home. He has a family.
Home. The nurse in the hospital bringing him jelly. Hospitals and therapists’ office and learning how to be a person again.
Home. His wife. His kids. Drawing heights on the wall and where screams are in laughter. He’s here. He opens his eyes to see his wife is on the floor next to him. She’s holding his hands in hers and there are tears in her eyes. She’s talking to him, and she’s repeating the same word his therapist gave them.
Home.
Safe.
Okay.
He’s home.
He’s Safe.
He’s okay-No, never okay. Not anymore.