Buried in Guilt

We jump out of a hovering helicopter and move away, watching it rise and disappear. Our boots crunch quietly in the snow and we can see our breath. If I had more time, I might look around and admire my surroundings, but my admiration could be deadly. It’s eerily silent as we take a formation, everyone has each others back. No blind spots. There are no birds. It’s too cold. I think it snowed recently because I see no tracks, only pits from where the snow had fallen from the trees. I look to the trees, but I can’t see between them. It feels like an artist has painted this scene for us, but has left the forest dark to warn us away. A c***k of ice breaking a tree startles us and focuses me. We laugh nervously. The first man falls with another c***k of a gun. I thought it was ice. Blood spilled from myself and the many fallen around me, steams in the frozen air. It turns the snow-covered field, red. A wound to my neck stops me from seeing my team.. I can barely move. Where’s the fear? I should feel pain. What’s that quote? ‘He greeted Death like an old friend’?  A warm hand takes my own. My breath clings to my lashes. The forest is glittering in the dying light. I drifted on death doorstep for weeks. I don’t remember the hospitals, or the flight home, I only remember the glittering haunted world, covered in ice and snow. An oil painting just for me. It was beautiful. Magical even. I’d laugh about it if I could. The place I lost my team and almost, my life, magical? That’s bullshit. It was hell, but aren’t the Devil’s words soaked in honey?  Everyone is calling me a hero. I don’t feel like a hero. My entire team is dead, under my watch. Is this what all veterans feel like? Like they didn’t deserve to survive, or like they didn’t deserve their lives? They call it survivor's guilt. I don’t think I survived. I think I let others die in my place. I let others die who didn’t need to die. They had something to come back to. I didn’t, but isn’t that how fate works? Make the world hate her chosen one. Create a pariah. We all need something to hate or we’ll hate ourselves. I don’t have any family left, and my only friend has left me with the rest of them. There’s nothing for me here but that’s the point. Make me suffer on my pedestal while they throw rocks at me. Trying to bring me down. I’m already below them but their perception is warped. They see their rocks going up and falling short. I see them coming down and never missing. One of the bullets that took me down shattered my left hip bone. At best they don’t think I’ll ever walk again without help. At worst, I won’t walk. As I write this, my pain meds are wearing off. I have a button to administer another dose, but I owe this journal to the men and women who died without me. They’re dead. I can handle a little pain. If the military won’t punish me for their deaths then I can do it myself. The field medic told me he was the one that found me. I remember his warm hand. On top of my destroyed hip, he had to dig out about four bullets. One in my right shoulder, one on the right side of my neck. He said I’m lucky it didn’t hit anything important, I don’t feel lucky. Two in my left leg, one chipped my femur. If there’s a god out there, and from what I’ve seen, I highly doubt it, what lesson was he trying to teach me? What was I supposed to learn? All I know is that I wasn't able to save the only family I had left. My government doesn't want me anymore. In war, there are no heroes, only survivors, left to suffer alone. I survived, but god, do I wish the bullet that struck my neck hit a bit further to the left. He watches her hit the button from outside the room, standing out of sight. He jumps when the doctor speaks, “She was writing for over an hour.  You could see the pain in her face as she delayed another dose of the pain meds.” He knew her well enough to know she despised the feeling of not being in control. She always refused to take a sleeping aid as a child, preferring exhaustion to a med head daze. He walks in to sit in the chair beside her bed. He abandoned her when she left for the government promised glory of war and he despises himself for it every day. She needed him. He’ll blame himself for her injuries for the rest of his life, but unlike her, he’s a coward, he’ll never apologize, he’ll never confront her. Never come back. He’ll leave a vase of flowers. Marigolds, her favorite. Here with no note to tell her he cared enough to come. He was all she had left and she still had nothing.  As he sits there, he remembers his greatest hits. They say your life flashes before your eyes in your final moments, but they don’t clarify the type of final moments. His final moment is his last one with her, even if she doesn’t know he’s there. He remembers the rivers during the hurricanes, the streams that normally trickled, knocking them over as they laughed and shivered. It was like ice, but they didn’t care. Blue-lipped they ran inside to a bowl of warm soup and a Disney movie. There was no secret love, they were never that type of friends. They got dirty, they played rough.   He looks down at the tattoo on his wrist. She has a matching one. He broke the promise of the tattoo, but he’ll never get rid of it. He’s a coward. He stands to look at the doctor   “Don’t let her know I was here. It will hurt her more than any bullet.” He leaves with a nod from the doctor. I wake up to a vase of beautiful flowers. They’re my favorite. The room feels odd, it reminds me of waking up in a bed where the other side is cold because the one who keeps it warm left a long time ago. Scared to wake you, they left without a goodbye. It feels sad, lonely. A hollowness in my chest. I can blame it on grief. That’s all it is.  I’m told I will be discharged from the hospital today, and they will take me to a treatment clinic. Six long months of physical and psychological torture called rehabilitation. Why do they try? I don’t deserve it. I’ll probably be fixed in their eyes, but I don’t think I’ll ever be okay in my own. I’m being lifted into a wheelchair, it’s cold and uncomfortable, my legs are tingling painfully as they wake up, I wish I could move them to speed up the process, but I’m strapped down and told not to move. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I want to. There is too much pain. My room at the clinic is white and empty. They say cleanliness is good for healing and a calm mind, but all it does is invade my dreams and show me the snow. An endless white wasteland. I can’t find my team, they’ve been buried and I can’t give them a proper send off. Their bodies have been eaten away by my guilt. I’m next. Waking up is almost worse than the dream. It's painful and I’m hit by reality. In my dreams they are just lost, waiting for me to find them. I don’t think I ever will find them, but it still leaves me with a sense of peace, thinking I will round a corner and see them laughing.  I just spent hours with a very passive aggressive physical therapist. I could tell she wasn’t a fan of her job, but it paid well. My shrink thinks I’m just paranoid and scared to think people actually care because I refuse to believe I deserve other people’s comfort. “I know physical therapy hurts, but pain is apart of healing.” My shrink says this every time I mention how uncomfortable I am with physical therapy. I don’t correct her, but I’m usually talking about the physical therapist’s passive aggressive attitude. My shrink would just say I’m in my own head. I’m just being paranoid. Everyone here wants to help me, don’t they?  I’m walking again, but I have a brace. It makes me think of cybernetic pants. All it does it support my weak muscles and my walker gives me balance. It still hurts to move my lower back. My hip is still out of commission. If I go by what the doctors say, my hip will never truly be fixed. I’ll walk, but not without help or pain. Everything hurts and the pain meds aren’t helping. Maybe my shrink is right, it’s all in my head. It’s snowing outside. It’s beautiful. The clinic has a garden. When covered in snow, it looks like those woods. The woods from a fairy tale that killed my team, but not me. I want to walk in the snow. I manage to sneak out. It’s lax security, but I guess broken people don’t need security. Nobody wants to take something broken.  Walking in the snow is hard, and painful, but I push through it. I’m cold. My breath is clinging to my lashes. Didn’t they say I have PTSD or something? I would think that this, if not anything else. This walk in the snow, would trigger something. Flashbacks, tears, terror? There’s nothing, only a sort of numb awe. It’s beautiful. Maybe this is the last thing they saw before they left me. If so, it makes me feel a little better, thinking that the last thing they saw was a winter woods, shimmering like a dream.  It starts snowing again. Time seems to slow as I watch a snowflake land on my hand that I didn’t realize I had held out. It melts away when it touches my skin. It’s surreal. The melting of the snowflake reminded me of how fragile we are. One wrong move and we melt away. I start to shiver violently. I bet my lips are blue. My shrink decided I needed closure, so she’s taking me to the funeral for those men and women. I don’t know how they recovered the bodies. She told me to prepare something to say, but I don’t have anything that I can put into words that would soothe the living. The dead can’t hear me. The row of coffins gleam, even though the sun is behind clouds. I toss a handful of dirt into each hole before walking away, feeling the gaze of each mourner burning into me at my dry eyed silence. Those stares are not the ones that haunt me in my dreams though. When I dream. It’s a place of nightmares, a lure of monsters, ready to take your life in your sleep. You believe it's a peaceful dream, gentle in its touch and all it does is rip your soul from you. I watch my own reflection in a falling icicle, it shatters before it reaches the ground. The bullet goes through me and I shatter like the ice. I see the world in thousands of different reflections. I see people die. I see them live. I see an end. I reach for it but it’s not time. I come back together again to awake, but next time I sleep, I’m ready to fall to pieces and reach for an end I cannot have. They’re sending me home today, with a nurse aide of course. I doubt I could function on my own. I think she’s more there to make sure I don’t die or give up, an insurance. I still have to come back three times a week for physical therapy and twice a week for psychological therapy. Sometimes the appointments will be right after the other. I don’t mind, it’s something to look forward to instead of wallowing in my thoughts. My shrink says that will be my downfall.  “Find a hobby, try quilting, or crafts of some sort. Keep your mind busy but don’t strain your body.”  It sounds interesting, but I don’t know yet. That’s all my life is right now, uncertainty. I’ve been ‘home’ for a month. It’s not really home, it’s just somewhere to lay my head. Home is where the heart is, I have no heart left to leave here. My weeks seem to drag by. I tried the quilting thing, but my hands, once agile enough to pull apart an M16 assault rifle, clean it, and put it back together, can’t thread a needle or hold it properly. My shrink suggested something new  “Scrapbooking?” “I hate glue.” She gives me this sad, almost hopeless look. I see it often. I think she hears the emptiness in my voice, it reflects how I feel. She leans forward. “You need to try and see a little more positivity in life.” Positivity? What was positive in my life? I was crippled, alone, and drugged off my ass most of the time. I hate my job. This woman, this ‘war hero’ was the worst. The veterans always are. With person after person praising and pitying them, but giving no thanks to the nurse. I was just an accessory, provided by the government so they can look good. They don’t care about their veterans, so why should I? Every day, I cook her breakfast, clean her, dress her, help her walk. She does her best, but I can tell she’s given up on life. We go through the same song and dance every morning. “Good Morning.”  “‘Morning.” Each time it’s grumbled.   “What do you want for breakfast?”  “Whatever you want to make.” She’s never picky, I wonder if that’s from her time in the military, or just her inability to care anymore. I can’t help but hate her. She was given the chance to sacrifice everything, and she lived. I wish she died. A lot of families do. Why does one bitter woman, with no friends or family, live while a team of people, with everything to live for, die?  I set out her medicine, wondering if I could get away with overdosing her. I don’t think she'd notice, but others would. I’d probably get caught. She’s not worth going to jail for, she’s not worth anything. When she’s not eating, or sleeping, she’s writing in that journal of hers. I think I’ve bought her two more since she got back. She pays me back. I still hate her.  In my final moments on that battlefield, a man jumped in front of me, he shielded my body with his, without him, I wouldn’t be here, maybe he deserved to live more than I. Isn’t a captain meant to go down with their ship? I, in my own mind, am a dishonored soldier for letting another use their life to save mine. “I’m sorry.” The aide looks at me “For what?” I don’t answer, I don’t have anything I can say. I didn’t even mean to say it aloud. I watch her roll her eyes and turn away, continuing to separate my meds for the week. I wish she’d make a mistake. They don’t work anyways. I’m out of my wheelchair now, but I do need to sit a lot. I can’t walk for long periods of time. I have a walker. I don’t get a choice. It’s the walker or a wheelchair. I’m thinking about asking my aide if she’ll take me with her when she goes shopping this week, I want to try some baking. I used to love that before I enlisted. Something chocolate.  “Do you mind bringing me with you when you go shopping?” I hobble up to her, trying not to wince at how childish I sound. She looks at me. I can’t tell if she’s annoyed, or surprised. “What for? Can’t you just make a list like normal?” I nod, she sounds annoyed.  “I could, but my shrink wants me to get out of the house. Thinks a little vitamin D will help with my lack of smile.” We roll our eyes together. We both know that I put on a facade of getting better each time I go see her. Maybe I am getting better. I can’t tell, half the time I think I have a mask up to fool those around me, but she is a trained professional, so maybe my shrink knows better.   “Fine, but you need to get ready. I’m leaving in ten.”  “Let me grab my coat.” I tried baking, and honestly, I’m kind of proud of myself. Even the aide liked them. Maybe if there’s any left, I’ll bring some to my shrink to keep up the mask.  She says I’m getting better, but I don’t feel like I am, or maybe I don’t want to get better. Maybe I want to stay in this dark pit. Maybe I want to drown. Maybe I deserve it. Today was a good day, but they’ve been happening less and less. Or maybe more, I just don’t want to believe it. Is this what chronically sick people feel like? Like cancer patients? I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and the main character talks about ‘The Last Good Day’ something in the cancer world. You don’t know when it’s going to happen because it just feels like a slightly easier day. I don’t have cancer, but I wonder if the sentiment extends. In my most recent therapy session, I overheard my shrink talking to my aide. Instead of coming in every day, all day. She’ll come in every other day or only half days. I think they’re trying to make me self-dependant again. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t feel ready, I’m not better, I don’t want to get better.  My aide started showing up less, I don’t really know what to do with myself. It’s only been six months since I was sent home, I don’t think I’m ready. My apartment is so empty, quiet. Maybe I should play music? No, I think that would make it worse. All today's music is depressing, love songs and I couldn’t stomach that. I limp  to the kitchen. I’m getting faster every day. Around the house, I can use just my cane. I open the cabinet and pull down a can of soup. I’m not hungry but it’s lunchtime. Maybe staying in the routine will keep me stable. I feel like I’m falling apart. I didn’t think I needed her so much. The sun is setting and my apartment grows dark. It feels like one of my dreams, but not the false fantasy. It feels like the nightmares that rip me apart. The ones that punish me each time I close my eyes. I can’t bring myself to turn on the lights as the ghosts of those I failed, start to appear. One after another. Glaring. Angry. Betrayed.  “I’m sorry.” My mouth is dry and I can barely move it. I’m so tired. I don’t know who I’m apologizing to, they can’t hear me. The first tears I cried since I left home, rolls down my cheeks. I cry for my team, I cry for myself. There is nothing left of me to save.  They scream at me. Wordless noise. Is this a nightmare? Or maybe this is my path to Hell. I don’t deserve anything better. Maybe all people who are condemned to Hell have to walk down a path that’s lined with their mistakes and misdeeds. Lined with the reasons they’re damned. The beeping of my microwave brings me back from what dark hole I was digging myself into. I feel emptier than ever. I get up and grab my soup. It’s not hot but I can’t bring myself to care. I guess that’s how my life has been. My shrink was right. Being left alone to my thoughts is my downfall. She was right about a lot of things, but also wrong about many more. I’m not better, nor was I getting better. I still hear whispers. I see the snow, red with blood as I put my dishes in the sink. I see the ice and hear it. Breaking and snapping tree branches. It almost sounds like wind chimes when it bounces off other ice. That sound is marred by screams and gunshots. Or maybe the cracking of ice is gunshots.   “Help.” I croak as I sit in my chair, not seeing my apartment, but those winter woods. I see a body block mine and I feel it fly backward with the force of the bullets. It tears through him and lodges in me. This is the end. I can’t feel any pain. I hear more screams, then silence.  Like in the beginning after the helicopter disappeared into the blinding horizon. It was so quiet, broken by nothing but the crunch of snow under our boots. I wonder if our footprints were filled in. I wonder if our blood still stains the snow or if it’s gone. It’s stains my memory, but if I were to go back, would it still be there? I doubt it. This world is so full of pain and blood but it always hides the evidence so that we may forget. It’s bloodthirsty and being its children, so are we. I think I now believe that those damned to Hell start the journey there while still alive, they run and scream, trying to free themselves. They face those they wronged and they realize their irreversible mistakes. Maybe they kill themselves to cut the journey short, knowing that the path is worse than any punishment they could receive. But by the end of their path, or even by the time they can no longer face themselves, they beg for the punishment like I do.  As I walk to my room, I don’t see my apartment. I see a line of soldiers, saluting me on either side, behind them are open caskets. All are dead, and bleeding. Waiting for me to join them. They deserved better. At the end is the one who saved me. He gives me a skeleton’s grin as tears run down my face. I pray. I don’t believe in god, but I pray for him to forgive me. I beg my team to forgive me. I can’t forgive me. There’s a gun in my bedside table. Maybe I can tell my team that I was sorry face to face. Maybe I can find peace in my punishment. The metal is cold and the sound of it being c****d is loud in my empty room.  I arrive at her house, an odd, heavy feeling in my stomach. Walking through the living room, I notice the weight of her pain and grief, sitting like a shroud over the apartment. I make my way into the bedroom . I don’t scream, it would break the silence. I walk out and to a phone. No tears fall, but I’m shocked, though I know I shouldn’t be. I knew she wasn’t ready to be alone, but I didn’t speak up. Am I to blame? I find the journals after the EMTs take the body away. I tuck them in my purse. This is something that will be buried with a soldier. Another gleaming coffin for a soldier, buried in guilt, for a war they enabled.