The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(29)

The Navy shrink was a stout, friendly lieutenant commander with soft hands but a strong grip. He asked Peter why he didn’t eat in the officers’ mess, why he slept outside on the wild part of the base. Was there something wrong with his quarters? A thick folder open on the desk before him. Peter’s service record.

Peter said he liked the open air. It was a way to get some time to himself. He didn’t mention the way his lungs got tight and the walls closed in and his heartbeat would accelerate inside a building. Especially an institutional building, like the vast office complex where the shrink sat behind his steel desk under flickering fluorescent lights. Peter could barely keep himself in the chair.

The Navy shrink looked at him with a kind smile, and Peter knew the man could see it in him, the pressure in his head, the way the sparks crackled up his brainstem.

“It’s a nice day out,” said the shrink. He closed the folder and set it aside. “How about we go for a walk?” And he watched Peter’s breathing slow in the open air as the static subsided.

“How bad is it?” the man finally asked as they walked the manicured paths. “I’m not writing anything down. This is just you and me.”

Peter told him it was fine if he stayed outside.

“That’s gonna get in the way of civilian life,” said the shrink. “Was it worse during fighting, during downtime, or both?”

“It didn’t start until I got off the plane here,” said Peter. “End of the tour.”

The shrink nodded like he’d heard it a thousand times before.

Maybe he had.

“What you’re experiencing is called a panic attack,” he said. “It can be triggered in many different ways. For you, it shows up as an acute claustrophobia. When you were in combat, was there a lot of fighting inside, clearing buildings?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “Fallujah. Twice. But now I can barely go inside the dining hall. That’s not a combat zone.”

“Your body is reacting to an environment that was very stressful over a relatively long period of time. It was a useful reaction in Fallujah. It helped keep you alive. But now it’s too sensitive. It’s overreacting to a perceived threat, and your fight-or-flight reflex goes into overdrive.”

“Well,” said Peter. “Shit.”

“I have to ask this,” the man said, watching Peter closely. “Again, this is just you and me. But I need a brutally honest answer. Do you feel like you’re a danger to yourself? Or to anyone else?”

“No,” said Peter. He drank in the fresh air. “I don’t want to hurt myself or anyone else. I just want to solve this problem.”

The Navy shrink nodded again.

“A lot of combat vets are changed by war,” he said. “Some of them are physically changed, wounded, missing limbs. That’s very difficult. But some have other effects. Stress effects, which are no less real. And for some vets, they’re harder to live with, because you can’t see them.

“Sometimes those effects diminish over time,” he said. “Sometimes they go away entirely. Sometimes they don’t. But there are things you can do to help.”

“Like what?”

The shrink said it depended on the individual. “For some people,” he said, “the solution is to stress yourself in a controlled manner, a little more each time, and allow your unconscious to realize that in the civilian world, nothing bad happens. Like curing fear of flying by getting on a plane.

“And sometimes,” he said, “you do the opposite. You back away, reduce the stress, and allow the brain to reorganize itself to a life where people aren’t shooting at you all the time. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two. You work with a therapist to find the right course of treatment. That’s the best way to get better.”

Peter nodded, thinking that sitting in a shrink’s office was going to drive him crazy all by itself.

Reading his face, the shrink kept talking. “Not everyone wants to work with a therapist,” he said. “Some people can learn to just listen to themselves and pay attention. Find someone to talk to, and work it through.”

“What if it doesn’t go away?” asked Peter.

The shrink gave him the same kind smile. “Then that’s just who you are now,” he said. “If there are limitations, there are also benefits. That’s your life. Learn how to live it. Find something to do. Someone to love. Get on with things.”





15



Detective Sam Lipsky returned two hours later, flipping through his notebook. Peter still sat in the back of the cruiser, his legs out the open door. He couldn’t get comfortable. The white static buzzed and crackled. He worried about Dinah.

“I thought you were fresh off the plane,” said Lipsky. “But you got discharged over a year ago.”

Peter nodded.

“So for the last year, you’ve been doing what?”

“Working, here and there. Hiking out West.”

“Is this some kind of hippie dropout thing?”

“All due respect, Detective?” said Peter. “Fuck you.”

Lipsky smiled. “You won the silver star,” said the detective. “And a lot of other medals. You were a lieutenant for eight years. I didn’t know that was possible. You should have been a captain, even a major. But my contact says the details are sealed. So what happened?”