So Blessed A Son
by Invisible Ranger (HBF), 2011
Disclaimer: TAT's original characters belong to SJC and Universal. I just do this for the jazz. Enjoy.
Dedicated: To all the returning vets who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are all heroes.
The cream Victorian with the sky-blue trim might have stood out, even been an eyesore, most anywhere else. As it was, this was Redlands, California, and it was just another pretty gingerbread house on a street lined with them. It could have been a charming little tea shop, or an antique dealer, or the home of some old lady with many more cats than molecules of common sense.
Captain Paul Nemecek stood in front of the rambling old house. He frowned, looking down at the business card in his hand, then checked the number yet again. 616 Mariposa Avenue. This was it. But there was no sign in front, not even a name on the mailbox, and the lawn was a few days overdue for a good mowing. If he hadn't seen the old Ford pickup and the snazzy Mini Cooper in the driveway, Nemecek might have guessed nobody was in.
But he was feeling braver than usual today. There weren't many of those days anymore. So, with a sigh, he decided to trust his instincts. He walked up the steps past the clusters of honeysuckle and rang the bell.
A pleasant voice, a young woman's, answered right away. "May I help you?"
"Yeah." Nemecek swallowed. "I, um, have a fourteen-hundred appointment." After a year in civilian life, that was an old habit he still hadn't kicked.
There was a short buzzing sound and the door opened. Inside, the sunlight made the place bright and welcoming. Walls were painted in soft blues and greens, and bric-a-brac decorated every available surface, reminding Nemecek more and more of some grandmother's place. What kind of doc had ever had an office like this?
"You'll be Mr. Nemecek?" The young woman who'd answered, a soft-eyed Latina with glossy raven hair, smiled up from her desk. "I'm glad you made it."
"Yep. Paul." His civilian form of address was another thing he'd had trouble getting used to. He nodded at the receptionist, giving her a smile with no warmth behind it.
"He'll be with you in a few. He's running a little behind today," she said, going back to typing on her desktop. "You want some water, a Coke, anything?"
"Nah. Thanks." He'd rather be anywhere but here, and had already decided he was a little skeptical of this doctor despite the many official-looking certificates on the opposite wall. Some of the shrinks back at the VA might have been cold, clinical sons of bitches with no sense of humor, but they didn't have office space in a crazy cat lady's house and they didn't hang sepia prints of dead baseball players in their waiting rooms. Nemecek, sitting on a faded chintz sofa, noticed the framed face of the late Ted Williams staring down at him.
Yeah, that's a great way to make men like me feel better. Surround them with pictures of dead guys. I've seen enough of that shit to last two lifetimes.
The crazy thing was, before he got to Bagram, in what felt like a lifetime ago, Nemecek had loved baseball. Now it seemed as stupid and unimportant as everything else. He picked up an old Reader's Digest and flicked through it, not reading the words or even looking much at the pictures.
Is this what I missed back in the world? Is this what all of what we did was for? Golden retriever puppies and pills for acid reflux disease?
The door behind the reception desk opened with a squeak, making Nemecek jump. Every little noise did that now. A fortyish guy with a long, mournful face walked out, his expression blank. Behind him stood another man, whom Nemecek assumed was the doc. At first glance, he looked a lot like most of the VA medical types: older, balding, wire-rimmed glasses, but his rumpled khakis, wrinkled button-down shirt and sneakers seemed just as much in eccentric character as his unorthodox office space.
Nemecek wondered, not for the first time that day, whether he'd made a mistake coming here.
After a moment the other patient left, taking an appointment card with him. "Mr. Nemecek?" asked the doc. He had an apologetic smile on his lined face. "I'm sorry I'm behind schedule today. I'm Dr. Cormack."
It took Nemecek a moment to realize the doc had his hand outstretched. He took it and pumped once. "Yeah. Pleasure. I, uh, was just noticing your photos here," he said, feeling stupid even as he indicated the framed shot of Williams along with Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente, and a few others.
The doc grinned. Despite his age, which Nemecek put at at least sixty, the older man had a boyish look to him.
"I'm glad somebody besides me knows who they are. We've got the next hour to ourselves, though, so, shall we?" He indicated the door. "Pilar, please put my calls through to voice mail," he added to the receptionist.
"You got it, Doc."
Paul stepped through to the office, feeling both nervous and embarrassed. Inside the room, which might have once been the master suite, it was just as homey and quaint as the lobby. A desk cluttered with paperwork and half-empty coffee mugs, several mismatched chairs, and, strangely, a grinning skeleton wearing a Dodgers cap and a tie-dye Grateful Dead t-shirt in one corner.
Nemecek was in the middle of wondering whether this quack was going to try hypnotizing him and making him bark like a dog when he realized the doc was trying to say something to him.
"Dr. Richter's told me a lot about you. He said you've been working him with a while now."
"Oh. I guess so," said Nemecek. That was something he'd never been good at: talking about himself. And he wasn't about to start today for yet another crazy civilian doc who didn't know, couldn't even imagine, what life was like out there. On the battlefield, up in the unfriendly skies, looking death in the eye every single day. "What'd he say?"
The doc sat behind his desk, a curious expression on his face. "I was hoping I could get your side of the story." He indicated the array of chairs. "Have a seat if you like."
Of all the grouping, Nemecek settled his six-foot frame uncomfortably on the edge of a vinyl barstool. Comfort wasn't something he was used to or even expected. "What do you wanna know? Have me tell you about my mother or some crap?"
There was something in the doc's brown eyes besides mere curiosity. "I guess it would be helpful for me to know a little about you, Captain. I hear you're a hell of a flyer who earned quite a bit of hardware."
So he had done a little of his homework, thought Nemecek grimly. Though what had happened to their doomed unit was hardly a secret. "I'm not some kind of hero. I'm not interested in telling you that Hallmark bullshit like they wrote about in the papers," he said, letting the words come rushing out like ingested poison.
Cormack wasn't scribbling on a notepad or even making those stupid Oh yes, I understand head nods. He was listening intently. "I never said you were. If I had to guess, you're finding it a little strange back here. You know, in the real world. It is a pretty damn strange place to begin with," he said.
"I'm not crazy," Nemecek said stubbornly, even defensively. "I'm not hearing voices or dreaming about it at night. I just…just…"
He trailed off. This was the most open he'd been with anyone, including his family, since he left Landstuhl almost a year ago. And he'd only just met this guy. Was it some sort of hypnotic effect? Or worse, was this man simply that likable? He hadn't felt this much at ease meeting anyone since, well…
Since I met Jake Wilcox and Esai Serrano that first day in Bagram.
An uncomfortable beat passed, and Nemecek had to swallow hard. He hadn't even spoken Jake's or Esai's name aloud since that cold April morning. "I just don't like talking about it," he finally said.
Cormack drew something on a steno pad. Then he looked up from behind his glasses. "But you can't stop thinking about it."
"Exactly," Nemecek said before he could stop himself.
"Tell me," Cormack said, turning the steno facing forward so that Nemecek could see it. "Is this pretty much it?" There was a quick doodle of a helicopter, along with several words in black ink. "Anger." "Loss." "Frustration."
For a second, Nemecek fought a crazy urge to laugh. Then he shook his head. "Doc," he explained, "I'm sorry to be wasting your time like this. Hell, I feel like I'm wasting my time. You just don't know," he said, fighting the growing lump in his throat, "what it's like to walk away from something like that crash. With just a compound fracture and a fucking limp to show for it. Much better guys than me died that day. Guys I'd gotten to know and even like. Pilots, Rangers, grunts. All of 'em, dead. And they're never gonna be back. Never."
The tears came before he could stop them. After two years in Afghanistan, a year rehabbing in a German hospital, six months with the shrinks at the VA stateside, a shouting match with his then-fiancee, and the pleading of his mother, it was finally out. The elephant in the room, standing there with that stupid-ass skeleton. It was the reason Nemecek dreaded waking up every day, the reason he lay awake most nights wondering if he even wanted to go on. It was a snarling mass of rage and guilt and regret that grew, like a tumor, inside him. And just like cancer, he knew it would eventually win.
But that was supposed to be why he was here. That was, as Richter and the others always said, curable. It just took time.
Time was supposed to heal all wounds. And now that he'd received his final discharge, Nemecek had all the time in the world but didn't feel like using it. That was the final, shitty irony of it all. It was as if the Taliban had won after all.
All of this was still swirling around in his head as he felt the doc's surprisingly strong hand on one shoulder.
"I understand. I know you may not want to hear that, but I do."
"Like hell you do."
"Take a look at that photo on the desk." Nemecek obliged. It was a tarnished silver frame holding an old, yellowed snapshot of two young men in the cockpit of a Huey. Both wore flight suits with captain's bars, and were turning back to face the photographer, and smiling, flashing thumbs-up signs. The co-pilot was a stocky kid with a plain Midwestern face. The pilot, dark-haired and mischievous, was unmistakably a much younger version of the doctor on whose desk the photo sat. Which meant the photo was taken in…
"'Nam?" Nemecek said, knowing the answer was yes.
The doc nodded. "'Nam," he agreed with a long sigh. "That was taken forty years ago and I still remember the hell of it all. Still have nightmares about it, sometimes. You see the guy with me there? He never made it either. Lasted only three missions. And he was a good guy. Most of 'em were. I lost a lot of good friends too. I miss 'em. But you know what?"
Nemecek listened, mesmerized, to the doc's voice. It was kind, but with a hardened edge underneath. "What's that?" he heard himself say, as if from far away.
"Life goes on," the older man said. "I know you think it's about to end, and there's no reason to go on. I thought so too. But, here I am." He looked tired, and for the first time Nemecek saw the grey at his temples, the wrinkles, the burden of years. He was suddenly reminded of a phrase from one of those Harry Potter books he'd picked up at the base library, then gotten hooked.
One day, if I am lucky, that will be me too.
He'd decided not to hate this doc the way he hated the others. Maybe it was his old soldier's instinct, the one that had kept him alive when so many others had died. In this crazy world you had to know who to trust. This guy was one of the good ones. Despite his dead ballplayers in the lobby and the Deadhead skeleton in the corner, he was all right.
"So, Captain," Nemecek found himself not minding his old rank so much as he listened to the doc, "what did you want to talk about today? You don't even have to talk if you don't want to."
He found that, weirdly, he did. Maybe the damn guy was a hypnotist, because Nemecek spent the better part of the next hour feeling the memories of three years flooding out. Roadside bombs and barren mountain passes, Apaches and Blackhawks, kids blowing themselves all to hell in the name of their god, bombed-out villages and bone-chilling cold. He left very little out, though he found he still couldn't call Jake and Esai by name. At the end of it all there were no tears. There was only a strange sensation of relief, as if in the wake of a powerful hurricane. He felt as he hadn't in those three years. Almost as if he were clean.
And the doc, through it all, only stopped to ask needed questions. Dr. Cormack had, Nemecek knew, the gift that few others had. He had the ability to listen well and not judge. Better yet, he didn't seem to toss around the clinical terms Nemecek, as a soldier, found so frustrating.
He had to remind himself that, once upon a time, the doc had been a soldier too. Not just a soldier, but a chopper pilot. That alone was enough to forge a tentative, unspoken bond between them.
At a few minutes past three, the doc smiled. "I always seem to run late through these appointments, don't I?" he wondered aloud. He scribbled a few words onto the back of a business card and handed it to Nemecek.
"I don't want or need any meds," said Nemecek, feeling a surge of anger. That's what these guys always try to do, make us all a bunch of mind-numbed drones.
"It's not meds. Take a look."
And he did. On the reverse of the next scheduled appointment reminded were five words in the heavy black ink.
It gets better. Trust me.
"In the meantime," said Cormack, standing up behind his cluttered desk, "why not do something for yourself. Get out of the house. I think the Dodgers are in town this week. How long's it been since you've been to a ball game?"
"Too long," said Nemecek, not able to come up with a date.
"Doctor's orders, then. I've got season tickets. I'll give you mine for Thursday if you're not doing anything. Just ask Pilar on the way out, all right? She'll set you up. And, Captain?"
Nemecek turned around and looked the other man in the eye. "Yeah?"
"It's been a real pleasure. I'm grateful for your service. See you in a couple weeks, same time?"
"Um…yeah. Sure. And thanks for what you guys did in Nam."
He left the office a few minutes later, baseball ticket in hand, wondering what the hell had just happened. Deciding it wasn't some dream or flashback or drug-induced flashback scene, he shrugged, unlocked his Mazda, and drove down Mariposa back toward the freeway and home.
At the window of the Victorian house, the tall Cormack watched him go. He shook his head. No matter how hard he tried, how many diplomas were graced with it, and how many times he asked others to use that moniker, he'd never quite get used to a name that wasn't really his.
But this gig, he'd discovered, was the best of both worlds. It was the greatest con game ever. He was able to avoid any unwanted attention, whether MPs or desperate interview seekers, while at the same time, live the quiet life giving something back. Helping out fellow soldiers, like Nemecek, in need.
It was like Face always dreamed of, all those years ago. Only better.
H.M. Murdock's mouth curled up in a smile. Another day and still no one, aside from a close few, knew his little secret. He was no more a doctor than some of those quacks on afternoon TV. The name Ronan Cormack had become convenient enough when the real owner of the name had disappeared during a trip in the Andes. So Dr. Cormack he'd become, with a bit of Faceman's old expertise and a few clicks of a mouse.
He loved all the new technologies. Even the video games were better.
Humming absently, he dumped the necessary paperwork into his briefcase. Nemecek had been the last appointment for the day. That was yet another perk of being a phony doctor like Richter Sr. You could set your own hours.
Somewhere, Murdock knew, Face was still quietly envious. Even now that his oldest friend had the permanent Malibu address he'd wanted all his life.
Scamming stuff was the easy part. Actually working a bit to get it, well…
That was different.
"Pilar," he said on a whim, pushing the intercom button, "you and Chaz still want those Dodger tickets for tonight?"
"Yeah, Dr. C! That's awesome." He couldn't see her face but he knew she was grinning. "Thanks. He'll be thrilled. You know how he loves when the Giants are in town."
"Great. You know where they are. Have fun, OK?"
And Murdock, still humming the Beatles tune, thought of Nemecek too, and all the other vets he'd seen in eight years of practice. They needed him, because he had something most real MDs and PhDs didn't and could never get. He knew what being a soldier really was and he'd fought with the demons for most of his life. These young guys needed somebody like that, somebody who'd seen the kinds of things they had. Not some egghead in an ivory tower who fainted at the sight of blood.
It had been forty years ago. Murdock remembered a conversation he'd once had with Hannibal, a long time ago.
I remembered it. I just didn't think about it.
And maybe that's what he was doing, in this charming little office full of important-looking diplomas that belonged to another man, living a borrowed life. Helping soldiers like Paul Nemecek remember but not dwell on the memories.
Still smiling, Murdock gunned the old pickup's engine. His arthritis was flaring up today and his bad knee hurt worse than ever. But he couldn't have been happier.
And, tonight's Dancing with the Stars. Faceman will be thrilled if I drop by with a bottle of wine and a pizza and some more stories.
Author's Note: Special thanks to AJ, who partially inspired this one. The premise was borrowed from a recent Q&A with Dwight Schultz about what might Murdock be doing with his life 25 years later, post A-Team. This was my attempt to answer that question after what he had said. My thanks to both for the inspiration.
Fini