A/N: Book recommendation. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. The author is superb, the material is riveting, the pace never falters, and the story is 100% true and meticulously researched. I love reading history even more than reading fiction, but I hate authors who make it boring. There's no excuse. History was not boring. But Hillenbrand is a marvelous storyteller. This is the best book I have read this year.
(H/C)
"Did you hear back on John's father?" Jensen asked as soon as the group assembled in the living room that afternoon. House had checked email a few minutes ago while Blythe was going through the bathroom and Cuddy was double checking that the girls were soundly asleep, and his tension and analysis level had both jumped in those few minutes. Jensen left him the out in case Thornton's email had involved something else private, but assuming it was John's father, the psychiatrist didn't think they could advance to another topic until dealing with this one. House was too wired.
"Yes." House gave them the summary of Charles House's military career.
The living room was silent for a moment after he had finished. "Wow," Cuddy said softly. "That could sure explain some things."
Blythe was stunned. "He never mentioned any of that. He said once his father hadn't been in good health. That was his excuse why he didn't invite his parents to travel to the wedding, just told them later so they wouldn't feel guilty about having to miss it. They never visited us, either. But he never mentioned his father being a prisoner or anything like that. And those letters from his mother I found, there were only a couple, but she never mentioned that the war had changed things."
"People didn't back then," Jensen said. "We just didn't talk about things like POW experiences then or mental health issues from it. Any POW I've ever had a conversation with would much rather nail that box closed and never bring it up at all. That would be so off limits for conversation in the family that she still respected his privacy after his death."
"John sure mentioned it with me," House snarled. They all looked at him. "Not his father by name, but all the time, he would talk about what might happen in a military career if I got captured, how I needed to toughen up and learn to take things like a good soldier. That he was doing me a favor by preparing me. And of course, after the infarction, he never lost any chance to tell me that didn't count. Real men got disabled in battle, not in medical stupidity." His respirations were up a little by the end of that, and Cuddy took his hand. Belle was already in his lap this time.
Jensen took over the conversation, giving House a minute and backing away from the personal to general analysis. "Anybody with that record almost by default would have PTSD. Being actually at the Pearl Harbor attack would be enough by itself. Then many quite intense battle experiences, then being shot down, then the prison camp for a year. The Japanese prison camps were horrific, even worse than the German ones in a way. We had a basic cultural values clash there that complicated everything."
Cuddy looked confused. "How do cultural values clashes make a Japanese prison camp worse than somebody else's?"
"The Japanese are obsessed as a race with being honorable. And for a warrior in particular, the honorable thing to do if you were about to be captured was to commit suicide instead."
House nodded, getting into the cultural details now, relaxing a little. "I heard a few people talking when we were stationed there. Suicide made sense to them as the better choice in some circumstances, and in war, it was an especially honorable option. Remember kamikaze pilots? The Japanese Navy also had kaiten, manned torpedoes. A pilot would drive them into the target, and of course, if you hit your target, you died. In fact, you died even if you missed. The sub wouldn't have gone to retrieve you, and returning after a miss would be too shameful anyway, so you just rode it on into the sea. There was a big reward paid to your family if you hit a target, though. Very honorable way to check out. But even if you weren't on a specific suicide duty like that, if you were about to be captured, the right thing to do would be to kill yourself. Harakiri. It erased the shame of having put yourself in a losing position, and you died with full honor."
Jensen picked up the explanation. "That's why our figures for Japanese POWs captured in the war were only a fraction of theirs for Americans. A good soldier wasn't supposed to let it happen. If possible, take out the enemy at the same time, but at the least, don't let yourself become a prisoner. So to the Japanese military running the camps, every soldier there had personally failed to act honorably. There wasn't a greater failure, as far as their culture was concerned. The camp staff was absolutely disgusted with the POWs. Individually, as men and as soldiers. No proper Japanese could imagine letting himself sink that low. There were beatings and humiliation. They worked a lot of them to death, too. Duties like working in the coal mines, things like that, with impossible daily quotas, and all that on a starvation diet. I had one patient years ago who had been a Japanese POW. Decades later, it was still crystal clear, and what he described was unspeakable. And no, it hadn't ever been open for discussion as a family topic."
Blythe was trying to absorb all of this. "So you're saying that if John's father mistreated him, it was a result of the war?"
"It's an educated guess. We'll never know for sure. But take somebody raised in a strict home, not necessarily abusive but strict. They can be totally different things. His mother's letter implied that he was raised strictly, although if he did mistreat John, I doubt she saw the worst of it. But take a person like that, give him those war experiences, and then send him home and drop him back into society with basically no support. Unfortunately, the military really dropped the ball on returning soldiers. They still could improve, but they're trying now, and the issues are talked about, at least. But the World War II soldiers got basically no help. PTSD wasn't even a diagnosis until decades later. So he comes back to a house where his strong-willed young son has had an absent but hero father for several years and a presumed-dead father for one year."
House had his differential expression on. "John was obsessed with the military. I think that was legit, even if he lied about his career. So you think on one hand, he idolized his father and wanted to be like him, and on the other, he was abused by him?"
Jensen nodded. "His early childhood years would have been dominated by the war. Any child old enough had to be aware of it. It was talked about on every street, in all the papers. And they also would have followed his father's career as a pilot as much as they could. It makes perfect sense that John would worship this absent father and become obsessed with wanting to be a pilot himself. But when his father came back, he was physically broken and emotionally unstable. Hard to reconcile that with your gilded mental image, especially for a child. And I think John's obsession with the military as a future career probably made things worse for Charles. That phrase about 'toughening him up.' I always thought John was repeating that and a few other things. His mother apparently used the phrase in the letter, too; she must have heard it several times, even if she didn't see everything going on. In a warped way, maybe Charles thought he really did need to prepare John for his military career if his son was determined to enlist once he was old enough. Charles would have been still mentally fighting the horrors that a military career had led to. Probably, to him, he was doing his son a favor. It's all a guess, like I said, but psychiatrically, it makes sense."
House shuddered, trying to shake off a very grudging sympathy. "That still doesn't excuse him. No matter what his background was."
"Of course not," Jensen agreed. "What he did was unspeakable, and the responsibility for that is his. Nobody else's."
"That whole lie about being a pilot was probably for his father as much as for Mom. So his entire military career was a failure."
"Yes. That had to gnaw at him. He couldn't have ever openly admitted getting kicked out of flight school, not to his family at least. Bury the shame and pretend it isn't there."
"He always said to me privately in those early years that I was going to be the perfect officer, that I wouldn't have his faults to deal with but did have his genes and would go all the way. He was saying that at my second birthday party. Just a chip off the old block. You think when he thought I really was his son, he wanted me to be the hero he couldn't and honor his father by proxy?"
Blythe jumped in before Jensen had a chance to answer. "You don't remember your second birthday, Gregory." Her tone was perfect condescending parent humoring the child, and Cuddy's newborn sympathy for her dived out the window.
House tensed up sharply, hurting his leg a little doing it. "Like hell I don't," he snapped. "How could you possibly know whether I do or not?"
"Easy," Jensen said.
Both of them totally ignored him. "Children don't have clear memories that young," Blythe stated confidently. "Maybe you heard things later and just think you remember them from then."
"Things later? How could I possibly confuse later with those first few years? We were in the kitchen, and you were taking pictures. I kept trying to get to the chocolate cake, didn't realize I really should have been watching out for him instead. You asked him to try to get me to look at you, but I still wanted the cake, and he laughed and said we'd have to do that first. Then the presents. I got a Marine teddy bear and a ride-on toy and a 2-year-old sized Marine uniform. John put the uniform on me right then and wanted pictures of us together in the uniforms, but you ran out of film. While you went to the bedroom to get more film, he was talking to me, saying the same old speech he always was telling me when we were alone, and I wasn't even listening. I missed it." He ran down finally. Cuddy was gripping his hand tightly now, and Belle was watching him closely. Blythe was staring at him, at first in wonder, then in concern.
"Settle down, Greg. You really remember that?"
"No, I made it all up just now. I read your mind and pulled it out of there because I'm telepathic. Is that any easier for you to believe?"
"Take it easy," Jensen repeated. "All right, let's take a break for a while."
House ran straight over the recommendation. "No. He actually loved me at first, didn't he?" His whole body was starting to tremble slightly now.
"Yes, Greg. He was so happy. He doted on you. I think that's why Thomas never raised the question and never came forward. John was happier those few years than he'd ever been. Are you all right, dear?"
"Fine."
Jensen stood up. "That is enough. This session is over. We'll talk more tonight." Cuddy glared at Blythe, an unmistakable message, and Blythe meekly fell into silence and started to get up herself.
At that moment, Abby woke up, and they heard her calling. Cuddy looked from her husband to his mother and said sharply, "Come help me, Blythe." She stood and headed back to the nursery, and Blythe slowly followed her, leaving the two men alone.
Jensen moved over to the couch. "Take an Ativan," he said softly. House hesitated, then pulled the pills out. "I think we need to stop after tonight. We don't need another day of this."
"I can take it," House insisted stubbornly.
"That's not the point. The question is, should you take it? Pushing it too far is counterproductive; we've already made a lot of progress here."
House shook his head. "We're not through everything yet."
"We aren't going to get through everything. But you agreed to listen to me on this if I thought it was time to stop. We'll talk a little more tonight, calmly, and then leave things there. You gave me your word."
House fell into silence. Jensen waited patiently, not pushing on but not moving away. "Okay," House said grudgingly after a minute.
Jensen put a hand on his arm. "I'm proud of you for this week. It's a big step, and it shows how far you've come."
House looked back toward the hall, dodging, though the approval warmed him. "You suppose they're safe back there? Lisa wouldn't kill Mom in front of the girls, would she?"
Jensen grinned. "No, she'd wait for a private opportunity."
House sighed. "Sometimes she seems to be making progress, and then she'll say something like that, and we're back to square one."
"She is what she is. Definite progress, but it's not ever going to be complete. But she'll always be your mother, even so." Jensen squeezed his arm lightly and stood up. "And that's more than enough of this for the afternoon. Let's get some fudge."
Rachel, running down the hall, heard the last word. "FUDGE!" she called, bursting into the living room. "Yay!" House was smiling himself as he moved Belle aside and stood up.
