A/N: Alright alright alright. This story is kind of depressing—I'll admit that. But do not fear, my dear readers, for a happy ending is in sight for our beloved Carlton! Real quick: I apologize if my use of the ethnic slur when describing the Iraqis does not offend anyone. I'm only using it because I know that's what a lot of soldiers called them in the war. I, personally, would never use that word and I disagree with all slurs. On a side note, I'll be writing another Psych fic after this, so I'd love some suggestions of what you want to read!

Lemon. He could smell lemon. The sour smell burned his nostrils.

His eyes felt glued shut. He tried lifting his hands but they were about ten pounds too heavy for his weak state. He let a groan escape from deep within himself.

Suddenly, he felt a light touch on his shoulder. "Relax, soldier," a male treble voice said. "You're in a hospital in Germany. I'm Dr. Gentry. You were shot in the chest. It's a very serious wound, but we have hope that you're going to be alright."

Lassiter tried to nod and say he understood, but all that came out was another low groan.

Dr. Gentry patted his shoulder again. "You're a very lucky man."

Lucky?

He heard an escalating beeping as his heartrate went up. Lucky? His sergeant had died in his arms and he wasn't able to do a thing to save him. Lucky? If he hadn't have been so standoffish in the first place, Sergeant Rich wouldn't have had to come over to the foxhole to talk to him. Lucky? He wouldn't have gotten out of the foxhole at the exact moment a raghead caught him in his sights and blasted him.

Lucky? This quack didn't know the meaning of lucky.

He heard Dr. Gentry shuffle his feet uncertainly. "Well, guess I'll be off then. Get some sleep, private. You're gonna need it." His footsteps echoed on what Lassiter guessed was an obscenely white floor with not a speck of dirt on it. Ironically, the idea that he was in a place so unnaturally clean and antiseptic made him want to throw up.

Left alone, Lassiter tried to rouse himself from his fatigued state. He couldn't stand just laying here and "recovering." He needed to be out there, doing something, forgetting everything. First, he tried to open his eyes, but they were so heavy. Maybe if he just left them closed for a little while longer…

No. He needed out of this lemon-scented prison, and he needed out now. He'd go crazy left with nothing but his thoughts, his guilt, and the pity of sympathetic strangers. He didn't want to endure any of that for any longer than he had to.

He tried again, forcing himself to stay awake. He could feel the sweat drenching his body with the exertion. Ironic, he mused. He was a soldier who could at one point carry a 300-pound sandbag for five miles without breaking a sweat, and now he couldn't even lift his eyelids. His frustration invigorated him and he finally opened his eyes halfway. His lashes still slightly veiled his view, but he could see enough.

Just like he had pictured, the room was a sterile white—not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. His bed even had white blankets, pillows, and guardrails. It felt like an asylum.

With another great, concentrated effort, he turned his head to his right where a curtained window taunted him. Though the sheer white (what other color would they be?) curtains were drawn, sunlight still teased the room. Lassiter felt a deep ache in his body. He wished he could be out in that sun now, getting sunburnt and dehydrated and exhausted. He parted his lips in a small whimper.

"What are you looking at, soldier?"

If he had been in better shape, he would have jumped. As it was, his body felt much too heavy to move, so only his slightly-widened eyes revealed his alarm.

A young woman with blonde hair tied back into a ponytail walked in front of the window, forcing Lassiter to look at her. Her baby blue scrubs were faded and had numerous stains on them—remains of long days without food, sleep, or showers. Her smile was stretched much too tight, as if she'd had to keep it on all day (which, Lassiter realized, she probably had).

"My name is Julianne. I'll be your nurse while you're here." She reached behind Lassiter's head and pulled down a remote control with a cord attached. "This is your call button. Press the button when you need me. Has the doctor told you exactly how long you're expected to be here?"

His body protesting the effort, he shook his head. Julianne's brow furrowed and she shook her head. "Dr. Gentry, you absolute idiot," she muttered under her breath. She raised her voice. The smile was gone now. "You've been shot in the chest, Private Lassiter. That's not a wound you can just recover from in a week like they do in the movies. You're going to be here for upwards of three months. Do you understand?"

Lassiter nodded—it was getting easier now—and turned his head to stare at the ceiling. He curled his hands into loose fists (since he could not clench them any tighter) and willed himself not to cry in front of this woman. Soldiers weren't supposed to break down like emotional schoolgirls. They stood strong in the face of adversity. They could watch twenty-three of their buddies die and not even bat an eye. War is hell but you're the gatekeeper. You've seen it all.

Julianne seemed to understand. "I'll leave you be. You press that button if you need anything." She padded out soundlessly in her worn-out sneakers with no tread.

Lassiter clenched his jaw as tight as he could. Three months. Three months for him to sit in silence, stewing in his guilt-ridden, violent thoughts. Three months for him to think of the many ways he could just end it all and forget about what happened. Three months to relive the terror of a shelling in the middle of the night or a bullet taking out one of his buddies on a patrol. Three months too long.

The days and nights passed in agony—in the days, he was bored and restless; in the nights, he was terrified and ashamed to admit that he was now afraid of the dark. Some nights he woke up screaming, setting off all kinds of heart monitor alarms. On those nights, Julianne would come in and send all the other nurses out while she took his hand and repeated to him that everything would be okay and why don't you shut your eyes for a while?

Some days he became so angry—angry that he had been shot, angry that he was still alive, angry that they wouldn't let him go—that he refused his meals and attacked any nurse that dared breach his personal space. On these days, Julianne would clear the room, close the door, and stand by his bed (just out of reach, of course) with her arms crossed, staring at him until the snarl left his face and his breathing wasn't so rabid. Then she would take the uneaten food next to his bed and practically throw it on his lap, threatening that if he didn't eat it all she would shoot him again. This last comment would almost get him to smile, but he couldn't bring himself to make the expression just yet.

Julianne was the only bright spot of his day. The other doctors and nurses only gave curt replies to his questions, sometimes ignoring him completely. Dr. Gentry wouldn't give him any specifics about his condition, preferring to tell Lassiter that he was fine and could go back to sleep, even though he'd just woken up. The nurses wouldn't even let him eat with a fork and knife anymore, fearing that he would turn them into weapons and attack them.

But Julianne understood him. She'd give him every detail of his condition, right down to the disgusting ones that even he didn't care to know. She'd sneak in utensils for him to eat his food, trusting him enough not to hurt her. She'd even relate to him the news from the Gulf, reciting casualty reports and the latest from the front. She was the only thing keeping him from ripping out the tubes in his body and running out the door, killing anyone who dared get in his way.

After a few weeks, he was finally able to walk again, with the help of Julianne. Lassiter found it was easier to cope with his invalid status if he could wander the halls of the hospital, so they took a long walk through the corridors together about once a day.

"So, you're doing remarkably well," Julianne noted on one of these walks. She had an arm linked through Lassiter's right elbow, but was otherwise not supporting him. He wanted to be as independent as possible and glared at her if she tried to do anything more to help him. They walked at a snail's pace down the blinding white hallway.

Lassiter grunted in reply. He still hadn't said more than a few sentences to Julianne. He felt he could trust her though, which is why she received a response at all.

"Dr. Gentry says you should be out of here in the next month or so."

Another grunt, this one much softer in tone. He really did want to go home.

Julianne smirked at her patient's grumpiness. He reminded her of a child. A sullen child who didn't get his way and so he was sulking all over the house. She was going to miss the big lug. But her grin immediately vanished as they walked by another patient's room.

"Mom! Mom, help me! They're trying to kill me!"

She heard feet scuffling and a few frantic cries of "It's okay, soldier, relax!" She tried to hurry Lassiter past the room, but he stopped cold in front of it. He craned his neck to see inside.

"Private, let's keep walking. Obviously, that man is in intense pain and doesn't need an audience."

But Lassiter refused to budge. He continued peering inside. Because of the layout of the room, all he could see was a curtain and some shadows flailing about the walls. He took a step toward the doorway to get a better view.

"Mom! Mom!"

Julianne tugged lightly on the sleeve of his navy plush bathrobe. "C'mon, Private, nothing to see here." But Lassiter had already passed through the door and was stumbling closer to the commotion. Julianne grabbed his elbow and tried to stop him, but he firmly (but with a certain gentleness, she noted) pushed her hand off. He slowly, painfully, made his way to the curtain and tentatively peeked around it.

A young man lay on the white bed, no more than nineteen years old. Only, the bed was no longer white. Blood spatter speckled the starched sheets and pooled around the boy's body. Four nurses surrounded the bed, one for each limb. They were all trying desperately to restrain the thrashing boy, but he was much too strong. The dog tags jangling around his neck told Lassiter that he was also in the military.

"Mom! Mom, please help! Help!" The soldier was hysterical, tears streaming down his face, screaming for his mother over and over.

Lassiter had a brief flashback to when Sergeant Rich died, when he called forlornly for his own mother. He couldn't help but see him on the bed before him, his body torn to shreds by bullets and screaming at Lassiter to fire back. Suppressing a grimace, he blinked hard to rid himself of the memory and looked once again at the pitiful soldier. One of the nurses looked up from wrestling his leg and glared.

"Get out of here! We don't need more trouble! Go on!" She pointed to the door angrily. She had been one of the nurses he had once punched in a fit of anger, Lassiter realized. He ignored her and took another step towards the bed. He scooted around one of the nurses so he could stand at the head of the soldier's bed.

The nurses were all scowling at him now. They'd all been victims of the raging Lassiter at one point during his stay. But they were all much too preoccupied to do anything about it.

Lassiter reached out with a shaky hand and placed it on the soldier's forehead. Immediately, the boy stopped thrashing about. With his eyes still closed, the boy mumbled, "Mom? Mom, is that you?"

Lassiter's eyes widened as he looked around at the nurses. They collectively shrugged and, dropping the boy's limbs, went about their business connecting IVs and checking heartrates, now that he no longer had to be restrained. Lassiter turned back to him. He wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't pretend to be this kid's mother. But would he start thrashing around again if he said he wasn't his mother, but just another soldier trying to help? He took a deep breath.

"No, soldier. My name's Priv—my name's Lassie."

The soldier licked his lips. "Like the dog?"

Lassiter nodded, then realized the kid couldn't see. "Yeah, like the dog. My real name's Lassiter."

The soldier grinned slightly, revealing at least five chipped front teeth. "Lassie. I like it. You know, I got a nickname, too. JFC. I think you know what that stands for."

Lassiter grinned—his first grin since deploying. It was a common acronym soldiers scrawled on various objects throughout the war-torn desert and referred to the grunts as. "Yeah, I know all about that." He smoothed back JFC's hair from his damp forehead and surveyed the blood surrounding him. There was so much of it. Too much. "How long has he got?" he whispered to a nurse next to him, so low only she could hear.

"He won't last the night," she said at a normal volume. She was past trying to protect anyone's feelings—hers had been swept away years ago.

Lassiter turned back to JFC and mustered a weak giggle. "So, where'd you get the great name?"

JFC grinned and launched into a story about his recruit days, but Lassiter didn't listen. He didn't even really see the boy. All he saw was the face of Sergeant Rich as he lay in the foxhole, half of him blown away, grinning up at him from the dust, babbling about his own recruitment story and his family. He chose to focus on a piece of green lint next to JFC's pillow. His eyes bore into the little piece of fuzz, memorizing every curve and strand of fabric creating it. It was as small and insignificant as he felt right now. But if he got enough of the little fuzz balls together, he could create something bigger. Just like the Army. Each man was insignificant alone, but once you put enough of them together, you could sure kill a whole lot of people.

It was a trick he'd learned in the heat of combat from his first sergeant, Sergeant Clayton. Hyper-focus, men. That'll get you through it. Choose something to focus on and don't worry about anything else. Your buddy gets shot on patrol—you focus on your bolt as you pump like heck to get the bastard that shot 'em. You get shot on patrol—you focus on that rock next to your face and you memorize every nook and cranny like it's your girlfriend. That, my boys, is how you get through hell.

JFC had finished his story and was now ranting about his hometown, just like any red-blooded American soldier. Lassiter wanted to roll his eyes at how much the scene felt like a movie, with the blond, squeaky-clean American kid babbling about how proud he was to serve his country as the hot lead in his body slowly, painfully killed him. His words had slurred so badly that even if he had wanted to, Lassiter wouldn't be able to understand him. He took JFC's hand and squeezed it gently, hoping the gesture would express what he wanted to say but couldn't right now. Shut up, grunt. Just shut up. Nobody likes a drama queen. You're dying, and that's that. You're going to die, and you're going to be scared. But it's going to be okay, because you're going to go to whatever is after this life and meet Sergeant Rich and John Wayne and Audie Murphy and they're going to pat you on the back and say, "Good work, soldier," and you'll never have to fight again and you'll finally be able to lay back and relax without the fear that the chair under your butt could blow up at any minute.

Suddenly, he realized that JFC's hand had gone limp in his own. His eyes were still closed, but his mouth was open. He heard the last exhale of air leave the boy's lungs. He was gone.

"Well, he sure went quick, didn't he?" one of the nurses remarked. She pushed Lassiter back towards the curtain and checked JFC's pulse. The rest of the nurses went about their business readying the body for the morgue and recording time of death.

Lassiter felt numb. Just the twenty-fourth guy in a long procession of death. Just another freakin' grunt who got killed in a foreign land without even getting to say goodbye to anyone who cared about. He wished he could feel something—sorrow, anger, hurt, frustration—anything that would make him seem human. But he could feel nothing. His heart had frozen over and his brain was a blank screen. Soldier's don't feel. Soldiers don't care. Soldiers aren't human.

He felt a small hand at his elbow. It was Julianne.

"It's time to go, tough guy." She led him away and he followed with no resistance.