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You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest, that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
—Jane Glidewell
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Chapter Eleven
Back In Hiding
"I told them I could walk," Hogan complained, as the orderly parked the wheelchair in front of the desk and left the small office.
The man behind the desk smiled sympathetically. "Let them spoil you while they're still willing. It doesn't last long enough nowadays!" he said. He stood and extended his hand. "Major Vincent Wheeler, US Army Air Corps, Medical Division. Formerly from Stalag 19."
Hogan raised an eyebrow as he accepted the gesture. "Robert Hogan," he said unnecessarily. He shifted uncomfortably in the wheelchair.
"If you're really anxious to get out of that chair, General, why don't you join me over here?" Wheeler indicated a pair of softer, high-backed chairs set away from the desk and moved toward them.
Hogan stood up, biting his lip as soreness from the prodding of the physical examination he had just endured came to the fore. He eased himself into one of the chairs. "POW, huh?" Hogan asked.
Wheeler ignored the beads of sweat that had broken out on Hogan's face from the exertion of the move. "That's right," he answered. "May I call you Robert? This really isn't the place for rank to get in the way." Hogan nodded. "Vince," he said, pointing to himself. "I hate Vincent. Anyway, yes. Caught in September '44. I understand you were a prisoner, too."
"I'll just bet you do," Hogan said before he could stop himself. Wheeler let his eyebrows rise up but he didn't answer. Hogan looked up at him with only token guilt. "Sorry."
Wheeler shrugged offhandedly. "No apologies necessary."
But Hogan continued. "It's just that everyone seems to know about me."
Wheeler cocked his head. "Know about you?"
"You know—the nutcase who ran out in a snowstorm thinking the Krauts were after him—two years after he left Germany." Hogan's voice betrayed his shame and anguish.
The tone wasn't lost on Wheeler. "Is that how you see it?"
Hogan stared at the wheelchair near the desk and said nothing.
"Robert," Wheeler said softly, "some of the men who went to Germany came back with more debilitating injuries than those that could be fixed up in an operating room." He watched closely as Hogan's face mapped his journey back in time—whether to the other night, or to the time of the original events, Wheeler didn't know. But it was a trip that was clearly causing Hogan to suffer. "And some of those men are still haunted by their experiences. Would you call them nutcases?"
"Of course not," Hogan answered sharply.
"Then why insist on that label for yourself?"
Hogan thought for a long time, still seeing, hearing, feeling his past. "I didn't want to believe it was true." He stopped and watched again. "I didn't want it to be real." Finally, he closed his eyes. "I went off the deep end. I don't even remember where I was a couple of days ago." He looked at Wheeler with eyes full of torment. "It was all coming at me again, but I couldn't figure out that it was a dream!"
Wheeler shook his head. "But it wasn't a dream, was it?" he asked quietly.
Hogan shook his head, his eyes becoming glassy. "No," he whispered, near tears.
"What was it?"
Another long pause. Hogan stared straight ahead. To the untrained eye, he would have appeared to have tuned out, but Wheeler knew the man was deep, very deep, in his thoughts, reliving events that could be both unconscionable and unforgettable. "It was real," Hogan breathed. Wheeler waited. "They used me like a lab rat. They tied me up and pushed me around, and when I was exhausted, they picked me up like a rag doll and made me do more…." Wheeler once again let the silence remain unfilled. Hogan's voice got softer and weaker as his visions got stronger and clearer. "They drugged me. They beat me…. They electrocuted me…. They said they had singled me out for special treatment." Hogan stopped and suddenly squeezed his eyes shut as excruciating memories filled his head. He put a hand up to his face, feeling a shudder run through his body as unbidden tears rolled down his face. "It hurt so much," Hogan said eventually, his voice breaking. Another pause, then, devastated by the realization: "I wanted to die."
"But you didn't. You got through it."
Hogan laughed bitterly, wiping the tears way from his face. "You call this getting through it?" he retorted. "I don't know about you, but this wasn't exactly how I planned on spending my post-war years."
"Actually, Robert, I do call this getting through it." Wheeler held up a hand to pre-empt any comments. "The key word there is 'getting.' I'm not going to give you a snow job and say it'll be okay and things will be back to the way they were before the war tomorrow. But what I will say is that you have gotten through a lot already, and that you can get through the rest. The fact that you're sitting here right now is proof of that."
Hogan shook his head. "No thanks to me, that's for sure," he said. "I can't talk about this any more," he said abruptly. "I need to check on Newkirk." Hogan pulled himself up from the chair, again with unhidden difficulty that he didn't let slow him down. "He's the one who made sure I got here today, by trekking around in the snow looking for me when I took off, physically and mentally. You're wasting your time trying to sort this out. Thanks all the same." A sharp pain near his temple pulled Hogan up short, and he gripped the back of the wheelchair and hissed through his teeth. "Let me go back to my room," he said. "I'm tired." And he sank down into the chair, emotionless, as though waiting for the orderly to bring him back to wanted isolation as Newkirk slept on. He could look after his friend, as he had always done during the war, and forget all over again… if he was lucky.
Wheeler stood and took hold of the wheelchair's handles. "That's fine, Robert. You go do what you have to do, and we'll talk another time." He pushed the chair into the outer office and asked his clerk to arrange for Hogan to get back to his room.
Major Wheeler picked up his phone after settling behind his desk and started dialing. Once he got past the various desk jockeys at the Pentagon, he was finally able to talk with General Walters. "General? Major Wheeler, staff psychiatrist over at Walter Reed. I understand, sir, that you've asked to be kept in the loop concerning General Hogan's case." A pause while Walters spoke. "I've got a problem, sir. They sent over the General's personnel records, but there's a huge chunk of them missing: everything from July 1942 through to the end of the war…. Classified?" Great. "Look, sir, I can't do my job and take care of Hogan without knowing what happened to him during that time…. Thank you, General Walters. I appreciate your help with this."
Wheeler hung up the phone and sighed. Classified records and a patient who's not ready to talk. This is going to be a tough one, Vince. Shaking his head, Wheeler pulled out a notebook and started writing up his notes from his first meeting with Robert Hogan. The first of many, Robert…and the sooner we can get through your barriers, the better off you'll be.
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Hogan nodded weary thanks to the orderly and watched as the young man closed the door. Shuffling to Newkirk's bedside, he watched the rising and falling of the Englishman's chest, trying to satisfy himself that the doctor's words had been correct and his friend would recover well. He had seen too much of pneumonia in Germany—the cold winters, the lack of adequate heat and blankets and supplies. Too many fine young men had succumbed and went to an early grave.
Medicine is different now, Hogan reminded himself. He looked closely at Newkirk's face, trying to take in everything that had happened in the last couple of days, and trying to figure out what he had ever done to deserve the unequalled loyalty of the man before him. Thank you, my friend, Hogan thought.
Hogan wanted to sit by the bed as he knew Newkirk had done for him, but his body was aching and he longed for rest. I hope you're having pleasant dreams, he thought fleetingly as he turned away from his friend. Hogan lifted himself gingerly back into bed, sinking wearily into the mattress and the pillows. His chest hurt. I must be due for pain relief soon, Hogan realized, as his arm and side throbbed in time with his head. Normally determined to avoid dependence on any medication, this time Hogan was ready for it—if it brought on oblivion, and a respite from his memories, he would take as much as they would offer.
