CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jack Untreigner was one of the foremost experts on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His experience with the affliction went beyond a psychiatrist's usual scope. He was himself a sufferer, or would have been considered one had there been any such thing in 1944. The U.S.S. Silver Starr had gone down with all hands in the midst of the Atlantic, or so everyone had thought, on the seventeenth of January. Two weeks later, a convoy travelling from St. John's to Liverpool had picked up one of her lifeboats. Aboard her were two survivors: an eighteen-year-old enlisted man and the ship's surgeon, both dehydrated and half-dead of exposure. Ten men had escaped aboard her, only to succumb one by one to the elements. The little sailor boy had died in the sickbay of the Canadian battleship. The surgeon had survived.
It had taken Jack a year to talk about it. Three years before he could bear to practice again. Even now he still had nightmares about it. Watching his men die one by one, and he couldn't do a damned thing for them. He still woke up in the middle of the night, not in his bed next to his Gertrude, but in that miserable little coracle in the midst of the endless ocean, surrounded by death and darkness.
He knew, to a degree, what the man in front of him was grappling with.
Calavicci sat on the edge of the sofa, his bare feet planted next to each other and his knees pressed together. He had a hospital blanket wrapped tightly around his body, cocooning him and hiding his smock. His eyes were fixed studiously on a patch of carpet near the desk.
"Now," Jack began. "You had a dream."
"Have to dream to get a decent night's sleep. Mind doesn't rest otherwise." The gravely voice was low and sullen. Clearly cooperation was not high on Calavicci's list of priorities.
"That's very true. This was a nightmare, though, wasn't it?"
"I'm not crazy," the former POW—former MIA, Untreigner corrected himself, glancing at the chart in his hand—muttered.
"No, you aren't crazy, and the fact that you can have nightmares about what happened in Vietnam bears that out," Jack said.
Calavicci looked up, surprise momentarily lowering the guard in his dark eyes. "It does?"
"Of course. Any man who went through what you have and didn't have the occasional nightmare; him I'd call crazy." The psychiatrist leaned surreptitiously forward, looking for a reaction.
The captain muttered something unintelligible.
"I didn't hear that," Jack said.
"Nothing."
"Oh." He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back. "I thought maybe you said that they weren't occasional at all."
"They're occasional," Calavicci said, too quickly. "They're definitely occasional. Just… not occasional enough, you know?"
"I see. They happen more often than you would like. What sets them off?"
He had gone too far too fast. Jack could see the battlements rising out of the earth, surrounding the man's true feelings, his thoughts, and the darkness he was fighting. Locking him in with his own worst enemy. "They're dreams," mumbled Calavicci. "Who knows?"
"Well, for instance, tonight's," Jack said, keeping his voice conversational. "What was it about?"
The look he received would have incinerated silicone. "That's not important."
"Was it a battle?" Jack asked, not so easily swayed. "You've seen a lot of action."
"No."
"You haven't?"
"No, I have," the former pilot allowed. "I mean it wasn't a battle."
"Oh. A death?"
"Hell, no!"
Jack tried again. "Your capture?"
This time it was scarcely a whisper. "No."
"An interrogation session." It wasn't a question.
Calavicci shivered and pulled the blanket more tightly around his body. "That's… a polite way of putting it," he said flatly.
Untreigner regarded the sad, shrunken figure. What horror had he relived tonight? What beating? What atrocities was this man remembering? He had heard tales from others, less guarded, less wounded than Calavicci, that had chilled his blood. It was difficult to maintain objectivity at times like this.
"It can be stressful being away from home," Jack said, trying to get the message across that this episode wasn't something the man should be ashamed of. In his experience people like Calavicci would never see it that way, but you had to try. "Sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, away from your wife, your usual nightly routine disrupted. Perhaps there was some important part of your evening ritual you couldn't do? Maybe that helped bring on the dream?"
The glance Calavicci gave him told him that this was exactly what had happened. That the man looked away again, his pallid cheeks tingeing faintly with shame, told him it was something less than respectable. Something the man didn't want to admit to.
"Perhaps it's just the hospital itself," Untreigner said, offering him an out. "Personally, I've never had a decent night's sleep in a hospital since the day I was born."
"Tell me about it," Calavicci said, his voice gaining some solidity as he tried to wisecrack. "No wine, no women. Well, no women who aren't packing hypodermic needles and rhinoceros sedatives!"
"Was that what you missed?" Jack asked, before he could help himself. "Do you usually take a glass of wine before bed?"
"No!" Calavicci snapped, fire crackling in his eyes. He composed himself and rocked a little. "I think I know why I dreamed about… what I did," he mumbled.
The dodging tactic wasn't lost on Jack, but it was executed masterfully. The patient had successfully diverted the conversation away from a subject he didn't want to broach by switching to one that was still distasteful but evidently less so. A subject, in addition, that no shrink could resist.
"Is that so?" Jack said.
"Yeah!" There was anger in the brown eyes now, building as he spoke and filtering into his voice. "Being stuck here, that's what did it! All my stuff taken away, you sadistic bastards poking and pricking and swabbing, sticking things down my throat and in my ears and—and other places where stuff doesn't belong! I—" He froze, clearly horrified at admitting what he had.
"I see," Untreigner said. In fact, he wasn't certain that he did, but part of being a good psychiatrist was having the right words at the right moment. "It isn't anything physical. It's the feeling of having no control. The idea of letting go and allowing someone else to take charge."
"I… yeah! Yeah, that's it, exactly. You're a genius, Doc. You hit it on the nose," Calavicci said rapidly. "Can I go back to bed now?"
"Not just yet. Is there anything that I can do to help you regain some sense of control?"
"Give me back my clothes, my wallet and my car keys."
Untreigner smiled. "I can't do that," he said. Vice Admiral Featherstone had issued very specific orders. While most of the veterans were cooperative, others had a way of vanishing when least expected. Calavicci scowled ferociously.
"Can I at least have some jockey shorts?" he asked. "I mean, it's not that I'm not proud of what I've got, but it gets a bit breezy, you know."
Humor. They had come full circle. The walls were back up. The window of opportunity that came with the vulnerability that followed in the wake of the dreams was lost. There would be no earth-shattering breakthrough tonight. In all likelihood, there would never be one. He just hoped the iron barrier that Calavicci was building was strong enough to weather the storm.
"I'll see what I can do," Jack promised.
MWMWMWMWMWWMMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMMWMWMAl sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his knees as if they had the power to take off without him. The nurse had taken him to the Quartermaster's, where he had been issued half-a-dozen pairs of regulation white boxers, and then brought him here. It was a private room with a large window. He wouldn't be bunking with the other men anymore.
He was glad. He couldn't go back there and face them, not after what they had witnessed.
"You don't do things by halves, do you, Calavicci?" he muttered. "Not enough to have your silly little nightmares: you have to wake up the whole damned ward."
He remembered enough of the awakening to remember that.
He was still shaking in the wake of the nightmare. Yes, it was very, very good that they'd moved him here. Going back amongst those men would have been almost as bad as being returned to the hootch after that session in '72 had been. Bobby and the guys had done what they could for him: drawn the matchsticks carefully from his bleeding ears, eased the tubing out of his nose. They had tried to minister to his wrists, still locked behind his back so that they couldn't set his shoulders. As best they could without water or fresh cloths they had cleaned him up. But they couldn't expunge the memory. They couldn't exorcise the shame. Dim memories of humiliation so great that he couldn't even rouse himself to beg for death assailed him, and the trembling worsened.
He couldn't go back to sleep. He couldn't. If he did, if he went to bed without a little liquid insurance, Al knew he'd be back there in a heartbeat. He couldn't face that.
Yet he was exhausted. Any renewal the scant hours of unconsciousness preceding the night terror had brought was cancelled by the pervasive weariness possessing him now. His very teeth ached with it. He knew he could try to fight it, but eventually his harrowed body would win out and he would slip under. Out of the present and straight back to Vietnam.
The only thing to do was to ring for a sedative. They'd probably give it to him. They always did, after the nightmares, but the next day you had to justify yourself to the shrinks. They'd grill you for hours, trying to find out whether this happened at home a lot, whether you had a habit you were feeding off the streets. Whether, after all, you weren't quite the sane, stable paragon of Naval virtue and capability that everyone thought you were. They were always trying to trick you, to trap you. To catch you in a moment of weakness so that they could chuck you out the door.
The thought occurred to Al, but only briefly, that that was a very paranoid way of looking at it. He scrubbed his face with quivering hands. God, could he ever use a nice cold glass of whiskey. Of course, that was out of the question.
Or was it?
Sure, it was a hospital, but there had to be some spirits around here somewhere. Alcohol was the antidote for something, wasn't it? Methanol poisoning?
Al got to his feet and moved unsteadily to the door. His legs wouldn't obey him properly, and his knees shook, but he kept going. He reached the door and slipped out into the corridor. It was deserted. He crept towards the end of the hallway, each step growing more confident. There had to be somewhere he could go for a drink. They probably had potable liquor in the dispensary in the basement, but it would be locked up. He could only imagine how well it would go over with the brass if he was caught burgling the Balboa Naval Hospital pharmacy.
The kitchen, he realized triumphantly. Sure, they served up slop for the patients, but the staff was fed here too, and you could bet they didn't give the brain surgeons rubber meat and prehistoric vegetables. There had to be some burgundy or something for cooking.
He knew the hospital better than most patients would. He had spent twenty months in and out of this place after repatriation. And Beth had worked here… Beth…
Al shook his head as if he could physically obliterate her memory. He reached the elevators, and then realized that that was a bad move. He'd be trapped, unable to hide if some nurse wanted to use the lift. This floor was quiet, but there were others that never stopped, not for night or for any other force. He turned towards the stairs.
They flew beneath his bare feet as he flitted down, a ghost in a hospital smock. Nine floors vanished behind him and he emerged on the service floor. It took him a minute to orient himself, trying to remember the long-gone days of coming to pick up his beautiful wife. Beth, Beth… but he couldn't think about her. He'd been through enough tonight without dreaming about Beth.
Eventually the mental maps came back, and he moved silently through the hallways, past the laundry which even at this time of night was a hive of activity. The kitchen was easy enough to enter: it had swinging doors that apparently were never locked. Then came the monumental task of searching the room. He did so methodically, going through cupboard after cupboard carefully and thoroughly. Eventually, he had to admit defeat. There was nothing. Maybe he could nab some rubbing alcohol or something.
He moved to close the last cupboard, and a yellow label caught his eye. He snatched up the bottle. It was a half-gallon of pure vanilla extract, almost full. Al clutched it fondly. Vanilla extract was at least thirty-five percent alcohol. Of course, had an aftertaste like purgatorial mouthwash, but that was a small price to pay for a decent night's sleep. There were plastic water jugs on the other side of the room, and he emptied half the bottle into one. Then he replaced it carefully, lifted his pitcher and started towards the door. His hands were shaking so that he was in very real danger of spilling. He stopped and took a long draught of the dark fluid. It burned its way down his throat, tasting vaguely of bourbon. He let out a sigh of contentment. This was high-grade stuff: had to be at least eighty proof. It would get him through the night. If he rationed himself, it would probably last the whole stay in this miserable hospital.
The return journey was not without its tense moments. Al had to duck off the stairwell hastily, hiding on the fourth floor while two night-nurses headed downstairs for their coffee break. Also, mounting eight flights was a much more onerous task than descending them, and by the time he made it back to his floor his legs ached as if he had run a marathon. He went back to his room, concealed his precious cargo beneath the bed, and then took his own empty pitcher up the hall. A fistful of ice in a plastic hospital cup, vanilla extract and two packets of Sweet 'N Low he had swiped from the nurses' lounge, and he actually had a fairly decent cocktail. He polished it off and curled up under the blankets. Soon he was asleep.
He did not dream again that night.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM
Tuesday he was in for more x-rays, and then had to do time with the physical therapists, who wanted to gauge the dexterity of his other joints. Then more blood tests and a sperm count, and a two-hour meeting with a career counsellor who wanted to hear all about Starbright. Al actually enjoyed that one. He loved to boast about his girls, and Starbright was definitely his girl. Of course, he couldn't go into specifics, but raving about the cover operation alone made him happy. That evening, protected by his vanilla, he didn't dream at all.
Wednesday was Shrink Day. Interrogation by the sex therapist, ninety minutes in the clutches of a family counsellor, the never-ending education about late-onset PTSD. Al tuned that one out. He didn't have late-onset PTSD. His stress disorder had been with him right from the get-go, but it wasn't something they could help with. They didn't need to know. There were a lot of things he'd rather die than tell anyone. Much, much rather die. He'd rather endure them again than have anybody know.
Thursday he should have been discharged, but instead he was sent to pre-op for his shoulder. The German War Machine had continued to roll over Calavicci, and they weren't going to delay fixing the joint. If they did, Doctor Nyugen quipped, he would only do more damage to it!
Al awoke from the anesthesia, groggy, disoriented and not a little stoned. There was a smiling nurse above him, and he had a dim recollection of saying something very stupid. She laughed amicably and adjusted his blankets. Soon after that he slipped back under.
It was only when he awoke the next morning with the world still bleary around him that he realized Sharon would've expected him last night, and he was supposed to be at Starbright today.
But he was too tired to do anything about it now, so he let his eyes close again.