Much respect to all of those who have served...including my son who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Nightmares Are Dreams of the Soul

"I'm glad you decided to come back to see me," Dr. Charles said.

"Yeah," Jay said shifting in his seat, his eyes focusing on something the doctor was unable to see.

"Did something happen that made you call me?"

"Yes and no."

"Well, that's something that sounds like it's worth diving into."

"You remember that after Liam pulled his undercover stunt, I started having this dream." Jay began, inhaling deeply.

"The one you had mentioned where Liam is shot because you had forgotten to get him childcare?"

"Yeah. It always feels so real."

"Do you still wake up all sweaty and unsure if he's okay?"

"Sometimes. Every time," Jay admitted. "But I'm having another dream, and it's just as awful. It happened after there was an incident while I was undercover."

"Well then, let's talk about it. What happened while you were undercover?"

Jay filled him in about the afternoon in the park where he saw Liam and Mandy and a crisis was adverted only due to Liam's quick thinking.

"Wow, he did do well. Are you afraid that it might embolden him?"

"Maybe. He hasn't said or done anything out of the ordinary since then though. Not really."

"How long has it been?"

"Around a week." Jay said.

"Are you proud of his actions?"

Jay sat for a moment before he answered, a smile creeping up his lips. "Yeah. Actually I am. I mean, he was pretty freaking impressive. Most adults would have panicked, but he didn't even stutter. Acted like he did this all the time. It was as if it came naturally to him."

"But you're still scared he might take on something he shouldn't? And what do you mean by not really?"

"He's been successful twice. He's two for two, that's pretty good for a ten year old and I guess that does make me proud. But I feel like I can't even tell him because, like you said it might embolden him and cause him to take on something else he shouldn't.

"He's acted fine overall, just had some nervous energy, wanted my attention. I mean the parenting guides don't tell you much about this stuff."

"Do you read parenting guides?"

"No. But I highly doubt they would have a chapter covering this particular event."

"But this time he didn't initiate the contact. He saw what was unfolding and knew that he needed to intercede to protect you, protect your cover."

"Yeah, he protected me."

"Is that hard for you?"

Jay sat quietly. "I'm the one that's supposed to protect him."

"Does that mean he can't ever protect you?"

"I guess not."

"Has he protected you in other ways?"

"Sometimes, well, for years I thought he came into my room, my bed, because he was having nightmares."

"But he wasn't?"

"No. I was. I saw a lot of action in Afghanistan and much of it came home with me. I've had counseling and have done better, but the dreams will never be gone."

"And you have nightmares and Liam comes into comfort you?"

"Yes. I'll wake up and he'll be next to me. Sometimes, he'll wake me up. My dad told me—he told me not to enlist. He said it would haunt me."

"But you did enlist and saw some horrific things and they are haunting you."

"Yeah. And now my son. I mean I don't tell him about what happened, about my dreams. But he has to hear me, see me when I'd rather he didn't."

"And that's hard for you."

"Yes. Like I said, I'm supposed to protect him, not the other way around."

"You don't want to appear to be vulnerable. That's understandable. Did your father protect you when you needed it?"

Jay shrugged. "I guess maybe he tried when he told me not to enlist. I didn't think he wanted me to be a cop either, but I found some newspaper articles he had saved that showed he had some pride in what I did."

"I'm sure he was very proud of you, whether he told you or not. But he wasn't always there for you was he?"

"I felt like I couldn't go to him, tell him things, tell him much of anything."

"How come?"

"Because he would tell me it was my own fault. 'How could you not see that coming Jay?' He would say. It always made me feel that I was worthless if I didn't already know everything."

"That must have been hard."

"I dealt with it."

"Wounds can run deep. A parent can pass on a wound to their child, they might not be doing it purposely or even be aware of it, as most of these wounds don't have a face, but it happens and it happens a lot. I think your father passed on a wound that he had to you and you are doing your damndest not to pass it on to Liam."

"He's already lost so much. I just want us to be good. My relationship with my father was never great, my mother died when years ago, my brother and I do okay, but we're both busy in our own lives and my luck with love has never been great."

"But Liam is yours and always there with that unconditional love."

"Yeah. The last thing I want to do is hurt him or allow him to be hurt."

"And you think him taking care of you sometimes allows him to be hurt?"

"I don't think it's his responsibility to take care of me."

"Why not?"

"He's a child."

"He's your child. He loves you. He wants to help you."

"But he shouldn't have to worry about taking care of me."

"He isn't taking care of you, but he wants to help you when he can. A relationship of give and take is better than one of simply taking. Yes, you are the adult and it's important that you bear the brunt of things, but just because he's young doesn't mean he can't contribute. The smaller the family, the more you need each other.

"You extend your hand—no bullshit attached, because you are his father, why can't he do the same when the situation calls for it?"

"Because I worry that I'm failing him."

"You were in Afghanistan. You lost men. Men you believed you failed to protect. Now you are projecting those misconceived notions of failure here at home. Is that what your dream is about? Failing your son?"

"Yes. Since the second undercover issue, the dreams have been relentless. Plus something else happened."

"What? What else happened?"

"He was waiting for me at the district. I was running behind as usual. He was in the hallway when they brought an offender in. He looked at Liam as he passed by him, he looked right at my son, licked his lips and said, 'what a pretty little boy.' The look on that man's face, it was as if Liam was dessert."

"What did you do?"

"Snapped. Lunged at the guy, shoved him, told him to keep moving. Told him he was a sick bastard."

"What did Liam think about it all?"

"I don't think he understood. He later said he was a boy so he wasn't supposed to be pretty. I was glad he didn't get it, grasp what the man was wanting, seeing, when he looked at him. But it scared me. Terrified me."

"Why is that?"

"Because, I know what happens to pretty children. The sex trafficking is an abundant business, not to mention the run of the mill pedophiles. It's such an ugly world."

"And you want to protect Liam, so the exchange brought on more dreams?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me about them."

"Well, it made me remember something when he was a preschooler. The brother of girl I had dated in high school had been kidnapped, abused and murdered by a pedophile, a guy named Lonnie Rodiger. I found Ben's body, I was a patrolman back then. Everyone knew who had done it, but his father alibied him. I had kept in touch with Ben and Allie's parents. And after Liam was born—he was still living with his mother—I found that the case hit me even harder as the anniversary of Ben's death came up, his birthday. I followed Lonnie, harassed him and his father. It nearly cost my career, but it was like I couldn't stop, couldn't let it go. It was like if I did, somehow Liam would pay for me being lax. That one day he would become a victim."

"Wow. That's a pretty heavy responsibility. Whatever happened to Lonnie?"

"He was murdered. His father actually did it. He had repressed every thought that his son could be guilty, but then the evidence was too strong to ignore and he took care of it himself."

"Evidence that perhaps you pointed out?"

"I made him aware, over and over I made him aware."

"Your son was the driving force behind your attempts to take this Lonnie down?"

"If it could happen to a family I knew, then it could happen to my son. And how could I ever explain to him, or live with myself if I just took the easy way out and let someone else handle it."

"Your life has been a difficult twist of the past and the present. Liam intertwining with so much of it. Tell me about the latest dream."

"I still have the one where he is shot in the head. Then there is one where he tells me he is going to run away, but I don't believe him and then he is just gone. I look everywhere, but nobody knows where he went. I look all over the city, but I can't find him. When I try to call him the call won't go through. But there's another one and it's the worst one yet."

"Tell me."

Jay licked his lips and spoke of the dream that had been frequently interrupting his sleep. It seemed so real, so very, very real. He had gone over it and over it in his waking hours, at his desk, driving, eating, trying to sleep. He could feel the cold, feel the scream blossoming in his throat. There were times when he thought he was losing his mind. But perhaps that would be better than losing his son.

He closed his eyes and the dream came to him now as easily as it did when he slept. The air was chilly, puffs of breath hung in the air unsure exactly what to do or where to go. The entire team was huddled in the street, Kevin and Adam doing their best to hold Jay back. Liam had been gone for over two days. He had been down the street at a friends house but never returned home. Jay had been distracted and hadn't realized that the boy was late, but when he checked with the home of the friend, they said he had left an hour before. Jay attempted to track the phone, but it was off. He went up and down the street and called the team in. As the hours turned to days, Jay aged from minutes to years.

Now they had gotten a call about the body of a tender age child in the street of an industrial South Side neighborhood. The description matched Liam or as much of it as they could get. The body had endured quite a bit of trauma. Now as Voight, Burgess and Upton didn't want to believe it, there was no denying the child was Liam. His battered and bruised body lay in the gutter, discarded like trash.

Jay had wanted to see, but the two men were trying to spare him the agony. "He's my son, my son. I need him—I need to see him," Jay had screamed.

"And you will. But not right now Jay. Not like this man." Kevin said.

"How do you know for sure!? I know him the best. Maybe it's not him," Jay yelled trying to push forward pretending to still have hope, but knowing it was fleeting as he saw the faces of his coworkers—knowing the crumpled body was his own flesh and blood, his only child.

"What an awful dream. What happens after that?" Dr. Charles asked.

"I break free and go see the body."

"Is it Liam?"

"Yes," Jay said trying to keep his emotions under control. "I pick him up and start walking with him in my arms."

"Where do you go?"

"I don't know, that's when I wake up."

"So you weren't able to protect him in your dream?"

"No."

"You're a cop. It's your job to protect him, to protect an entire city. Like you did with Lonnie Rodiger. But you might not be successful every time and if you can't protect him how can you do your job effectively? You base who you are on what you do, if you aren't successful, then what does that say about you? If you aren't successful then your father might have been right about you, that maybe you shouldn't have joined the Rangers, the CPD, become a father yourself."

Jay looked up at the doctor. "But I am good at what I do."

"Yes you are. And you know what else you're good at?" Jay just continued to look at him. "You are a good father. Not perfect, because that doesn't exist, but you are doing an amazing job. But you're worried because the world is a rough and cruel place and you can't control it or control Liam, not fully. But because things happen, and some are tragic, doesn't mean that you are a failure. You can't hold the world up on your shoulders. Do you spend too much time at work? Probably. Will that screw up Liam for life? Probably not. Will he get frustrated by it at times? Probably. Will he get over it? More than likely. Will he love you despite your flaws? Most definitely. Just as you love him.

"Do you wake up shaken with this latest dream?"

"Yes. I can feel his weight in my arms as if I'm carrying him."

"What do you do?"

"I go check on him. Then I try to go back to sleep."

"Can you—go back to sleep?"

"Yes, but sometimes it takes a while."

"It is said that a man who has nightmares every night is in pain. I think you are in pain."

"No more than I have ever been." Jay said.

"You brought a lot back with you from Afghanistan, you've told me this before. Did this dream stem from any of that trauma?" Jay inhaled deeply and looked at the far wall. "We've already seen your mind twist different experiences together, and perhaps if we can unwind some of them, that could help separate memories and release some of the pain."

"Actually, yeah." Jay said, exhaling the breath he hadn't been aware he had been holding. "Kids man, war is hard enough anyway, but the kids—they're the innocent ones and they pay for our sins."

"That they do. Sins of the father or fathers."

"That and more."

"Tell me what happened."

"We had been on patrol, it was routine." Jay began. "Typical day, going through the motions. I had been outside of the Humvee, walking beside it, when a colorful piece of cloth caught my eye. We had been sweeping for IED's so I grabbed the guy who had the detector and pointed him in that direction."

"And what did you find?"

"The cloth was a sweater and it was being worn by a child—a little boy. He couldn't have been more than five or six."

"Where was he?"

"On the side of the road, underneath some garbage."

"Was he—"

"Dead? Yes. He had been beaten to hell. There wasn't an inch of him that wasn't bloody or bruised. We all stood there staring, motionless. But then the guys started to walk again, but I couldn't, I couldn't move. I told them that we couldn't leave him there."

"But they disagreed?"

"They said he could be booby trapped."

"Was that common?"

"They would put IED's anywhere we would be vulnerable. His body could have been placed on top of an explosive device, so when he was picked up it would have gone off. I had my guy check the area but didn't pick up any metal, but still—well you just never knew. I pulled the kid's sweater up, to check his belly."

"What for?"

"They would put explosive devices inside people so when you tried to help they would go off. Often times they were alive when it was placed inside."

"Jesus Christ," Dr. Charles whispered.

"He was bruised, but no incision."

"So what did you do?"

"I picked him up and I carried him in my arms for two miles. Nobody had fought for this kid, somebody had treated him like a punching bag like he was meaningless. He had just been abandoned there, left like trash. I had just found out earlier that morning that I had become a father. I just couldn't leave that boy there, he deserved better."

"Just like Liam deserves better? Are you worried about Liam abandoning you?"

"I feel like I've abandoned him."

"By working so much?"

"Yes. The picture he drew, he feels like he's second in my life." He said thinking of that drawing Liam made when he was at the district with Voight.

"Is he?"

"Not really. I think about him all the time. Worry that he's okay. But I have to work. I need the overtime. But he's getting older and he won't care as much if I'm stuck at work."

"And that hurts doesn't it?"

"When I would pick him up when he still lived with his mother, he would run to me full speed. His face was all lit up."

"But it doesn't quite light up like that anymore does it?"

"No. But I'm a full time father now and he's older."

"But it still stings."

"Yeah. I feel like I can do better."

"Then try and do better. Look, it sounds impossible, but often it is the little things. You have to prioritize what little time you have left over each day and week. But you have to make yourself a priority as well. Make time for yourself. You can go out, have a date, stay in, do whatever it is that you need to do. But once in a while, make Liam the priority. Surprise him by picking him up early from school or be spontaneous on a weekend. You'd be surprised by how one

special afternoon can make a big difference, even if you just go out to lunch and walk along the river or the lake. It's those days, those moments that will keep him close, keep him talking to you, keep him trusting that he can go to you when things are rough and when things are great."

"I'll try."

"Jay, you're doing a great job. Parenting, like life is full of ups and downs. Enjoy the ups, deal with the downs and hang on for the ride."

Soundtrack:

Can't Get It Right by Matthew Perryman Jones

This is War by Matthew Raetzel