McLean Hospital

McLean, VA

Intensive Care Unit

February 4th, 2018

2300R

Alexander POV

Quiet breaths and steady beeping were the only sounds in the room as I stared at my unconscious daughter, fear gripping me. She was still alive despite the severe loss of blood and 0.25% blood alcohol content, but that didn't mean she was conscious just yet. Scratch that, she was conscious earlier, but for only a few seconds to throw up before passing out again. The medical staff were thankfully gracious about being absolutely covered in vomit.

And now, Erica was under suicide watch. Becky the ER nurse—as well as most of the med staff I interacted with—were positive that Erica's injuries were self-inflicted, and I had to agree... unfortunately based on personal experience.

Not mine, per se, but once when I found a troubled young CIA officer in a similar condition (minus the alcohol) during a deployment in the Horn of Africa. She would've died had it not been for the SEAL that revived her and subsequently put her on a flight to Ramstein with other severely injured/ill personnel. Last I heard, she'd resigned from the Agency and was living quietly in Wisconsin with her husband and two kids.

Erica and the ex-officer had two things in common: the method of self-harm and the reason, with the reason being loss. I'd later found out that the ex-officer lost her mother—her only family—prior to the deployment. She didn't seek out any sort of help and never brought it up, resulting in what I can only assume was a bottling up of emotions that ended in slashing her own wrists.

Why didn't I figure it out? I knew she was hurting, but... to go this far? To commit such an act? I should've seen it... so why didn't I?

Erica began stirring with a groan, snapping me out of my thoughts. I hovered over her as she slowly opened her glassy, unfocused eyes that slowly searched the room before landing on me.

"D-Dad?" she choked out in a weak whisper that made my heart clench.

"Yeah, it's me," I quietly replied, caressing her face with the softest touch I could manage. "It's me, kiddo. I'm here."

"Wh-where am I?"

"Hospital. ICU."

"B-but... I was..."

"In your apartment, I know. Chip and Jawa came to visit you, found you unconscious, and drove you here. Did some crazy shit to keep you alive and get through traffic, even getting a police escort."

At that last bit, she fell silent as her eyelids drooped and her eyes turned away. I tried coaxing out a response a few times, but to no avail. Unsure of what to do, I called for Lori the ICU nurse. The woman came in and did a quick check of vitals, attempting to ask Erica about how she was feeling. Like me, Lori received no reply, but the experienced nurse took it in stride, showing extraordinary patience and grace as she continued her work. Once she was all finished, she bade us farewell—but not before quickly whispering some words to me:

"Best thing you can do is just listen patiently."

I didn't want to listen. The officer within me wanted to dissect the situation, extract every possible piece of information. I had to know. What was I missing? Why would she do this? What was—

No, wait. Stop. This is your daughter, not a prisoner. And this is her healing, not some operation.

It was a delicate situation that had to be handled with the utmost care, and it wasn't just because she was under suicide watch. It's because—if I wasn't mistaken—what caused her fracturing was a very certain event. But this wasn't the time to play Twenty Questions... I had to let her divulge at her own pace.

Sighing in resignation, I sat back in my chair and scooted closer before gently taking her cool, clammy hand in mine. She tensed up at the contact before relaxing, not squeezing back but not pulling away either.

"I won't leave you. Not this time," I said. "Please... tell me what I can do. How I can help you. I want to help you, just... please, tell me."

She still didn't look at me. Nor did she speak. Remembering Lori's words, I waited. Once again, only breaths and beeps filled the air as we sat in silence. Erica still hadn't moved her hand away from mine. Pushing down my impatience, I waited, but was unable to keep my mind from wandering. I was fairly certain what the key to the whole mess was, but I didn't want to risk an error. Erica needed to tell me of her own accord, then we could go from there.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. At twenty-three, she spoke.

"I couldn't get him out of my head," she whispered, still not looking at me.

"Who?"

"You know who."

"I don't."

"You're fucking CIA. It's your job to know shit."

Combative... sounding like her old self to a degree... maybe this is good?

"Enlighten me, Erica," I urged, hoping I could coax her into getting it off her chest at the minimum.

"Steel Tiger. Comms go dark. Thirteen people dead. And one of them? Ben goddamn Ripley," she grumbled, still not looking at me. "And what did I do? I built up feelings. A relationship. And look where it landed me."

"Erica—"

"Dad, I lost my shit."

"Erica, you don't lose your shit."

"Don't I?" she hissed in frustration, finally turning to look at me. "First I catch feelings for the shithead known as Hallal, then he goes Benedict Arnold. I back away and get detached only for Ben to invade my life, refusing to leave me alone. Keeping coming to me for advice because he didn't know shit and wanted help, and wanted to be a friend. For the most part, laid his cards on the table for me to see. And what did I do? Turn him into bait, manipulate him, lie to him, like... like a damn puppet."

I did not see that coming. I never really touched on the whole Ben/Erica deal—never going too far beyond teasing remarks and self-contained theories (shared with Catherine at most)—but this was the only time apart from that Christmas two years ago when Erica actually poured her heart out regarding the manner. And just like before, the principal emotion was regret with a dash of frustration and heartbreak.

"Now, every time I close my eyes, all I can see is his dead body. At night, I imagine what those bastards did to him. Even when it's silent, I keep hearing his voice: the plan we had with Zoe to get dinner after the op, the falling-out, and all the words prior... and some of it was anger. Anger that I never saw or felt from him, but from Zoe, Mike, Chip, and Jawa. How I treated his heart like a plaything. How I used him. How I fucked him over with my fear and insecurity."

That bit surprised me. I knew about the falling-out between Erica and her peers, but it shocked me to hear just how harsh they were. Not that they were necessarily wrong—they probably understood the situation better than I did—but you'd have to be a cold bastard to not feel anything from those words.

"I just wanted to stop hearing him. Stop seeing him. I just wanted the voices to stop! The images to leave my mind! Him to get out of my goddamn head! So yeah, I lost my shit! WHAT THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO?!" she raged, tears leaking from her eyes as she stared me down with heavy breaths. But I had no reply. And, quite frankly, I was a little afraid to speak—the wrong thing could make matters worse, and since nothing I thought of sounded right, there was 100% chance that anything I said would just worsen the situation.

Why does this have to be so complicated?

Cyrus POV

I had never been so happy to be at the hospital before. After nearly an hour of enduring Catherine's incessant questioning and rambling, we'd arrived at McLean Hospital, where I escorted my hyperactive daughter-in-law to Erica's room. Visiting hours were closed, yes, but due to her being under serious mental duress, an exception was made to ensure that someone was keeping an eye on her at all times—the hospital was having an unusually high number of patients.

Alex and Catherine shared a brief hug before the latter made a beeline for their daughter, immediately trying to understand the situation while I pulled my son out of the room. He somehow seemed even more drained than in the past few weeks, like he'd been to hell and back.

"Uh, you okay, son?" I asked.

"I don't know how to help her, Dad," Alex shakily replied. "I-I don't know what to do."

"Did she say anything?"

"All she could see or hear was Ben and she wanted it to stop."

"Hell... okay, maybe we should start asking around."

After a brief chat with the nurse—Lori, I think—we sought out a psychiatrist that was attached to the ICU (the hospital didn't have its own psychiatric ward). We had a sit-down and discussed Erica at length, with Alex taking the lead despite his own emotional exhaustion. It went on for around an hour as the three of us sipped coffee and went back and forth on the situation. But at the end of it, the psychiatrist gave a very different response from what I was expecting.

"Okay, I'm going to refer you to someone."

"Wait, what? Isn't this your area of expertise?" I asked.

"Yes and no. See, I think the better idea is to talk to a psychologist first, 'cause they're all about getting inside the patient's head, for the lack of a better phrase. I focus on the biological factors surrounding it more so than any sort of counseling and prescribe medication. This case might require more counseling than medication. Not that a psychiatrist won't get involved, but you might wanna talk to Rhonda first. She's a good psychologist. Doesn't mean a psychiatrist won't get involved, but it's best not to jump to drugs first."

He has a point. Don't think psych meds are as addictive as something like painkillers, but that doesn't mean you can't be careful.

"Okay, so speak to Dr. Rhonda Mancini and let her take it from there?" Alex clarified, looking at the slip of paper the psychiatrist gave him.

"Yep."

We discussed the situation for a little while longer before the psychiatrist was called away to assist with a new patient, leaving Alex and I to digest the information. I felt better after finally having a game plan, but Alex—if anything—looked even worse.

"Dad, what if—"

"One step at a time, Alex. One step at a time," I cut him off, not wanting him to go down the rabbit hole of what-ifs. "You need to sleep now."

"I'm fine."

"Bullshit."

"Dad—"

"You ain't savin' shit if you're messed up, Alex," I muttered. "You've done a lot. Catherine's here, and it'll be good for her and Erica to spend some time together. I'll drive you."

"... okay, Dad," he sighed in resignation before slowly walking back to Erica's room. "I'll update Cath and meet you at the car."

I watched my son plod off, trying to keep myself under control as I staved off bad memories. My mother died in childbirth. My father survived war to die in a car accident. My wife was murdered by a mugger. Alex and Erica had nearly died on operations. And now this... our family schtick seemed to be losing the ones we loved. It was a goddamn curse. Sure, we were defending America in the shadows, but... but we couldn't have any happiness of our own.

It reminded me of an exchange I'd had with one of my platoon sergeants in 'Nam, not long after we'd beaten back a Viet Cong assault.

"Y'know, I wouldn't mind those hippies spittin' in my face right now," I joked as we hunkered down for warmth in the rain. "Even if that's home, still beats this fuckin' jungle."

"Home?" my platoon sergeant mirthlessly laughed as he looked at me. The grizzled gunnery sergeant had been to Korea and had been in more firefights than I had birthdays. "You serious, Hale? Lemme tell you somethin' right now, boy: we ain't goin' home."

"Whaddaya mean, Gunny? We're gonna get killed?"

"Didn't say that. We ain't goin' home. We can't. Men like us gotta cross a very specific line... one we can't backtrack. If we're lucky, we do what needs to be done and die."

I clenched my M14 as I digested his words, trying to understand what he meant. We weren't going home... but we weren't dying?

"I... I don't understand, Gunny."

"You'll see soon enough, son," he grunted somberly as he took a drag from his cigarette. "At the end of the day, you're gonna be just like me: wantin' peace. Not like those goddamn hippies, but in another way... akin to freedom or somethin' like that. You're gonna fight for it, but you can't have it. It's why we can't go home. Not now... not ever."

Ever since that day, I thought about my platoon sergeant's words. I always thought it was just the typical pessimistic old man speech—even after becoming a pessimistic old man myself. But now, as I really thought about it with present context, I finally had an idea of what he meant: those who end up fighting wars, whether on the battlefield or in the shadows, are hard-pressed to return to normalcy even after the bullets stop flying. And sometimes, it was worse being the survivor when others perished.

Even to this day, I sometimes thought I was still in the jungle, or the desert, or whatever godforsaken hellhole I had to work in. I thought about the men that came home in boxes and the ones that came home before putting themselves in boxes. Strange as it sounds, I envied them: they found peace. Perhaps in not the most desirable way, but they'd found it.

No, not peace... peace ain't in man's DNA. It's freedom... freedom from the memories... from the pain.

Just like what Erica wanted.

Apologies for the short update. Couldn't really squeeze anything else out of my brain and wanted to avoid adding unnecessary fluff. I'll try for more substance next time.

Mental health is becoming a bit of a theme, I know. And psychiatrists prescribe medication while psychologists focus on counseling (all my information on the two fields is based on Internet searches).

The thing about Cyrus still being in the jungle was inspired by Jarhead and his platoon sergeant's speech was inspired by Spec Ops: The Line, two pieces of media that stuck with me—not because I'm some cringy edgelord (pretty sure I'm not)—but even my keyboard warrior ass could make some sense of the messages woven into them. And they felt appropriate in the context of this story, which is currently about the war in the mind.

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to leave your feedback. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Until next time,

- ADF-2