“Did you talk to Ryan at all during this time?” Zarina asked. “He’d gone through the same thing. Was he having problems dealing with it, too?”
“Yeah, but most people probably didn’t notice it. I knew him well enough to recognize he was hurting, too, just in a different way.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Before what happened in Kunduz, Ryan and I were like brothers. But after that, we both changed. It was like there was this big pink elephant in the room, but both of us acted like we didn’t see it. I pulled away from everyone, Ryan included.” Tanner sighed. “As for Ryan, he bought a big motorcycle and started street racing and staying out in the clubs around Seattle until the early morning hours, stumbling in hungover just in time for morning physical fitness training. It wasn’t long after that we stopped talking to each other altogether. It was like we woke up one morning and realized we didn’t know each other anymore. I didn’t even tell him when I made the decision to walk away from the Rangers.”
“Didn’t anyone in your unit notice what was happening?” Zarina asked, frustration clear in her voice.
He shrugged. “Sure they noticed. The army really tries, but as a general rule, soldiers tend to stay out of one another’s heads. If you show up to work on time and do your job, the thoughts rolling around in your bean are your own business. But I had to talk to a few docs in order to get out-processed, and they figured out I’d had my brain bucket rattled a few times. That’s where the VA disability came from. I didn’t want to take it, but it’s pretty standard in the military now. Get blown up a time or two, get a few bucks from the Veterans Administration. I’m not even sure if there’s a way within the VA bureaucracy to give it back.”
Zarina scowled. “That’s crazy! Why the hell wouldn’t you want to take the money? Traumatic head injury is serious, and it’s a common side effect of concussive blasts.”
Tanner couldn’t refute that. Zarina was a doctor, so she was probably right. But for him, getting money simply because you’d been knocked unconscious a few times didn’t feel right. Not when there were soldiers out there coming home with body parts missing. His problems were nothing compared with that.
“Regardless,” he said. “After I filled out a few forms and watched a couple of videos about dealing with stress, I was done with the army, and they were done with me.”
That answer didn’t seem to make Zarina very happy if the look on her face was any indication, but she let it go. “Okay, so you got out of the army and went back to see your family?”
“Yeah. I thought spending time with them would fix everything.” He winced at how incredibly stupid and naive that sounded. “My family had always been close, so I assumed being with them was what I needed to get me out of the fog I was in after getting out of the army.”
“But it wasn’t?”
He shook his head. “It was like I didn’t know how to fit into their world anymore. They wanted to hear stories about what I’d seen and done, but I wanted to forget it all. They tried to help, but they couldn’t understand the mood swings, the anxiety, the strange sleep patterns, the hypervigilance, the hours I spent staring up at the ceiling. Hell, I didn’t understand it, either, but it was tougher on them. I was someone wearing the face of the man they knew as their son, their brother, their friend, but I wasn’t the person they’d known all their lives. It scared the hell out of them.”
Zarina was quiet for a moment. “Did you try to get professional help?”
“Sure. I wasn’t stupid. I knew there was something wrong with me. I tried to get an appointment to talk to someone at the VA in Seattle, but the waiting list was insane. There are way too many vets needing help and way too few people helping them.” He shrugged. “I made the appointment even though part of me knew I’d never show up. I felt like I was a car flying down the interstate at a hundred miles an hour with one lug holding each tire on. I knew it was only a matter of time until a wheel fell off and I crashed and burned. I was right.”
“What happened?” Zarina asked in a hesitant voice, as if she really didn’t want to know.
Tanner took a deep breath, shame and embarrassment nearly overwhelming him. “Dad came downstairs one morning and found me sitting at the kitchen table where I’d been the night before when he and Mom went to bed. I was staring out the window at the sun coming up. He said good morning, then started to make coffee like he always did. When I just kept sitting there without saying anything, he figured out pretty damn quick something wasn’t right with me.”
Tanner raked his hand through his long hair, wishing he didn’t have to tell Zarina about what happened next, but he needed to.
“He wanted to know what the hell was wrong. I know Dad meant well, but I couldn’t explain the things I was feeling. I don’t know what happened. One second, we were shouting at each other, and the next, my hands were around his throat, and I had him pinned against the wall.”
Tanner didn’t look at Zarina, afraid to see the horror in her eyes. But when he risked a glance in her direction,
