I sighed and walked to the nurses’ station. “Hi, we would like to turn the ketamine off now.”
Being put on ketamine was a rite of passage at Walter Reed. Everyone had a funny story about the dreams and visions induced by the drug. Some people saw things like armored knights standing in the corner of the room, or they thought some of the hospital staff looked like celebrities. Josh, however, went into hysterics, much like he did when he got his tonsils out as a child. His regular narcotics were already causing extreme paranoia. Adding a horse tranquilizer to paranoia was a recipe for putting his stress into overdrive. The ketamine was replaced with oxycodone. The hallucinations stopped, but the laundry list of needs did not. I went to the bathroom and thought, How long is it going to be like this? God gave me a touch of hope as Josh’s mind sobered when he was off the ketamine.
With a slightly clearer mind, he began to open up about what happened on his deployment.
CHAPTER FOURDEPLOYMENT POINT OF VIEW
That’s why we are not discouraged. No, even if outwardly we are wearing out, inwardly we are being renewed each and every day. This light, temporary nature of our suffering is producing for us an everlasting weight of glory, far beyond any comparison, because we do not look for things that can be seen but for things that cannot be seen. For things that can be seen are temporary, but things that cannot be seen are eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:16–18 ISV
JOSH
When I left for my first deployment with the 1-23 Infantry Battalion, I remember walking away from Paige knowing I would never be the same. The next time she saw me I could be injured, mentally messed up, or in a box. She would be living in a place she barely knew… without me. She’d already given up everything for me, and now I was leaving her, never to return the same man. We were headed into real danger. A place where the Taliban ruled. When I joined the Army, I knew I would serve in the War on Terror in some capacity. I prayed that this would be one of many deployments in my Army career. But while I was packing up every bit of gear that I owned, I just thought I would feel more like charging into the fight. Instead, I was overwhelmed with facing an unwavering enemy on foreign soil. I shuddered at everything I might lose.
The day I deployed you could almost see the anxiety swirling around our tiny apartment. The raw, overwhelming fear seemed to be seeping through the walls in our living room. I had spent all day stressing, packing, and driving back and forth to the base to make sure I had all the required items. I tried to keep my face calm, but then my mind flashed to the future, and I could feel a sudden shortness of breath. I would pause just long enough to not be noticed to look at Paige. I could sense Paige was trying to hold back her own emotions, and I knew she wanted to help me, but conflicted looks kept crossing her face. My mind would go into this warped space and think, This may be the last time you ever see her. If I could keep packing and moving and running up and down the stairs, then she wouldn’t see the fear. However, the tension was building every time I looked at a clock. Time was the dark shadow in the room, consuming more and more as the daylight disappeared. We both could feel it. When we got down to the last hour, we couldn’t look at each other. I began loading things into the truck as Paige checked the apartment again and again looking for anything I missed. We went up the steps for the thousandth time and did one last sweep of our home. A shrug from Paige translated as “I think we got everything,” and I just started crying. We did have everything. There was nothing else to pack. There were no other forms of distraction. It was time to leave. For real. Paige didn’t ask me what was wrong or even come over to console me. These tears weren’t about missing each other or being apart. It was pure heart-melting fear. I was never going to be ready. I was just going to have to do it scared. Paige saw my fear and just let me experience it. She didn’t pep-talk me into believing I was ready or, worse, downplay the danger I was going into. She just invited me to sit next to her on the couch and share the tears with me. After a couple of minutes, she said, “Let’s just make a promise to each other. Let’s promise to be positive for each other no matter what. We are both really afraid now, but after tonight, we have to focus on the positive.” I agreed, not really sure if I could actually do it.
Time was our enemy but the Army’s best friend. And I was a slave to it down to the second. We had to leave now. “You ready to go?” I asked, and Paige nodded, the eye contact almost killing me. Then, I looked at Cooper, our little four-month-old Cocker Spaniel, and said “Bye, buddy.” Keep your mom safe. She’ll need you.
The usual twenty-minute drive to Fort Lewis seemed to go by in about ten seconds. Paige drove up to the drop-off point and helped me unload. I checked in with my leadership at our battalion’s building much like I would on a normal day at work. Nothing about this night felt normal. The eye contact thing was apparently contagious. There was an unspoken code of conduct: words, energy, and emotion had to be saved for our families. Nothing would be wasted on niceties or small talk with
