However, when it was just the two of us, his emotions were unpredictable. We were circling back to embarrassing public outbursts and irritation over random things, but this time it wasn’t because drugs were messing with his head. His thoughts about his ever-diminishing platoon played on repeat in his mind, and his feelings about it could be triggered by anything. After an exhausting day in physical therapy, we went to the mailroom and picked up several packages. On our way to his room, the seat belt on Josh’s wheelchair fell below the seat and was banging against the spokes in his wheels. In a panicky voice, he asked if we could please stop and fix it. My hands were full, and I was trying to push his wheelchair, so I said we could fix it when we got back to the room. I could see him wringing his hands and sweat forming on his forehead. I pushed him inside and put all my things down to help him with the seat belt. Before I could turn around, he had leapt out of his chair onto the floor and was ripping the cushion out of the wheelchair. I asked him to calm down and let me help him, but he wouldn’t even slow down. Violently untangling and tightening the straps of the seat belt, he finally slammed the cushion back into the seat and pounded it in place with his fists. With his adrenaline pumping, he tried to get into his chair from the floor, a transfer he couldn’t do without my help.
After his third failed attempt, I lifted him into his seat. He sat back in his chair, panting, sweating, and crying. In my bewilderment, I just stared at him, my body language demanding an explanation. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and he stared at the floor and said, “I just need you to do that kind of stuff right away.” I tried to explain that I couldn’t just drop everything in the middle of the hallway or the sidewalk and fix a seat belt, but again he violently shook his head and repeated, “I need you to do that stuff right away,” his hands flat and parallel like a drill sergeant pointing at me, sharply emphasizing his words. I apologized just to ease the tension of the situation. I leaned in to hug him and he just turned his wheelchair around and almost ran over my toes. He locked himself in the bathroom for about thirty minutes. When he came out, I asked if he was okay and all he said was, “Yep.” Well what else can I do?
JOSH
The Afghanistan nightmare just wouldn’t end. I talked with a therapist when I first got to Walter Reed, and I had come a long way since my injury. I was beginning to see that people were inspired by me, and that kept me going. Juan’s death set my mental health back further than where I was when I first began at Walter Reed. This was so much worse than any nightmare about Afghanistan. Those nightmares were scary, but they were always about me, and I could wake up and remind myself of the reality I lived in. I couldn’t wake up from this actual reality. Whether I was waking up from surgery or trying to fall asleep, the demons that haunted me now spoke words of guilt and shame about Juan and Barrera. Nobody could convince me that this wasn’t somehow my fault. I just crawled back into my shell and stopped talking about it.
Paige and I began to function under two extremes: the smiling, steadfast dream team and the frustrated, grieving couple behind closed doors. I had gotten to the point in therapy that I didn’t struggle talking about issues as long as they were issues I was willing to bring up: pain, bad dreams, and general amputee frustrations. Paige brought up the outburst I had about the clicking seat belt, and I had reluctantly agreed to mention it to my therapist. Anger had been building inside me. Anger and fear. I was losing control, and I couldn’t even find corners to grasp to take hold of my grief. Anger wasn’t my usual stance. I was more angry at myself for not being there at Juan’s side than I was at the guy who built the IED that took my legs. Paige kept telling me that anger was part of grief, but she also couldn’t predict my scale tipping from simmering anger to full-blown rage, fear, and anxiety wrapped with a bow—a gift I hated giving her time and again. Like the time I about crawled out of my own skin when we had been caught up in a group of no more than ten people walking on the hospital grounds. Paige could tell I was on edge, but I couldn’t communicate to her without losing it. Sweat trickling down my back, the sideways glances, and my short breaths were all Paige needed to wheel us away from the group. She just wheeled me around for a bit to calm down. I knew she was struggling with me, and while my fuse was short, I knew the aftershocks
