The Vet

As I stared into his eyes, I could see the pain that he had been hiding behind decades of therapy, various meetings of the Anonymous type, drug cocktails (some prescribed by his doctor, some he got from the curbside pharmacy down his street) and copious amounts of booze. He was almost unrecognizable compared to the young man I knew in the 60s. It was a different time back then. Having just graduated from college, the future looked like it held so many wonderful opportunities. Then on December 1st, 1969, they held the draft.

After our tour in Vietnam was over and we had our boots back on American soil, every time I looked into those eyes, recognition would slip further and further away. Week after week, year after year, he slowly morphed into someone else entirely. I would confront him about how he was hurting everyone he loved by locking himself away for days at a time, and he would yell at me for not understanding his side of things.

This had continued on for years. The arguing, the relapses, hiding in his room for days at a time. The time had come. This was the last straw. The camel’s back had finally, violently, broke in two.

“Okay man! This is it! I’ve had it! For years and years you’ve held me back. I’ve tried to get you help, but you refuse. Today is the day we do something about it!”

“That’s not fair and you know it!,” he snapped back, the hurt showing plainly in his voice. “You have no idea of what I’ve seen! What I had to do over there in the name of Freedom!”

“Don’t forget, I was over there too. I saw the things us humans are capable of. War is hell. But I’ve learned to deal with it. To shove that stuff all the way down until it just sort of disappears.”

“Well, isn’t that just great for you! I’m happy for you, I really am,” he said, with more than a hint of sarcasm laced in. “I wish it was that easy for me. But as you know, I feel like there are two versions of myself. One that sees things the way you do, and one that sees the world for what it truly is. And the latter seems to take hold more and more often.”

He paced back and forth, getting progressively more worked up. After a moment or two, he continued.

“Every night when I close my eyes, I see the faces. The faces of the women who I saw ravaged by the American Soldiers who were supposed to be saving them. The faces of the children who were alone and begging on the streets because their parents were killed by U.S. bombs that fell where they weren’t supposed to.

“Every night I see their faces looking to me for help, and every night I do the same thing I did when I was there. Nothing! They all look to me for help, but I’m just a coward who did nothing when I had the opportunity! What kind of person am I if I couldn’t help those poor souls?!”

We sat in silence for several seconds and as I stared into his eyes and I could see the helplessness behind them.

“Look, man,” I said with as much compassion as I could muster. “You have two options. You can keep going on like this, always feeling guilty about something that you had no control over, or you can finally man up and do something about it. I’m just done with having to deal with your mood swings and relapses.”

We argued for a few more minutes and then we went our separate ways. We both needed a break from each other. I went about my day and I didn’t see him until later that evening.

As I was getting ready for bed, I ran into him in the hallway and stopped him so we could continue our conversation from earlier that day.

“Hey man, did you think about what I told you earlier? I just hate having these arguments with you all the time. You’ve become a totally different person, and it’s affecting everyone around you.”

He stared at me for several moments before he finally broke the silence.

“Yeah, I thought about it. I thought about all those souls I never saved. I thought about that young boy in Da Nang. About his little sister, frantically trying to wake him up, although he never would. The way her eyes looked into mine for some sort of help.

“I thought about that young woman in Saigon, and the fear in her eyes as eight American Soldiers dragged her into that alley. I thought about her cries for help that went unanswered.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day. Actually, that’s what I’ve been thinking about ever since we got back from that hellhole. And it all boils down to this. The world would be better off without someone who could’ve let those things happen. So I’m going to take this bottle of pills labeled ‘OxyContin’, and I’m going to wash it down with this nice bottle of vodka.”

I starred at him for several seconds, waiting for him to laugh, or to give me any sign that he was, in fact, joking. But no laugh came.

“Wait, you’re serious?! No! You can’t do that! There are things to live for. I mean, what am I going to do? I need you. Let’s think this through!”

“I have thought it through. I’ve been thinking it through for years. All those innocent souls need some sort of closure. And I’m going to give it to them.”

“What you did or didn’t do over there wasn’t unforgivable man! you were just following orders.”

“WE were just following orders,” he corrected me. “You keep talking to me like you weren’t a part of this. You didn’t help those people either.”

“There wasn’t anything I could’ve done! What can a Private do? We would have gotten court martialled for not obeying orders.”

“Maybe. But at least we would’ve been able to live with ourselves.”

We sat starring at each other in silence for several minutes, and as we sat I began to see the logic in what he was saying. Maybe he was right. Maybe what we did over there just couldn’t be forgiven.

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. I looked into his eyes through that mirror, grabbed the pills and bottle of vodka, and said, “I wonder how long this will take?”