Josiah, Emergent

"Seriously, Lieutenant," Vogel said, standing and moving into the aisle. He looked at Mattie and said, "Sorry about this. ma'am."

Josiah had never seen Mattie so angry. Her hands by her sides were clenched, her arms straight and stiff beside her.

The major left after talking quietly to Father Phil for a moment. Josiah felt a weight drop from his shoulders. He turned to face the Morrisons.

It was a long day for Josiah. He had Vogel to think about, Cindy and Randy to impress. He felt that everyone thought he was crazy, like they were looking over at him all the time. Mattie was mad all day, whether at Vogel for the imposition or Josiah for not being as angry as she.

It wasn't that. She was mad because she didn't want to make excuses for Josiah. For her boyfriend. She thought of him as part of her future, her future with children, her future with family and friends and life, if things worked out. Josiah acted as if he didn't know he was being shamed.

He wouldn't blame Vogel; he knew Vogel had his interest at heart. But he thought he was finally out of his depression, and wasn't that the point? But no, it wasn't enough for Vogel. Vogel wanted more. It wasn't just depression. Vogel offered a red pill. Vogel demanded he accept reality, whatever it was.

Ultimately, Vogel thought Josiah was strong enough to handle the truth.

*

No one trusted him the way Vogel had. His release made him voluntary, but he'd sworn up and down that he'd seek therapy. Vogel even set it up with a therapist in Dayton, so when he disappeared to Greenville and then Sky Grey, Vogel waited and finally tracked him down. Vogel's problem was that he liked Josiah, and he thought it had led him to trust Josiah too much. He knew now that Josiah couldn't help fleeing.

Vogel knew Josiah's memory was not his memory, his recall was not just recall. His imagination was also a defense mechanism working hand in glove with his memory to produce original, technicolor, reality-not. Josiah knew he didn't remember things the way they happened, he remembered them a way that protected him. He remembered differently every time he needed differently.

Vogel worked to understand why the patient needed differently so much.

Vogel didn't just diagnose and treat patients; he studied them as if they were a manuscript on some specific condition. Josiah assumed he'd never married, or that he divorced a lot. His patients and his job were his life.

But Vogel said Josiah was sane. He let him out of the hospital. From his perspective, at that point the patient went walkabout. It wasn't hard to find him, but it would take time and he had lots of patients. He could have kept him in Walter Reed or Bethesda. Or any VA hospital with a mental facility. There are a lot of those.

"Am I a danger?" Josiah asked him before his release.

"No. You're not suicidal, either," he said, "but you are delusional."

"Do you know what happened on that bridge?" Josiah asked him, thinking it would give him pause. It had not.

"Better than anyone on earth," Vogel said. "I talked to your whole platoon. Hell, Lieutenant, you were there. No one saw more than you: do you know? Do you know?" Josiah remembered he could not answer.

Maybe he knew. When he tried to remember, he remembered it was tragic, a shark blew up in the water, and he was shot in the knees: a shark, in the river, hundreds of miles from the sea. The remembering panicked him.

CHAPTER 14: The Bridge

Mattie drove them to the appointment Monday morning. Mattie, mad, said nothing, and when Josiah started to speak she raised a hand at him as if she would attack. Josiah realized Mattie was not exactly like him. Love was different with her. It was different with him, for her. She felt betrayed and loved and treated as ignorant. No one wanted ignorance in love. Perhaps love can't be ignorant.

Josiah took a chair between Mattie and Vogel, introducing them. Mattie shook Vogel's hand, but she left no doubt how she felt about him. She didn't smile. They were seated in a meeting room, with a large, cheap cafeteria table and some rickety chairs. Josiah was at the long end.

Vogel addressed Josiah first. "May I talk about you with her? Everything?"

Josiah was squirming and he didn't understand it. "Now you cover the bases? After embarrassing me in front of her family. Must you?"

"No, but I think it would help you. A lot. I could see how you felt about her, yesterday. You've made strides, probably because you discovered a woman might love you. You assumed that was gone with your knees. Certainly not because you've skipped therapy. So yes or no?"

Josiah looked at Mattie. What could he tell her? Until he met her he thought celibacy was his future. Something in him cried out. Josiah wanted to be a real person. Welcome to you, Mattie, he thought.

"Okay."

Vogel smiled and nodded, then turned to Mattie. "Josiah has trouble connecting with his feelings. It doesn't prevent him constructing the feeling, just communicating it. He loves you, if you have any doubt. I don't." Dr. Vogel was smiling.

Josiah exclaimed, "Hey!"

Vogel went on. "He can't say it, he can't act on it, but he's in love. He's probably had trouble kissing you, telling you how he feels. I doubt you've had sex. But it's real. Real love. And with him, it's probably forever. Whatever happens, he'll always love you. Always. I hope you love him back."

She looked at Vogel as if he were crazy. He was so sure and clear and arrogant.

"How do you...?" she said.

He smiled and leaned back. "He's one of the most honest men I've ever met. He's so forthright. He's almost... pure. In a sense. He's in anguish over something he can't remember. It doesn't prevent him from loving, but he can't admit it. It's too much. To him, it's everything."

"Uh, I'm right here, you know," Josiah said.

"Childishness now, ever a new reaction," Vogel said, smiling and shaking his head. Josiah was protecting himself.

"Why should I listen to you?" Mattie asked Vogel. "Do you humiliate all your patients? Is that some Army doctor technique for forcing someone to therapy?"

Vogel looked down at first, and looked then at Josiah, who had an unusual look on his face. Josiah realized Mattie was defending him. He also realized what she couldn't: Vogel was defending him, too.

"I see why you love her," Vogel said to Josiah. Josiah smiled at him; Mattie thought the smile on Josiah was strange, childlike, as Vogel had said before.

Vogel looked at Mattie and waited until she looked at him. "He's smart. He knows why I do things my way." He was quiet and smiling a moment. "It was the bridge. The incident on the bridge. He must have told you something, it's his whole life, his whole understanding of the world, and he believed what he said at the time. He told me several times, several versions, a few weeks apart. None was true. Sort of true, true in an alternate universe sort of way, but not this one true. He can't tell you the truth, and he knows it, and he's so honest it's eating him up. You, most of all, he wants to trust him."

Vogel shook his head looking at Josiah, who was looking down at his hands on the table. It made Josiah very uncomfortable having them talk about him. It made him feel academic, or silly. He felt like someone else was inside his body, acting strangely, not as he wanted to act.

"It interferes with his emotional defences. Ask him if he loves you. He'll avoid making the commitment. He's so damn honest the lying kills him, but it's the only way he can protect his personality from his experience. He'll never get past it without help. It reduces him to childish reactions, like now. Other times it manifested in other ways."

"He told me two different stories about the bridge," she said. "No, three. Not greatly different. You think they were lies?"

"Not regular lies. He can't prevent what he says. I think he's hedging still. He needed the barriers yesterday, and you see the reaction now. He's honest about this like a five year old; he'll believe his lies when he tells them because he can't face the reality of what happened to him, and BECAUSE of him."

"If you two would like to talk, I'll go get a sandwich or something," Josiah said.

Mattie looked at Josiah differently and asked, "Did he do something bad?"

Vogel smiled and shook his head. "No, that's the irony, not bad. Heroic, even. But he did something he'd like to forget."

Mattie thought for a moment, remembering something her father said.

Vogel thought to himself, "Wow. I haven't met one like her before. I wish... But no." He was professional, and Josiah was his patient, and Josiah needed Mattie. Vogel thought, "I think Mattie needs Josiah, too. What an interesting pair they made! Why does Mattie need Josiah?" He shook his head. She was not his case.

Love was not for Vogel. He'd had three wives, none like this woman, and Vogel didn't want another. But this one... He shook his head. Outstanding.

"Okay," Mattie said, turning to her boyfriend. "Josiah, do you love me?"

Josiah looked panicked. He squirmed and hemmed and hawed, but he said, "You ask me in front of him? I want you to love me. I can't stop thinking of you. I want you to love me."

She smiled, put her hand on Josiah's, and looked at Vogel. Arrogant or not, he seemed to understand Josiah. "I see what you mean," she said.

"Dissembling. He should be a politician. If you persist he may tell you that he loves you," he said.

"Why's it so hard for him?" she asked.

"He can't afford to love. Love has meaning and responsibility and repercussions. Loving a woman could mean a family, and he has to avoid creating a family." Vogel stopped and looked thoughtful. "A mother. He doesn't want to make you a mother."

"He loves mothers, but he knew one he could never understand."

Mattie was listening.

"He can't remember what happened. Every time he tries, he imagines things a different way and he can't cut through to the truth. It took me a lot of thinking and studying him to realize how it was inhibiting his emotions."

"He's mentally ill?" she asked, looking very concerned. She'd feared that was the crux of it when Vogel had embarrassed him yesterday.

Vogel smiled. Josiah smiled, like a five-year-old, Mattie thought. She didn't smile.

"Depends how you define it. If you saw something, DID something, so awful, so upsetting that you NEVER wanted to admit seeing it or doing it... would it be normal to remember it? Like your sister's wedding or high school graduation? No. He's sane. That's why I let him out of the hospital. But it's getting in the way of his ability to feel emotions the way he normally would. It runs his life. He didn't move home, he moved five miles away from home, changed his cell phone number, changed his email, joined very few online sites that I might be able to locate him. It's been over a year, but I finally found him." He smiled at her, and then became almost somber.

He said, quietly, "It was awful, what he did and experienced. I even have nightmares about what he saw, and I just heard the story from others who were there. Are you willing? To hear how awful it was? Realizing he SAW it, DID it? Feels so bad about it that he's... probably always going to remember it, every day. I think he's strong, he might be able to live with it."

Mattie thought about it. "Do I love him? He did something he has trouble living with. The major says it was great, awful, life-long. Do I love him?"

"I love him," Mattie said. She thought, "I'd rather live with the worst horror of his life than not have him. I just hope we can be happy."

Josiah looked up at her, startled and adult-like. Vogel looked at her and thought, "Wow! I wish things were different."

Vogel turned to Josiah. "What's the worst thing you've ever seen, Lieutenant?" he asked. "Tell me truly, now. No avoiding."

"I saw a shark explode," Josiah said, smiling. It wasn't funny though. He saw it in his mind, a grey shark falling into the river and exploding. He was perspiring now, fighting to get it out, and it was a shark.

"A shark," Josiah said again, forcefully. Next to a little boy, he didn't add.

"No you didn't," Vogel said, soothingly. "Misleading us, again. But I know what it means now. You can't fool me as easily. It was a fake shark. A fake. Heck, it was probably a toy shark. And there was a little boy near, too. Too near."

Vogel realized Josiah had to react to this contradiction, and Josiah reacted. He stood, suddenly beyond squirming. He had to move, to act, to do something. He stood and walked to the wall, using a crutch in his left hand, and he pounded with his right fist into the plaster and a crack appeared. It was not sheetrock, it was old thick plaster. He looked at his right knuckles for a few seconds, and they were swelling. "Idiot," he thought, "probably broke a knuckle." Josiah wasn't smiling anymore.

He looked at Mattie, and she had a fearful expression. He imagined her thoughts: "Why am I with him? Why do I pick a guy with such issues? Am I heading for a lifetime of heartache? Is he violent?"

"Father may not let me use this room again, if you keep it up," Vogel said. He didn't seem unhappy. Josiah realized he was reacting as Vogel expected. It was the child, Vogel thought. He had been right. In the end, it was the mother's willingness to sacrifice her boy. Josiah associated mother with child as the greatest bond; it was the child that was the coup de grace, Vogel thought. He could handle the mom, but not what she did to the boy. He remembered what Josiah had said of his own mother.

"WHAT is going on?" Mattie asked. She put her hand on Josiah's left as he sat back down, so he didn't feel completely alone, and he then looked at her.

He was lost in thought. "Would I ever be able? Do our minds heal?" He realized Mattie was a reachable star: but he had to reach for her. "Why hadn't they made out? Why no sex? Am I ever going to get past it? Am I ever going to love and let someone love me? My legs are broken, but it's my mind that's holding me back." Josiah relaxed and stared at his new love, seeing her in that daydreamer's reality that transfixed him.

Suddenly he was mature again. He looked at Vogel. "A lot of mental therapy depends on the patient deciding to improve, doesn't it?"

Vogel said nothing, but his eyes widened, and he nodded. Josiah's words were prognostic. Some patients never can face it. "He loves that girl," Vogel thought. Vogel looked at Mattie. "Does she realize how much this guy loves her?"

Josiah closed his eyes. Mattie later told him he kept them closed for ten minutes, sitting there as if looking at her through his eyelids, and Dr. Vogel signalled her to be quiet. She held Josiah's hand in both hers. After about ten minutes, eyes still shut, he lowered his forehead to the edge of the table, as if looking at his lap.

For him, maybe a few seconds passed.

"Not near. In my hands. The little boy was in my hands," he said to his lap, finishing some thought aloud.

"We were crossing the bridge in Humvees," he said clearly, making the words distinctly heard, "and people were walking toward us. A hundred, maybe two, from the village just bombed. I saw a woman with her son, and they were on our right, out in front of us maybe fifty meters. She looked... heavy, walked as if weighed down, burdened and awkward in a burqa. It was... gray. I watched her and finally realized what it was. I yelled into the comm halting us. 'The woman has a vest!' I tried to explain as calmly as I could into the comm, but there were dozens of women, many in gray, some with children. She could kill scores, maybe some of us in the vehicles, too. There were many people in my line of fire if I shot. She was coming closer as I thought how to describe her in time, but there wouldn't be time.

"'Cover me!' I yelled. There were people everywhere, a hundred maybe near us. She stopped thirty feet in front of our Humvee as I got the door open (I remember knocking someone down with the door) and jumped out, and she lifted the little boy over the concrete wall, behind an abutment, not realizing I'd figured her out. Her hands were full of her kid, we were safe for a second, she'd have to reach for the trigger. Her back was to us, to me, and I was running, I hit her in the legs with my shoulder, low, under her butt, wrapped my arms like a tackle, and lifted her up as she let go the kid, and I flipped her over the wall. She saw me at the last second; I remember her surprise in her eyes. She was cartwheeling from the bridge to the water. I grabbed the kid, he was barely on the little ledge, I lifted him but then she reached into her burqa and exploded. Right as she reached the water."

His forehead was on the table. He felt Mattie's right hand on his back, rubbing, and then he felt her head on the table too, next to his. He felt tears leaving his eyes. "I got cut on my right hand, and something sliced under my right eye for watching her, I have a scar, but the concrete wall and the little boy's body protected me. Her kid, the little kid was... there wasn't much of him that wasn't blood. He was in pieces, some in the water next to her, I was only holding part of him. She wasn't far away when she blew up. She was... halved."

The recollection was gruesome. It overwhelmed Mattie, thinking, "Oh, my God. How does he live with it?"

He went on, eyes closed but as if looking down at his lap, forehead on the edge of the table. "When she exploded he must have been hit by her shrapnel and the concussion, it... blew him apart, too, and just then I was shot in the knees and I concentrated on holding that poor boy. Not realizing he was not there. I held onto the concrete rail, slumped, arms across it with the boy dead dangling. I looked down into the water at what was left of a mother and I only held part of her son... Finally I let go of him. Soon my guys got to me." He shook his head at the horrible memory, repeating himself because he was telling the truth and it was so.

Moms should love their children.

"His mom blew him apart," Josiah said, quietly. Mattie was crying, too, Josiah noticed. He felt Vogel's hand on his back, too. It was quiet for a long moment. A long one.

"That was hard for you, Josiah," Vogel said, almost in a whisper, calling him by his first name for the first time. "Why don't you go get some water and let me talk to Mattie a minute?"

Josiah looked at him, as if a weight were off him. He could see that woman and her son. He could see them, whole and then not as if instant replay were running automatically. He could.

"Yeah, I'll be right back." He hesitated as if he wanted to say something to Mattie, but then he just left. Mattie later told him what they talked about while he was gone a minute. Mattie noticed that Josiah was drained, tired, soaked. Something was emptying him.

"He needed to love. I think he was looking to find a way to get over the horror. He couldn't get past it... Who could? He's a decent guy. He had no family, he always wanted one like other kids had. When I saw him with you yesterday, during and after Mass, I saw why he was different. He's trying very hard to get better now. For you."

Mattie said, "I've seen some effort. But he's not like other guys."

Vogel nodded and considered her. "You're his motivation, like it or not. I hope you're sincere. He found someone he wanted to love, and you were open to him with all his problems and devils. You must have seen them?"

"Yeah. Mom's worried he's crazy. So am I."

"It's PTSD, and it's not crazy. PTSD is not unreasonable. It's even normal in lots of circumstances, but his is extreme. Because it was the mother."

"I'm sorry? I don't understand," Mattie said.

"I assume Josiah's mentioned his mother. She died in her early fifties. Alcoholic. Everything she did the last five years of her life was to give Josiah a future. A chance. The drink had her, and she didn't think she had long, so she got to work and prepared for after she died. Life insurance. Work in a factory." He shook his head.