The Withdrawal

This story, while set in the Blue Girl Universe, does not fall logically anywhere into the timeline or canon of any of the BGU stories. It is a stand alone story that can be considered separate from the main storylines. You don't need to have read any of my stories to read this piece, but the characters are from my Hard Landing and Wheels In Motion series, and it contains major spoilers for both. I just felt the need to write this.

Content warning for discussions of depression and suicide.

~~ GW Hospital, Washington DC ~~

"Dude in exam two's got some bad kidney stones, so make sure his urologist referral gets in his discharge packet along with his pain meds." I slid the aluminum clipboard into the discharge rack, then stretched my arms over my head, cracking my spine. "Angel, anything else need my attention, or can I go home?"

Angel Navarro, one of the two nurses behind the desk, checked his computer. "It's gotten pretty slow, Liz. Dr. Rivers is on now, and Dr. Andrews has gotten a pretty good handle on all the baby docs. I think everything we have at the moment can be handled by the residents."

"Thanks. You guys are off soon too, right? Want to go to happy hour? Addison's meeting me across the street."

"I could use a drink, but before you head out, you might want to check the doc's lounge. Jo's here," said Katheryn Hayden, the other nurse.

"Really? I didn't hear a bird come in."

"We didn't get a Life Flight. I think she drove."

"That's weird. Okay, thanks Kat." I turned my wheelchair away from the desk and coasted down the hall towards the doctor's lounge.

As I rolled past one of the waiting rooms, I glanced up at the TV on the wall where CNN was running footage of Afghans scrambling at the gates and lining up to board C-17s on the tarmac at Kabul airport, just like they had been all week. My stomach churned as I looked away. I wished they'd find something else to run on a loop.

I hit the handicapped button to swing open the door to the lounge and rolled into the room to find a lone occupant standing with her back to the door, apparently studying the bulletin board.

I'd recognize my old commander, Chief Warrant Office Jocelyn Collins, from any angle. She was short, with the solid build of a crossfit athlete, her cropped blonde hair sticking up in a thick flat-top.

We'd served together in Afghanistan. I'd been on my first and, as it turned out, only tour, while she'd been on her fifth as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. I was the 68W, or flight medic, on her bird when we'd been shot down while on a medevac mission to pick up a sick Afghan army soldier from a mountaintop outpost. Jo had managed to crash-land us. I'd shattered my spine, leaving me in a wheelchair. Jo hadn't escaped unscathed either, ending up in a coma for three weeks and losing her left leg from the calf down. Our crew chief, Sgt. Ehrens had survived too, breaking almost every bone in both his legs, but he'd returned to active duty after a long rehab. We'd lost two members of our crew that day, Sgt. Ben Jackson and Jo's co-pilot, Chief Eric Nguyen.

Jo had a bionic leg now, as she liked to call her artificial foot, but had managed to get a medical waiver to get her civilian pilot's license and now flew for Virginia State's Life-Flight service, piloting Eurocopters on medical flights all over Northern Virginia. I'd gone to college, then medical school, and was now an attending physician at GW Hospital.

She wasn't wearing her royal blue flight suit, which I was used to seeing her in whenever she came to the hospital. That wasn't too often. Virginia Life-Flight only came here when they picked up a patient near the capitol and there were capacity issues at northern Virginia hospitals or if GW had better facilities for the particular type of injury. Seeing her in her street clothes made her seem out of place in this setting.

"Hey Jo, s'up?"

Jo turned to face me. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red.

I stopped my chair with a tiny screech of my tires. "Jo? What's wrong?"

Jo opened her mouth to speak, but her breath caught in a hiccup. She cleared her throat, then tried again.

"Billy Ehrens killed himself this morning."

"What?!" I shouted.

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes, and she awkwardly knelt next to my chair, wrapping her arms around me.

"Sgt. Shumpert, one of the maintenance women from our old unit, called to let me know. I didn't want you to hear it from anyone else," Jo said through her tears.

"But... but why?" I said. I immediately regretted saying it. Who ever knew with certainty why anyone took their own life. "He was going to retire in like a year!"

Jo let go of me and stood up. "She said he'd been struggling lately. He was seeing a BHS, but... I dunno. He shot himself at his apartment. When he didn't show up for PT this morning, his CSM sent someone to check on him."

The door to the lounge opened and Kat poked her head in. "Everything okay Liz? I thought I heard you yell."

Jo stood up away from me as I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of the long-sleeved Henley I always wore under my scrubs.

"I'm okay. I'm... my old sergeant killed himself today."

"Oh my god, Liz I'm so sorry. Do you guys need to be alone?"

"No... no it's okay... I just..." she turned back to Jo, "What was he struggling with? Did he still have PTSD from the crash? That was so long ago." I was feeling crushing guilt that I hadn't talked to him in months.

"I don't think so. Shumpert said he was really upset about the collapse of the Afghan government following our pullout."

I choked back a sob, taking a deep breath. "Fuck, I'm having a hard time with that too."

"Who isn't?" Jo asked.

"Is there going to be a service?"

"Nobody knows yet. But she said the unit will probably have a memorial at Bragg next week."

"Okay... Are you going down? I can see if I can get off."

"Probably."

An uneasy silence fell over us, as Jo and I stared into space, each lost in our own thoughts.

Finally Kat uncomfortably cleared her throat. "Do you guys need anything?"

I shook myself. "I need a drink." I looked up at Jo. "Are you okay? Where's Jill?"

"She's driving around looking for a parking place. We just drove in from Front Royal. Eric is with my dad. We were thinking of getting drunk tonight and staying at our condo." Jo, her wife Jill and son Eric split their time between Jo's family farm in Front Royal and their condo in Adams Morgan.

"That sounds like an outstanding idea. I'll call Addison and let her know."

The fact that it was a Tuesday was probably the only reason we managed to get a table in a quiet corner big enough for all of us at A League Of Her Own, our favorite lesbian bar in DC. No pre-season Monday Night Football, and no DJ that night.

Jo and her wife Jill were on the other side of the table from me and my wife, Addison, Jill's hair dyed bright blue, as it had been ever since I'd known her. Kat and Angel had joined us at my invitation too. Kat's wife Megan was stuck at home with their daughter, Caitlyn, who was in bed with a bad cold.

"...sitting in the shade of our bird, right there in the dirt," I said, "It's like two hundred degrees, and this private has been griping about the heat and the usual hurry up and wait for like an hour. He says something like 'I never should have joined the Army!' Then Billy, who's laying back against the wheel and looking like he was asleep, says 'But then you'd miss out on all the great perks.' The kid turns and asks Billy, what perks? Billy says 'The chicks, of course. That's why I signed up.' The kid just stares at him for a second, then says 'How'd that work out for you?' Billy spreads his hands out like it's the most obvious thing in the world and says 'Well, I got me an ex-wife, so...'"

Jo covered her mouth to keep from spit-taking out her beer as everyone else laughed at my story.

"Here's to Billy," I said, raising my beer.

"To Billy," everyone repeated quietly. We all clinked our drinks over the middle of the table, toasting Billy for what must have been the sixth or seventh time. Jo and I had been sharing stories with the rest of the gang, trying to stave off the depression that comes from hearing someone you'd served with was gone. For any reason, much less one as senseless as this.

Billy Ehrens had been one of the most relentlessly positive people from my time in the army. He'd been a mentor to me. Sometimes a father-figure, sometimes a big brother, sometimes a hard-ass sergeant when I'd needed one, teaching me the right way to be part of an aircrew, a teammate. I couldn't reconcile his ever-present grin when he inevitably was waiting for the rest of us at the Blackhawk, already having started pre-flight before any of us, even Jo, arrived at the pad, with the idea of a man who killed himself.

A long silence fell over the table after my last toast. Finally Jo spoke up.

"I talked to him last week," she said, "He was worried about the idea of the withdrawal. Lots of soldiers who'd done tours over there were concerned that exactly what's happening now was inevitable. That the government would just collapse, and all the people who had helped us would be trapped, at the mercy of the Taliban." She stared into her beer. "I don't think anyone thought it would happen this fast."

"Watching it on TV is pretty horrifying," said my wife, Addison. She was sitting next to me, holding my hand tightly.

"It makes me sick everytime I see it on the TV in the waiting rooms," I said, "All those people desperate to get on a plane going anywhere out of the country. We fucked this up so bad."

"It seems like they have it under control now though. The evacuation seems pretty orderly after the initial panic." Angel said.

"Maybe," Jo said. "There's still going to be people left behind. People who don't want to live under the Taliban. People with no way to leave the country."

"We had to get out sometime," Angels said. "Spending billions of dollars for decades to prop up a government that couldn't hold on more than a week after we started pulling out seems like a waste."

"You know what Angel? Maybe shut the fuck up," I snarled, "You were never over there, you don't know what you're talking about!"

"Babe!" Addison said, squeezing my hand.

"Take it easy Liz," Jo said.

"What?! You shouldn't have an opinion on this cluster fuck unless you had skin in the game!" I noticed heads turning our way and lowered my voice. "At least not today of all days."

"I... I'm sorry, doc, I..." Angel stammered.

"Angel, it's cool." Jo glared at me. "Liz is just upset right now. We all are."

"That's not—"

"Liz, Chill," Jo's command voice cut me off. "We don't have the right to gatekeep this, everyone's entitled to an opinion. Even people who haven't served pay taxes, and we've spent a trillion bucks over there."

"Wait, so you think this withdrawal is a good idea?!"

"I think this withdrawal is a walking cluster-fuck. We could have been pulling out translators, local government leaders, women activists and other vulnerable people for months, instead of this last minute bullshit. There was no plan. People are going to get left behind. And a lot of them may be killed by the Taliban."

"That's what I'm saying!" I still wanted to be wound up.

"But we should have been out of there years ago. A decade ago," Jo continued.

That stopped me. "Really? You really think that?"

"Yeah, I do," Jo said, puffing out her cheeks. "Liz, all the times I deployed over there, I never saw us making any progress. We'd go to a province, build schools, hospitals, train troops. As soon as we'd leave the Taliban would move back in. We'd give farmers money to grow crops, and as soon as we'd left they'd plant poppies, which fueled the drug trade the Taliban used to fund itself. If we burned the poppy fields, that would just turn the locals against us. I don't know what we could do differently over there. By my last tour, I was getting so goddamn tired of going out and evaccing wounded U.S. soldiers for what seemed like no good goddamn reason."

I felt my gaze drop to the table.

"How did you feel about it?" she asked me.

"I don't know. I only had the one tour, and as you may recall it was cut a little short."

She gave me a mirthless smile.

"I don't think I had time to form an opinion of how we were doing. I was too focused on learning to do the job. But I hate the idea that I'm sitting in this wheelchair for no good reason. That I'll never walk again for no good reason."

"I get that, I really do," Jo said, and noisily stomped her artificial foot on the wooden floor. "But you and I have both been dealing with that for years now. That's not why we're angry this week. That's not why Billy was struggling this week."

I sighed. "I know."

"Talk to me about what you're angry about, babe." Addison said.

"I... I'm worried about Niya," I finally managed to get out.

"Who's Niya?" Kat asked.

"She was an old lady who had a food stand in the market outside the gates of Kandahar air base."

"She's the one who taught you how to swear in Pashto?" Addison asked me.

I nodded. "She was so sweet. She only spoke a tiny bit of English, but she was so good at pantomime, she'd taught me basic vocabulary in a couple months. Her borani kadoo was the best thing to eat anywhere on or near the base. I probably ate from her cart five times a week. Her son had been in the Northern Alliance and was killed during the initial invasion after 9/11. His wife had died of something, cancer it sounded like. Niya was raising her two granddaughters by herself and she was so proud to have her own little business to support them."

"She sounds amazing," Kat said.

"She was. And if she's still alive, she's completely fucked now."

"Maybe she'll get out," Angel said hopefully.

"How? She wasn't a contractor, or translator, or anything that would qualify her for a SIV passport. She was just a vendor outside the base. And now she'll be at the mercy of a government," I made air quotes, "who believes women can't have their own business, can't be in public without a male relative escorting them, or even be seen without a face covering. She'll lose all her income, any way of supporting her two little granddaughters. If they don't just kill her for having set up shop to feed Americans."

I stared at the table as we sat in uncomfortable silence.

Jo cleared her throat, "There's organizations working to try to get people out. Do you want to try to put one of them in touch with her?"

I laughed bitterly. "I don't even know her name. Niya means 'grandmother'. It's all she wanted me to call her because she was so proud of her granddaughters. They were going to school. They were the first girls in her family who had ever gotten an education."

"I'm so sorry babe," Addison said. I looked down and realized I had a death grip on her hand. I eased up, afraid I was going to hurt her.

"Me too, Doc," Angel said. "I shouldn't have run my big mouth."

"No... no, it's okay Angel. I'm sorry I blew up." I blew out a long breath. "Jo's right, people are allowed to have an opinion. And she's right, we haven't been accomplishing squat over there for the last... God, I don't know how long. Just... maybe pick a better time to have it."

Jo nodded, "Veterans of all stripes are going to have all sorts of feelings about this. And I think right at this moment, it's good to give them space to feel what they need to feel. People who didn't serve are perfectly entitled to have opinions about this. Just pick your spots."

"Fair enough. Sorry again, Doc," Angel said.

I nodded, acknowledging his apology. "All good, man." I leaned over and gave him a fist bump.

"I wished Billy had... had talked to me last weekend," Jo said quietly. "I wished I'd..." Her voice trailed off.

"It's not your fault Jo," I said.

"I know. I just remember everything I was going through when I woke up from my coma. I think if Jill hadn't been there for me, I might've..."

Jill leaned over, resting her head on Jo's shoulder. "Love you babe," she whispered.

"Back atcha, Blue," Jo said, kissing the top of her head. "I had thoughts about checking out after our crash. Losing my leg, not knowing if I was going to ever be able to fly again. Or even run. There were times I didn't think my life was going to be worth much. But the thing that bothered me the most was not really knowing if what I'd lost had been for any good reason. But, with the love of a good woman," Jill blushed, "and a lot of therapy, I made it out of the other side."

"Yeah... I know the idea crossed my mind more times than I could count, the first few months I was in this chair," I said. I smiled grimly, "And I didn't have an amazing partner like Jill to keep me afloat. Addison didn't get around to coming into my life for years after that."

"Hey! That's not my fault!" Addison said, "You could have slid down an icy handicapped ramp to bump into me sooner than you did!" She smiled at me and I reached up to tuck a stray lock of her white-blonde hair behind her ear. I didn't have her before, but she was my rock now.

"Billy lost two or three really good friends over the years in Afghanistan," Jo said, "And he also worked with a lot of the ANA guys, training them on maintenance and stuff. Watching us just... up and leave... even if it was the right decision... it couldn't have been easy for him. It's not easy on any of us."

"I know..." I said. "I guess all we can do is try to keep in touch with our teammates. Let them know we're there for them if they need someone. I need to go through my phone and check up on a bunch of people."

"Me too," Jo said. "But tonight, I'm glad y'all are here for me and Liz."

"Yeah, I'm happy to have friends I know care about us. And you babe," I said to Addison. "After everything we went through to get together, I can't imagine a better partner to keep me afloat."

"Good thing I spent all that time trolling icy wheelchair ramps so I could save a hot doctor from a speeding bus," she said.

I laughed for the first time that night, then I leaned over in my wheelchair and she met me halfway for a kiss.

The End

Thank you for reading, if you got this far. I know this isn't really even in the general vicinity of an erotic story, and this is Literotica after all. I've just been feeling some things and wanted to get them out of my head and onto a page.

If you know any veterans, now might be a good time to check in on them and make sure they are doing okay. Feelings can be really complicated right now.

If you or any friends or family are veterans and are struggling, help can be found at suicidepreventionlifeline dot com, or for help with PTSD at PTSD dot VA dot ORG.

Take care of each other, friends.

Author's Note

The point of writing this story, for me anyway, was not to bash politicians or political parties. IMHO, our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coasties and veterans have been failed by both sides for the last twenty years. The sad part about the war ending, again my opinion, is not that we didn't "win" but that it went on for so much longer than it should have, chewing up our service men and women.

Any overtly political comments on this story will be deleted. This story is meant to be topical, not political. The point of my writing this piece was that our veterans are going to have a lot of feelings about the end of the war, and they are both entitled to have those feelings, in whatever form they take, and that they need to be watched out for. I wrote this to encourage people to check in on their battle buddies, their family members, their neighbors. And to take care of everyone who needs it.