The Whisperers (29 page)

‘None. Yet.’

‘Good. Now you get to participate.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then you can leave. This is a trade-off, Mr. Parker. You want my help. I’m prepared to give it, but only in return for something. In this case, it’s your willingness to acknowledge when, and if, any of the symptoms I’m about to detail are familiar to you. You need answer only in the most general of terms. There are no records of this conversation being kept. If, at some point in the future, you would consider offering some deeper insights into what you’ve been through, then I would be grateful. You might even find it beneficial, or therapeutic. In any event, it goes back to what I said at the start. You’re here to find out about PTSD. This is your chance.’

I had to admire her. I could leave, but I would have learned nothing, except not to underestimate women who look like boxers, and I’d figured that out long before I met Carrie Saunders.

‘Go ahead,’ I said. I tried to keep the resignation out of my voice. I don’t think that I succeeded.

‘There are three main categories of post-traumatic stress disorder. The first involves flashbacks, the re-experiencing of the event that may have sparked the disorder or, less severely, and more commonly, a series of unwanted, intrusive thoughts that may feel like flashbacks, but aren’t. We’re talking about dreams and bad memories on one level, or making associations with the event from unrelated situations: you’d be surprised at how many soldiers dislike fireworks, and I’ve seen traumatized men hit the deck at the sound of a door banging, even a child shooting a toy gun. But on another level there may be an actual reliving of what occurred, to the extent that it feels real enough to disrupt ordinary, day-to-day functioning. One of my colleagues calls it “ghosting”. I don’t like the term myself, but I’ve spoken to sufferers who’ve seized on the concept.’

There was silence in the room. A bird flew by the window, and the sunlight caused its shadow to flit across the room: an unseen thing, separated from us by glass and brick, by the solidity of the actual, making its presence felt to us.

‘There were flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, or whatever you want to call them,’ I said at last.

‘Severe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Frequent?’

‘Yes.’

‘What would bring them on?’

‘Blood. The sight of a child – a girl – on the street, with her mother or alone. Simple things. A chair. A blade. Advertisements for kitchens. Certain shapes, angled shapes. I don’t know why. As time went on, the images that would cause problems for me became fewer.’

‘And now?’

‘They’re rare. I still have bad dreams, but not so often.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

I was conscious of trying not to pause too long before my replies, of not giving the impression to Saunders that she might have hit on an interesting avenue to explore. The possibility that I believed myself to have been haunted by my wife and child, or some dark version of them that had since been replaced by forms less threatening but equally unknowable, would have qualified as an interesting avenue even if I’d been in group therapy with Hitler, Napoleon, and Jim Jones. Under the circumstances, I was pleased that my reply to her last question was virtually instantaneous.

‘I don’t know. Time?’

‘It doesn’t heal all wounds. That’s a myth.’

‘Maybe you just get used to the pain.’

She nodded. ‘You might even miss it when it’s gone.’

‘You think so?’

‘You might if it gave you purpose.’

If she wanted another response, she wasn’t going to get it. She seemed to realize it, because she moved on.

‘Then there are avoidance symptoms: numbness, detachment, social isolation.’

‘Not leaving the house?’

‘It may not be that literal. It could be just staying away from people or places associated with the incident: family, friends, former colleagues. Sufferers find it hard to care about anything. They may feel that there’s no point, that they have no future.’

‘There was some detachment,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t feel part of ordinary life. There was no such thing. There was just chaos, waiting to break through.’

‘And colleagues?’

‘I avoided them, and they avoided me.’

‘Friends?’

I thought of Angel and Louis, waiting outside in their car. ‘Some of them didn’t want to be avoided.’

‘Were you angry at them for that?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they were like me. They shared my purpose.’

‘Which was?’

‘To find the man who killed my wife and child. To find him, and to tear him apart.’

The answers were coming more quickly now. I was surprised, even angry at myself for letting this stranger get beneath my skin, but there was a pleasure in it too, a kind of release. Perhaps I was a narcissist, or perhaps I had simply not been so clinically incisive with myself in a very long time, if ever.

‘Did you feel that you had a future?’

‘An immediate one.’

‘That lay in killing this man.’

‘Yes.’

She was leaning forward slightly now, a white light in her eyes. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, until I realized that I was seeing my own face reflected in the depths of her pupils.

‘Arousal symptoms,’ she said. ‘Difficulty concentrating.’

‘No.’

‘Exaggerated responses to startling stimuli.’

‘Like gunshots?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘No, my responses to gunshots weren’t exaggerated.’

‘Anger. Irritability.’

‘Yes.’

‘Sleeping difficulties.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hypervigilance.’

‘Justified. A lot of people seemed to want me dead.’

‘Physical symptoms: fever, headache, dizziness.’

‘No, or not excessively so.’

She sat back. We were nearly done.

‘Survivor guilt,’ she said softly.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Yes, all the time.

Carrie Saunders stepped from her office and came back with two cups of coffee. She took some sachets of sugar and creamer from her pocket and laid them on the desk.

‘You don’t need me to tell you, do you?’ she said as she filled her cup with enough sugar to make the spoon stand upright without a hand to support it.

‘No, but then you’re not the first one to try.’

I sipped the coffee. It was strong, and tasted bitter. I could see why she was adding so much sugar to it.

‘How are you doing now?’ she asked.

‘I’m doing okay.’

‘Without treatment?’

‘I found an outlet for my anger. It’s ongoing, and therapeutic.’

‘You hunt people down. And, sometimes, you kill them.’

I didn’t reply. Instead, I asked: ‘Where did you serve?’

‘In Baghdad. I was a major, initially attached to Task Force Ironhorse at Camp Boom in Ba Qubah.’

‘Camp Boom?’

‘Because there were so many explosions. It’s called Camp Gabe now, after a sapper, Dan Gabrielson, who was killed at Ba Qubah in 2003. It was basic as anything when I got there: no plumbing, no a/c, nothing. By the time I left there were CHEWS, central water for the showers and latrines, a new power grid, and they’d begun training the Iraqi National Guard there.’

‘CHEWS?’ I said. I felt as though I were listening to someone speaking pidgin English.

‘Containerized housing units. Big boxes to you.’

‘Must have been hard, being a female soldier out there.’

‘It was. This is a new war. In the past, female soldiers didn’t live and fight alongside men, not the way they do now. It’s brought its own problems. Technically, we’re barred from joining combat units, so instead we’re “attached” to them. In the end, we still fight, and we still die, just like men. Maybe not in the same numbers, but over a hundred women have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds more have been injured. But we’re still called bitches and dykes and sluts. We’re still open to harassment and assault by our own men. We’re still advised to walk in pairs around our own bases to avoid rape. But I don’t regret serving, not for one minute. That’s why I’m here: there are a lot of soldiers who are still owed something.’

‘You said you started at Camp Boom. What about after that?’

‘I was seconded to Camp Warhorse, and then to Abu Ghraib as part of the restructuring of the prison.’

‘You mind if I ask what your duties there involved?’

‘Initially, I dealt with prisoners. We wanted information, and they were naturally hostile to us, especially after what happened in the prison in the early days. We needed to find other ways to get them to talk.’

‘When you say “other ways” . . .’

‘You saw the photographs: humiliation, torture – simulated and otherwise. That didn’t help our cause. Those idiots on talk radio who laughed about it had no understanding of the impact it had. It gave the Iraqis another reason to hate us, and they took it out on the military. American soldiers died because of Abu Ghraib.’

‘Just a few bad apples getting out of line.’

‘Nothing happened in Abu Ghraib that wasn’t sanctioned from above, in general if not in detail.’

‘And then you arrived with a new approach.’

‘I, and others. Our maxim was simple: don’t torture. Torture a man or woman for long enough, and you’ll be told exactly what you want to hear. In the end, all they want is for the torture to stop.’

She must have seen something in my face, because she stopped talking and eyed me intently over her coffee. ‘You’ve been hurt in that way?’

I didn’t answer.

‘I’ll take that as a “yes”’, she said. ‘Even moderate pressure, and by that I mean physical pain that doesn’t leave one in fear of death, is scarring. In my view, someone who has endured torture is never quite the same again. It removes a part of oneself, excises it entirely. Call it what you will: peace of mind, dignity. Sometimes, I wonder if it even has a name. Anyway, in the short term it has a profoundly destabilizing effect on the personality.’

‘And in the long term?’

‘Well, in your case, how long has it been?’

‘Since the last time?’

‘There’s been more than one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus. If I was dealing with a soldier in your position, I’d be making sure that he was undergoing intensive therapy.’

‘That’s reassuring to know. To get back to you . . .’

‘After my time in Abu Ghraib, I moved into counseling and therapy. It became clear at a very early stage that there were problems with stress levels, and those increased when the military instituted repeated deployments, stop-loss, and began calling up weekend warriors. I became part of a mental health team working out of the Green Zone, but with particular responsibility for two FOBs: Arrowhead and Warhorse.’

‘Arrowhead. That’s where the Third Infantry is based, right?’

‘Some brigades, yes.’

‘You ever encounter anyone from a Stryker unit while you were there?’

She set her cup aside. Her expression changed.

‘Is that why you’re here, to talk about the men of Stryker C?’

‘I didn’t mention Stryker C.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

She waited for me to proceed.

‘From what I can tell, three members of Stryker C, all known to one another, have died at their own hands,’ I said. ‘One of them took his wife with him. That sounds like a suicide cluster to me, which would probably be of interest to you.’

‘It is.’

‘Did you speak to any of those men before they died?’

‘I spoke to all of them, but Damien Patchett only inform ally. The first was Brett Harlan. He’d been attending the Veterans Outreach Center in Bangor. He was also a drug addict. For him, it helped that the needle exchange program was based next to a veterans center.’

I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

‘What did he tell you?’

‘That’s confidential.’

‘He’s dead. He doesn’t care any longer.’

‘I’m still not going to reveal the substance of my discussions with him, but clearly you can take it that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, although—’

She stopped. I waited.

‘He was experiencing auditory phenomena,’ she added, slightly reluctantly.

‘So he was hearing voices.’

‘That doesn’t fit with the diagnosis criteria for PTSD. That’s closer to schizophrenia.’

‘Did you investigate further?’

‘He discontinued treatment. And then he died.’

‘Was there a specific event that triggered his problem?’

She looked away. ‘It was . . . nonspecific, as far as I could ascertain.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘There were nightmares, and he was having trouble sleeping, but he couldn’t relate it to a specific occurrence. That’s all I’m prepared to say.’

‘Was there any indication that he might have been about to murder his wife?’

‘None. Do you seriously think that we wouldn’t have intervened if we thought that there was such a risk? Come on.’

‘Is it possible that the same stimulus could have led all three to act as they did?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Could something have happened in Iraq that led to a form of . . . collective trauma?’

Her mouth twitched slightly in amusement. ‘Are you making up psychiatric terms, Mr. Parker?’

‘It sounded right. I couldn’t think of any other way to explain what I meant.’

‘Well, it’s not a bad effort. I dealt with Bernie Kramer twice, shortly after he returned. He displayed mild stress symptoms at the time, similar to those being experienced by Brett Harlan, but neither referred to any common traumatic occurrence in Iraq. Kramer declined to continue treatment. Damien Patchett I encountered briefly after Bernie Kramer died, as part of my research, and, again, he spoke of nothing that might correspond to what you’re suggesting.’