Page 3 of The Darkness Within
The guards are back. They rush into my room, poking their guns in my face.
But they aren’t guards, and they aren’t guns. They’re nurses with sharp needles, piercing my flushed skin, and the lightheaded feeling becomes so strong that I feel detached from my body, floating above the bed as I watch them subdue me into an incoherent Haloperidol haze.
Five…four…three…
As I count down the seconds before I lose consciousness, I can smell the stale breath and rotting teeth of the dogs, hot and thick in my face, choking me.
Coming to after being sedated is a bitch. My head aches, the slightest movement sends a sharp pain throbbing through my temporal lobe. My vision feels off and everything appears blurry. My mouth is dry, and my throat burns, like maybe I was screaming, but I can’t remember a damn thing. Even my arm hurts. My biceps are sore, probably where they jabbed me with the needle harder than they needed to, most likely a punishment for ripping out my IV.
I remember the blood, which is partly what triggered me. But glancing down at my gown, I can’t find a trace of it, nor is it staining my sheets. They must have cleaned me up while I slept. A knot of emotion thickens my throat, and I have to fight back the tears that rush to my eyes.
I feel so fucking desolate, so hopeless. I was so out of it that I wasn’t even aware they were touching me. They had to have undressed me and washed me to put a fresh gown on. They rolled my body so they could change the sheets beneath me while I slept on them, and I never even stirred. I’ve lost all consent and autonomy over my body.
Over my entire life.
As a patient, I’m entitled to certain rights, but as a patient displaying signs of mental illness, I seem to have been stripped of every one of them. I’m nothing more than a puppet dancing on their strings. The thought of being touched while unconscious fills me with so much fear and anxiety that I almost can’t breathe. The machines beep loudly as my heart rate spikes into the danger zone. I can feel the signs of a panic attack coming on, and if I don’t get control of myself quickly, they’ll sedate me again.
They’ll touch me again while I’m unconscious.
Every time they put me under, I feel like I’m losing another piece of my soul.
Sucking a deep breath into my lungs, I hold it in my chest, trying to slow my breathing, slow my heart rate, slow my racing thoughts and my rising panic. I focus on the oak. The way the leaves dance in the wind. The little black bird perched on the lowest branch. I release the breath. One… Two… Three… And suck another one into my lungs. I hold it for the count of three and release it again. My heart rate slows. The beeping stops. But the tears I was holding back rush forth, dripping down my cheeks in wet trails. Tears of frustration and impotence. Tears of loneliness and isolation. Tears of self-pity and shame. My heart and my head are a Rubik’s cube of emotions, and I can’t vent a single one of them without fear of losing control and losing my tether on reality. I hoard them inside of me until I’m so stuffed that they leak from my eyes against my will.
The doctor comes in, and I swipe away my tears with the hem of my blanket.
“Sergeant, how are you feeling?”
All I can manage is a halfhearted shrug. I don’t trust my voice after crying.
“Well, I bring good news that hopefully will help you feel better. You’re being discharged.”
His heavy German accent sounds so foreign after hearing nothing but Pashto for weeks. “To where?” My voice croaks like a bullfrog.
“Stateside. The Army arranged for transport. They’ll be here sometime tomorrow to pick you up. I’m transferring your records to Walter Reed Medical Center.”
Walter Reed. I’m done. I know I’m done and that my career is over. My glory days are behind me. What does that mean for the rest of my life? What does my future look like now that I’m nothing but a head case?
“W-will I be sedated during transport?” The fear of being unconscious for hours as I cross continents is terrifying enough to make my heart stop beating.
“Not as long as you can remain calm. There will be a medical professional on board to administer meds, should you need them. But if you lose control, they’ll have to sedate you.”
I swallow down my panic and nod my head. What else can I do? I really don’t have a say in the matter. All I can do is my best to remain calm. Having to remain vigilant about my surroundings every second to avoid being triggered is exhausting. And it’s terrifying, always afraid of what someone might say, afraid that my memories will betray me because I’m not in control.
I am powerless. Ruled by everything and everyone.
A victim of my circumstances and my surroundings.
The doctor shuffles the papers and reaches for a pen from his coat pocket. “Just state your name and ID for me before I give you these papers to sign.”
He checks the plastic ID bracelet on my wrist. It’s standard practice to identify the patient before administering any kind of service. After weeks in the hospital, I know this, but I’m on edge, I’m afraid, and therefore, I’m vulnerable. His simple request makes the pain in my head spike, and all the light fades from the room, and the memories pull me back down into the darkness below the ground.
Day 4 in captivity
Hunger gnawed at my empty stomach. My mouth felt so dry, it might as well have been glued shut. We’d only been given a piece of flatbread to appease our bellies and a few sips of dirty water. I don’t want to know where it came from. I didn’t have much choice. If the parasites didn’t kill me, dehydration would have. Everything hurt. My shoulders ached from being tied behind my back. My head throbbed from being beaten repeatedly, and I’d be surprised if my jaw wasn’t broken. I was bloody and dirty and sweaty and fucking miserable.
Exhaustion had weakened my body along with the hunger and the dehydration and the constant fear. The crashes of adrenaline had depleted my energy. The dogs barked night and day, it never ended. Soldiers yelled, always yelling, shouting orders in a state of confusion. They sounded angry, but who knew? It could just be the way they spoke. We had a new guard. He was younger than the others, with dark skin and eyes, and his head was covered in a red cloth. I believed his gun was Russian, which didn’t surprise me.
“Will they come back for us?”