I closed my eyes as the memory came back to me. “He died in my arms. And do you know what the last thing he said to me was?” I asked, my eyes still shut.
“Tell me,” Dr. Sharpe said, his voice filled with compassion.
“He wanted me to tell his unborn son that he loved him and would always be with him.” I leaned forward and scrubbed my hands down my face as I let out a frustrated sound. I looked back up at the doctor. “I told his wife in person that he died and held her in my arms while she cried. The day she delivered her baby, we weren’t deployed, so the entire team was there for her. I held John’s son in my arms and wondered why it was me there and not his father.”
I dropped back onto the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “If only I had found the sniper sooner.”
“Aiden, this guilt you’re carrying for your fellow soldier and friend…I’m going to guess he’s not the only one you’ve lost.”
Slowly, I shook my head as I stared up at the white above me. “No. There are more. I keep all their names on a list in my phone.”
“Do you look through the list?”
I lifted my head off the back of the sofa and met his gaze. “Why?”
He tilted his head some and shrugged. “I’m just curious if you often read through this list of names.” Dr. Sharpe leaned forward, set his notebook down, and then cleared his throat as he rested his forearms on his upper legs. “Aiden, you’re not the first military person to sit on that sofa. You know I served in the Marines.”
I nodded.
“Let me paint a scenario… Will you let me do that?”
When I didn’t reply, he went on.
“You’re alone, maybe you have a beer or a whiskey in your hand, and you pull out this list. As you look through it, memories resurface or voices of your fallen brothers fill the room.”
I swallowed hard and started to rub my hands down my legs to keep them from shaking.
“The voices get louder, or maybe the memories grow more vivid, until you can’t take it anymore and you either go work out, go for a run, or maybe you call another buddy and you head out on the town. Or, now that you’re out of the military, maybe you dive into the family business you’re going to be taking over. Maybe look at the plans for the security company you’d like to start up. Anything to get the memories to go away. Does any of that sound familiar to you?”
I reached over, picked up the ball again, and started to squeeze it in my right hand. When I didn’t respond, Dr. Sharpe went on.
“Aiden, you’ve got to learn to let go of the past. The painful parts of your past. This world you lived in, it was emotional. It’s one person killing another, sometimes day after day. That kind of world will bring out the worst in you, but if you focus on the bad parts of those missions, you may never be able to see the good.”
“The good?”
He nodded. “No one knows why those soldiers died and you lived. Maybe we’ll never know, unless you believe one day you’ll find the answers to all of your questions.”
I looked out the window and then back at him. “Do you believe that?”
“What?”
“That we’ll find the answers to all of the whys.”
“Will my answer impact yours?” he asked.
I thought about his question for a moment before I replied, “No, it won’t.”
Dr. Sharpe smiled as he drew in a long, deep breath and then exhaled. “Yes, I do believe that somewhere down the road, we will find the answers. I personally believe it will be when I get to Heaven.”
I nodded. “My grandmother and grandfather used to take me camping up at Lonesome Lake. I remember one time—I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight—we were sitting on the side of the lake having a rock-skipping contest. I asked my grandmother if she missed her mom and dad. She smiled as she looked up at the clear blue sky and said she missed seeing their faces, but that she felt them. Always. Every day, she felt them.”
“Are you afraid that you’ll forget them if you don’t have the list?”
I lifted my eyes to meet his probing gaze. “I’m afraid I’ll forget it was them and not me.”
He shook his head. “Aiden, the first step you need to do is realize that those people on the list did not die by your hands. You were not the cause of their deaths, and before you say it was your fault…ask yourself this question.”
I waited for him to go on as my heartbeat started to pick up in tempo.