No More Backup

Posted on Wed May 25th, 2016 @ 12:49am by Lieutenant Mikela Reyes MD

Today I finally got some use out of my counseling training. I treated a young man, one of the new Marines, who thought he was having a heart attack. Of course, I could tell right away that it was an anxiety attack. I stabilized the fellow and listened to him yammer about how he didn't even know why he was here and he was afraid of dying for the wrong reasons until the medication took hold and he had a nice little nap. I'm going to have to talk to the Marine CO about him. Not looking forward to that much, but I need to revisit Marine Country someday, and it might as well be sooner rather than later. Not looking forward to doing this to that kid, either. An anxiety disorder is darn near 'kiss of death', even if it can be controlled by medication. I put him on a new regimen, and he's going to be out for at least a week.

Hearing him go on, though, got me to thinking. Why do I do what I do? I know why I started. Michael and I, we always had each other's backs. We always had each other's company. The orphanage put us in the same crib, since we were twins, and I think they should've made twins out of the rest or the kids, too. It's a lonely thing to grow up when your 'parent' has sixty 'children'. The bullies couldn't hurt us, because we had each other, but there were other kids who weren't so lucky. I guess I wanted to give them something.

Saying that makes me sound kind of silly. It's like I'm some kind of charitable figure, but I never tried to give them my food, or extra blankets or whatnot like a proper charity person. I guess what I wanted to give them was a little bit of safety. Even if it was just pretend. So one day I upped and went for the bully, and he was twice my size... and as soon as he was about to pound me, he got hit with a flying tackle from my other half. We took him down, the two of us, and he didn't try to force food out of the littler kids anymore.

I think I still feel kind of guilty... I... I... uh... I don't want to talk about this. Log entry... no. No, I'm going to keep going. I have to admit it. I feel guilty about it. Michael never started a fight. Never. He never went for the bullies. He just kept me safe. I'm the one who dragged him into every fight he ever had. I dragged him into everything. When I became a Marine, he became Security. I got into fights... he kept my ship safe. Until he couldn't, until there was nothing in the world he could do for me, or I could do for him. I knew. I knew when it happened. My squad leader asked me if I was okay. He didn't laugh at me. He didn't even doubt me. I don't know why. He just took extra charge of me and kept me nearby, and then the pieces, we saw them like a meteor shower, and... I don't care. I know it's good for me to talk about it, but I just plain don't want to, and I'm not going to.

I want to stop now.

Computer, stop recording. Turn it off. I want to stop now. I want to stop.

Computer, delete log entry.

I oughta get some sleep.