Sparta (54 page)

After half an hour a young black woman appeared in the inner doorway. She wore a white lab jacket over jeans and a tan cardigan buttoned up the front. Her hair was pulled back by a hair band.

“Farrell,” she called out, her eyelids heavy. She sounded audibly disinterested. She held a sheaf of folders against her chest. Conrad raised his hand and stood up. “Zuccotti, Gadruso.”

Two more men stood up.

“Gadruto,” one of the men corrected her.

She ignored him. “Follow me.” She spoke loudly, as though they were far away. She turned and set off down the hall. It was narrow and shabby, the cream walls badly scuffed, the floor dull. The woman stopped beside an open door. “Room twelve-oh-nine,” she said. “Farrell.”

She stood waiting. The door of 1209 was open.

“Thank you,” Conrad said, and went inside. The room was small, without windows, and the walls were painted cinder block. The only furnishings were a small metal desk and two chairs. The doctor sat in a tilting armchair before the desk. A straight-backed metal chair stood at right angles to him, for Conrad. There were no books, no rug, nothing but the desk and two chairs and a calendar on the far wall.

The doctor was in his fifties, compact and balding, with a bullet-shaped head and a close-trimmed beard. He wore metal-rimmed glasses, a striped short-sleeved jersey, and khaki pants. On his feet were thick-soled running shoes, as though he might take off down the hall at any moment.

“Hello, I'm Dr. Chandler,” he said. “Sit down.” His eyes were pale brown. He waved at the empty chair.

Conrad sat down. The chair was narrow and had no arms.

The calendar was open to a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of red poppies. The month was October, the year before.

“So,” Dr. Chandler said, glancing down, “Conrad. Why don't you tell me about your record and your deployments.”

All that information had already been filled out by Conrad, and it was in his file, which lay on the desk. It irritated him that Dr. Chandler had not read it. Why had he spent all that time filling it out? Conrad started over, listing the dates and places.

Chandler nodded. “So, tell me why you think you have PTSD.” He leaned back and the chair tilted springily beneath him. He wrapped his arms across his chest. His arms looked strong, though running a little to fat.

“I didn't say I had it,” Conrad said. Post-traumatic stress disorder was a candy-ass condition to claim. He wasn't naming his situation. He was only admitting that it was problematic.

“Then why are you here?” Chandler asked.

Conrad stared at him. He couldn't say these words. Where was the person who understood this? Where was the voice who would speak for him, recognize him?

“I've been experiencing—having—troubling symptoms,” Conrad said. Now he began to feel a kind of panic; his chest was filling up. He didn't know how to proceed.

“Want to tell me what they are? What might have caused them?”

“Well, I saw a lot of combat. Both Ramadi and Haditha. There was a lot of stuff that went on.” He cleared his throat. “In Haditha, the Humvee I was in was blown up by an IED,” said Conrad.

Spoken out loud, here in the cinder-block room, the words seemed tiny and insignificant. He paused, trying to find the words that would make the event what it had been, that would give it the size and significance it still had in his mind. But the words had nothing to do with the way the black flower of sound had bloomed inside his head, the way it kept on blooming, over and over, blotting out the world.

Dr. Chandler nodded, hugging his soft upper arms. “Did you lose consciousness?”

“I don't know,” Conrad said. “It's disorienting. You lose track of what's going on. I might have, or I might just have felt disoriented. If I did, it wasn't for long.”

Chandler made a note in the file.

“Did you report your symptoms? Were any tests done?”

Conrad shook his head. “We were in a combat zone. I wasn't going to leave my men because of this.”

“So there was no report and no test.” Chandler folded his heavy arms on his chest again. “Any other episodes?”

Conrad now felt uncertain, as though he were being cross-examined.

“In Ramadi, in another Humvee, I was beside one of my Marines who was killed,” Conrad said reluctantly. “It happened right in front of me.” It sounded like nothing. As though he were boasting.

Dr. Chandler nodded. “Combat incidents can be very troubling.”

He waited. His chair creaked as he leaned back. It was on springs, and even when he was not moving, the springs made tiny squeaks as Chandler breathed.

Conrad shrugged. “Also, I shot a man who was right in front of me, in the street. I thought he was armed, but he wasn't. I had to step over his head.” He paused. “I guess everyone has these stories.”

Dr. Chandler started to answer, but the phone rang on his desk. “Excuse me.” He picked up.

“Dr. Chandler,” he said. He was looking diagonally at the floor, past Conrad's legs.

“No, I'm not,” he said, then listened. “How long?” he asked, still looking at the floor. “We'll have to discuss that at a later date. I think Morton knows more about it than I do. Have you spoken to him?” There was a pause. “I talked to him last week. It would be good to get his opinion.”

Dr. Chandler leaned closer to the desk. He set his fingertips on it, making a spider of his hand. Then he lifted the index finger, tapping it lightly on the desk as he talked, as though the spider were getting ready to dance.

“Not unless you count the first time,” he said into the phone. “I think you'd better discuss this further. Why don't you call me tomorrow. Yes. Yes,” he said. “All right, thanks.”

He hung up and turned to Conrad.

“Where were we?” he said.

Conrad shrugged his shoulders. “Two deployments to Iraq,” he said. “Ramadi, Haditha. Two IEDs. A lot of other events.”

Dr. Chandler nodded. “Combat incidents can be very troubling.” He said this as though for the first time. “How long have you been having symptoms?”

“They started when I got back last May,” said Conrad. “They've gotten worse.”

The phone rang again. Dr. Chandler raised his index finger at Conrad and picked it up. It seemed to be a different caller.

“I didn't know about that meeting,” Chandler said. “I hadn't heard about it.”

Now he was looking at the wall over his desk. Despite the big, serious-looking running shoes, Chandler's affect was sedentary. It was the slack, heavy arms.

“Can you keep me in the loop?” Chandler asked. “I'll need to stay current with this whole situation.”

When Chandler hung up, he looked at Conrad again. He swiveled the chair around and leaned back, tilting toward the wall.

“Busy day,” he said. “Sorry.”

Conrad nodded.

“Your symptoms,” Dr. Chandler said. “What are they?”

Conrad had written them all down. He listed them again: anxiety, insomnia, panic, flashbacks. Hypervigilance, depression, mood swings, rage. Impotence. Being a dick. Being unable to concentrate or focus on anything and fucking up his GMAT and pretty much fucking up his life so far. And how about being unable to rely on himself for anything, not even for being civil to his family or his girlfriend, and how about not knowing if he'd ever be able to learn anything again?

He didn't like saying any of these words out loud. He couldn't explain what the symptoms felt like, or how they took him over, how powerless he became. How frightening it was to feel that his brain was not where he expected it to be.

Here in this room it all seemed to mean nothing.

“Are you a danger to yourself or others?” Dr. Chandler asked.

Conrad looked at him. “Not to others.”

He waited for the doctor to ask more.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “So, I'm going to prescribe three medications for you, Trazodone, gabapentin, and paroxetine.” He tilted his chair back but then leaned forward against the movement, as though he were on a horse going uphill. “There's no test for PTSD,” he told Conrad. “Treating it is not an exact science. Some medications work for some people and not for others. We use them variously, separately, and in combination.”

He seemed absorbed by what he was saying, and interested in the medications. “We can start you off with one protocol and see how it goes. Don't expect any change for two weeks or so. These take a while to take effect. If you're still having problems, we can alter it until we find the right mix.”

He put his hands on the desk and pulled himself over to it, the chair rolling easily across the bare floor. There was something faintly repulsive about his scooting across the floor without using his legs. He took up a prescription pad and began to write. Conrad said nothing.

This was it.

This was all there was, this brief, useless exchange in this small, windowless room with the out-of-date calendar and the tilting chair. There would be no discussion of what had happened to him, the roaring blackness in his ears, the intrusions on his mind, the explosions of rage, the sense of sullen misery that underlay each day. The sense of confusion, and the relentless headache. All this meant nothing to anyone but him. He was trapped with it forever. This was it.

“You don't need to know any more?” Conrad asked.

Chandler was still writing. “We get a lot of men with these symptoms,” he said without looking up.

Conrad wondered if Chandler used this office all the time, if it was his own regular office or if it was like an examining room in a hospital, used interchangeably by different doctors. So that no one would feel responsible for the calendar.

Dr. Chandler tore off a page and held it out with his left hand. His right was spidered again on the desk. He tapped silently with his index finger, waiting for Conrad to take it.

“I've given you a prescription for Ambien as well, for insomnia. So, start in on these and I'll expect to see you again in about three months.”

 

27

Conrad pushed open the door to the lobby, the pharmacy bag in his hand. The Russian was standing near the counter, his arms folded on his chest, his feet splayed. He stared at Conrad, narrow-eyed. Conrad nodded, walking past him to the elevator.
Fuck you,
he thought.
I'm done, I'm out of here.

In the apartment, Conrad went into the bedroom. He opened the curtains wide and looked out. The sky was lightly overcast by a soft high cloud cover, but the air was clear. The river below was pale and silvery. The swells were low and flat; small whirlpools traced themselves on the surface. A motorboat was heading upriver, its prow lifted by speed. A neon-orange flag fluttered at the stern, a narrow silver wave rippling along the bow.

He was determined to make this work. Even if the appointment had been for shit, his condition had been recognized. What he had was real. He was getting treatment, and from now on things would be better. He could do this on his own: take the pills, monitor the results, climb his way out of this black hole. He didn't need the fucking doctor with his fat arms and big running shoes.

He stood looking down toward the river. Before him lay the big sweep of air and landscape, the glittering surface of the water, beyond it the dark, ticking, smoking collage of Queens spreading into the distance. He took long, slow breaths.

Okay,
he told himself,
the conversation was bad.
The doctor had paid no attention to him. The spoken words had been meaningless, and he never should have said them. Naming things had been wrong. There was no way to name them. There was no one to whom he could ever say them.

But the pills were real.

He imagined them starting to do their work. Like small heat-seeking missiles, they would drive deep into his neurological system, destroying certain memory engines, disconnecting certain links until the troubling images that paraded through his head were exploded, eliminated, vanished.
Fuck.
They would be gone from his mind, or they would become faint and blurred. The thought of their erasure made him realize the depth of his exhaustion. Mercy was what he hoped for.

He brought his computer into the bedroom. He wanted to sit next to the sky, the river beneath him. This was his new self. He sat in the green chair by the window. He set the pill bottles on the table next to him: Trazodone, gabapentin, paroxetine. Carefully he typed the letters of the first name onto the screen. These weird names that the drug companies came up with, with their strange combinations of letters. He clicked on “Find.”

Trazodone came right up. It was prescribed for depression, no big surprise. It increased the presence of serotonin in order to maintain mental balance. Everything made sense until he got to the side effects.

Children, teenagers, and young adults (up to 24 years of age) who take this or other antidepressants to treat depression or other mental illness may be more likely to become suicidal than those who do not.

Your mental state may change in unexpected ways when you take this or other antidepressants, even if you are an adult over age 24. You may become suicidal, especially at the beginning of your treatment. You should call your doctor right away if you experience any of the following symptoms: new or worsening depression, thinking about harming or killing yourself, extreme worry, agitation, panic attacks, difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep, aggressive behavior, irritability, acting without thinking, severe restlessness, and frenzied abnormal excitement.

Your health-care provider will want to see you often while you are taking this medication, especially at the beginning of your treatment.

Conrad's next appointment was in three months. The doctor hadn't said anything about seeing him more often. The idea of reaching him in an emergency was a joke.

Conrad read the passage again, more slowly. It hardly seemed possible that he had been prescribed a medication that would duplicate and amplify his existing symptoms. Yet he had.