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“I’d like to suggest something to talk about for today,” she said.
That was fine with me. It saved me from having to figure out something to talk about. “Sure, what do you want to talk about?”
She handed me a piece of paper. “This.”
It was a photocopy of a news article from the Snow Creek Daily. “Local Hero Comes Home.” Damn. But I figured we’d have to talk about this sooner or later. I scanned through the article, my nerves on edge.
* * *
Local resident and Award of Honor recipient Talon Steel returned home to Snow Creek this past week. Talon entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant and quickly gained the rank of first lieutenant and then captain due to his hard work and heroism. He was deployed first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. He received the Award of Honor from the governor of Colorado for making six death-defying forays into a killing zone to save six American troops. Captain Steel was thirty-two years old at the time of his return. He was granted an honorable discharge.
“Captain Steel is a hero to us all and a great example of a model citizen of Colorado,” said the lieutenant governor. “We are proud to have him home to our great state.”
* * *
I stopped reading but glanced at the last line.
Captain Steel made only one comment: “I didn’t do it to be a hero.”
I let out a sigh. “All right. I figured you’d find this eventually.”
“This is amazing. You truly were a hero.”
Hero. There was that word again. People loved to throw it in my face, most notably my little brother. I wasn’t a hero. I sure as hell didn’t feel like one.
“How does this article make you feel, Talon?”
Why not admit the truth? “It makes me feel like a fake, a fraud. I’m no hero.”
“I beg to differ. You saved six soldiers. That equals a hero in my eyes. In most other people’s eyes as well.”
“Let me tell you just how much of a hero I was that day.” I clenched the armchair. “I went back in and saved all of those people because I was hoping to get my ass shot off myself.”
She didn’t bat an eye. “Really? Let’s talk about that a little bit. Why were you trying to get killed?”
“Because I couldn’t deal with my life. Is that any surprise?”
“No, it’s not a surprise, but if you wanted to die so badly, why didn’t you just take your life?”
A question I’d pondered more than once. “I don’t know. I thought about it, but something stopped me.”
“Your will to survive. The human instinct for survival is strong.”
I closed my eyes and thought about things, things that happened back during that horrible time. How I’d said those awful words they’d forced me to say just so they wouldn’t kill me. My will to survive…
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“I never thought I truly wanted to live until recently. The fact that I was held captive, and they threatened to kill me if I didn’t do something—something horrible. I always did it. And I hated myself for it.”
“But you did it to survive.”
I grasped my jawline, my stubble scraping my fingers. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I spent most of that time wishing I were dead. So why did I want to survive? Why did I do what they made me do in order to survive?”
“What kind of things did they make you do?”
Admitting this would be torture. But I had determined to get through this. “A lot of times, they made me tell them that I…” I gulped, swallowing back the nausea that threatened. “I liked what they were doing to me.” My knuckles were white with tension as I gripped the armchair.
“I know this is hard for you to say, but it’s part of the healing. Anything else?”
