“Was anyone killed?”
Ethan took a deep breath in.
Exhaled.
If he was honest, the question had surprised him, and now he found himself bracing against a slideshow of images he’d spent a lot of therapy sessions trying to come to terms with.
The shockwave as the RPG explodes behind him.
The severed tail section and rotor falling a hundred and fifty feet to the street below.
The sudden g-force as the helicopter spins.
Alarms going mad.
The impossible rigidity of the power stick.
The impact not nearly as bad as he feared.
Consciousness lost only for half a minute.
Seat belt jammed, can’t reach his KA-BAR.
“Ethan. Was anyone killed?”
Insurgent fire already tearing into the other side of the wreckage, someone opening up with an AK.
Through the cracked windshield, two medics limping away from the chopper.
Shell-shocked.
“Ethan...”
Straight into the four-blade rotor still spinning fast enough...
There.
Gone.
Blood sheeting down the windshield.
More gunfire.
The insurgents coming.
“Ethan?”
“Everyone was killed except me,” Ethan said.
“You were the sole survivor?”
“Correct. I was captured.”
Jenkins jotted something on a leather-bound notepad. He said, “I need to ask you a few more questions, Ethan. The more honest you are, the better chance I have at helping you, which is all I want to do. Have you been hearing any voices?”
Ethan tried to suppress the glare.
“Are you kidding?”
“If you could just answer...”
“No.”
Jenkins scribbled on his pad.
“Have you had any difficulty talking? For instance, maybe your speech has been garbled or mixed up?”
“No. And I’m not delusional. And I’m not having hallucinations, or—”
“Well, you wouldn’t really know if you were having hallucinations, now would you? You’d believe the things you were seeing and hearing were real. I mean, if you were hallucinating me and being in this hospital room and this entire conversation we’re having, it wouldn’t feel any different, would it?”
Ethan slid his legs over the side of the bed and eased his feet down onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” Jenkins asked.
Ethan started toward the closet.
Weak, unstable on his legs.
“You’re in no condition to be leaving, Ethan. They’re still evaluating your MRI. You could have a closed-head injury and we don’t know the severity. We need to continue our evaluation—”
“I’ll get an evaluation. Just not here. Not in this town.”
Ethan pulled open the closet door, took his suit down off the hanger.
“You did walk into the sheriff’s office without a shirt on. Is that correct?”
Ethan slid his arms into his white button-down, which appeared to have been washed since he wore it last. The stink of human decay replaced with the scent of laundry detergent.
“It reeked,” Ethan said. “It smelled like the dead man I had just—”
“You mean the one in the abandoned house that you say you found.”
“I didn’t say I found it. I found it.”
“And you did go to the residence of Mack and Jane Skozie, whom you’d never met before, and verbally harassed Mr. Skozie on his front porch. Is that a fair statement?”
Ethan started on the buttons, fingers trembling, struggling to fit them through the holes. Got them out of order, but he didn’t care. Get dressed. Get out of here. Clear of this town.
“Walking around with a potential brain injury is not on the list of smart things to do,” Jenkins said. He had risen out of his chair.
“There’s something wrong here,” Ethan said.
“I know, that’s what I’ve been trying to—”#p#分页标题#e#
“No. This town. The people in it. You. Something’s off, and if you think I’m going to sit here, let you fuck with me for one more second—”
“I am not fucking with you, Ethan. No one here is fucking with you. Do you have any idea how paranoid that statement sounds? I’m merely trying to determine if you’re in the throes of a psychotic episode.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Ethan pulled on his pants, got them buttoned, reached down for his shoes.
“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that. ‘An abnormal condition of the mind, generally characterized by a loss of contact with reality.’ That’s the textbook definition of psychosis, Ethan. It could’ve been caused by the car accident. By seeing your partner killed. Or some buried trauma from the war resurfacing.”
“Get out of my room,” Ethan said.
“Ethan, your life could be—”
Ethan looked at Jenkins across the room, and something in his stare, his body language, must have suggested the real threat of violence, because the psychiatrist’s eyes went wide, and for the first time, he shut up.