The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline(263)

I took my phone and walked down to the beach alone.

“Nic, it’s Lee.”

“Hey, honey! What time do you want us tomorrow?”

“Look, it’s not good timing. Sebastian is … struggling. He’s not ready to meet anyone.”

She could hear the tremor in my voice.

“Fuck that, Lee! I want to see you. This isn’t something you have to do by yourself.”

“I know that, Nic, but now just isn’t good. Maybe in a few weeks.”

There was a short silence.

“How bad is it, Lee?”

“Bad,” I said. “Really bad.”

And then I started crying, and couldn’t stop.

Nicole listened to me sobbing into the phone for several minutes. When I finally began to calm down, she spoke to me firmly.

“Lee, you need professional help on this; Sebastian needs professional help. Can’t the VA hospital do something? I mean, the military has programs to help with exactly this problem.”

I shook my head wearily, wishing she was there to throw a comforting arm around me.

“He refuses to talk to anyone, Nic. He barely talks to me. I don’t know what to do—he says he’s had enough of hospitals and never wants to see another doctor. I get that, and I feel the same in some ways, but I’m at the end of my rope here. And he’s drinking; he hardly eats. He doesn’t touch me, and won’t let me touch him. I don’t know what to do.”

She hesitated for a moment.

“Are you sure you want to do this at all, Lee?”

I took a sharp intake of breath.

Out of everything I thought she’d say, that had been furthest from my thoughts. And I had considered that I might not be what he needed, but I’d always assumed that he’d be the one to walk away.

“I can’t abandon him now, Nic. He needs me, more than ever.”

“I’m sure he does, but unless he accepts your help, you can’t do anything. He has to want to get better.”

I knew she was right; I just wasn’t sure what to do about it.

By then the nightmares had started, too. Or rather, I hadn’t realized how bad they had become, but now we were sharing a bed, it became clear to me how traumatic they really were. Sebastian would have intense dreams and wake up screaming. Once, I thought he was going to attack me, his flashback was so vivid. He held back at the last second, his eyes wild and black with terror; I think it was seeing my fear that stopped him from … from hurting me.

He started checking that the windows and doors were locked two or three times a night before we went to bed, and he became paranoid about people coming to the house, whether it was the mailman or one of our neighbors dropping a leaflet through the door.

He refused to leave the house, but hated me going out, too. We became virtual recluses. I tried to carry on working, but there was only so much I could do from home, and I began to resent his attempts to control me.

One day, he yelled at me because there was no alcohol in the house, and I’d refused to buy any more.

And I yelled back.

“If you want a fucking drink, then get your fucking ass off that couch and go get yourself one, Sebastian!”

I marched out of the bungalow, my blood boiling.

I felt horribly guilty the moment I slammed the door behind me, but I so wasn’t backing down. We’d reached an impasse: something had to change.

When I’d calmed enough to go home, a place that was no longer a refuge, Sebastian had gone to bed. He didn’t even acknowledge me as I climbed in beside him. Our bed had become another battleground.

And he wouldn’t touch me: he barely looked at me, shunned any embrace, and we didn’t make love. We were strangers to each other, but sharing a bed.

In the morning, I wearily dragged myself awake, both of us having slept badly. He’d had another terrifying nightmare, screaming out in fear. I longed to hold him, but he wouldn’t even look at me. When I touched him, he flinched.

I didn’t know how much longer we could go on like this. And he still refused to speak to any doctors.

“What the fuck do they know about it, Caro?”

“A lot: you’re not the first Marine who’s been injured.”

“Former Marine; former fucking Marine, Caro. I’m nothing now. Maybe you can try and fucking remember that.”

His words cracked my heart.

He’d been my lover, he’d been a Marine, and now he was neither. The past was another country and the future was … well, he couldn’t see that he had a future. We lived from each slow hour to the next.

And he felt guilty—so guilty for having been the one who had survived. No one would tell me exactly what had happened but from what I’d pieced together, and from what David had told me during that first phone call, someone on the inside, an ally, had started shooting and then detonated a bomb. Three other Marines had died and two more were injured, although not as badly as Sebastian. Surviving wasn’t about skill; it was about luck.