Messed Up

The story of a man who went to fight for freedom.

He came back minus a leg, with PTSD.

This is his fight to find his worth in life again.

~#~

Your freedom.

My freedom.

It didn’t come free.

It was paid for

By someone else’s blood.

-Paraphrasing Chris Pratt.

Chapter one.

Reaching down to rub his aching knee as he drove his old truck through the wide open plains of New Mexico, Connor Tane O’Reilly was jolted again as he always was when he felt the metal of the hydraulic joint instead of flesh and bone.

The thought that this was not his knee flashed through his brain right before the thought that yes, this indeed was his knee, and had been for over nine months now. He wondered if he would ever get used to the idea. One thought triggered another and suddenly he was lost in the memories.

~~

He had been sent to the Middle East where there never seemed to be any lasting peace, and was stationed in the latest area they were calling the Sand Box. The old hands had watched the green horns walk in and although it was highly frowned upon, took bets on which of them would be the first to fall. The short, fair, redhead was paying big money.

But they had miss judged him badly. He may have looked soft but he had been put through a morning routine much like the one at boot camp, for the two years preceding it while working on his uncles Ranch.

Life was hard, hot and dry, He got used to sand being in everything including his food as well as a few places you would really rather it wasn’t, and everyone who had bet on him lost their stakes. He turned out be better at staying alive than even some of the old guys.

Six months later, Private First class O’Reilly was one of the old hands watching the latest batch of green horns arrive.

Connor had been eating sand for 691 days, or one year, ten months and twenty two days if you would rather.

Day 692 dawned just as hot and bright as every other day.

The assignment was routine, just like every other day.

He joked with his buddies, just like every other day.

He walked the same track, just like every other day.

One of his buddies, Sammy had got a letter from his girl, and after having kept it to himself over night, he was now reading it out to Connor, who they called Red (no one knew why), and Popsicle. They did this for each other any time they got a letter from home. Connor didn’t have a girl so his were usually from his Mom or his twin sister. Popsicle said he was in love with Caitlin and hoped Red knew he was going to be his brother in law. Connor just shook his head and smiled. Truth be told he would be just fine with it, but figured Caitlin ought to be given a choice in the matter first.

Sammy took a step off the well worn track. He turned to look back at his two buddies, taking two more steps as he did and that was the last thing Connor saw that day. By the time he regained consciousness he was at an Evac base. At the time they didn’t tell him that both Sammy and Popsicle were dead, they just told him he was going home. He didn’t remember anything much about the next week, the drugs stole that time from him. He wished he couldn’t remember being told his buddies were gone, but that moment would live forever in a brilliant spotlight of grief.

Six weeks later with a new knee in his left leg and instructions to take it easy and keep weight off it, he was sent home. His broken bones had knit back together and the cuts and abrasions had healed although they left a number of scars over his body, but the loss of his friends was still raw.

~~

He came out of his flash back to find he had pulled the truck over to the soft shoulder, for which he was grateful, but his hands were gripping the wheel so tightly he wondered if he was leaving additional dents in it. His heart was hammering in his chest and his breathing was quick and ragged. His throat felt raw as if he had yelled himself horse, and his eyes were stinging. A quick glance in the mirror showed they were red and there were tracks from tears down his cheeks. Looking back at his hands he forced his fingers to let go and stretched them straight with the palms still resting against the wheel and began to count. A three count as he breathed in, hold it for it for three and out for three. He continued to do this until he was sure he had himself back under control.

He smiled humourlessly to himself, his counselor would be proud of him, the sanctimonious bastard that he was. Connor wouldn’t miss his weekly meetings with him. Besides, he had his medication and this proved he was the one in control, not the PTSD. He had pulled over hadn’t he? If it wasn’t him in control then the truck would be in the ditch, wreaked, possibly along with himself. And one other good thing was that he had been alone in the truck, no one to witness it this time. He shook his head as he remembered a time in the kitchen back home. His Mom had not coped well with it and the bruise on Caitlin’s face still haunted him. She told him not to worry, she should have known better than to get up in his face during an episode.

He had never hit a female before that, although he had been sorely tempted a time or two. He had been taught to respect women from an early age, and it was a blight on his soul that this….this condition had taken over and ….

No, there was no one to blame but himself. He had to learn to take control back over his life, or he didn’t deserve to live it.

He looked down at his leg. The pants hid the prosthetic but he could still see the outline.

A Trans-femoral prosthetic with a state of the art modular knee joint that contained a computer chip which kept the swing and gate of his stride in check, as well as having a friction brake and attitude control. All this meant that it helped to make him walk as if the leg was born to him, and on a good day he only had a slight limp to give it away.

It actually worked much better than the artificial knee that they had tried first.

That had been stiff and hard to walk normally with, not that he ever really got the chance. The femoral bone they had anchored it in was weakened by the damage sustained in the blast and after only a short three months it had become clear that the strain on the bone was too much, it was braking under the pressure and Connor may never be able to put his full weight on it.

Then had come the day when he had lost his patience, tried to do too much, and a piece the size of a quarter had snapped out leaving not only a hole but fractures in the bone. Before he was put under he was told they would do everything they could to save the leg, but when he woke up he was told they couldn’t. The damage to the bone went too far up and the left leg would have been a good three inches shorter than the right if they had put the knee back in. This way they could give him a good stump and a leg of the same length. The stress on the bone was much reduced as well, when you didn’t have a hunk of metal jammed up the middle of it. The pain was less too, if you didn’t take into account the phantom pain that he had. Some days his foot ached so bad, other days his calf itched like crazy. The stump itself still hurt but it was muscle hurt not the deep bone hurt of before. Pain medication took care of that easily, and he took much less of it than previously.

Feeling secure in his ability’s again Connor put the truck in gear and looked behind before pulling back onto the road and continuing his journey.

He didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t have a plan beyond 'getting out of Dodge', so to speak. He needed to find some space to discover who he was again, what he was. To find his worth in life, or end it if he couldn’t.