The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Collateral Damage

Joe was tough, a highly decorated state trooper for 20 plus years and thought he’d seen everything. He’d been shot at, shot, rammed by a car, seen the gore and death of countless accidents and domestic violence. He was tough, and one of the best at corralling the bad guys.

Then one day he got an emergency call. There was a "jumper" on a bridge. He grabbed the man's arm but the "jumper" twisted, arms tangled, slid, he had him by the wrist, another twist. "Jumper" was gone.

Joe was tough, but he fell apart. It all came back, erupted, Vietnam. It was not the fear, terror of death, the explosions, the hidden enemies, or the killings. He was the only survivor of his company. All his buddies, his brothers, were gone. He’d put that all out of his mind until the moment the "jumper" was gone. He was unable to save that life too. Then it all came flooding back and was drowning him.

***

Anna saw her sister bludgeoned to death, and she did not make a sound. The soldiers told her she couldn’t. If she did she would be next. She obeyed. She never voiced it to anyone, not to other family, friends, or even to her husband, and certainly not to authority. She put it out of her mind -- she thought.

Years later working in a factory her sleeve got caught in a grinding machine pulling her into the chewing gears. The shoulder injury was not severe and the surgeons got an “excellent result,” but the pain did not go away. It got worse and worse and was agonizing.

As her arm was being pulled into that machine the image of her sister rose from the empty deadness in Anna flooding her with pain.

***

The plump graying grandmother walked into the store, put on a dress, then another over the first, then another over that, and on and on until she could hardly walk. The sales lady standing right there was speechless. Grandmother then waddled out of the store where she was immediately stopped and charged with shoplifting. This was not the first time. In fact this had been going on for years. She was always caught.

When she was ten years old her family was deported to a work camp. On her eleventh birthday her father took her with him as he sneaked past the guards and over the barbed wire. He took her to the nearby town where there was a clothing store, and told her to wait outside while he broke in and got her a birthday dress. She waited and pretty soon her father appeared with a dress over his arm. The soldiers were waiting too and shot him dead washing her feet and the dress in his blood.

***

A man and his brother fought side by side in a noble patriotic battle. He saw his brother hacked to death. The man went on to become a writer and dramatist. His main recognized themes are justice, the destructiveness of revenge, war, and the need for humanism. An unrecognized theme is the destructive power and suffering caused by unspoken grief. The battle was Marathon. His name is Aeschylus.

Published: November 6, 2007