Vicarious

At work, I checked in with some of the staff who were showing signs of distress. One of the patients had seriously hurt two nurses who were out with head injuries. A nurse walked me through the unit to get a feel for it. The patient was left to pace the hall wrapped in a blanket, talking to himself, apparently focused on elsewhere. They had a lot to say, the staff. The system, as we all know, is broken.

When I got home, the pillows I purchased to save my ailing neck were on the doorstep. I took them inside, used a scissor to cut through the tape on the outer box, and saw that there was a second box within. I noticed then that I had that disproportionate tiredness, the physically heavy kind, so I cast the inner box aside, undressed and went directly to bed. 

I dreamed of flying into a city on a helicopter as part of a military unit. We were standing on the skids and I was trying not to think about falling. We flew low through the downtown streets just above the roofs of the the cars. It was a training mission, but the civilians were unaware and did not understand our presence. As we disembarked and began patrolling through the streets, some of them panicked. 

The enemy weren't uniformed military. They were interwoven into the civilian population. Instead of killing them, my job was to identify and count them as we pushed through the city. I told the first two people we encountered they were dead and they smiled slyly. They knew that I knew who they were. And I knew with absolute certainty. 

And then we were searching a house filled with women and girls who were lined up to interview for jobs. It was a brothel, or soon to be one, opening in anticipation of the presence of an occupying force. Us. 

I was counting them. They were the enemy too. In different circumstances, we'd be killing them now. When I reached thirty, my absolute certainty started to feel less absolute.