Thank You for Your Service Read Online Free PDF Page A

picked up a chair and charged her husband with it. When he was nine, his mother said one day, “Your father’s gone. He’s not coming back,” and it was true. Adam had been doing well enough until that point—honor-roll grades, no shortage of friends—but his mother had no money, and soon they were evicted from their house, sleeping at a relative’s and living out of a car, and then they were moving in with this strange old soldier, who as far as Adam was concerned was just one more man who was going to let him down.
    Instead of ignoring him, though, or abusing him, the old man would pile his bruised grandson into his Cadillac and take him for long drives. Just the two of them, keeping each other company. He never said a word, except to swear at other drivers. “You fucking bastard,” he would scream, and then keep driving in silence, smoking incessantly. At home, he didn’t talk, either. If he was reading the newspaper and wanted to show someone something, he would point to it with his middle finger, always his middle finger, and slide it across the table.
    That someone was usually Adam. His grandfather was his first experience with war wounds, and Adam grew to love him, and soon after the old soldier died, he joined the army and became a great soldier and now has his own list of places he has been.
    United States—born, molested, beaten, abandoned, girls. wow.
    Iraq—We fought a tough battle there.
    Interstate 70 in Kansas—“Hi. This is Adam Schumann,” he says on the phone now, Topeka nearing, calling to confirm his appointment at the VA. He listens for a moment and hangs up.
    “The appointment’s not till tomorrow,” he says to Saskia.
    She shoots him a look, starts to say something, doesn’t.
    So he says it for her.
    “Goddamn it.”
    They ride in silence for a few miles.
    “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
    “Well it’s not my fault,” she says. “Maybe you should write shit down.” She gets off the interstate at the exit for the hospital. Maybe they can worm their way in somehow. “Why didn’t you call this morning?”
    “I was sure it was today,” Adam says. He rubs his forehead. He slaps his head. He drums his fingers on his leg.
    There’s the hospital in the distance. Saskia slams on the brakes at an intersection in order to avoid a woman crossing the street against the light.
“Dumb bitch,”
she explodes.
    “God, I can’t believe I messed everything up,” Adam says.
    At the hospital now:
    They pass through an entranceway lined with survivors of previouswars in wheelchairs and “Proud to Be an American” T-shirts. “It just stinks like old people and smoke,” Saskia says. They walk down a hallway behind a woman who is giving a tour to two men. “The guys from Vietnam are so expressive, but the new ones, from Iraq and Afghanistan, go straight to violence and suicide,” the woman says. “Mm-hmm,” one of the men says. One of the worst things about Adam’s war, the thing that got to everyone, was not having a defined front line. It was a war in 360 degrees, no front to advance toward, no enemy in uniform, no predictable patterns, no relief, and it helped drive some of them crazy. Here, though, in this new war of Adam’s, there is a front line: this hospital. This old, underfunded, understaffed hospital, which nevertheless includes a compassionate receptionist who says she will see what she can do and a doctor who is underpaid and overwhelmed and says that of course he can squeeze Adam in. So in Adam goes, preceded by all of the previous histories dictated about him over these two years, rendered as only doctors and interpreting bureaucrats can:
    Topeka VAMC reports you were clean and appropriately and casually dressed. Your psychomotor activity was unremarkable. Your speech was clear and unremarkable. Your attitude toward the examiner was cooperative, friendly and attentive. Your affect was expressive. Your mood was depressed and irritated. Your attention was intact. You were