Until Tuesday (20 page)

They happened so frequently, these little reminders from Tuesday, that after a while I took them for granted. I was so up and down, so prone to dwelling on traumatic events from both New York and Iraq, that Tuesday’s interruptions became the rhythm of my life. He was keeping me so grounded, in fact, that I didn’t realize I was pushing myself too hard, thinking too much, and letting my sleep schedule run amok. I didn’t think much of it, since my life had been haphazard for so long, until the hours before dawn on the fourth night of absolutely no sleep, when Tuesday started to cry. If you have ever heard an animal whimpering in the dark, you know what a heartbreaking sound it is. Those sobs, so raw and genuine, cut through my chest like a serrated blade and then, like a key in a lock, pierced right into my closed-off heart. I rose from my bed, walked over to Tuesday, and gave him a hug that lasted until dawn. Then I put on his cape and, together, we went to the emergency room.

A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn’t think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry . . . until I looked into Tuesday’s eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love.

When I put my hand on his head, he stepped onto the couch and raised his face to my own. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then, slowly, Tuesday licked me. Yes, on the lips . . . and the chin . . . and the nose . . . slobbering all over my face with that big slow-moving tongue. That’s the moment when Tuesday, after all his caution, stopped being just my service dog, and my emotional support, and my conversation piece. That’s when he became my friend.

CHAPTER 20

SUMMER DAYS

Once you choose hope, anything’s possible

—C
HRISTOPHER
R
EEVE

By the summer of 2009, it felt like everything was com
ing together. Ali, my former translator from Al-Waleed, had arrived in the United States from Jordan and settled in New Jersey. He was having difficulty finding work, his two-room apartment was too small for his family, and he was in debt to the U.S. government for the cost of his flight, but at least he was safe. Or, as safe as you can be in the more urban sections of northern New Jersey.

My medical situation, meanwhile, was improving. I had a great therapist and a great primary-care physician, and my newest course of medicine, more than twenty pills for everything from anxiety to irritable bowel syndrome (my digestive system never recovered after Al-Waleed), was working as expected.

In fact, medical treatment of all veterans was improving noticeably by the summer of 2009. The Obama administration had increased the VA budget significantly, leading to more consistent—if still too often inadequate—care. Traumatic brain injuries, like the one I sustained in Al-Waleed, began making the news after evidence surfaced that concussions in football players caused long-term anxiety, stress, and depression—many of the symptoms I shared. At the same time, the nation, and especially the Army, began taking PTSD seriously. There were still deniers and military leaders at all levels who mistreated afflicted service members, but a majority of people understood that war, violence, and proximity to sudden death inflicted psychological wounds and that those wounds need to be addressed. Treatment for PTSD was more available and a little less stigmatized, even among military officers and active-duty personnel. If I had been wounded in 2008, instead of 2003, the course of my treatment, and even my life, would almost assuredly have been much different and vastly superior.

But, as a nation, we still had far to go, and I wasn’t about to let anyone forget it.

Between May and July, ten of my articles were published in numerous venues, urging the United States not to become complacent about Iraq and the health of its combat veterans.

What about the atrocities American soldiers were still being asked to commit in Iraq, I wrote in the
Hartford Courant
, from firing into occupied buildings to induce and thereby pinpoint return fire to frequent searches of homes without probable cause?

What about soldiers like Spc. Alyssa Peterson, an Army interrogator who killed herself in September 2003 after being reprimanded for showing “empathy” toward prisoners and refusing to torture them? Her words, as written in the official report of her death, are haunting: “She said she did not know how to be two people . . . [She] could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.”

What about the thousands of wounded veterans who were being discriminated against in hiring, during a terrible recession, either because their bosses felt therapy sessions for PTSD took too much time or because of the stereotype that combat-wounded veterans were ticking time bombs waiting to explode?

What about the fact that, according to the RAND Corporation, of the 300,000 veterans suffering from PTSD (out of 800,000 servicemen and women who had served at least two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan), less than half sought treatment?

What about the suicide rate among veterans, which was already staggeringly high but wouldn’t become a national issue until 2010, when the number of suicides per month surpassed combat deaths?

Even beyond my articles, my advocacy efforts were increasing. That spring and summer, as he promoted his bill establishing a pilot program to match service dogs with wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Senator Franken often mentioned his meeting with Tuesday at Obama’s inauguration. He even spoke about us on the Senate floor, thus entering our names in the
Congressional Record
. This exposure led to national news articles and invitations to charitable events, which in turn led to relationships with several organizations that offered resources to the disabled, most notably the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID) and the Harlem Independent Living Center (HILC). I was so impressed, I started working with them on broader issues of acceptance and accessibility. They were kind and accepting people and, in hindsight, I can recognize them as the larger family I had been looking for since leaving the military. They might not have understood my experiences in Iraq, but they understood my struggles, because they had gone through similar circumstances.

The culmination of those efforts, at least psychologically, occurred on July 23, 2009, when Senator Franken’s legislation, the Service Dogs for Veterans Act (SDVA), was introduced to Congress. Its passage soon after was a meaningful victory, and one that inspired me with hope and pride, not just because Tuesday had inspired it but because I knew how a service dog transformed a life. That March, Tuesday and I had been the guests of honor at Soho’s Animazing Gallery charity event, where we raised service dog awareness and donations to help wounded warriors. The title of a piece I wrote about the event for the
Huffington Post
summed up my feelings when Senator Franken’s legislation passed: “For Veterans, Happiness Is a Warm Puppy.”

That is not to say life was easy in Sunset Park. Tuesday and I went back recently for the first time in two years to see my old landlord, Mike Chung, and his French bulldog, Wellington, and I became so anxious on the hour-long subway ride I almost threw up. If it hadn’t been for this book, and my need to reconnect with those memories in order to write it, I would have turned around and gone home. On every block, a business evoked a negative memory, and there was one where the experience was so egregious the thought of it sent me careening so completely into the past that I grayed out and don’t remember the last five minutes of the walk. While I was lost in memories, Tuesday led me dutifully back to our block. My old row house, thank goodness, was a safe zone. Mike was as cheerful and welcoming as ever, and Tuesday and Welly picked up exactly where they left off, barreling into each other and then racing wildly up and down the stairs. Twenty minutes later, they were panting on the floor of the entryway, Welly lying upside down on Tuesday like a passed-out preschooler while Mike and I laughed like old times.

But as soon as we left, I felt the apprehension, something I can only describe as claustrophobia even though Tuesday and I had gone from a four-foot entryway to the open air. I limped four blocks out of my way to the one deli where I felt comfortable, but they didn’t remember me, and the man at the counter said, “No dogs.” I explained, and with a long hesitation, and then visible reluctance, he took my order. But when he went to make my sandwich, a lady came in and started complaining about Tuesday, so another employee turned to me and said, “Hey, sir, no dogs in here.”

“He’s a service dog.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

They served my sandwich, but I spent the next twenty minutes hunched over my table, muttering to myself while the deli employees watched me anxiously, hoping I would leave. Tuesday knew to stay at my feet—it was easier that way, when he didn’t call attention to himself—but he stared at me the whole time with sympathy in his eyes. No, life wasn’t easy for me in Sunset Park. Not at all.

But there were good memories, too—great memories, in fact—and an upward trajectory to my life, especially with Tuesday. We had moved into a new phase of our relationship, where we could be both a disabled veteran and his assistant, and a man and his dog.

I remember like it was this morning, in fact, the first time I took Tuesday to the dog run at Sunset Park, the large green space fifteen blocks from our apartment for which the neighborhood was named. Dogs were only allowed off the leash for a few hours in the morning, so we’d risen early and made a special trip. I saw Tuesday’s ears perk up when he heard the barking, but I played a trick on him and walked past the first entrance. After a brief hesitation, and an audible sigh, Tuesday ignored the sound and focused on the sidewalk ahead. When I turned into the second entrance, he dropped his good-dog act and practically pulled me—“Easy, Tuesday!”—up the short staircase. Sunset Park was a hillside sloping down to the street, with a high wall at the base, and when we reached the top of the stairs we could see for the first time the dogs on the hill, running and carousing, their owners standing in little groups along the top. The concrete path wasn’t steep, but it was a slow climb for someone with a cane, and Tuesday walked at the front of the leash the whole way, pushing the pace.

At the top, I paused to catch my breath. Sunset Park isn’t one of New York’s more picturesque parks—it’s mostly grass and benches, crisscrossed with concrete paths, young trees, and garbage cans—but the view from the top is one of the best in the city. Beyond a white tower and three insectlike loading cranes on the Brooklyn waterfront, the Statue of Liberty stands two inches tall in the middle of New York Harbor, looking out toward the sea. Beneath her, the Staten Island Ferry is almost always visible, a dark shadow in the shimmering water, a white wake pushing it toward the glowing rectangles and gray shadows of lower Manhattan. The view extends past the support towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, with their mesh of cables, all the way to midtown, the whole southern half of the island appearing no more than five feet long and half a foot tall where the Empire State Building punctures the horizon. It was a perfect metaphor for my existence at that time. I was part of New York, but there was a distance between us. It was only a matter of time, I realized, before I stepped back into life. Maybe that’s why, on that morning, Manhattan had never looked more beautiful.

Tuesday, of course, didn’t notice. I don’t know if dogs can see that far—Manhattan was at least two miles away—but even if he could, he wasn’t interested in the view. That morning, he just stood and stared at me, waiting for the next move. When I bent down and unlatched his vest, his tail started to wag and his feet began to shift.

Until then, I had only taken the cape off in my apartment or after midnight, when Tuesday and I limped past the dark row houses to Rainbow Park. This was a first: broad daylight, people nearby, other dogs. I touched his side as I unhooked his second buckle. I felt the quiver, and I knew Tuesday was ready. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I move rather slowly. I have always been a methodical person. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” as they say in the Army, and I like to get things right the first time. After all, you never know when it will end up being your only shot. Since my physical injuries, I’ve become even more precise. Or maybe it just takes me longer to perform to the high standard I have always set for myself.

By the time I removed his vest, Tuesday was shaking with anticipation. I could tell by the speed and angle of his tail that he was ready to explode into a sprint, but he took one last look at me, his eyebrows bobbing as he analyzed my face. I didn’t have to nod. He could tell from my eyes that I wanted him to run.

“Go play!” I yelled, and before the words were out of my mouth, Tuesday turned and bolted down the hill, out past the last of the dogs, running with such abandon I thought for sure he would tumble over in a ball of fur. But halfway to the bottom he slowed, then turned and doubled back, lowering his head to propel himself up the hill, then swerving into the pack, and, finally, bumping and rolling with the other dogs. Have you ever seen a golden retriever running with abandon on a sunny morning? Have you seen the excitement on his face, the pure joy as he gallops faster than it seems his legs can carry him, his tongue hanging down to his knees? Can you imagine what that must have been like for Tuesday, who was three years old and had never really run that way before?

I could feel it. It was a wave of excitement, rising from his soul as he skidded, then stopped, then took off in another direction, a dog at his heels. The other dogs sensed it, that pent-up enthusiasm, and soon the whole group was sprinting and playing with ferocious joy. I suspect the other owners felt it, too, although I was too nervous without Tuesday beside me to glance in their direction.

But I wasn’t paranoid. And I wasn’t overwhelmed, even though this was the first time Tuesday and I had been apart in the eight months since I’d adopted him. Instead, I was transported. I hadn’t expected it, but when I saw Tuesday leaping and wrestling with the other dogs, I felt like it was me out there, running, jumping, doing things my physical body was no longer able to do.

A few months later, in August 2009, my application for graduate housing at Columbia finally came through. I had been stymied for a year by the fact that the only way I could afford Columbia housing was to have a roommate, something I felt incapable of handling. It was my mother who suggested I inquire through the Office of Disability Services, an idea I like to think indicates she was starting to accept the new realities of my life. My therapist, my priest, my physicians, and Lu Picard from ECAD helped me with recommendations and paperwork.

That’s something special about ECAD. All service dog providers are required to recertify their dogs every year for public-access training. Most providers, like ECAD, also have a follow-up system to keep in touch with the recipients of their dogs. ECAD went further by being available and supportive at all times. Even today, I still call them at least once a week for advice. Is this food acceptable? What’s the discipline for this particular problem? What should I do about discrimination? Almost always, I speak directly to Lu. She is remarkably busy training dogs and pairing them with the needy, but she is available nonetheless, whenever I am in need.