THE PTSD BLUES IN 3 Parts new job less than 6 months back from Afghanistan and I’m losing money fast so when the prison job came along I took it even though my psychiatrist said he could not imagine how I could get better working in that environment I did not understand what he meant the first time I went into an inmate extraction the guards removed a convict in hand and leg cuffs while I treated a young inmate unconscious bloody and swollen with 4 teeth scattered across the concrete floor I remember feeling at home for the first time in months. NOSC Erie I had blown my cool one day at drill and the officer in charge referred me to mental health counseling after that I would get phone calls from chiefs and officers just to check on me and how am I doing and was I OK I was working a third shift job in the County jail and I was only sleeping about 3 hours a day and there was a ringing in my ears that sounded like a telephone and every 4th inmate was a vet who blamed the military or the war for their drug habits and drinking for the assaults or beating their wives after awhile I stopped even pretending to listen it's hard to hear that shit with the sounds of helicopters and wounded soldiers screaming in my ears. bed the cots we slept on in Afghanistan were no wider than your shoulders so I would sleep with my hand on the rail to remind myself not to turn over or I would fall out of my rack 5 years later in a king sized bed I hold onto my wife’s hip at night the bed is bigger but their is so much farther to fall. About the Author: Matthew Borczon is a writer and nurse from Erie, Pa he writes about his experience at camp Bastion, the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-11 and all the problems he has had coming home. His work has been printed in Big Hammer, Rasputin, Dissident voice as well as many other journals and his chap book A clock of Human Bones will be published by the Yellow Chair review in Early 2016.
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April 2024
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