Updated Apr 11, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 7: The Dream
Jackson
The dream starts the way it always does.
I’m back in Afghanistan, the air thick with heat and dust, and my unit is moving through a village that intelligence swore was clear. Lieutenant Morrison is on point, cracking jokes about his girlfriend back home. Corporal Hayes is humming under his breath, some country song I can never quite remember when I’m awake. Private Chen is checking his weapon for the third time in as many minutes because he’s paranoid about misfires.
We’re three weeks from the end of our deployment.
Three weeks from going home.
And then the world explodes.
The IED goes off under Morrison first, and there’s a split second where I see his body lift off the ground before the second explosion hits, and the third, and suddenly I’m on my back and my ears are ringing and I can’t hear anything except this high-pitched whine that sounds like the world ending.
I try to move, try to get to my men, but my leg won’t work right and there’s blood everywhere—so much blood—and when I look up, Chen is lying five feet away from me, and his eyes are open but he’s not moving, he’s not breathing, and I’m screaming his name but no sound comes out.
Hayes is calling for a medic, his voice raw with panic, and Morrison—
Morrison is—
“Chen!” I’m crawling now, dragging my useless leg, trying to reach him because if I can just get to him, if I can just check his pulse, maybe he’s still alive, maybe I can save him—
But when I touch his shoulder, he’s cold.
He’s already cold.
And that’s when the gunfire starts.
***
I wake up screaming.
The sound tears out of my throat raw and desperate, and for a moment I don’t know where I am—can’t see past the smoke and the blood and Chen’s dead eyes staring at nothing—and my hand is reaching for my rifle, for my sidearm, for any weapon because they’re shooting at us and my men are down and I need to return fire—
“Jackson.”
There’s a voice, female, unfamiliar in the context of combat, and it cuts through the panic just enough for me to register that I’m not in Afghanistan.
I’m not on the ground.
I’m in my cabin.
But my heart is still racing, my breathing is still too fast, and when I see movement in my peripheral vision, I recoil so violently I nearly fall off the bed.
“Don’t touch me!” The words come out harsh, threatening, because I can’t trust my eyes right now, can’t trust that what I’m seeing is real. “Stay back!”
“Okay.” The voice is calm, measured, with a kind of authority that cuts through the flashback haze. “I’m staying back. I’m not going to touch you. You’re safe, Jackson. You’re in Montana. You’re in your cabin. There’s no danger.”
Montana.
Cabin.
My breathing is still too fast, my hands are shaking, and I can feel the cold sweat on my skin, can smell the phantom scent of blood and smoke that always lingers after these nightmares.
“You’re in Montana,” the voice repeats, and I finally place it—Sloane. “You’re safe. It’s Sloane. You’re okay. You’re in your cabin. Bear is here. You’re safe.”
She keeps talking, her voice steady and grounding, and slowly—painfully slowly—the present starts to filter back in. I can see the wood walls of the cabin instead of the dusty streets of Kandahar. I can feel the soft mattress beneath me instead of hard ground. I can smell pine and woodsmoke instead of explosives and death.
“That’s good,” Sloane says, and she’s not moving, not coming closer, just standing a few feet away with her hands visible and her voice calm. “You’re doing great. Keep breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth. You’re in Montana. It’s night. It’s cold outside but warm in here. Bear is lying by the stove. You’re safe.”
My breathing starts to slow, matching the rhythm of her words, and the shaking in my hands begins to subside. I focus on her voice, on the details she’s giving me, anchoring myself to the present through the sound of her calm, controlled instructions.
Lawyer voice, I realize dimly. She’s using her courtroom voice, the one that brooks no argument and commands attention.
It’s working.
After what feels like hours but is probably only a few minutes, I’m back in my body, back in the present, and the flashback has faded to the background—still there, always there, but no longer consuming me.
“I’m okay,” I manage, my voice hoarse from screaming. “I’m… I’m back.”
“Good.” She still doesn’t move closer, and I’m grateful for that. “Do you need anything? Water?”
“No. I’m fine.”
We both know it’s a lie, but she doesn’t call me on it.
I sink forward, my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands, and the shame that always follows these episodes crashes over me like a wave. I’m a grown man, a former Army Ranger, someone who was trained to handle stress and danger and combat, and I’m waking up screaming from nightmares like a child.
Pathetic.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I say, not looking at her.
“Don’t apologize.” She moves then, but only to sit on her own bed, maintaining the distance between us. “You don’t have to apologize for having PTSD.”
“I should have warned you. Should have told you I get nightmares.”
“My dad had PTSD,” she says quietly, and that makes me look up. “Vietnam. He had nightmares for forty years after he came home. I grew up listening to him wake up screaming, watching my mom talk him down. I know the signs.”
Something in my chest loosens at that admission, at the understanding in her voice.
“What did he do?” I ask. “Your dad. After Vietnam.”
“He was a mechanic. Worked with his hands, said it helped to create things instead of destroy them.” She’s quiet for a moment. “He died three years ago. Heart attack. But he always said the war killed him long before his heart gave out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” She looks at me, and there’s no pity in her eyes, just understanding. “He would have liked you, I think. He always said the mountains saved him, even though we lived in Pennsylvania. He’d go hiking every weekend, said it was the only place he could breathe.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That’s… yeah. That’s exactly it.”
We sit in silence for a moment, and it’s different from the hostile silence after our fight earlier. This feels… companionable. Safe.
“What do you usually do?” she asks. “After a nightmare. Is there anything that helps?”
“Bear usually wakes me up before it gets that bad. But he was sleeping hard tonight.” I glance over at the wolf-dog, who’s now sitting by the stove, watching us with those too-intelligent yellow eyes. “Traitor.”
“He’s exhausted. You had him out all day checking traps.” She pauses. “Do you want to talk about it? The nightmare?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
I expect her to push, the way therapists at the VA always pushed, but she doesn’t. She just accepts my answer and sits there, present but not intrusive, and I realize this is the first time since she arrived that I don’t feel like she’s taking up too much space.
“Do you get them often?” she asks after a while.
“Couple times a week. Used to be every night, right after I got out. The mountains help, but they don’t make them go away completely.”
“My dad said they never go away completely. But they get more manageable.”
“Yeah.” I run a hand through my hair, feeling the sweat that’s still cooling on my skin. “Look, about earlier—”
“Don’t.” She cuts me off, and there’s pain in her voice. “You don’t need to say anything about earlier. I was horrible to you. I said things I had no right to say, and I’m the one who should be apologizing, not you.”
“You weren’t completely wrong,” I admit. “I am hiding up here. Maybe not in the way you meant, but… yeah. I’m hiding from a world that’s too loud and too fast and too full of triggers. And maybe that does make me a coward.”
“It doesn’t.” She says it with such conviction that I actually believe her. “It makes you someone who’s trying to survive the best way you know how. And there’s nothing cowardly about that.”
We look at each other across the dimly lit cabin, and something shifts between us. Some wall that we’ve both been maintaining starts to crack, and for the first time, I think I see her clearly—not as an inconvenience or an intrusion, but as a person who’s fighting her own battles, who’s trying to survive in her own way.
Just like me.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “For talking me down. For knowing what to do.”
“Thank you for trusting me enough to let me help.” She smiles, and it’s soft and genuine. “We should both try to get some sleep. It’s going to be morning soon.”
“Yeah.” But I don’t move, and neither does she.
We just sit there in the quiet darkness, two broken people finding unexpected connection in the middle of a blizzard, and for the first time in five years, I don’t feel quite so alone.
Bear gets up and pads over to Sloane’s bed, settling down beside her, and when she runs her fingers through his fur, the wolf-dog makes that contented sound that means he’s claimed her as pack.
“Traitor,” I say again, but there’s no heat in it.
Sloane laughs softly. “I think he has good taste.”
“He has terrible taste. You reorganized my entire cabin.”
“And you’re still bitter about it.”
“I’ll be bitter about it for years.”
“Good thing I’m only here for another week or so then.”
The reminder of her impending departure sits heavy between us, and I realize with a start that I’m not looking forward to it the way I thought I would be.
That I’m maybe even starting to dread it.
Which is a problem I don’t have the energy to deal with right now.
“Goodnight, Sloane.”
“Goodnight, Jackson.”
I lie back down, pulling the blankets over me, and listen to the sound of her breathing gradually slowing into sleep. And for the first time in years, when I finally drift off, I don’t dream of Afghanistan at all.
I dream of gray-blue eyes and determination and a woman who knows how to bring someone back from the edge without making them feel weak for having gone there in the first place.
And in the morning, I’ll probably regret it.
But right now, in the darkness, it feels like something close to peace.
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