To Hell and Back
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 8: Broken
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center - Two Weeks Post Second Amputation
Kirstie stopped counting the days. Stopped counting the surgeries. Stopped counting anything that mattered.
She existed in a gray fog of pain medication and phantom agony, where her missing leg screamed at her constantly—burning, crushing, twisting in ways that shouldn’t be possible for something that didn’t exist. The medications helped some, but never enough. Never enough to make the ghost quiet.
The physical therapists came daily, trying to get her mobile, trying to prevent her from wasting away in the hospital bed. She refused. What was the point? She had no leg. She had no future. She had nothing.
“Corporal Roberts, you need to participate in therapy,” they’d say, voices patient but firm. “Muscle atrophy is setting in. Your core strength is deteriorating. We need to get you moving.”
She’d turn her face to the wall and say nothing.
Her parents came every day. Her mother would read to her, try to engage her in conversation, bring news from home. Sam called regularly. Ellie sent care packages—handwritten notes, drawings, silly things meant to make her smile.
None of it mattered. None of it touched the darkness that had settled over her like a shroud.
“Kirstie, please,” her mother begged one afternoon. “Please talk to us. Please let us help you.”
“You can’t help,” Kirstie said, her voice flat. “Nobody can help. I’m broken. Permanently. There’s nothing to fix.”
“That’s not true—”
“Isn’t it?” Kirstie gestured at her body—the scarred face, the damaged shoulder, the empty space where her leg should be. “Look at me, Mom. Really look at me. I’m not a Marine anymore. I’m not a door gunner. I’m not even whole. I’m just ... nothing.”
Eleanor was crying now. “You’re my daughter. You’re still my daughter.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
That was the truth of it. Kirstie Roberts—farm girl, Marine, warrior, door gunner—had died in that crash. The person in this hospital bed was a stranger wearing her face, or what was left of it.
The Nightmares
Sleep, when it came, brought no relief. The crash replayed every night in vivid detail—the spinning, the screaming metal, the impact, the pain. Sometimes she was still in the door, watching the ground rush up. Sometimes she was inside the aircraft, trapped and unable to move. Sometimes she died on impact.
The worst dreams were the ones where she survived intact, where she woke up and realized it had all been a nightmare, where she still had both legs and could stand and walk and run. Those dreams were cruelest because waking from them meant facing reality all over again.
She’d wake screaming, or crying, or both. The night nurses would come, would offer medication, would try to comfort her. But there was no comfort for this. No pill that could make the nightmares stop.
One night, she woke to find Staff Sergeant Vance sitting in the chair beside her bed.
He looked better than the last time she’d seen him—his arm out of the cast, moving stiffly but functional. His ribs had healed. He’d been released from the hospital two weeks ago but had come back to visit.
“Hey, Roberts,” he said quietly. “Heard you were having a rough night.”
She didn’t ask how he knew. The amputee ward was small; everyone knew everyone’s business.
“You come to tell me it gets better?” Her voice was bitter. “That I’ll adapt? That I’m still a warrior?”
“No. I came to tell you it sucks. That some days it will keep sucking. That you lost something that can’t be replaced.” He leaned forward. “I came to tell you the truth: you’re not the same person you were before the crash. That person is gone. But that doesn’t mean the person you’ll become isn’t worth knowing.”
“I don’t want to become someone else. I want to be who I was.”
“Can’t happen. You can spend the rest of your life mourning what you lost, or you can figure out who you are now. Both are valid choices. But only one of them is actually living.”
After he left, Kirstie lay in the darkness and thought about his words. Figure out who she was now. The problem was, she didn’t want to know who she was now. Because who she was now was broken, useless, empty.
Who she was now was someone not worth saving.
The Plan
It started small—a thought she quickly pushed away, horrified by its presence. But it came back. Again and again. Growing stronger each time.
What if I just stopped?
Not suicide, exactly. Not at first. Just ... stopping. Stopping the fight. Stopping the endless surgeries and therapies and attempts to rebuild something that could never be whole again. Just letting go.
But as the days dragged on, as the phantom pain continued to torture her, as the reality of her new existence settled in, the thought evolved.
What if I just ended it?
She had access to pain medications. Strong ones. Enough of them. It would be easy. Quiet. Just drift off to sleep and not wake up. No more pain. No more nightmares. No more having to face the stranger in the mirror.
No more being a burden to her family.
She started hoarding pills. Not many—just one or two from each dose, palmed and hidden under her pillow. The nurses didn’t notice. Why would they? She was compliant, taking her medications, not causing trouble.
She was just very, very quiet about her plans.
After a week, she had enough. Probably. She wasn’t sure exactly how many it would take, but she had a significant quantity. Enough to be certain.
She chose a night when her parents had finally gone back to the hotel to sleep—they’d been staying in her room most nights, taking shifts, afraid to leave her alone. But they were exhausted, and she’d convinced them she was okay, that they needed rest.
The lie came easily.
Once they were gone, once the night nurse had done her rounds and wouldn’t be back for hours, Kirstie reached under her pillow and pulled out the small collection of pills she’d accumulated.
This was it. This was how it ended. Not in a helicopter crash serving her country, but in a hospital bed, defeated by her own body and mind.
She deserved better. But this was all she had left.
She lined up the pills on the bedside table, counting them. Twenty-three. Was it enough? It would have to be.
She picked up the first pill.
Intervention
“Put it down, Roberts.”
Kirstie’s head snapped up. Sam stood in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes locked on the pills.
“Sam? What are you—”
“Ellie called me. Said she had a bad feeling, that something was wrong. So I caught a flight.” He walked into the room slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. “Put the pills down, Kirstie.”
“Go away.”
“Not happening.”
“Sam, please. Just ... just let me do this. Let me be done.”
“No.” He was beside her bed now, his hand covering hers. “You don’t get to quit. You don’t get to leave us.”
“I already left!” The words exploded out of her. “I left when I enlisted. I left when I became a door gunner. I left when I got on that helicopter. The person you knew—your sister—she’s gone. This is just ... this is just what’s left. And it’s not worth keeping.”
“Bullshit.” Sam’s voice was rough, angry. “You’re still my sister. Still the girl who climbed every tree on the farm. Still the Marine who survived boot camp and earned her wings. Still the woman who flew a hundred combat missions and saved lives. That’s still you, Kirstie. All of that is still you.”
“I don’t have a leg, Sam. I don’t have a career. I don’t have a future.”
“So you’ll build a new one. A different one. But you don’t get to check out before you even try.”
Kirstie was crying now, ugly sobs that shook her whole body. “I can’t. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. Everything hurts too much.”
Sam sat on the edge of her bed and pulled her into his arms, careful of her injuries, and let her cry. He didn’t try to fix it, didn’t offer platitudes, didn’t tell her it would be okay.
He just held her while she broke apart.
“I’m calling the nurse,” he said finally. “You need help. Real help. Not just for your body—for your head. And I’m calling Mom and Dad. And I’m not leaving. You understand me? I’m not leaving you alone until you’re safe.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to push him away. But she was so tired. So tired of fighting, of pretending, of trying to be strong when she had nothing left.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
The nurse came. Then the doctor. Then a psychiatrist. They took the pills, did an evaluation, adjusted her medications. They talked about depression, PTSD, crisis intervention, inpatient psychiatric care if needed.
They talked about saving her life.
And Kirstie let them. Because Sam was right about one thing: she didn’t get to quit. Not yet. Not when people still cared enough to fight for her.
Even if she couldn’t fight for herself.
Psychiatric Ward - Three Days Later
They moved her to the psychiatric unit for evaluation and intensive treatment. It wasn’t a punishment—the staff made that clear. It was protection. Protection from herself, from the darkness that had nearly consumed her.
Her roommate was an Army sergeant who’d lost both legs and an arm to an IED. She was three months into recovery, already fitted with prosthetics, already walking.
“First time?” the sergeant asked on Kirstie’s first night.
“First time what?”
“Psych ward. First time wanting to check out permanently.”
Kirstie didn’t answer, but her silence was answer enough.
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