The Riddle

Why am I here? Hell, Doc, you know why. I’m getting court martialed, and JAG wants to know if I can competently stand trial.

Why am I getting court martialed? You ask a lot of questions you already know the answers to. I don’t want to discuss it just yet, though.

Want to hear a riddle?

A father and his son get into a car wreck. Father dies instantly. The ambulance takes the son to a hospital where the doctor immediately says, “I can’t operate on him. He’s my son.” How is that possible?

No. No gay marriage involved.

Keep thinking about it. Maybe the answer will come to you.

I told you I don’t want to talk about the court martial just yet.

Do I have a girl back home? Yeah. I did.

Emily. Cute girl. Pale white. Freckles. Wanted nothing more than to have a kid. Acted as if her value as a woman depended on it.

No. She, um, well, she started to get real tired. Went to her doctor and found out that something went wrong with her white blood cells. More tests. Bone cancer. Not the sort you bother to fight.

She was twenty-six years old.

She panicked, but the wrong way. All she could think about was that she would die without having a baby. She wanted one, swore she could keep the cancer at bay until she delivered.

What the hell could I say? A dying girl’s wish? It felt wrong. No way she could live long enough to give birth to a healthy kid. Even if time weren’t an issue, she was sick all the time. It wouldn’t work.

But . . . dying wish. So, yeah, I knocked her up.

I immediately wished I hadn’t. I kept thinking about this premature baby I would spent the rest of my life saddled with.

My girlfriend’s about to die, and I felt only self-pity and anger at her for pushing me into such a stupid life-sentence.

She died less than a month later. Took the kid with her.

Hell of a thing. Standing there, watching my girlfriend lowered into the ground, feeling relieved.

I rejoined the Army the following week.

Why did I rejoin? I don’t know . . . why did I ever join in the first place? I guess I felt . . . macho when I did.

After I let Emily die, I needed to feel like a man again.

The court martial? You really have a one-track mind, Doc.

I got captured by one of those smalltime terrorist groups out in the sandbox. I forget what they called themselves. Some piss-ant group. Maybe twenty members in all. Made a couple amateur-as-hell IEDs.

My own fault. They got the drop on me while I took a piss behind a building.

I wake up in some basement, tied to a chair. Scene right out of 24.

They leave, all except this one guy who speaks perfect English. He tells me about how an American bomb killed his mother, his sister.

He shocks me with electricity. Doesn’t ask questions, just shocks me. Over and over again. This goes on for six hours, then the chair’s arm splinters.

He doesn’t notice.

Once his back’s turned, I suck in a breath, snap the chair’s arm, get out of my ropes, and punch the dickhead until he’s on the ground, helpless, astonished that I moved so fast, that the tables turned so quickly.

I find my walkie-talkie and headgear nearby. I call headquarters. They connect me to my commanding officer, who connects me to his commanding officer.

He tells me that he can triangulate my position. He promises to arrive soon.

My orders until then? Keep my captive alive for interrogation.

This guy that spent the last six hours zapping me? He’s on the ground, watching me with naked hate. He heard my orders over the walkie’s speaker. He knows what “interrogation” means.

Now I face a court martial because I didn’t follow those orders.

No. No. You misunderstand. I didn’t kill him.

I let him go.

Okay. A father and his son get into a car wreck. Father dies instantly. The ambulance takes the son to a hospital where the doctor immediately says, “I can’t operate on him. He’s my son.” How is that possible?

Because the doctor’s the mother.

Don’t feel bad, Doc. No one ever gets that one right.