Member-only story
The Day He Left the Base for Good
As his psychiatrist, I should have been able to stop his suicide
TW: Suicide, Child Sexual Violence
October 2008, I’d been deployed to a remote base outside Mosul, Iraq for about two months, long enough to settle into a routine. I spent most of my days in a small building just off the base’s air strip. It had been an old Iraqi Air Force base, complete with a few burnt out French Mirage jets at one end of its runway.
The windowless, white-washed building we used for our Army Combat Stress Control clinic consisted of five small rooms. Our military added desks, file cabinets, chairs, and air conditioners. But it left the hooks. A large one pierced my office’s white ceiling in its center. Between patients, I stared at it and pondered whom or what had hung there.
As the only psychiatrist on base and one of three in northern Iraq for the U.S. military, my morning had been the usual busy. I saw soldiers for medication follow-up appointments. Our therapists had also seen several patients, and our enlisted techs ran at least one group session.
About mid-morning, the waiting area outside our offices was crowded. There was a large overhang with a few benches where soldiers smoked and talked. It wasn’t unusual for me to see one of…
