Trowbridge Dispatch Short Stories

The Valley

I.M. AIken — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:56:59 GMT

Let me read this to you…
https://trowbridgedispatch.iamaiken.com/p/the-valley-audio

In my effort to promote good writing, good writing habits, and ignore the intrusion of AI, sharing my collaboration with my editor SarahBelle Selig seems just plain right.

21AUG2026

Dear Charlotte,

I cried yesterday. Tears welled in my lower lids. My throat closed. A silent, existential cry.

There are three, was four, but three people to whom I could croak words of the horror I yet carry, the pain I occasionally feel. I cried listening to the story of a sixteen-year-old’s death at the hands of stupidity and the utter violence of machinery. She lived three towns north of me. She lived in a town in this state with the exact name of the town in the neighboring state where I graduated high school.

I suppressed the first set of tears when my physical therapist told me the story while snug in our private confessional of a Thursday afternoon appointment. Her building was empty. The first cop on scene later called his boss (my therapist’s husband) for a post-crisis debrief. The men spoke quietly. I cried because horror travels through the invisible threads of human life.

I listened to my friend tell her story of her husband’s story of his trooper’s story. A sound in a deeply quiet forest connected that death to my deeply quiet forest miles distant. Later, I was reminded of a 120-year-old chair once positioned in my office for peer counseling of my own crew, a chair now long retired to a sunny corner for reading.

During the pandemic, your mother returned to this place she has often called home. We walked “the block” (a six-mile hilly amble along dirt and paved roads, mostly dirt, that form a triangle). As we walked, I prattled on about the medical status, medications, trauma, deaths, and family trees associated with each property we passed. Because that is how I experience much of my human connection. The day reminds me that we are but one.

The great religions strive to teach us this, but too often they lose the truth. One of my father’s best jokes told child me of a religious man who approached a dirty-water dog vendor on the street, asking: “Please make me one with everything.”

The internet, fiction, and leaders seek strife and differentiation where unnecessary. One Love, Three Little Birds. One blood. And to paraphrase my old friends and neighbors, HD Thoreau and RW Emerson, one cannot harm people without harming oneself. They may have been writing of time, or nature, or both. I am certain, at the core, that the philosopher of squirrels would have danced a Reggae beat with me when hearing a version of that same truth.

I believe I croaked a knowing, “Yes,” to a fellow trained medical practitioner, and friend. As she pushed my right wrist into what should be a natural position, she whispered a family name. Even in the whisper, her voice diminished to silence. I said, “Yes.” Then the first pair of tears took station on my lower lids. “She was one of mine, yes.”

Charlotte, I don’t even know if I can continue my narrative. Most of what I will tell you, my child, can be found in public records. A teen died a violent, horrible death in the teeth of a machine on a quiet forested mountain surrounded by her friends. I should not have been there, but for a blizzard and a sad emergency in my own town. Two of us heard the screaming pleas of overwhelmed and under-trained first responders asking for help and equipment over the regional radio system. We made the southward turn toward trouble instead of home.

Unseen to civilian eyes, responders can misdirect grief, anger, frustration, and fear toward each other. Two fire chiefs turned on each other and the two medics who came to help with a truck full of kit. Teenagers screamed in rage, blaming all of the gods, the demons, and the rescuers near. Hard to know if the undropped tear was for the trauma induced by the variety of well-intentioned rescuers, or the tragic death of a teen, or the blend of it all. Doesn’t matter, does it? Those are inseparable. We, humans, can be dreadful, mean, petty, and unforgivable in the face of trauma, amplifying the underlying mess.

I did not ask, “How did you know?” as my therapist bent my wrist to its rather limited extent of twenty degrees or so. Instead, I said, “It got worse. I attended the twinned deaths of her father and uncle.”

With gentle pressure on my palm, pushing my wrist professionally, my therapist stated that another uncle committed suicide, a scene she knew all too well. As I recounted my facts, she told me the name of an unknown person I met in the forest that day. We both knew the stories. They bled at our feet.

I forbade myself from telling this tangle of stories because, like stars in our night sky, some dots when placed just so create a landmark. A cluster of six (or seven) stars has been known as subaru, the seven sisters, the Pleiades, and other names globally. If I hint at these facts on paper, it takes little to align them to a known constellation. I tell myself my silence protects that family. I tell myself my silence protects my community. I tell myself my silence protects me from the judgment of others, for my failures and inability to manage these scenes better. I was not in charge, just an experienced EMT and medic who’s been walking, or running, toward trouble since 1983.

Stoicism required that during a professional meeting at a local business, I spent an hour not looking at a large, framed photograph of a dead teenager sitting on the credenza directly behind my host. My host, by placing this photo there, stated: “I am connected to that death.” And yet, I saw only reflections of my version of that night. I could not ask for the photo to be shifted or turned. Instead, my eyes flicked left, right, up, down with the guilt of a suspect being questioned by police.

The paradox of the widespread loneliness crisis is that we each stare into a human-manifested suite of technology we have mislabeled as The Web. I question which is worse: the sense of modern digital isolation or the profound acknowledgement that we humans are but one. We, naturally, form a web. What we do unto ourselves affects all. I walked the valley of death learning that the valley is neither remote, nor hidden, but ever present. It isn’t just the death that pains me but the human behavior in the teeth of tragedy.

I am a node in a mycelial-like species. Invisible and fragile hyphae communicate between us all. I am one. Silent tears return unbidden.

The End

Hey, this is I. M. Aiken, in late August 2026. My third novel drops in late September. Captain Henry: 2 ½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1 ¼ Centuries, and a Story of Love has been described as a, “A contemporary perspective of American warfare that reminds readers of Hellers’ Catch 22 and Hooker’s MASH.” The stories are based on my first-hand journals from Iraq in 2006 and Reconstruction-era archives about my great grandfather, who enlisted as an underaged private in 1870 then later lead troops in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, providing infantry support to the Rough Riders, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Buffalo Soldiers. You’ll find it or can order it at any bookstore and/or listen to me read it to you as an audiobook available at all of the outlets: Libro.fm, Barnes & Noble Audio, Libby, and Audible.

Take care of each other. Few understand. My young friend (a woman I help raise) informed me this week that as she transports vets in her ambulance, they are universally informing her that therapists have asked them to open up and tell their stories, only to end the session early saying: please stop, you are traumatizing me, you’ll need to find a different therapist. This now forty-year-old medic was a young EMT on that stormy night above.

One love.

The Valley

I.M. AIken — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:51:51 GMT

One love.

It Matters

I.M. AIken — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:05:07 GMT

Follow along with my audio here: AUDIO BY AUTHOR

In my daily phone call to my former assistant chief, I relayed the conclusion of a twenty-year drama that I have yet failed to reconcile. Andy tells me a fresh story from his year in Vietnam, thus reminding us both that history matters, the names matter, respect matters. I face injustice with anger, with frustration, and with a sense of utter bewilderment. I wish to yell: That is just wrong.

I woke this morning knowing my story slated for August 2026 must be resigned to a digital drawer and never be published, because even as a storyteller, I feel obliged to tell the truth. I had a difficult and respectful story to tell of a police officer’s commitment to his nation and a strangely circular set of coincidences that linked three friends plus Flat Stanley, Aberdeen, South Dakota, and the Iraq war. A sad story, a story that resulted in two fatherless boys entering their teen years without their dad; a story that left a lovely woman widowed.

Fourteen hours later, my head spins.

I read this morning that while the United States has lost 18 war fighters in combat-related deaths since starting a war with Iran in February, yesterday, the official records got revised down to 14 deaths. We’re discounting lives. But it goes beyond misstating the cost of war, it puts every D.O.D. family at risk. When a warrior flies into a conflict zone, several things change. First, the warrior gets combat pay for the calendar month (that was the rule in my day). Second, a warrior in a conflict zone becomes eligible for combat-related benefits and recognition. If injured, they become eligible for the Purple Heart, an award that carries lifetime benefits. The process of death and burial benefits change, eligibility for Arlington changes. Families are eligible for recognition as a Gold Star family (regulated by U.S. law). When we remove “combat” from a warrior’s death, the family’s benefits change. The status of their warrior changes.

Two men in my life deserve the Purple Heart. The nephew we raised from pre-teen to U.S. Marine got blowed up in a Humvee in Iraq. His mates died. Our kid lived with a severe TBI, but he never bled. Eighteen years into service, he left with 100% disability and three combat tours. But he never bled. My former assistant chief was a young machinist’s mate on CLG-5, the Oklahoma City, a WWII-era light cruiser. Part of his mission involved boiling water in the evaporators (steam, freshwater, etc.). What was not then understood is that the Agent Orange the U.S. used over land returned to Gulf of Tonkin down the rivers and through the deltas. My friend spent months boiling that water, breathing in Agent Orange. At one point during the new/modern Agent Orange program run by the D.O.D. and V.A., these old-ass, hard-breathing tough bastards who are now in their eighties suffering from U.S.-deployed toxins would be awarded Purple Hearts. A compromise was met where the folks would get similar benefits without the formal presentation of a Purple Heart.

I spent thirty-four years with federal agency identification cards in my wallet. Each ID came with its own obligations and its own level of security clearance. I lived knowing that I accepted the duty to hold myself to higher standards for honesty, personal integrity, and honor. In exchange, I have lived an amazing life, with odd missions on some six continents. Sometime after my return from Iraq, the government notified me (and tens-of-thousands of others) that someone stole our highly-sensitive personnel data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (O.P.M.). We all then believed these data were stolen by a state actor. I filled out a Standard Form 86 telling the 100% truth of my odd-as-f life. I sat at the kitchen table in Alaska answering the questions of two federal investigators who had already knocked on all of the neighbors’ doors. I will protect your secrets and you, Uncle Sam, shall protect my secrets… Until a chainsaw swung through expenses that few understood. After the theft, Uncle Sam paid for monitoring of our digital lives in an effort to protect us. When the chainsaw hit government budgets, our sole remaining benefit disappeared. You, the letter said, are on your own. No monitoring for you, all done. Too expensive to protect those who decided to protect the United States.

Honor matters.

We are holding up our end of the deal. Civilian, uniformed, municipal, county, state, or national—service is service.

I dedicated my 2026 novel Captain Henry: 2 ½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1 ¼ Centuries, and a Story of Love to the officers killed by Americans on January 6, 2021. On January 6, 2022, while completing the draft this novel, I wrote the following:

Those in public service, including the military, swear to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This novel is dedicated to all of those who have taken, then upheld, this oath.

Brian D. Sicknick, Capitol Police

Jeffery Smith, Metropolitan Police

Howard S. Liebengood, Capitol Police

Gunther Hashida, Metropolitan Police

Kyle DeFreytag, Metropolitan Police

Once in a while, governments and organizations forget that the honor of each who stands up requires an equal and opposite strength of honor from the nation. Call it the Third Law of Honor, if you wish.

We don’t get to rewrite history. While we ought not forget history, we must respect it. All of it. Confused, contradictory, ugly, wrong-headed, wrongly-executed—whatever it is, it is all history, our history, our shared history.

If I cannot have a plaque and a memorial established to honor these cops and the 150 others who were injured on that day, then I shall put their names in a quiet and obscure book about a 19^th Century American hero who has also been forgotten by time. My ancestor, the namesake and focal point of my novel, was honored by the City of Springfield, Massachusetts in the early 1900s. The honor was a massive bronze bas-relief plaque with my Henry’s handsome mug in uniform, plus a few words on his public service. Erected after the Spanish American War, melted during a world war for munitions. Gone, erased, and with his story plus the amazing history of soldiers from a modest New England city who provided the infantry support to the Buffalo Soldiers, the Rough Riders, and Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba. A small regiment with a casualty rate of nearly 25%.

This month’s short story recalled a moment twenty years ago in Baghdad. School children in Aberdeen, South Dakota sent our unit a Flat Stanley dressed in camo and a cool set of googly eyes. By luck, the U.S. federal marshal in charge of Saddam Hussein’s security came from the same tiny Vermont town as me. Given we have 500 folks scattered loosely over 40 square miles of mountains, it was amazing that two of us were in Iraq at the same time. He offered to host us for a day at the U.S. Embassy. Four of us from my unit arranged to hop a Blackhawk to the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad and then to the U.S. Embassy. While there, we snapped pictures of Flat Stanley for the school children back in Aberdeen. Flat Stanley at the judge’s bench. Flat Stanley in front of a Welcome to Baghdad sign. We four—two captains, me and my major—borrowed a day to go “play.” We could not know that within days, Iraq would erupt into violent civil war with the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

We came to the Embassy’s Wall of Honor. The final plaque on that wall was a tribute to International Police Liaison Officer Roland Barvels of Aberdeen, South Dakota. We posed our Flat Stanley from Aberdeen, South Dakota on this plaque. Roland was killed on January 18, 2006. We were in the embassy about a month later, in mid-February.

The experience immediately brought me home to my small New England town. Two small town “locals” stood before this plaque knowing how Roland’s community would respond to his death. We withheld the photo when returning Flat Stanley to the South Dakota classroom.

I never knew when the right time would be to reunite this plaque with Roland’s family. I was a custodian of one strange story from a faraway land, where a paper soldier made by children would travel half-way around the globe only to pose before a plaque honoring the father of one of their schoolmates.

One year was too soon. Five years seemed tough. On the tenth anniversary, I was being run too ragged with hurricane and natural disaster responses to look back. On the twentieth anniversary, as a novel about the experience is being released, I decided to pull the ends of this circle together. This novel, Captain Henry, alternates between my real journals from 2006 to my great-grandfather’s time following the Civil War, engaging in battles against the KKK and other anti-American groups who objected to the U.S. laws granting rights to human beings.

I wrote a story illustrating this coincidence while putting a soft light on the idiocy of folks thinking that you can have a “fun” day during a war. It was no different than sitting in an ambulance station or a fire station. Whatever is about to happen could possibly be the worst f’n thing that a family ever experiences and you’re doomscrolling on a phone with reruns of Law and Order on the TV.

Before publishing, I endeavored to find the family. First, to reunite a photo of this plaque honoring a father/husband with his family. Second, to ask their permission to use his name. My earlier draft respectfully obscured the city name and family names. A powerful story of how one small American community is linked to a faraway mission and decisions made by our elected federal officials. Third, I carried this story alone for twenty years. It wasn’t a legal secret, just a courtesy that I wished not to inflict harm on a family that already gave so much. For two decades, I wished to find a moment to say thank you to the Barvels family.

With the help of several police departments in the Dakotas, I was able to connect with Roland’s widow, Cindy. We shared our stories on the phone. She was charming, with a light laugh and that treasured Dakota inflection. I loved her accent (because, of course, I haven’t one). As soon as we hung up, I emailed her my photo of Roland’s memorial plaque with Flat Stanley posing beside. I also included Flat Stanley in his other poses to set the context of what we returned to Aberdeen.

Cindy emailed me hours later. “The picture you sent is not of Roland. This is Roland.”

Each fallen officer had been presented on his own wooden plaque with text to the right and a photo on the left. It appears that the embassy staff affixed someone else’s picture to the plaque of Roland Barvels. Suddenly, twenty-years later, I share the family’s pain. I cringe with shame for my efforts to return this tribute home. Her thoughts became my thoughts. The embassy’s foul-up became my foul-up. I did this.

You, now, own this too. When we send Americans into harm’s way, may we do it with honor. If our fallen fail to come home, may we remember them correctly, and completely. Instead of sharing the plaque from Iraq with silly Stanley and his googly eyes, let me present a more meaningful plaque the family sent to me, after Roland was awarded the Defense of Freedom medal from our nation.

We need to promise ourselves that we will count correctly, honor oaths, spell names correctly, and align images with people.

The End

This is I.M. Aiken. I write and publish at least one story per month on my Substack called Trowbridge Dispatch, a series of stories related to my novels. The first novel, The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County is an existential exploration of one quiet EMT/ Paramedic’ s life who comes to question the value of their sacrifice as they accept that their career closes. Stolen Mountain was my effort to write a bit of a woodsy mystery about a local fraudster who followed a pattern of massive fraud ventures dealing with development in Vermont and ski hills. The third novel, Captain Henry, was described by Craig Higginson, author of Shadow Country: “A deeply humane, authentic and nuanced exploration of moral ambiguity and courage through the lenses of two very different wars and two very different lovers.”

Support authors, buy books, visit libraries and keep enjoying stories.

It Matters

I.M. AIken — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:08:03 GMT

The Third Law of Honor dictates that those engaged in public service, who take then uphold oaths, put themselves at personal risk can expect an equal and opposite commitment from the government that asked them to step up. This bilateral commitment involves telling the truth when it comes to sacrifices made by people on behalf of our nation. We don’t get to discount the cost of sacrifice, we don’t get to dismiss benefits, injury, or death because it fails to meet the narrative of the day. When we memorialize a public servant, we put the right picture with the right name because it matters.

Echoes of a Lincoln Song

I.M. AIken — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:21:56 GMT

Read by Author Here

Ancient roads etch the landscape of the Harrington property. Stonewalls bound acres once planted. The ruins of a house rest quietly in the brambles. In the brief walk from my childhood home through the marsh, over a well-worn esker and down to these ancient roads, I would seek treasures. Treasures included the rusted carcass of an automobile from the 1920s, fresh water springs, footprints of raccoon and pheasant tail feathers.

Boston Globe Cartoon from mid-1970s (Author as “model”)

One early discovery still brings awe. At the first ages of my education, I saw, I felt connected to distant people of our history. Boundaries between then and now fade in this wood. Those names, and words, of history live. They breathed in these woods,. They breathe still. Just as their boots, wagon wheels, tractors and horseshoes compacted the roads I see below me; their ideas can be heard in the rustle of oak leaves, sniffed in the warm smell of decay, felt by fingers playing in the lichen growing on the granite at my thigh.

Here, I became a swinger of birch, a neighbor to many over a good wall. I became the self-appointed steward of all that surrounds. I am not Longfellow, Frost, Thoreau. I owned these thoughts. I say this not with hubris, not with a sense of property but with an understanding of the mystery of thought. A thought, like an old sweater of a loved one, or the baseball cap of a local team transforms the wearer. Yet, I am free to say their words, think their thoughts, walk their steps on lands they knew well. I argue with Jefferson as Adams did. I chuckle with Old Man Flint at the odd-fellow Thoreau come once to speak of an experiment. I hold the head of an injured farmer in my lap as his hand relaxes on the hunting musket. A musket taken in haste from the mantle as the British soldiers fled to Boston. I hear the greetings our militia shouted to Concord militiamen when they met behind a stone wall not three miles distant from my own hand. At a touch, a thought passes through time just as genes pass traits from then to now. I learnt in my wood that a thought is not a lone entity; cold, distant then set in sepulchral stone. A thought lives as a virus lives. History remains greater than a votive note on a page making commentary of one who passed by—to reader days later.

I am not the first to burst a puff-ball beneath my foot, not the first to break early ice on a muddy puddle. I am not the first to elect a path by its wear. Old worn thoughts haunt these now treed fields; thoughts awaiting the next generation to live anew.

History lives. At the youngest age, kings, barons, and knights were stuff of stories and play-things upon our parlor floor. Soldiers were plastic forms. Science was the stuff of men who revealed truths. Presidents were distant gray men drawn in cross-hatched lines. Industry was far, far away.

And yet on the school grounds were the heirs to land granted by kings, the off-spring of long dead nobles. School mates I now know to be the children of children of children of early presidents. The son of the former police chief told his father’s stories of a world war in Europe. The son of a photographer told his father’s stories of revolution in Chile. Another child told the story of his parent’s flight from China during a war never mentioned in our school books. I heard stories from a family who viewed the stars through a radio telescope, measuring the distances of space, and the age of our universe. I met parents who were pioneers of today’s technology. There was no first family among us; certainly, no stratification in our kickball games nor on the jungle-gym. Stories of humble homes told with the bravado of eight-year olds—nothing more.

Later, as I came to learn of the Great Depression, I see my rusted automobile with a new understanding. I tell myself it is a Model T. My story of this car is simple. I know that one of the people who touched that car in the 1920s was a child of the previous century. He drank local milk, harvested local eggs, picked peas from a nearby kitchen garden. As a youth, my unknown hero sat on the lap of an elder, listening to the stories of one who lived while Grant was president. Two hands bind two centuries.

A thought is incapable of leaving a footprint, incapable of returning a rock to its niche. Yet, a single thought may cleave a nation. Like the conundrums of modern physics, a thought is an object without mass; a force that cannot be measured in its native form. Thought doesn’t obey temporal rules. Thoughts may be given, received, and held captive. A thought may remain tied to land. A thought may travel with generations. A thought may be visited with a soft smell, or the feel of an acorn held on a fall afternoon.

This acorn, a small treasure of warmth and texture, will shade another on this path in the next century. I cannot imagine the hand will touch that future oak. Across the pond to my right works a man who holds the deed to this soil, to this rock, to this acorn. This deed has been passed through generations beyond my counting.

In these woods, walking along the path, I can live in each age from the 1700s through today: from ox to tractor, from horse to car, from woodland to farm land and back to woodland. Each of us who walk here, who borrow freely from the thoughts of those before us, leave something indelible. No one could have known that to my left, across the road from the ruin of the house lays the very spot my mother first showed me a lady slipper. In another season, another forest orchid will appear. Another will find it. Similar words of respect will be said. Another will see the path cradled peacefully in the wider colonial roadbed abandoned a century ago.

I believe I leave these woods without a print. Resting again, I spy well above my head a metal disk nailed to a tree. Too high for most to note, too rusted to contrast against the tree, I recognize a once-new red marker that guided my nocturnal skiing adventures of thirty-years ago.

The pheasant may be gone, future treasures unknown. Another child will come to this intersection and hide behind the rock wall. He, or she, will hold an imaginary musket and blast away at the evil tyranny that the Red Coats represented. Later as steward, the welfare of squirrels will be paramount. A birch will be climbed and that young birch will ease earthward with a youth’s dangling toes inches above the ground just as I did. Old thoughts woven from rock and branch, woven between the dewy moss of June to the crusty snow of February, invisible threads of an ancient web. One cannot escape the caress of frayed ends. Each touch transferring distant joys, fears, and hopes—a touch on a cheek where a tear will drop and a smile will break. A touch on a hand where a lost mitten will appear, only to fade again—the touch of the land.

-End-

I’ll publish a “Behind the Scenes” on this story on 01JUL2026. The image attribution belongs to one of the cartoonists from the Boston Globe in the early-mid 1970s. My father was an editor there and the cartoonists would give my father the occasional original when it was relevant. That’s my profile at what ever age that is. Oddly, I still have a little queue, but my hair is fully gray.

-christina aiken

Order Captain Henry Now

Echoes of a Lincoln Song

I.M. AIken — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:10:58 GMT

My tribute to the American Revolution, my childhood, the 4th of July and America's 250th. A short story of grow up on the battlegrounds of April 19th, 1775.

I wrote this story with/for my mother in 2003.

2026 Next Generation Short Story Award - a win

I.M. AIken — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:00:16 GMT

Hey guys,

Most of you know that I publish a short story near the opening of each month and you’ll get one for June!

Right now, a bit of a brag. Kahlil’s Wall is a fictional short story about peace during war. In 2006, a queer military intelligence officer builds a wall in Tikrit Iraq while exploring beloved poetry.

The story won in the Inspirational Category which makes me proud because (1) the core elements of the story draw on Robert Frost’s poem Mending a Wall (2) the only religious references are Islamic in that I wrote within the context of living, working, and collaborating with Iraqis.

After these guys publish the story, the story will also be here on substack with the audio available wherever you listen to podcasts.

I get notes from you guys out there once in a while.

One of you suggested I apply for a fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. I did and I am now in Residence there during their “Vermont Week”, a week reserved for Vermont artists. What amazing group.

One of you asked how to follow along with short stories better. Substack can be odd and Google does a poor job of showing our content during searches. He also related to me the real names of baddies in my last novel “Stolen Mountain”. That’s super cool. My message back was: try searching for “Aiken Trowbridge Dispatch” at your favorite podcast site. When a “stacker(?)” publishes a series of audio works on Substack, Substack automatically publishes them on the most common podcast sites.

I love reading aloud to you, my readers, but I never know who’s listening.

Since this entry is more like a newsletter than my normal efforts, here’s the recent activity.

Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries and a Story of Love - is now speeding towards production. Covers approved and marketing efforts to the behind the scenes stuff started. Working on getting book reviews.
I’ll be at the New England Independent Booksellers Association in September, just about the time of the “pub date” for that novel.
I finished a novella this spring. We may see that next spring if my publisher/publishing team determine it is ok enough.
I promise to get around to more bookstores this year. I fell through a roof the weeks before the last novel dropped. I couldn’t drive for six months. I did so very little to support the last novel, “Stolen Mountain”. Several of the VT bookstores recognized it as a Vermont story by a Vermont author and propped it up nicely and sold a few copies.

In Closing, I’ll share a market blurb by my friends at Catalyst Press. They were doing 2 minute pitches to national book sales people. I would not have written “decorated” and I had to read the closing twice. First time through I thought I might have been a “civil war veteran.” I re-read it. I am not that old.

“Our next title is CAPTAIN HENRY by I.M. Aiken — adult literary fiction in the anti-war realist tradition. The most politically charged title in our catalog. Pitch it honestly to the right accounts.

Here’s the author. I.M. Aiken served in Iraq as a civilian member of the U.S. military campaign and earned multiple military awards for that service. She is also short-listed for the 2026 Next Gen Short Story Awards for “Kahlil’s [kah-LEEL] Wall.” This is not her first novel. This is not a tourist’s view of war — this is a decorated participant writing literary fiction.

And this is not just a novel. It’s built on two real archives: her ancestor’s Reconstruction-era papers and her own Iraq journals. Pitch it as a novel and a semi-fictionalized memoir.

Here are the comps that do all the work. CATCH-22. M*A*S*H [Mash — like the TV show, but the novel by Richard Hooker]. Joseph Heller and Richard Hooker. Anti-war literary fiction written by people who lived inside the war and saw all aspects of its crazy reality. CAPTAIN HENRY belongs to that tradition. Less absurdist and more realist, but a direct descendant non-the-less.

What it is NOT: I talked to the author. It is not Jack Carr. Reps need to be clear about that — opposite end of military fiction. Not heroic thriller. Anti-war, literary, realist, queer.

Two timelines. 1870: eighteen-year-old Henry McDonald enlists in the U.S. military and is sent into Reconstruction Georgia, hunting Ku Kluxers through a landscape of lynching and guerrilla violence. He earns the nickname “Private Trouble.” 2006: Lieutenant Sam Musgrave is on her second tour in Baghdad — queer, competent, losing faith in her government — while her partner Brighid Doran traces an archival thread back to Private Trouble himself.

The book is dedicated to Capitol Police officers from January 6, 2021. References to a possible war with Iran read as prescient. None of this is incidental — it is the book’s argument.

Here is one way to pitch it: a Catch-22 for our forever wars, by a decorated civilian war veteran. That’s CAPTAIN HENRY.

Stacy from M.E. (Middle East)

I.M. AIken — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:07:19 GMT

Read to you by me

Friends, I often use this once-a-month forum for fictional stories in an effort to promote my novels. This story is mine and not fiction.

Stacy from M.E.

I’ve written of Stacy in my Substack posts before. I texted her via Signal a while back. Her response: “RUNNING FOR BUNKER.” Most civilian humans would explore private thoughts of hope and fear. My internal response was: “Bunkers? We never had no stinkin’ bunkers.” I am glad she’s got bunkers.

Learning to sit still in a dining facility during a mortar or rocket attack takes (1) resignation; (2) some stupidity; (3) the ability to curb nature’s urge to flee. I once watched mortar and rocket attacks using the childhood technique of counting the interval between flash and bang to gauge the distance between the lights just-over-there and my own ass. I would have loved a bunker. The lesson came as: “If no place is safe, then you do not run toward safety.”

Stacy became my friend and battle-buddy in 1995. In the name of others and with the spirit of adventure, we did stuff and bonded. A decade plus later, when she asked me to be a reference for her juicy DOD clearance, I said of course. I already did all that nonsense, with investigators interviewing me at my kitchen table and knocking on neighbors’ doors. When she disappeared into military posts in central Alaska that I once knew well, I understood (without asking) her mission. She pinged me after novel #1 with only the signature of “Stacy from M.E.” I knew all with nothing more said.

Because that is what a partner is.

Lessons of a Youth Given to Public Service

Over 40 years ago, I donned my first uniform. The dark blue polyester of our ambulance service matched the city’s police force. Early lessons involved how to knock on doors (and live); how to enter apartments and homes (and live); how to approach folks injured in melees (and live); how to restrain and transport emotional disturbed folks threatening violence to self or others (and live). Your successes and your joy came from the partnership you formed with the other human in your ambulance. In the fire service, the famed statement of “two in/two out” reflects this experience. In military operations, it is your “battle buddy” who serves to double your senses and protect your back (in the literal, by the way).

Another lesson of my youth, not codified until the 1990s, was “PST,” or Primary, Secondary, Tertiary. Every plan needs an alternate plan. Every set of plans requires an extraction plan. “Oh, that went wrong” is often met with humor in the field. The laughter gives way to fear, dread, and a full zing of sympathetic nervous systems responses we mammals get: fight, flight, freeze, fawn. I learned: plan to fail. Critically, I learned to never go anywhere without an exit plan and the ability to hunker, hide, and survive.

I wrote of my first great partner in the character of Aaron in The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County. Like each of us, partners come in 32 flavors, such as my EMT partner, who was in the USAF as a firefighter but screamed in the face of a grass fire started by a catalytic converter (“pull, squeeze, sweep” I offered ironically after I put it out). One of my partners brought a VHS tape of his operations as a medic in Granada. One partner was the mechanic for the local musician J. Giles, who loved car racing. My fictional Aaron was based on a Vietnam combat medic who decided to attend nursing school a decade after returning from overseas. The real Aaron, like the fictional one, had been shot down from three medevac Hueys.

Offered without statistical proof, I have observed that—both at home in civilian uniforms and overseas in combat zones—EMTs/paramedics, firefighters, and cops often do both. This group serves at home and with a military unit at some point. The crossover is significant.

Partnerships formed thus last lifetimes, even when the bonds stretch and the phone line falls silent.

In the decades since, we’ve expanded the definition of “partner” and “partnership.” In this entry, I refer to the historical and (typically) non-sexual aspects. When discounting sleep, one may spend more time talking with and adventuring with your on-duty partner than the spousal-like entity in your bed at home. In many of our lives, both roles exist separately. Each with their own intimacy, rules, boundaries, and fidelity.

I explored this a bit in my short story, “Murmuration.” With a great partner, you develop non-verbal communication and a sixth-sense of movement, thoughts, and plans. Like watching wolves hunt quietly, it takes but a look to define risks, sight objectives, and then say: “Go.”

This brings me to Stacy: my queer, wiry, amazing friend. In 1995, when we met, I recognized a human who was like me. For years, she was my battle-buddy. I mention queer only because, once, while clicking through one of the miserable streaming services, the original Lara Croft movie glided past. We two snuck away from our respective homes and families to enjoy the sexy, campy, quazi-porn flick. Cuz we could. We never dated. That’s not us.

I privately hung the blue service flag in my office to honor Stacy. A war with invisible regional boundaries, no objectives, no plans, and leadership with limited experience in armed conflict.

Blue Star Service Banner

For years, the cars in my family mounted and removed the Blue Star Service Banner. The marine we raised deployed before me, I think twice, each for three months. The flag on the car (or front window of a house) says: “I have a family member putting their life on the line for fellow Americans.” I got deployed for a year that excluded months before and months after the time in Iraq. I think the flag flew from departure to return. We hung it again with the marine deployed for the last time. His HUMVEE got blowed up on an IED, killing most of his squad and leaving our marine with a significant TBI. The injury essentially ended his active-duty career as a special-operations-qualified marine. He was medicaled out at eighteen years with 100% benefits, and full VA care.

The Gold/Blue star flags give recognition to families of those who serve. This silent statement affirms that some part of my heart and soul is given to an American warrior, sent forward on orders of national will and political need.

I’m here, but I am also there. I am there because part of me is there.

The Gold/Blue star flags show how one place can be connected to distant conflicts. This illustrates that leaders in one city adversely impact the families, lives, and plans of Americans hidden in the hills, living on city blocks, housed on military posts, or tucked into suburban homes. Congress recognized this privilege with 36 U.S.C. § 901.

War is Different with an Empty Chair at the Table

Having just come through the holy week, I was, again, reminded of the empty chair and open door reminding us to welcome Elijah. That gold star, that blue star, says that my table has a place set for someone who is not with me. With Gold Star Families, that chair shall remain unoccupied forever. For Blue Star Families, we live daily hoping that the door hinges creak and the empty chair gets warmed by a living and loving human.

When the direct impact of war comes to a community transported by emptiness and loss, we must not view far-away videos with the perverse curiosity of video games and ugly memes.

Veteran Families, Gold Star Families, and Blue Star Families get to ask the tough questions, often with tears: why are you sending my family there?

Some Part of All of Us

I am proud that so many veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars have been standing for elections. They get to ask the tough questions. They get to demand answers. I wish someone would remind us of how long the Iraq War actually lasted. Statements made this week may have been legally accurate, but misrepresented the truth:

· Iraq War: 2003-2011 (“8 years, 8 months, and 28 days”)

· Iraqi Insurgency: 2011-2013

· War in Iraq: 2013-2017

· Islamic State Insurgency in Iraq (2017-present)

The U.S. and Iran have been engaged in proxy wars in Iraq since 2014. In short, the Iraq war has not ended, the borders have simply expanded. One must never be contemptuous or dishonest about the cost of war.

We have been at war in Iraq for 23 years —yes, longer than Vietnam.

The human cost to American families (2003-2011):

Wounded
- 32,000 uniform military
- 44,000 civilian contractors
Injured/Disease/Other medical
- 45,000 uniform military
- Unknown civilian contractors
Killed
- 4,508 uniform military
- 3,650 civilian contractors

With rounding and including allied forces, that was 27,000 dead and 120,000 wounded/injured/ill in the first eight years.

When these families are your neighbors, or when you are a Gold Star/Blue Star Family, you know this deep in your soul. You shop with them. You see them around town. You see the flag sticker in the window of the car or house.

The rent in my heart, the empty chair at my table, and the Blue Star flag hanging quietly in my office is for all of the Stacys, Aarons, Andys, Jacobs, and others who stood.

The irony with my deployment is that I was in complete political opposition to the war when I was asked to join. Unlike most, my letter from Uncle was not legally binding, I had the right to say, “No,” and not report. I said, “Yes,” because I believe that democracy requires participation. I went.

Stacy is there because she is an expert at that thing she does and because she continues to make the voluntary decision to remain.

In fact, 100% of our military volunteered to undertake these missions. 100% of them swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution to stand and fight for Americans in the name of America. And for 23 years, Americans have been actively engaged in combat operations in places many cannot point to on a map.

My Favorite Stacy Story

In the late 1990s, I worked for the Indian Health Service, a part of the U.S. Public Health Service while living in Anchorage, Alaska. One winter, I was tasked with delivering a replacement medical device to the native health clinic in Valdez Alaska (yes, that Valdez). I asked my battle-buddy to join me on the three-plus day car trip.

For those of you who have driven the Glenn Highway in the summer months, the winter version of this same road is different. The road is isolated, lonely, quiet, and most road-side services close up ‘till the snow goes. Through the Thompson Pass, you may encounter walls of snow at the edge of the road that are higher than ten or fifteen feet. The state uses a turbine to blow and lift the feet of snow.

There are names you know along this road: Matanuska River, Willow and Palmer, Alaska.

After the right at Glennallen, you drive south towards Valdez. Climb and climb glaciated mountains, come to Thompson Pass. I hadn’t had a chance to pee. Getting desperate, I decided to stop on the two-lane highway. Explaining my plan to Stacy, I rammed the truck’s bumper into the wall of snow several times to cut a hole. I then dropped trou, hovered my butt over the hole in the wall, and took care of bidness. No flushing needed. The next plow run would freshen it up.

Stacy kept a bag of salted sunflower seeds on the dash. I’d grab one or two, suck the salt, and cough. We spit shells into empty water bottles like so many folks using chaw. She yelled at me for coughing. “Why eat them if, every time, you cough?” I still don’t know.

As we rode the last hour past the switchbacks down toward the coast and sea level, I put on Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony. As I sung loudly, I drove faster and faster. The music got louder and louder.

I knew that if we had trouble on the road, or had to camp in the snow, or prep a meal, or find a way to stay warm during a delay, this partner was for me. Together, we could survive (nearly) anything.

You plan a three-day winter mission in the Chugach Mountains with the right gear, the skills, contingencies, and a person by your side who can haul your ass from the shit and laugh about it while spitting sunflower shells.

As an aside to my aside, there are numerous stories of the Alaska National Air Guard parajumpers (PJs) flying out to save all sorts of U.S. military special ops teams who have had it all go wrong. A nice brag for the hometown team. When Seal Team 6 gets in trouble in the Chugach, who do they call? Alaska PJs.

Get your ass home (all of the Stacys).

I.M. Aiken author & narrator

“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)
“Stolen Mountain” (2025)
“Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast
“Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries, and a story of Love” (2026)

Follow along at:

Stacy from M.E. (Middle East)

I.M. AIken — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:01:07 GMT

Cardboard Undies, Endless Wars & The Tides of History

I.M. AIken — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 15:00:54 GMT

Read to you by me: https://trowbridgedispatch.iamaiken.com/p/cardboard-undies-audio

I.M. Aiken spent 2006 as member of a military unit in Iraq as a government civilian. She has a new novel releasing this summer/fall that incorporate her journal entries and ties them to ancestral stories of a soldier during the Reconstruction Period that followed the American Civil War. This story is a revised chapter from that upcoming novel. Links to current events will pop for you. This journal entry is from precisely 20 years ago this month, the author (me) seems to pleading for a description of the end game. Not different from March of 2026. And actually, not too different from 1898 and 1871 America, either, a theme in the upcoming novel. Note that in fictionalizing the journals, the roll of the storyteller morphed from the author to a fictional soldier, and made it a letter home.

Brighid:

Your ancestor, Captain Henry, relates to Killeen, Texas. How’s that for an odd link across a century and a quarter? Your young Henry served as a private soldier near Chattanooga, Tennessee just after the American Civil War. There is a creek near Chattanooga called the Chickamauga. Confederate General Hood originally trained and served in the U.S. Army before rebelling against the United States. He lost his leg near Chickamauga in a battle against the United States Army. Earlier at Gettysburg, he lost the function of an arm. Adding insult to injury, Hood lost most of his battles. He violated his oath, fought against the United States, and proved to be a poor leader. In an effort to appease southern politicians, we named the Army post in Texas after this guy. Fort Hood. You’ve been there with me. One of our nation’s largest Army posts is named for a general of a rebellious army, and a treasonous criminal.

As you research this period of our history, you might keep your eyes open for names that seem heroic and honored, but are actually a hint of old political battles within our country. While fighting here in Iraq, my thoughts explore the closure and healing process that follows civil war.

At the end of our one-year tour here, these soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division garrisoned at Fort Hood will move to Fort Carson in Colorado. These soldiers, who have been on the go since the wars began, have already been presented with a choice. If a soldier remains with the Fourth Infantry Division, they will return from combat to Texas and immediately move to Colorado. If a soldier decides that Texas and Fort Hood is their forever home, then the soldier must transfer to a different unit. But most of the units at Fort Hood who did not deploy this year will deploy to Iraq next year.

We’ve given our soldiers a Hobson’s Choice. They must decide to move to Colorado or return to combat nearly immediately. Many of the soldiers have already decided to use their mid-tour break to pack up their lives and their families.

If a soldier decides to remain with the Fourth Infantry Division, then they move to Colorado, then they will return to these battlefields within eighteen months. The only relief is retirement, injury, schooling, or end of service. And yet, there are hundreds of serving soldiers here who have already retired or have found themselves in active units during their supposed “terminal leave,” or trapped by stop-loss programs. The Army holds on to skilled and experienced soldiers. I am here with a lot of overweight soldiers, soldiers who have applied to separate from service, and soldiers who filed for retirement more than a year ago. Some do not expect to be released for yet another year.

Since 2003, our government has mobilized this division from Texas to Iraq then back to Texas then back to Iraq. From Baghdad, they will return to Texas, move to Colorado, unpack, then deployed again to Iraq or Afghanistan. I am counting the evolutions on my fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That will be seven complete moves of a heavy infantry division in under a decade. A division is approximately fifteen thousand soldiers. Add family, support staff, vehicles, office equipment, households, and sundry… the number of humans involved ranges between sixty and one hundred thousand. In addition to the people, their households, and offices, the moves include artillery, hundreds of M1A1 Abrams tanks weighing between sixty and eighty tons, thousands of Humvees, and thousands of shipping containers.

Young soldiers in our ranks, people my age, have experienced combat action in two countries and have been in a theater of combat for most of their very short careers. When command offers a young soldier a coin or a written statement of praise, they do not appear to care much. Young soldiers, young privates already awarded a Silver or Bronze Star, roll their eyes at being made soldier of the month from their own company. They have already seen multiple combat tours. Tired soldiers seeing years of combat operations in front of them. Letters of recognition fail to instill motivation like they once did.

With Iran in the news with such frequency, and the increasing violence in Iraq, I hope that our government does not expect that this Army to walk into Iran to solve the problems with Iraq. Iran and Iraq battled for a decade in the 1980s. The result was 1,000,000 people dead and a scared battlefield. Back then, Iraq was our friend and Iran held American hostages. Imagine the day when our elected officials announce that we are adding another battlefield. Such a decision will crush the souls and families of this generation of American soldiery.

Four of us got posted to tiny Camp Falcon. It is a short distance from my normal base. All of my stuff remains behind at divisional HQ. I live from my ruck, rotating between two uniforms and a handful of underwear and socks that I either launder in a sink or simply wear into the shower. I wash them with shampoo. I wring them out, then hang them during the night. The following morning, they are dry. Regrettably, my undies hold the shape of whatever I hung them on; they are just that stiff.

I barely sleep at night. I had been excited to have this small building to myself, with its walls and door; I did not feel welcome with the enlisted females as I am the only female officer on this base, and the rules state that I cannot rack out with my own squad because they are all dudes. I failed to understand that dozens of Chinook helicopters come in most nights. Chinooks date back to the Vietnam war. They have two sets of rotors and a loading ramp like a cargo plane. We fly them at night now because they are vulnerable to ground attacks during the day. They are heavy, slow, loud, and explain why this small building remained uninhabited by the soldiers serving here. Nobody wants to sleep in the landing path of Chinooks. Except me, I guess?

Most soldiers rack out in two-story buildings. These two-story buildings are dressed in the khaki-colored stucco that matches our equipment and the soil. The ground story of the building has a layer of tall concrete barriers—called either Texas barriers or Alaska barriers—which resemble the Jersey barriers of highways back home, except they stand three meters tall. Each window on the ground floor has three layers of sandbags. Ringing the buildings between the ground floor and the top floor is an exterior concrete trough that carries basic utilities. Our troops use this trough to carry communications wires and stack sandbags. The second story windows also have three layers of sandbags unless there is an air conditioning unit.

Sandbags, Sandbag Ghosts and Alaska Barriers (Iraq 2006)

The roof deck of the building is flat and made of concrete tiles on a concrete base. Antenna masts and antenna dishes are weighted down with sandbags. Additionally, one can observe the ghosts of former sandbags. Regrettably, a lot of the bags we have used for making sandbags had been manufactured out of nylon or plastics. The sun destroys these plastics within a few months. The sandbags get bleached, then corrode in the sun. The result is leaking and spilling sand. The dense sand remains in its neat, round pile while the plastic fabric fades to dust. Thereby creating ghosts of former sandbags.

One layer of sandbags slows a bullet, reducing its lethality, but the dust and dirt from the sandbag enters a soldier’s wound which can introduce evil infections. Three layers of sandbags stack with greater stability and stop normal bullets and most shrapnel from IEDs, mortars, rockets, and grenades. As many urban kids know, before joining the Army, sleeping on the floor provides greater protection from bullets.

During my first tour into Iraq, a female master sergeant provided an informal class to female soldiers. One of the lessons was called feet-first. Before dressing, take care of your feet and treat for fungus. Then put on clean, dry socks. Do this before putting on underwear. The little bugs can’t jump through your socks. The little beasties from the feet have a more difficult time traveling to the nether regions covered by the underwear. Listen to the infantry. Another lesson involved urinating into a plastic bottle. She showed us how to make an oblique cut on a plastic water bottle, which, when completed, makes an anatomical match. Stand or squad, she said. Pee, then pour the contents into a bottle with a screw on top. Toss. With the lesson, we joined the world of those who can pee standing up. It makes peeing on a C-130 Hercules, peeing when doing surveillance, and peeing with a small squad of male soldiers just that much easier. It also makes peeing at night easier, too.

Camp Falcon occupies a few city blocks. It has three-story walls, made from Iraqi brick. It already had guard towers, so I assume that this facility was once an Iraqi military post. This is an urban base. The sounds of Baghdad remain constant and close.

The nightly body count in Baghdad approximates fifty citizens. That’s fifty Baghdadi folks, not U.S. troops; Iraqis killing Iraqis. We seem further from an end that we did when I got here. We appear to be traveling backwards, away from peace, the longer we are here. In the summer of 2003, when I deployed here for a few months as a sergeant, I believed we approached the end of the war. Instead, peace keeps retreating from Iraq.

I acknowledge that my foul attitude is due, in part, to living in quarters that would be condemned in any U.S. city. In Iraq, I call it home-for-now. I have made a nest in the corner. I fight with mice, ants, bugs, and spiders to defend my crappy piece of this room.

I noticed a dramatic down-tick in my emotional state when I read about a man in Afghanistan who converted to Christianity. I read that the government of Afghanistan now wants to execute him because of his conversion. In a country where we committed U.S. soldiers, we are faced with a government that wants to execute someone because of a religious preference. I am incensed by this. My stack is blown—as in, remains blown. Aren’t we here to defend freedom? Freedoms of religion and of the press, freedom from unwarranted searches, freedom to vote?

The fact that I carry the Constitution and Bill of Rights with me, even in this miserable place, expresses my desire to stand for these values. I do not wish to have American soldiers fighting to restore power to a government that completely eschews our soldier’s oath.

I know I am in Iraq, but the fluidity between Iraq and Afghanistan amazes me. Between Iraq and Afghanistan is the nation of Iran. Presently, Iraq and Afghanistan are two different battlefields against two different enemies being fought for two different reasons. Yet it is the same few Americans that deploy into, then out of, these two wars. Most Americans do not know the difference. Most Americans cannot point to either of these nations on a map.

I read what I can about Afghanistan. If I am not going there next, I’ll return here. I am certain I will see Afghanistan at least once.

At this moment, NATO is taking over forces in Afghanistan. Our troops are about to fight under a British general for the first time since World War II. At the same time, we are in a diplomatic fracas with the Mayor of Kabul (oh, I mean the “President of Afghanistan,” forgive me). Under Karzai, opium production is better than it has been in decades. Their constitution does not provide for a distinction between state and church, nor does it provide itself the ability to supersede traditional Islamic law. Under the new rulers, Afghans can return to lopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women.

The Taliban’s strict enforcement of Islamic law inspired the destruction of the ancient Buddhist sculptures carved into the mountain side. The Buddhas of Bamiyan were considered idolatry and sacrilegious by these religious zealots. Therefore, the Taliban—then standing as the Afghanistan government—blew them up. They filmed it. They filmed the process of destroying artifacts created in the sixth century. One stood thirty-eight meters tall, the other fifty-five. “One should not let idols stand,” said the nation’s boss, so they blew them up.

Let’s admit that part of the Islamic code remains as rigid and archaic as Leviticus. Imagine a nation run by the rules of Leviticus? If someone decided that America must be a truly Christian nation and follow the teachings of the Christian Bible, where would we be? Yet the U.S. government seems to be stumbling around with our proverbial knickers at our ankles. We must stand for real religious freedom; instead, we support a government that has outlawed converting to Christianity. We plea for a life sentence or an insane asylum in lieu of death. We are negotiating with the government we installed, the government presumed to be more liberal than the Taliban.

Let’s observe that we negotiate the sentence whilst ignoring the underlying law. We have put American soldiers into the line of fire so that this new government can codify laws that limit religious preference. None of this follows the tenants of my oath—our oaths—nor the words written in that slim document in my breast pocket. What is the difference between the Taliban or this new Afghanistan government if they both use the same laws and tactics?

Soldiers express shock, anger, and dismay over this issue. Things heated up on the anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Many here thought that Afghanistan was a model for success, a model that demonstrated to all of us how this war in Iraq could come to a good end. Victory by U.S. forces can never, ever tolerate religious persecution. That is the first of our amendments. 1791, the same year Vermont joined the union, the following words were written and accepted as law:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The authors found that freedom of speech and religion where exactly that important. We do not drain our blood, our credibility, our nation’s bank account, and destroy American families so that some damn government can just lock up—or kill—a guy with a Bible, a Koran, a Torah, a Bhagavad Ghita, or any other document. That is not in the bargain. We serve to support our values and our Constitution. We shall not yield the life of a single American soldier to support a government that would execute or imprison a citizen for his religious beliefs.

Reporters in Afghanistan tend to focus on the military as the story: The bodies, the tactics, the weapons. The news has not yet made an issue out of the limitations of the laws in Afghanistan. The reporters, and politicians, need to see past the Humvees and the patrols.

But you have to be here to see beyond. Footage of the most recent bombing is the same here as any other place: flashing lights, a reporter yelling into a mic while wearing a blue flak vest, a bloom of smoke over his shoulder and bits of car and debris all over the place. We’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. It is not news.

We should be reporting on stories that matter. Let me offer several. I mean, no one is listening, are they? But if I could research and write stories, I may start with one of the following.

Story option one for the world press:

When I was flying last week, I traveled repeatedly over the major roads that go from Baghdad to Karbala. I wish I knew the original Iraqi names for these roads; we’ve renamed them all for our own purposes. I think of this highway as I-95 running north to south through the major cities. Hundreds of thousands marched from their homes to Karbala. They marched in a way we could never know. Old ladies marched alone in their black clothing. Kids marched. Everyone marched. For days, they marched towards Karbala. No packs, no bags, no cars. Every few kilometers, there was a waystation with food and water. These waystations had been built from ancient trucks or mule-carts or upturned crates. Anything that could host food and water. I traveled almost one hundred kilometers in two days by Blackhawk. We flew up and down I-95 from mission to mission. I was amazed. I was in awe.

How did all of this get organized? Who did this? How did the people know? How did the people know to trust their neighbors and that there would be food, water, and bedding along the way? How does this happen?

That’s a story. It highlights a change since Saddam. It documents a means of communication unique to this area. It illustrates how people can simply walk a highway with trust. The pilgrims were rewarded with kindness, food, water, and shelter. I saw no violence. I would know more if someone in the media researched it then reported on it. It illustrates new religious freedoms.

Another story option for the world press:

Why are the counter-Iraqi forces winning at the PsyOps game? PsyOps is Army-speak for Psychological Operations. The U.S. is prohibited by law from doing propaganda. So, we call it PsyOps instead. We do it. They do it.

Only, they do it more effectively.

The enemy is a bad guy. His tactics work. These bad guys stand for a type of totalitarianism and religious regime governed by Islamic law. They may not win hearts and minds, but they do control the community with fear.

The Bad Guys capture people and torture them. They film this, then burn the images to DVDs. They then duplicate the DVDs and distribute them throughout neighborhoods. The Bad Guys will kidnap the family of another fellow and repeat the process with the filming and the DVDs and the midnight distribution process.

If a Good Guy lives in the community and wants the nation to progress towards democracy, then this Good Guy finds his family held captive by a Bad Guy. The Good Guy becomes compliant. So do his neighbors. The DVDs show images of people who had once served tea as friends and countrymen, now acting with unbelievable violence towards these same friends and countrymen.

This technique is highly effective. It sends a strong message. And given the electronic nature of the message, it is untraceable. They scrub the location and equipment metadata from the video feeds, then reproduce with inexpensive DVD cloning machines. There is no internet address to chase. It is a brilliant application of technology.

A third story for the press to explore:

Let’s write an article, or create a short documentary, about our enemy. I’d like to know who he is. Who is the enemy? Are we fighting bin-Ladenism? Are we fighting an Islamic reactionary force? Are we fighting against a backdrop of traditional tribal war? Are we fighting foreign insurgents from Iran, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, all of whom have interests in controlling this region?

Turkey is afraid of the Kurds gaining autonomy. The Iranians seem to be supporting an Iranian-esque Shi’ah Islamic government. And the states to the west are likely to support the Sunni with an Islamic government. There is an American soldier in Iraq who would like to know the answer to these questions.

Many Iraqi I meet state some folks just want “The Chair.” They simply want power. They want to be rulers of their part of the land. “The Chair” seems to be a local term for throne or seat of power. They simply say, “The Chair.” Here, “The Chair” means power, and that means wealth, corruption, and respect. All of the above.

I offer a fourth story that the media could tell me:

I am a soldier on the ground, eating Iraqi dust, while wearing underwear that I can wag in the air like a stick. Please define success for me. What does the end –of this war look like to me and to the Iraqi people? What would they consider a natural state? What are their priorities? In my conversations, all I hear is security. With security comes all: utilities, benzene (gasoline), economy, family, growth, politics, and everything else. Without security, there is nothing.

I recognized my definition of the end when I thought through the question today. This conflict is over when I can walk out of Forward Operating Base Falcon and walk back to the division headquarters. I can see the hill next to the Z-shaped lake when I stand on a roof here. Imagine that I could step out of these gates, dressed in either my uniform or civilian clothing, then walk back to headquarters. If I could stop at an Iraqi bodega for water and a snack, greet people on the street, and make it the other side of my journey safely, that would be an accomplishment. I would accept that as an improvement in security.

Instead, I listen to frequent gunfire around me. In the morning briefings, we are informed of fifty dead Iraqis, or some other dreadful number. The evidence of kidnapping, torture, and street-based executions can be found in the DVDs we gather.

Blue fingers and elections don’t matter. Especially when the election can still result in the death of a man because he changed religions.

There are other stories like these that aren’t being investigated, that aren’t being told. And someone must. We’ve been at war since March 2003 in Iraq. It is March 2006. Therefore, we have entered the fourth year of this war. Where are the checks-and-balances in our culture to examine the situation? Like why fifty percent of our “fighting” force is contractors? How do we explain to U.S. citizens that a reduction in military presence here will be countered by an increase in U.S. contractors, filling roles traditionally held by uniformed military personnel?

If you do bump into any answers, please provide them to a dusty and tired soldier. Someday, I can sleep in a comfortable bed, then, in the morning, dress in soft underwear that doesn’t feel like cardboard.

Recently, when the daily death count of Iraqis killed by Iraqis escalated, we started describing our battlefield as a civil war. Our coalition forces stand on this same battlefield. All sides attempt to leverage us. They come to us with a whisper, an accusation, and sometimes proof. “Hey, old Freddy here, he was the one that mortared your base three days ago. He bought some weapons from the Iranians that came from China. I can show you.” We investigate. Do we arrest Freddy? In the early weeks, we did. We’d bang down doors, zip-tie or kill folks in Freddy’s building. We have wised up a bit. Maybe Freddy was set up. Maybe Freddy and Barney had a falling out. Maybe Barney is the real Bad Guy. We lost track.

Right now, we don’t know. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

We did not necessarily understand we stood in a civil war. We took intelligence from people we knew and trusted and had served good intelligence before. This environment can be like drug wars in U.S. cities, where one rival gang provides information to the cops about another gang. The result is that the gang making the reports gains territory and trust with the police. The police earn recognition for seizing drugs and making high-profile arrests. If the police side with one gang or the other, they escalate the violence and corruption. But if the police do not act on intelligence, they fail to curb the violence and movement of drugs. We find ourselves in that situation here today. The bosses have not yet said: “This is a civil war.” The politicians have not said it either. The dead bodies on the streets tell their own story. The gunfire at night tells its own story.

I came to Camp Falcon because a counterintelligence team found a metric ton of anhydrous nitrogen. While this liquid product is used by farmers as a fertilizer, we believe that this stash was to be used for improvised explosives. Certainly, we have thousands of local farms growing dates and other fruits. They would love to get their hands on this fertilizer for their fields. Yet, the manner of storage and the location of the find indicates that someone planned on making hundreds of bombs from this material. To make a bomb from this anhydrous nitrogen, we need a trigger and a detonation source.

One of the dining facilities I have visited during my travels displays the makings of various improved explosive devices (IEDs). Someone mounted the wiring and detonation system for IEDs on a sheet of powder-blue plywood. A black marker described the components and how they work. I remember one that used an egg timer; one that used a Nokia mobile phone; one that used the timer from an electric clothes dryer. We stood in line for our meals studying these diagrams. I learned and memorized more from these boards than I had in classrooms. Reinforcing these lessons was the knowledge that these bits of wires, timers, and diagrams had been picked from IEDs that exploded near the base. The soldiers who made these displays used crime scene evidence to make functional diagrams of explosive devices. Soldiers waited in line for breakfast learning how to either make one, or, more importantly, how to recognize one.

IED Recognition Training Board

A ton of explosive fertilizer, a small battery, a timer or trigger, then an ignition source… that’s all a bomb maker needs. When investigating a ton of explosive material, I tend to ask myself: “What did we miss?” I am working with Jim and Kyle, members of a human intelligence support team, or HST. Jim pays the guy who pays the guy who pays the guy who gets the information on shipments of bad-stuff and the location of these explosives. Kyle tends to write reports, analyze the data, and talk with bosses. Jim and Kyle created a team of two that has proven effective, even in this bizarre battlespace. They seem to be savvy enough to avoid the obvious attempts at passing on sectarian-based—or revenge-based—data. At the edge of this world, where spies do not call themselves spies, Jim and Kyle spy.

I look forward to yielding my corner back to the rats and bugs from whom I stole the space. I hate this hooch and do not feel very safe at Forward Operating Base Falcon. I never thought I would look fondly on a room that occupies one-third of an aluminum trailer. But back at that base, contractors do my laundry. I drop it one day, skip a day, then fetch my laundry. That’s the counter in my head: drop, skip, get. The clothing returns clean and with a hint of fluffiness. Life is better when dressing in soft underwear and a properly cleaned uniform. When I walk into the D-fac for my breakfast, the fellows at the griddle know my order and treat me well. I know I have it good, nestled in with the division headquarters staff. It is not Vermont, and I see them pour eggs from a carton. My morning egg comes from a shelf-stable egg-like product that pours from a box. In Vermont, eggs come from a chicken that scratched the dirt near someone’s home. In the ranking of good-better-best, Vermont remains at the top of the list, and it is best because it is my home. The divisional headquarters ranks as good. I acknowledge it as the best of all possible options when in Iraq. Camp Falcon is still better than sleeping rough and better than the conditions in which a lot of our soldiers live.

FOB Falcon greeted me with two familiar insignias. First, the four green ivy leaves of the Fourth Infantry Division. Second, an artist painted the shoulder patch of the 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101^st Airborne Division. During World War II, it was known as the 506^th PIR. The shoulder patch displays six white parachutes in a blue sky near a green hill. Below the image is the word “Currahee.” The HBO series Band of Brothers followed the men of “E,” or Easy Company, of the 506^th PIR through World War II. This unit is now here in Baghdad with us. Many soldiers serve anonymously and quietly. We do take pride in our efforts, and the heritage of our units. The men of the 506^th landed during D-Day, parachuted into the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden, slept in the snow during the Battle of the Bulge. In the spring of 2006, the men and women of the 506^th display their colors at this urban outpost in Baghdad.

I shan’t complain about stiff underwear I wash in the shower, because I have access to a shower. So many do not. I shan’t complain about a morning egg that pours from a carton, given we often have to rely on ready-to-eat meals. I shan’t complain about displacing rats and bugs to create my own nest on a floor, because it is better than sleeping outdoors or in a tent. But maybe I should wonder about invading a nation without much of a plan for either building the nation’s government or the possibility of creating a civil war in our own battlefield. This month, I know of one ton of explosives that will not be used to kill hundreds of Iraqis. Regrettably, if there was another ton of explosives a kilometer away, I would not know.

I.M. Aiken

Author & narrator
“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)
“Stolen Mountain” (2025)
“Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast
“Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries and a Story of Love”

Cardboard Undies, Endless Wars & The Tides of History

I.M. AIken — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 14:49:16 GMT

I.M. Aiken

Author & narrator
“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)
“Stolen Mountain” (2025)
“Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast
“Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries and a Story of Love”

If You Can, You Must

I.M. AIken — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:46:31 GMT

Listen to the author read you the story: audio

A five am 911 call means: woke up dead or super sick. Whatever lays ahead, this morning offers the frigid beauty of a Vermont morning. Peeing, prepping before rushing into deep cold, I admire the monster-sized full moon approaching the horizon. I am again awed by the sparkling cascade of clear-sky snow that floats on days like these.

“Dispatch, 14RC1 acknowledging call for Trowbridge. En route shortly.” No, you cannot go from sound, warm, lovely sleep into a -5 degree dawn. At this age, I need the obvious bio stop and time to layer on socks and long underwear below proper warm clothes.

My phone buzzes with a message from Regina: “Pick me up. I’ll be at end of my drive on the road.”

I text back: “3 min and I’ll be in truck.”

Regina leaps up and in. Together now, we speed-ish down her hill and away from acres and acres of hayfields buried in feet of snow. My emergency lights reveal every crystal of ice that dances over the road and in the woods that close in around us. The snowbanks on the left and right stand taller than the hood of my truck.

I think—aloud, I guess—“The boys will wing that back today.” As if that is an obvious and stupid observation. With a clear, cold day between weekend storms, I envision the town road crew plowing with the wing extensions set high. They will trim the snowbanks down while spraying the top half deeper into the woods. Snowbank maintenance. Given we work, drive, and respond over rural Vermont 3-rod roads, when snow tumbles back onto the road, the pathway narrows as if the snow wishes to reclaim it all.

I slam on the breaks.

Regina exclaims (shrieks): “What the fuck?”

“Was that a flying reindeer? Are we in a Santa Claus movie?”

Now fully stopped, I get out of the truck. I hear Regina open, then shut, her door. I circle the truck sunwise and she circles the other way. We meet and continue. The routine reminds me of silliness from high school when we would evacuate a car at a red light, run circles, dance like fools, then jump back in before the light turned green and horns cussed at us for being kids.

My heart has immediately accelerated to 120 beats per minute. My eyes dilate. In fact, my entire sympathetic nervous system reinforces that we nearly collided with a flying (or leaping) deer. Climbing into the warming truck, we babble like civilian humans who saw something that threatened to kill. The deer made it over the truck and landed on the opposing bank. We both witnessed the track marks. He was gone. No blood, no fur, nothing but hoof prints on plow-packed snow.

As we drive towards the emergency, we both breathe to control the massive hit of adrenaline we loaded into our bloodstream. We are professional paramedics. We are cool and calm. We stride onto a scene with a plan and authority that tends to soothe others at emergencies. If we show up wired and sparking with fear, then we will (and have) infected everyone else at the scene.

We are not allowed to be afraid. That admitted, let me confirm that every one of us has blown our cool. Somehow, someday, some setting, we have each keyed the mic with some variant of “oh shit, send me everything.” Because on that day, we are too small, too weak, too overwhelmed to fully assess and report what is in front of us. The 200-car pile-up in an ice fog on the interstate where the first car has mom holding the decapitated head of her husband while the infant in the back falls silent while you fail to understand that this is only the first car you looked at. Or that day when I said “priapism” over the radio because I saw a lad curling into a decorticate posture and an erection often associated with strangulation, hanging, or massive neuro-trauma. The right and professional words evaporate as you key the mic. You can’t be cool while squeaking sterile medical terms into a radio.

You’re first. You’re trained. Breathe, see the facts as they are, invent some stupid plan, then communicate your needs calmly and smoothly over the radio. It doesn’t always happen, does it? Sometime in every rescuer’s career, you want your radio to have an “oh shit” knob.

Hitting a flying deer on a brilliantly dark January morning feels like “oh shit” to the body. But it isn’t. No damage to truck or deer or humans. And yet, a few more miles to travel, hoping now not to meet a town plow coming north on this same road. We breathe. We both actively engage in calming.

I flip the radio knob to the town frequency: “Hey guys, RC1. We’re flyin’ south.”

“Alex, we heard you go out. All clear. We’re still in the barn. Call us if you need help.”

“Thanks, Pete.” They will plow a driveway for us, unstick the ambulance, or make whatever magic we need in the snow.

As one might expect, the best I could do was push Regina and all of our kit out onto the drive while I backed a hundred meters to the road. I parked my running truck with lights telling all who came next which drive and dropping the hint to not come up it. The drive is too narrow for traffic.

“Dispatch, 14RC1 establishing Trowbridge command. Inform the ambulance that my truck marks the drive. Tell them the drive is plowed, but no turn around. They should back up. It is flat, straight, and clear.”

See, that is appropriate and professional communication.

I shuffle up the drive, listening to the snow squeak beneath each footfall. The lights of the house and my headlamp illuminate the falling snow. It is like being in an old-time cartoon, stars dancing around the head of an injured duck or coyote. The snow sparkles and flutters.

At the door, I get the standard urgent greeting: “Hey, my mother is in the downstairs bedroom. She’s having a stroke. Your partner is already in there.”

Every action must communicate: calm, control, confidence. I offer hope. “Strokes are not like they were when we were kids. There are fantastic treatments that often work.” I don’t need to worry about Regina. We, two, didn’t need a plan. I continue, “When did you last see her looking and acting normally?”

“Maybe last night.”

“Well, what time did you go to bed or last see her?”

“I dunno, nine, I guess,” answers the son.

As we say in the business, “Time is brain, meaning the faster we assess and move, the better the outcome for your mother will be. Can we sit for a sec? I need her name, date of birth, physician’s name, and all of her meds. Also, I need to write down her medical history.”

I use my voice to slow the pace down. My pen and index cards are poised to capture information that will round out Regina’s assessment and aid the hospital in locating records and planning their actions following our stroke alert.

With the front and back of my card filled, a fresh photo of the advanced directives that rested under a magnet on the side of the fridge, I slip into Mom’s bedroom. I touch Regina on the shoulder.

“Urinary Tract Infection,” she says softly.

I shrug.

“Problem is, this stupid stroke chart assumes symptoms fall on one side or the other. She’s pretty gorked.”

“Ambulance is en route. We’ve got time.” I see what she sees. Every rookie and most EMT-basics would not hesitate to identify this as a stroke and push the big red button called “Stroke Alert.” A stroke alert, made to the hospital via phone or relayed via dispatch, pushes the hospital into high gear. The guiding principle is that it is better to make the stroke alert than to be wrong. But Regina and I have decades of experience and thousands of hours of additional training.

“Wanna call medical control?” Give some overnight doc the data and take the decision from the hands of two medics in a small bedroom forty-five to sixty minutes from the nearest community hospital.

What happens when you call in a stroke alert to a community hospital? They may tell you that their CT machine is down or… or… In short, the hospital may tell you to go elsewhere. If the ambulance starts rolling, they may have to turn around to head west or head south. Because options don’t exist.

Regina dials the hospital from the home phone. She asks for medical control. In her hand, she holds a PDF version of the Vermont stroke protocol open. She identifies herself and asks for the doctor’s name, which comes across as Ted.

“Ted”—Regina looks at me, indicating that I am to write more notes—“What is your credential level? Are you a doc?”

“PA? Ok. I have an 86-year-old female exhibiting stroke-like symptoms. But I believe that she is deep in a UTI.”

Regina’s frustration flashes at me.

“Of course, I did a FAST assessment and checked her blood glucose and that is why I am calling. Her symptoms are bilaterial. She’s aphasic and not following commands well. Both arms drift. Her face doesn’t have a lot of tone, but appears symmetrical.”

“I understand that a paramedic can’t look into a brain. She scores a 5 on the FAST-ED.”

“Fine, then. Trowbridge command is calling in a stroke alert for…” She reads from my notecard, providing our patient’s name, date of birth, and key medical history.

“Ted, if we tell the ambulance to divert to Dartmouth, we will add at least ninety minutes, if not two hours, before this patient rolls through anyone’s door. Is this the best option?”

Regina holds her middle finger towards the phone for my benefit.

“Thank you, Ted.” She hangs up and looks at me.

“I’ll call Mass. I am NOT calling Dartmouth. The docs at Dartmouth will tell me to get an assessment locally.” She calls the next emergency department. Frankly, this ED is either the same distance or closer than our primary ED. “Hey, I’m a medic in Trowbridge, Vermont. Can you guys handle a stroke alert? Is the CT working? Got an MRI? Is your neuro telemed link working? All the things?”

“Nice, cool. Ok, I am calling in a stroke alert for an 86-year-old female. I honestly think she got a rippin’ UTI, but she ticks the boxes for a stroke. Also, I should add, she has that odor. Her symptoms are symmetrical and a bit sour smelling, if you get me.”

She listens. Then prattles off the history and demographic data as the ambulance’s backup alarm creeps closer.

It takes a few years to understand that, sometimes, a “stroke” can be treated with a course of antibiotics because the stroke isn’t a stroke.

We’re back in my truck as dawn starts showing, an hour before the sun will appear through the trees of our forest.

“You did fine.”

“I’m tryin’ tell a guy a thing and he’s not listening.”

“Shitty, huh?” I am not a great sympathetic listener, often too quick with solutions and advice.

“I’ve been thinking I am done.”

“Done, done? Like, not renewing? Like, giving up your license?” I ask.

“I think so,” she says with all the earnesty she can muster. “I work full time and been doing this for two decades. Then some runt tells me I haven’t run enough codes, or landed enough intubations, and I need remedial training in addition to all the other crap. Christ, I love dogs, but now I need to be fully trained and credentialed for treating police canines: IVs, intubations, meds. Only for Mass. Vermont not so much. Keeping my license in Mass and Vermont requires separate training and separate credentialling but they are both part of the national registry.”

“It feels like 100 hours of training per year.”

“Yeah, something like that. Oh, your Mass refresher missed this Vermont module, or God forbid I take a Vermont paramedic refresher and submit that in Mass. It was supposed to all be easier. Nope, I have to add one class in Mass because the modules don’t line up. Vermont doesn’t have Nero’s law mandating veterinary emergency care for dogs.”

“Your gran was a nurse, right?”

“Yeah, and she raised us.”

Regina pauses.

“What it really comes down to is I don’t want to manage the next big call. I don’t know that I need another dead kid, a teen suicide, to be my last call. Can’t I just quit on my terms? I am sixty-four years old. Am I doing this at seventy? Am I recerting so I can work until I am, what, sixty-six, or sixty-eight?”

“Pull the plug,” I offer, feeling much the same.

“But I am still doin’ good out there. I like being on a medic transfer truck. Tons of meds and pumps. I work my ass off. Then some f’n buck decides today is the day for a megacode refresher, and no matter what you do, he needs you to fail. He keeps changing parameters and yells elevating the emotional pressure. He feels he needs to add realism. Yet for a decade of doing codes, we whisper and use our eyes to coordinate. Why do I need that? Get through the human resusitation station, then queue up and wait for the dog station. I am so sick of it.”

She pauses. “It goes back to the old phrase: ‘if you can, then you must.’”

“Sure,” I answer. “That was the rule here. If you were between sixteen and eighty and able bodied and male, then you must be a member of the town militia. It isn’t the case anymore. That ethos died. It is better to drive an expensive car and bully first responders for being in your way.”

Silence.

“Just let it go. I am going let it go soon, too. It can be someone else’s turn. And if there is no one else, then someone younger, more energetic, and less pissed off can solve that problem. I’ve done tried.”

I say: “Regina, my friend, I think it is perfectly fine to acknowledge that not everyday has to involve a shot of adrenaline that comes with a life-or-death encounter.”

“Dispatch, Trowbridge Command terminated.” I say into radio’s mic with perfect professionalism. I wonder how many more times I can wake to the emergency tones then rush through dressing and peeing. How many more times do any of us have? From sleep to crisis in a millisecond. Then some young human buck decides that EMS training must resemble screaming, high-tension, combat operations. Or some deer buck decides that leaping from one snowbank to another over a red pickup truck makes good sense. Cortisol, the stress hormone, floods when the tones go off alerting us to a 911 medical call. Cortisol hits again after not hitting the deer. No doubt for Regina, another hit came when the PA at the local hospital ordered the patient to go direct, via road, to the trauma center in New Hampshire. At some point, done is done. Right?

It is ok to walk away, isn’t it?

She’ll miss it. I’ll miss her. At one moment, you are the one with the tools, and skills, and experience to make stuff better. You’re the hero. You save lives. You’re the person people want to see walking through the door. That’s a nice feeling.

“I don’t know.” She says as she gradually accepts that this maybe it.

I.M. Aiken is a Vermont-based novelist exploring the impact public service takes on us.

“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” – September 2024

“Stolen Mountain” – October 2025

“Trowbridge Dispatch – Short stories” – an ongoing series of written and audio stories

“Captain Henry: 2½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1¼ Centuries, and a Story of Love” – September 2026

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