“Jesus fucking Christ Marcy what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” I yelled as I stumbled upon the, frankly, disturbing scene in our bunk.

Marcy was staring down the barrel of her handgun in what can only be described as a psychotic trance. I immediately disarmed her, twisting the gun out of her hands and knocking the ammo out of the barrel. It clattered to the floor unceremoniously, and the noise and pain finally snapped Marcy out of whatever stupor she was in.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, “Ow, that really hurt!”

“Yeah, obviously it hurt, you idiot!”

“I wasn’t doing anything!” she whined. It was always funny when she whined, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Hey, this isn’t funny. What if I was actually dead, what if--”

“Safety’s off, dumbass,” I said, tucking the gun into my pocket.

“Hey, that’s mine--”

“As per protocol, I’m going to have to report this.”

“Janet, that’s so not cool.”

“What’s not cool is you trying to blow your brains out in our bunk.”

“But I didn’t!” she exclaimed, “You said it yourself, the safety was off!”

“Yes, but you were clearly thinking about it. And that has to be reported.”

“Oh come on, they’ll cart me off to Psych and I’ll be stuck there for ever.” She groaned and flopped backwards onto her bed. “You can’t report this, I wasn’t even gonna do it, I swear!”

“Really? Because to me it looked like you were having an inner monologue before you pulled the trigger.

“An inner monologue? PSCH, what do you think I am, a cartoon?” she exclaimed, followed by a loud unconvincing laugh.

“You got a problem with cartoons?”

“No. It’s just… People don’t just have internal monologues.”

“They totally do, and you were definitely just having an internal monologue.”

“Janet… be cool.”

“I am being cool. I am being very cool. You don’t understand how cool I have to be to not lose my shit and yell at you for trying to paint the walls with your brain juice.” I took a deep breath, held it, then released. If I said anything more, I might explode.

“...Sorry.”

“Why are you apologising to me? I’d rather you apologise to the poor Privates who would have to clean that off the walls and the bed. Do you know that it stains?”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t.” I sighed, then took a seat next to Marcy on her bed. She was staring at a spot on the ground, but eventually turned towards me. “Marcy. If you were having troubles, you could have spoken to me.”

“I’m not… I’m not having troubles.”

“Seems to be like you were.”

“It’s just… I don’t know, okay? It’s complicated.

I reached over and placed my hand on her shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze. “That’s why I have to report this.”

“But--”

“I’m not qualified to help you with your complicated issues, Marcy. That’s what psychiatrists are for. Plus, if you end up getting marked as unstable, you’d get to stay here.”

“How is that a good thing?”

“It’s great. You stay at base, you only hear about the atrocities your teammates are doing, and you--”

“You separate yourself from the guilt. That must be so fun.”

“I got assigned to train new recruits like you when you arrived. It’s a good gig. You get paid well, and you aren’t risking your life constantly.”

“Really? It doesn’t bother you at all that you’re training up a new batch of deluded soldiers to fight someone else’s war? That you’re essentially building them up to die.”

“It’s… it’s a little more nuanced than that,” I said, “If you think too much about the details of what you do, that’s when the despair really takes you over.”

“So you’re saying I should just… ignore it?”

“At what point did I say that you should do that?”

“I don’t know what to do, Janet! I don’t know what I’m doing here, people are dying left and right-- I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing!”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to me, staring her straight in the eyes. “Listen to me Marcy.”

“If I die out there, what does that make me-- if I just keep watching people die, I can’t keep--”

“Marcy,” I stated again, firmly. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do anymore,” she mumbled, a sob building up in her throat before she coughed, leaning her head down against my shoulder as she began to cry. I carefully wrapped my arms around her and held her close.

“You survive.”