It was far too hot...

He sits across from us, genial and jovial despite his general aura of defeat. He is in the inpatient psych ward for the fourth time this year, brought in to protect him from himself. Covered in a shiny spider web tracery of burn marks and skin graft repair, he relaxes on his chair, nonchalantly eating a bag of chips.

His hands are stubby and shortened, the final bone of both pinkies far too explicably missing. He talks about his life, his kids. He talks briefly about the war, but it is far too strong a memory for him. He is on a new mixture of drugs. He hopes out loud that this will be the batch that keeps him from the darker places of his mind.

He has grandkids. A new wife. Friends. How terrible is it that this neurochemical abnormality constantly tries to take that from him. He locked himself in a car once. Covered in gasoline, he lit a match. The heat snapped him out of it, he reports. Deciding that it was far too hot in there, he got out. He won that fight, as he has won all of them. But just barely.