The Soldier's Tale Read Online Free

boy, had been a patient of the surgery since birth, and there were the usual notes of immunisations and childhood illness. It was clear from what he read that he started showing signs of depression around age fourteen, and Sean blinked at the words "needs more exercise" written under a prescription for depression meds. At fourteen.
    It went downhill for him from then on, but to be fair to his dad, it happened out of his control, at school. Connor succumbed to an addiction to drugs, cocaine, and speed, getting in with the wrong crowd. It didn't say that last part in the notes, but Sean had first-hand knowledge of Connor. He'd been at school in the village, and he knew the family. He'd heard the village talking, heard more than people realised. He opened his laptop and logged into the surgery network, running through the rest of his notes in their electronic form, updating the actions from last night in minute detail. But he kept getting distracted. Something was digging away at his thoughts, but for once it wasn't worrying or thinking of a patient of his. Sighing, he tracked back through his dad's appointments yesterday.
    The last appointment? No, actually the second from last, the only one that fit the details of the display Sean had seen. Daniel Francis, twenty-six, and the only records he could see were the automated records. Ex-army, bomb disposal, time in Afghanistan, injured badly by shrapnel in an explosion, his left side damaged, left knee, thigh, arm, face and neck, his ID number tracking a move to the veterans ward in Birmingham on arrival back in the UK. The man was evidently some freaking war hero, combat-ready, injured, but clearly still in defence mode. Hence the separating of Connor from his knife in such a brutally quick and efficient way.
    Daniel checked through the prescribed meds passed by the hospital and rubber-stamped by his dad. Jesus, how the hell did the man make such dramatic moves on the perceived threat when the drugs in his body were so damned disabling? Daniel Francis was a walking medicine cabinet—meds to keep the man sane, meds for highs, meds for lows, meds for the pain, muscle relaxants. He must feel like a zombie. There were no black and white records of post traumatic stress. Daniel's psyche evaluations were only that which would be expected. His plastic surgeon had recommended more work on his face and neck, but there were notes to indicate the patient had withdrawn from the programme of medical intervention. Having seen the scarring on Daniel's face, Sean wondered if surgical intervention would have made any difference to what was there. It wasn't awful scarring—Sean had seen worse on patients caught in fires—but he wondered if Daniel was self-conscious of the marks. Sean made another mental note to maybe book an appointment for some face-to-face time, but he would have to manage it without his dad getting wind of it. The elder doctor didn't take kindly to interference in his patients by his son. Maybe an informal chat? There were inconsistencies in his prescriptions, modern schools of thought that would never have prescribed the happy pills and the muscle relaxants on the same script.
    By the time midnight came, he was ready for bed, but by two in the morning, tossing and turning in his bed, he just knew he wasn't going to get any sleep. Solutions to this inability to sleep were easy. He handed them out every day to his patients without conscious thought. He should attempt relaxing, maybe aided by finishing a lukewarm drink, but not caffeine, warm milk perhaps. Then maybe he should be asking himself what might be worrying him. All he needed to do was to find the root of the issue, and sleep would normally follow. Simple. He just couldn't seem to apply any of these wonderful fix-it-all solutions to himself. He wasn't stupid. He had ideas why he was so restless and irritable. Connor was one. He knew he couldn't turn his brain off, which made him not able to sleep, which made him tired