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And two things happened. One, much of the blood coming out of Michael Emory's head kept going into Adam Schumann's mouth. And on the day he left the war and all the days since, it's not that he can still taste it, it's that he hasn't been able to stop tasting it.

And the other thing that happened is he was exhausted at the end of these three flights of stairs, and when they finally got Emory — a big guy — on this litter to get him to the Humvee, there's this moment where Adam loses his balance and almost drops Emory on his head.

And years later, there's a part in the book when Emory — who's alive, who shouldn't be but is alive — comes to visit Adam in Kansas. [Emory] just starts making fun of him for almost dropping him and killing him. And it's heartbreaking and it's tender and it's lovely — it just encapsulates so much of the intimate lives that are being played out in all these people trying to recover.

On the availability of treatment programs for veterans

Random is a very good word here. There are three people I write about in this book who go into treatment programs. Tausolo Aieti spent seven weeks in an inpatient PTSD program at a [Veterans Affairs] hospital, so he got the seven-week program.

Another guy I write about, Nic DeNinno, he wanted to get into the VA one, but it was full, so his case worker looked around and found one in another state that lasted four weeks. Was it as good? Well, it did OK for him, but four weeks is not seven weeks.

War and Literature

'Operation Homecoming': The Writings of War

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