The Ones Who Didn’t Come Back

I went to the VA today, which is something I try not to do unless absolutely necessary. The place itself feels like a waiting room for death—nothing but echoes, the occasional cough, the hum of old machines still chugging along past their expiration date, and that specific kind of resignation you only find in institutions where people are shelved until further notice.

It’s always dirty. Not in a grimy, urban kind of way, but the slow, bureaucratic rot of a place that’s been neglected by a country that needed bodies and now doesn’t know what to do with them.

The floors are never fully clean. The chairs are stained with the oil and sweat of forgotten men. The TVs mounted in the corners are always on low volume, playing Fox News or cooking shows no one watches. There’s a vending machine that only takes coins. The hallway smells like Lysol and piss.

And the people—God, the people.

They sit slouched and broken, half-ghosts wrapped in flannel and trauma. Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam. Even a few old relics from Korea, their limbs warped by time and shrapnel, their faces hollowed out by things no one wants to talk about anymore. Everyone wears it—the past. Like a uniform no one can take off. Skin mottled with old wounds, eyes glazed over, breath thick with the scent of forgotten wars. Some are missing arms or legs. Some talk to themselves in whispers. Some just stare.

It’s a fucking tomb.

I was there for something simple—an X-ray. Nothing dramatic. Just a flicker of pain in my shoulder that hadn’t gone away in a few months. I wasn’t expecting anything except the usual: paperwork, waiting, maybe the odd Vietnam vet ranting about the Clintons.

The radiologist was a civilian. Young. Pretty in that wholesome, Southern sort of way that makes you feel like a nicer person just standing near her. She smiled too much. Young enough to act like her job meant something, still proud that she was doing a public service. Her voice was bright and full of life, which felt obscene in a place like this.

She ushered me into the exam room, and that’s when I saw it—the wall.

Posters. Sloppily taped to the wall like they were trying to hold the place together. Covered in Sharpie signatures, drawings, scribbled unit numbers. She called it her Wall of Heroes, and said it proudly.

And I felt sick.

It looked like a child’s school project, like something in a high school hallway before Veterans Day. I scanned the names. Some were careful and neat. Others jagged and rushed, barely legible. One just said “FUCK THIS PLACE” in all caps. I liked that one.

She asked me to sign it.

I hesitated. Not for dramatic effect. Just because… I didn’t want to.

I’m not a hero. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I didn’t join the military out of patriotism or some noble calling. I joined because I didn’t know what else to do and someone offered me a steady paycheck and a purpose. It allowed me another chance to run away from everything I had known, so I did. I served. I followed orders. I volunteered so others didn’t have to. I went to the sandbox.

I did the job. And it took from me things I didn’t know I had until they were gone—like peace of mind, like the ability to relax, like sleep. Real sleep. The kind without nightmares.

Now I don’t talk about it. I don’t bring it up at parties. I’ve turned it into a blank spot in conversations, a quick detour. “Yeah, I served.” Then I quickly change the subject. Because it doesn’t feel like something worth sharing. It feels like a scar I’d rather keep under a long sleeve.

But I signed the wall.

Because she was looking at me like I was supposed to. Like it would make her day. Like it would mean something. And I couldn’t bear to disappoint her. That’s how far gone I am—I’d rather betray my own sense of truth than ruin the fantasy for someone else.

So I picked up the marker and wrote my name. And as I did, it felt performative. Like I was cosplaying my own history. Like I was lying in permanent ink.

And when I stepped back and looked at it, I felt nothing.

No pride. No catharsis. Just a familiar emptiness.

I said thank you, like a robot. She smiled, called me a hero again. I nodded. Then I shook my head as I left. I kept my head down the whole time. Emotionless.

Walking back through the hallway, past the slumped forms of the other veterans—the ones with missing limbs, the ones with haunted faces, the ones who probably had better reasons to sign that wall than I did—I felt like a fraud. A name on a wall pretending to mean something.

Yeah I did my time. I came back from the war in one piece, at least on paper—but standing next to the others, I feel like a shadow. Their pain is visible: missing legs, tremors, the thousand-yard stare that never blinks. Mine is quieter, buried under a half-functioning smile and polite conversation. And because I didn’t bleed in front of anyone, I’ve convinced myself it doesn’t count. because it doesn’t. I don’t matter.

I sat in my car for twenty minutes before I turned the engine on. Just sat there, staring through the windshield at the crumbling facade of a building meant to care for people like me.

So I keep showing up to these appointments—quiet, polite, invisible—moving through hallways that stink of bleach and resignation, signing walls like I earned the right to be remembered. They thank me, and I nod, because the truth is too messy to explain.

I saw things no one should see. I heard the screams, smelled the smoke, felt the heat, and I came back. That’s the part I still don’t understand. Why I walked away when better men didn’t. Why I wake up every night choking on memories I can’t speak aloud.

The worst part isn’t what I saw—it’s that I’m still here, pretending to be fine, while the ones who deserved to come home never did.