Little Relief on Ward 53

Joshua Calloway reported to Ward 53 five mornings a week in his uniform. He was a tough patient from the start, angering easily and impatient with anyone who had not experienced combat. He was irritated that he had to attend groups with soldiers who had bombed out of boot camp or never deployed. He participated in processing exercises using work sheets to help him manage his fears. ("For example, original thought: 'I'm in a crowd, they're looking at me, they're all going to jump me, the enemy looked at me in Iraq and shot me, I leave.' Feelings: Anxious. Behavior: Leave situation.")

With the exception of the post-traumatic stress group run by Joshua Friedlander, a clinical psychologist and former Army captain who had served in Iraq, most of the classes felt like B.S. sessions to Calloway. "Civilians reading from a booklet," he said.

Ultimately, his treatment was in the hands of a civilian psychiatrist. Before taking a contract job at Walter Reed in 2005, the doctor had worked at Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital and specialized in addictions and pedophilia. On Ward 53, he was responsible for about 30 soldiers, many back from Iraq. Calloway felt little validation from the psychiatrist. Sometimes the doctor typed on his computer while Calloway talked.

There was another, more delicate, problem. The psychiatrist was Indian. Calloway had a gut reaction to anyone he thought looked Iraqi, a paranoia shared by many of Walter Reed's wounded.

"You are seeing a [expletive] Pakistani?" asked Spec. Isaac Serna, a fellow war-wounded soldier in the 101st Airborne. "I'd freak, dude."

Calloway confessed his bias to the doctor. "I want to kill Arabs," he said.

"Does that include me?" the Hindu doctor asked, according to Calloway. "You can say it."

Antidepressants are most commonly used to treat PTSD, and Calloway was on a total of seven medications by Christmas, including lithium, used to treat bipolar disorder. He had now gained 30 pounds and was too lethargic to exercise. Bored one night, he took out the sweat-stained spiral notebook he had carried in Iraq. Grains of sand were still between the pages scribbled with Arabic commands. He repeated the phrases that loosely translated to "don't speak" and "shut up."

"Balla hashee!" he said. "In chep!"

He spent the holidays reading "The PTSD Workbook" and eating Starbursts in a room piled high with goody boxes from his church back home.

"You are in our prayers, Josh," one card read. "We are so proud of your service to your country."

Unabating Anger

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In Iraq he was infected with MRSA, a microbe that makes the skin boil, and at Walter Reed he suffered a painful outbreak that landed him in the hospital. Festering sores brought a respite from Ward 53. In the hospital, he got Percocet and "The Daily Show," and late at night he read a memoir by a soldier who served in Iraq called "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell." A friend in the 101st lent it to him with underlined passages, and Calloway read aloud the one on Page 172 about trying to fit back in after war.