But he was not ready to tell her that. He was not even aware of it himself anymore. He was an orphan, he knew, but beyond that his past was gone, the causes of his disease lost within the complexity of the defense mechanism they had triggered.

The thing that was always on his mind was the war. He had been sent to Vietnam towards the end of the conflict, had somehow managed to get past the medical board and into combat at a time when his illness was mild enough to be overlooked. In fact, in those days nobody knew about the suspicious bend in Jonathan Newman’s personality because it had yet to surface. But it was there, all the same. And the war brought it out. He had wanted to go to war, had waited eagerly for combat, perhaps because in war (and in death?) he would be offered the chance to escape these ever-increasing voices in his head, these thoughts that troubled him a little more every day.

He was the perfect candidate for combat syndrome, and once he was under fire and among the bodies of the dead, he experienced a complete mental breakdown, which prompted the first of his extensive hospital stays. During the few weeks he had spent in Vietnam, he had slowly come to realize that the real problem was with the government of the United States. They were the ones who sent him there to die. Since then, his suspicions rested mostly with people in authority (like his fears of the “people enforcing” police), and he saw them as the enemy.

He and the doctor discussed all that. She helped him fill in the blanks as gently as she could, had done more than any other doctor had been able to do. She seemed encouraged by these stories and his reactions to them, and promised him that they were getting to the bottom of his problem. But they weren’t, not really. She may have been fooled for a while, but it didn’t take long for her to realize this was not the root of his sickness, only a symptom. There were other, perhaps more disturbing, things that lurked in his subconscious. He had felt the paranoia inside him long before Vietnam. Soon, she was asking him that question again (And you, Jonathan. What has happened to make you so afraid?), but he couldn’t answer her. He just didn’t know.