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right when he got off the bus. It wasn’t as serious-looking as the five-story hospital building over to the left, which seemed to be brimming with activity, lots of men and women, some in uniform, but many not, some pushing walkers, some walking just fine. There were trees and grass near Building 1, just as he had hoped, and in the middle of the circular drive a giant flagpole waved the Stars and Stripes as well as the more somber flag of prisoners of war and those missing in action. The soft click-clack of the flags against the pole was a comfort, and the shade of the ponderosas and cottonwoods quieted Jefferson’s spirit as he walked beneath them, preparing himself for what was to come.
    Inside, the waiting room was occupied by a number of young guys who looked a lot like Jefferson, brown-skinned ex-soldiers, many of them lost in shell-shocked stares or chattering incessantly, compulsively. He signed in and waited until his name was called, and a nurse led him down a hall with pale blue walls and many closed doors, finally ushering him through one of the doors into a room painted a deeper blue. There was no window at all, much less one looking out on the garden of his daydreams, with its greenery, its flitting birds. He took a seat on one of two black metal chairs—he’d been wrong about the plush couch too. Someone was crying on the other side of the wall.
     
    He’d been helping Esco make tamales on Thursday night when he told her about the doctor in Albuquerque. She’d grabbed his wrist across the bar on which the pork and chile mixture, the bowl of masa, the cornhusks, lay, squeezing him in her relief. She looked as if she was about to cry, the space between her eyebrows earnest, but then she spoke instead. “This doctor will help you, Jefferson.”
    He hadn’t known what to make of his grandmother’s words. Frankly, he hadn’t been aware that he needed help, even though he had called the VA hotline late that one night. Because of that, he guessed, he’d been scheduled to see the doctor right away . He’d thought that his grandmother and Nigel, and even Auntie Linda, who he’d spoken to only once and then briefly from her front stoop, were feeling good about him, were proud of him, were waiting to see what he would do next. They seemed to believe in him as they always had, their faith unshaken that now that he was home from war, he would do good things. It was as if they were thinking—each time they saw him—that here was Jefferson, their sweet, smart youngest boy who’d graduated with honors from Santa Fe High and, on the authority of his own well-informed and intelligent brain, gone off and joined the army. Jefferson had not sensed any worry or judgment from any of them. And he thought he’d done a pretty good job these past few weeks of living up to their expectations. He was okay. The word had become a staple of their conversation.
    Are you okay?
    Yes, I’m okay.
    How are you?
    I’m okay.
    But the truth, as Jefferson was beginning to suspect, was that he was not okay. That’s what he’d told the man on the hotline. He needed someone, maybe a doctor, to help him. He wasn’t sure what form the help would take, but he hoped it might be an answer to a question that was getting louder and louder in his mind. Why? Could a doctor help him answer this question?
    Dr. Wesleyan arrived almost as soon as the nurse had checked his pulse and blood pressure. The door had shut briefly and then opened again, leaving him no real time to prepare. He’d hoped to be able to sing and possibly pray just a bit before beginning his conversation with her. He felt he needed to put himself in a meditative state of remembrance before he could answer the sorts of questions he imagined she might have for him, so he could ask for the help he needed. Why? That was the question he needed help answering.
    “Hi, I’m Dr. Wesleyan,” she said, sticking out her hand.
    She was young. So young that Jefferson tried to calculate