My name is Jamie Battle. I’m 27 years old and I’m a sergeant in the United States Army. I’ve learned to handle pain in some of the harshest places on Earth, but nothing ever compared to the concrete floor beneath the 14 steps of my family’s basement.
The fire from four broken ribs was nothing next to the ice in my father’s eyes—Senator Arthur Battle—as he looked down at me.
“She says she slipped.” My sister Renee lied with perfect composure just moments after she’d snarled, “You’re just a pathet*c little soldier,” and shoved me. My father didn’t ask if I was okay. He gave an order.
“Confirm her statement, Sergeant.” He used my rank as a reminder of my place, of my duty to obey.
“There’s a fundraiser tonight. Don’t ruin this family’s image.” They thought the soldier in me would just blindly follow orders, but they forgot one thing: a soldier’s highest loyalty is to the truth.
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The first thing I registered was the cold.
It was a damp, deep cold that seeped through the fabric of my uniform, right into my bones. The air smelled of mildew and earth, the signature scent of the McLean, Virginia basement I tried to avoid my whole life. A sharp grinding pain flared in my left side as I tried to draw a breath.
It felt like a shard of glass was twisting in my ribs.
Then the memory hit me. Not like a wave, but like a fist. It had started over something so small, so insignificant: my Army sharpshooter qualification badge.
I’d left my uniform jacket on a chair upstairs, and when I came down to the basement to find an old photo album, I found Renee holding it. She wasn’t looking at it with pride or even curiosity. She was holding it between her thumb and forefinger as if it were a dead insect.
“Look at this,” she’d said, her voice dripping with the casual condescension she had perfected over the years.
“The little soldier’s toy. Do you really think this cheap piece of metal makes you a hero, Jaime?”
I just wanted it back. It wasn’t a toy.
It was a symbol of months of discipline, of learning to control my breathing, my focus, my very heartbeat under pressure. It was mine.
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