Gillard Simon - Life sentence: a police officers battle with PTSD

Im awake again, shaking, sweating. My heart is racing and I stare into the dark. I cant close my eyes. I fear the images too many to count. They swim behind my eyelids; I am drowning in their terror. Suicides, heart attacks, murders, car crashes. The images come again and again. All the dead people I have to touch their legs, their arms, reach into their pockets, look into their unseeing eyes for clues. I see the lifeless head in a gutter, blonde hair bloodied. Im pulling a dead kid from the buckled wheel of a wrecked sports car. I see sand clinging to the discharge from a young teachers nose, and decomposing flesh slipping off the face of a bloated water-logged body. Theres no help from the cocktail of medications Im taking. Drinking helps to blot out the trauma, but its only temporary. I close my eyes and see little boys innocently smiling for a camera. All those little boys now broken men. I see my sons face in his school photo; I see the paedophiles faces.

Where are the children?

I open my eyes, stricken with fear. I must check my son. Tears well in my eyes as I creep quietly to his room. In the half-light my beautiful boy sleeps peacefully. I break down with relief and sob again. I check the doors are locked again. I touch the cricket bat under the bed. I lie down. Exhaustion overwhelms me, but I dare not sleep. Dreams become nightmares and I cant go back into that one. A man goes into a room with a gun; a woman screams No, no, no!; something has happened to the boy. I see my sons face. I cant see in the room; I cant get inside the room. I am frozen outside the door. A gunshot. I wake. Was I screaming? Silence. What happened? Sarah reaches over and takes my hand. She hugs me and asks if Im all right. But I cannot speak. More flashbacks. My mind has a life of its own. It makes no sense how everything gets so scrambled in my head. Where is Melloney? Her parents anguished eyes plead. I cant find her.

Take a deep breath, Simon. Remember, its not your fault.

I stare at the ceiling and sleep comes unbidden. Im in the butchers. The smell is strong. The morgue. A stainless steel slab gleams. The meat that smell; meat on the turn. The high-pitched sound of sawing through bone. Liver on scales. The smell of death, foul and metallic, in my nose. Blood pools, fluorescent, deep, rich; I can almost taste it. It washes over me in waves.

The mans on a rampage. To live, to die; to live, to die; what to do; what to do His words groove a loop in my brain. His glare wills me to look down; to look at his gun. Dont look. Im shaking inside. Hes going to shoot me. I will shoot myself.

I wake. I panic. I touch the cricket bat under the bed. Sarah reaches for my hand and again asks if I am all right. But I cannot speak.

Take a deep breath, Simon. Remember, its not your fault.

The day the police visited my primary school was the day that changed my life forever. When two young officers got out of their patrol car and walked into my classroom with their uniforms and guns I thought they were superheroes. In that moment I knew instantly I wanted to be a policeman.

No sooner had my love affair with the police begun, however, than I almost blew it. A girl I knew at school built a cubby house in bushland near her home, and together with my friends Travis and Chris I decided to kick it down. I have no idea what possessed us to do such a senseless thing, but being stupid 11-year-old boys we were quite pleased with ourselves that is, until Travis called me to say that two police officers had just been to his house about the cubby and had spoken to his parents. It seemed the girls cousin was in the police force and somehow the trail had led to us as the culprits.

I immediately confessed the bad news to my parents, fearing the worst. A minor misdemeanour usually meant being banished to the front step to sit for two hours to think about my behaviour, while a serious breach such as this could mean getting the strap from Dad. Both of my parents were disciplinarians: Mum was a very religious woman who lived by a strict moral code, and Dad, who was a fitter and turner, was not known for overt displays of affection. He did try to bond with me in his own way by taking me to see the Manly Sea Eagles play wed go with my best friend David Harris and his father but if Dad didnt like our rowdy behaviour he would move away and sit separately.