Oval Office Ambush

It's November 7, and it's been a few weeks since Janicki has visited the Kansas City VA Medical Center. Doctors had explained what led to his D.C. outburst: He was so fearful of attack that he had forced himself into a confrontation. They prescribed another antidepressant to calm his nerves, but the medication did little to help.

• Jay Soldner

  

  Janicki's medals and commendations.

• Jay Soldner

  

  Janicki at home, where he's most comfortable alone.

Details:

Listen to Alexis Janicki explain why he jumped the White House fence and why he feels betrayed by the Army on this week’s Pitchcast:

Subject(s):

Iraq, President George W. Bush, PTSD

He'd been out of the Army for two years, but he still hadn't been able to hold a job. He and his wife struggled to make the payments on a small, rented bungalow near Interstate 435 and 23rd Street. He had trouble adjusting to home life. When a van was ransacked in his neighborhood, he began carrying his AK-47 to the mailbox.

Jamie had been working as a certified nurse's aide at a nursing home, and when she got home earlier that day, Janicki confronted her. He accused her of pretending to love him so that she would have access to his disability stipend, $389 from the Army each month for his PTSD. He accused her of having an affair.

He took the money his mother had sent to help cover his attorney's fees and left.

His goal is his mother's house in Virginia. But he ends up lost on rural highways. Time seems to slow; the digital clock on the dashboard ticks off minutes that crawl like hours. Janicki begins to hallucinate. Through his windshield, Janicki watches the moon swing back and forth across the sky like a hypnotist's watch. His memories from Iraq play as if on instant replay.

Suddenly, blue and red lights flash in his rearview mirror. A police officer pulls him over outside Bloomington, Illinois. Though days seem to have passed, he's less than 400 miles from home. He speaks sluggishly to the officer, who tickets him for a busted taillight and driving with an expired license. Because the car is unregistered, the cop orders it impounded.

"That's fine," Janicki remembers telling the officer. "I'll walk."

He's held at the police station until Jamie arrives the next morning in a borrowed car to bail him out. With no money left, they leave the Volkswagen at the impound yard.

"I was just stressed at that point," Jamie says. "I just didn't know what to do. I just knew he had to get to the doctor."

At home the next day, Janicki's paranoia returns. He checks doors and windows to make sure they're secure and pleads that neither of them should leave the house. It takes her six hours to get him to come with her to the gas station so that she can buy a pack of cigarettes. Even then, he insists on staying in the car and with his pit bull, Purdy.

Three days after his road trip and arrest, Janicki finally allows Jamie to cart him to the emergency room of the VA Medical Center. The doctor tells him that he's in danger of having a full psychotic break, which could lead to dementia. His prescription cocktail is switched from olanzapine (which is marketed as Zyprexa) and clonazepam (Klonopin) to the antidepressant citalopram hydrobromide (Celexa). And for the first time, the VA doctor recommends that Janicki pursue regular therapy with a VA counselor.

Of course, Janicki already has a PTSD counselor and has for months expressed concern about his mental well-being. The VA hospital assigns him a staff psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Yaffe (who declined to be interviewed for this article). Meanwhile, Janicki fears that he's being medicated into a neutered state, without anyone fixing his overall mental problems. "All she does is prescribe stuff," he says.

Sitting at home beside Jamie on a recent weekday, Janicki lights a cigarette. His hands shake. "PTSD was called shell shock in World War I," Janicki says. "They've humbled down the name, and now they are trying to humble down their actual ties to it, basically." His pit bull sleeps near his feet. To make rent, he recently pawned his 9 mm handgun and sold his AK-47 rifle. Their car is still impounded in Illinois; an Army friend lent Janicki his Pontiac Grand Am.

The Secret Service still classifies his arrest as an open case and recently called his mother to see if he was coming home for Christmas. He missed his court dates, so he has open bench warrants for his arrest in D.C. and Illinois.

He fiddles unconsciously, messing with the dog or twisting up paper coffee cups. "I always feel antsy, like I'm supposed to be doing more but there isn't more to do," he says. "In Iraq, you're always paranoid of everyone outside your small group, your small unit, because they are all Iraqis. When I came back, I was paranoid of everybody outside my small group of my family, and then I started getting paranoid of, like, family members as well."

"He's 100 percent better," Jamie says unconvincingly.

She smokes and watches her husband intently before she adds, "But what if, God forbid, it happens again?" He passes over a package-handling gig because it's too far away; his wife has the car most days. He skips a painting job because it requires the initial investment of tools; he's too broke for that. He ignores a delivery position; it requires a clean driving record. Construction is out because of the cold weather. A whole column of opportunities is skipped for his own self-respect, because they pay less than $10 an hour.