Charlie Macauley waits in a run-down motel. He reflects anxiously on his frayed relationship with his wife, Marilyn, and his homesickness for his past. Tracy, a sex worker, enters the room and asks him for money. Charlie ignores a phone call from Marilyn. He has been seeing Tracy long enough to believe that they’re in love, long enough to have stopped paying her for sex and time. When Marilyn calls again, he answers her call and listens to her complain about her daughter-in-law’s rudeness. Charlie senses the hit-thumb theory come upon him. This theory essentially dictates that in the moment of an intense hit, the body and mind react calmly, but the calm quickly wears off and descends into deep pain. He experienced this as a child when he hit his thumb with a hammer—and as an adult in the Vietnam War.

Tracy again asks for the money: $10,000 for her son, who Charlie suspects has a problem with drugs. Charlie refuses to help. He met Tracy after starting therapy with other veterans. The young men who had fought in the Iraq War made him feel even more lost in his own experiences in Vietnam. He found Tracy through an online ad.