Healing

When I first met Corporal Betsy I had every intent of killing her. The Corporal was a sharpshooter for the New California Republic. My allegiance was with the Legion for this playthrough. She and everyone else at Camp McCarran were going to die if I had my way. Allow me to explain. The universe presented in Fallout: New Vegas is one that I find highly appealing. Dark cynicism and black humor are the hallmarks of that world, a retro-futuristic result of the 50’s obsession with science fiction and paranoia about atomic weapons. It rides the fine line between tongue-in-cheek humor and dead seriousness. And it does so well. There are times when you will laugh and there are other times when you will seriously ponder the moral ramifications of your actions. Take for example this dilemma: Do I kill Corporal Betsy because she is my enemy or do I take her quest anyway?

The quest, I Don’t Hurt Anymore, isn’t really even Corporal Betsy’s. She does not give it nor does she finish it. However, she is the main focus of it. Corporal Betsy was raped. The event happened long before my new Legion Courier could have done anything to intercede. I am informed by her commanding officer that she will not seek help on her own. Instead, she has taken to hitting on every woman that passes by as a coping mechanism. Corporal Betsy is a self described “stone-cold bitch” and behaves in a way that I am told is “unacceptable in the 1st Recon”. Her commanding officer would disciple her, but he rather that she gets help. The quest is to convince Corporal Betsy that she needs psychiatric help/emotional healing.

I have been in that position before. 

So, I lay my options out in front of me: I could kill them all; I could accept the quest to gain their trust and then kill them all; I could complete the quest to gain the XP and then kill them all; or I could complete the quest and let them live suffering damage to my reputation to the Legion. I considered my options, five in total if you counted just walking away. But I was lying to myself. There as only ever one option and I knew I would take it. Reputation with the Legion be damned.

She was raped. Nothing is ever the same.

There is a line that I refuse to cross. Everyone has them. We set barriers for ourselves to keep who we are and who we want to be away from the things that might destroy us. Corporal Betsy represented that line to me. There was no possible way that I would not complete her quest. Not for the XP, but because I could not bring myself to let her suffer.

She was shy when we first met. I remember that with clarity. She was beautiful and I stood there thinking that I should get to know better. She was quite and withheld. It was so obvious something was wrong, but I could never have known what it was. She was brave, perhaps the bravest woman I have ever met. There was also sadness there. Just below the surface. Her eyes would cautiously sweep before settling on any one person or thing. She had a big secret that made her sad, but she never let it show. She was so brave.  

When speaking to Corporal Betsy about getting help she counters that she is a soldier. No one else in her squad complains about the little cuts and bruises. If your character has enough speech or medical skill you can right then and there convince her to get the help she needs. I was building up my Legionary to have a high medical skill that will be needed later in the game. I told her that just like bruises and scrapes emotional wounds need proper time and care to heal. She seemed to like that logic and agreed to go get help. After a firm thank you from her commanding officer the quest was complete.

Even though I never wanted to, there was no way to stop myself from seeing it, the wound in her heart. Watching her suffer was the hardest thing about being her friend. She would smile, laugh and make it look like everything is okay. At first I believed her. I wanted to. There was a desperate desire within me to believe that she was alright. That everything really did turn out alright. But, I looked into their eyes and I could see it; the fear, the anger and the pain. There is so much pain that it would over flow leaving myself and the few others who really deeply cared to soak up the rest. Then we held her as she cried and let her pain fill us because it was the only thing we could do.

There is another way the quest can be completed. If your character lacks the skills necessary to convince Corporal Betsy on your own, you can talk to the other members of the squad to try and get their input on the situation. Each one will tell you that they found some way to work past their troubled pasts. One was tortured by the Legion. One is of the few survivors of a massacre. Each of these soldiers is just a person that needed help. Without the care and support of others they would never have survived. That is what you tell Corporal Betsy and she seems convinced.  Quest completed. 

There is an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness when you know someone who has been raped. I always wonder ‘What if I had known her earlier? Could I have prevented it?’ And it comes back to me that no matter what I do in the here and now I can never protect her from that horror. She has been raped. It happened and there is nothing I can do to undo that. When I hold her close and whisper that everything will be alright it burns in the back of my mind that it won’t. How could anything be alright ever again? And suddenly I’m holding her tighter. I want to comfort her. I am also deathly afraid of what will happen if I let go.

There is one last part of Corporal Betsy’s quest that seems almost trivial. After I convinced her to get help I must journey to the clinic and let the doctor know that Corporal Betsy is coming. It is not even a very far walk. Upon entering the clinic I speak directly with the doctor in charge. She says that Corporal Betsy can be scheduled in and sessions will begin immediately. It is a small gesture. By now I have known Corporal Betsy for a full fifteen minutes, but it feels like I have known her much longer than that. Being able to insure that she gets the care she needs fills a space deep within my heart. I know that I will leave the clinic and never return to Camp McCarran. I cannot kill Corporal Betsy nor can I kill her squad. They are her support and care. She needs them so she can heal.

She was raped. She is healing.