Clarky "The Fainting Goat" Part 1

Clarky “The Fainting Goat”

Part I: Discovering the Goat

Back in 2023, I passed out while doing laundry in my bedroom.

There’s a master bathroom connected to our room. Just inside that doorway sits a granite countertop. Holding the door open is a doorstop. Not an ordinary doorstop. This one is a solid concrete, decorative, detailed, and unforgiving… pineapple. Detail mattered more than it should have.

At the time, I was under crushing stress. Not the kind you clock out from. This was stress that lived inside your skull. Relentless. Insane. Awake or asleep, twenty-four hours a day my reality was a looping nightmare. There was no rest. No silence. Just noise, blame, and self-interrogation. 

A few months earlier, my healthcare had been taken away.

Shortly after that, my eldest daughter was badly burned in an accident. Over half of her face. She was under my healthcare. The same healthcare we both lost. Thank God my wife moves mountains, because without her, I don’t know how that story ends.

Then I was fired for PTSD.

An injury they claimed I did not incur in the line of duty. They blamed my time in the Marines. A mayor and a fire chief made that determination. A cold, morally vacant decision. One that used no medical review, no physician input, no due process. Just a pen stroke and a verdict. Judge, jury, and executioners of my career and my future. Perfect for “Sin City.” A place where everyone still acts like they are in the mafia. Unfortunately it's not a farfetched truth and it's written in many books and told in many stories of every background in Utica.

Around Veterans Day, a few miracles of life occurred. Each deserves its own story, so for now I’ll leave it here.

While hunting in the Adirondacks, we came across a moose stuck in a tree. Her hind legs were lodged in roots on a steep incline along a ridge known as “Cardiac Hill.” Rightfully named, as it would ultimately claim the life of this beautiful cow moose. We called DEC, and a Forest Ranger helped us free her. A once-in-a-lifetime experience in nature.

At the same time, we lost one of our closest companions, Denali. A beautiful Alaskan Malamute we raised from a puppy. We got him when Michelle and I first moved in together with the girls, our new family member. He was born with a heart defect common in large breeds. He was only five.
RIP Denali Rain Clark.

Right before this incident, the Veterans Center and the Fire Department contracted a Medal of Honor recipient to speak. I immediately reached out to someone I considered a close friend, a “brother.” A fellow USMC veteran and professional firefighter. I knew he would have access to the guest of honor.

I was seeking help. Help to explain, mentor, and show a community how to understand and overcome PTSD in extreme environments, especially when leadership doesn’t recognize it, or refuses to believe it exists. I didn’t know that reaching out would later be used against me.

So there I sat, in a room full of peers at a local community college theater. Firefighters. Veterans. Law enforcement. EMS. Students. To add tension to an already emotional situation, much of my leadership was present, along with politicians from every level of local government.

I raised my hand and asked my question:

“Sir, how do you explain or help leadership understand PTSD and its effects in these environments?”

I was not ready for the answer he gave, publicly.

My PTSD (Cardiac discovered later) was because I just “couldn’t hack it.”

All of that was in my head while I folded laundry.

That doesn’t even touch the deeper rot. The feeling that I had failed myself and my family. That my peers had disowned me. Even though my family stood by me, I still wondered what they truly saw when they looked at me.

I walked around the bed, between my wife’s side and the bathroom door, to grab more laundry.

That’s when it hit.

An overwhelming sensation. Instant. Intense. Undeniable.

I reached for the bathroom sink just inside the door.

That’s all I remember.

I came to spitting out my teeth.

I imagine I looked like a beer-league hockey player after a brawl with the community goon.

Blood and saliva filled my mouth. It was metallic and warm. My forehead was bleeding too. I could feel it before I saw it. I figured it had only been a few seconds. There wasn’t much blood on the floor. None on the pineapple. Time had collapsed, but not long enough for panic to echo. What happened became clear quickly.

I had passed out.

My head struck the granite countertop above my eye. It bounced. Then my face traveled another two feet in free fall. I was wearing what must have been a smile as big as Jack Nicholson’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Straight into the concrete pineapple leaves, standing upright, perfectly aimed at the front of my pie hole.

Remember how I said detail mattered.

My brother calls it payback. The smile felt appropriate. Darkly accurate. On brand for who I was at that moment in my life.

But the reality was darker.

I had just blacked out in a house full of people, and no one heard me. I was bleeding from multiple places. Dizzy. Sweating profusely, yet freezing. I knew my heart rate was dangerously low. I could feel it. I couldn’t get it moving.

So I stood up.

One hand tried to contain the blood pouring from my mouth. The other pressed against my forehead. I imagine I smeared blood everywhere. I’m not coordinated on a good day. I stumbled through the bedroom. Down a flight of stairs. Around the corner.

Now I’m in the dark. The TV is on. My wife, my son, and my daughter are in the kitchen.

Like one of my classic Irish-goodbye stupors, I wobbled around the coffee table and couch, aiming for the kitchen doorway.

That’s when they saw me.

Instant panic. Questions firing. My wife yelling to my daughter to grab towels.

And I muttered the words no paramedic ever wants to hear themselves say, except when they know something is very wrong:

“Call an ambulance.”

-Dan