Sgt. Daniel Buck is haunted by his job in Iraq.

The Marine was responsible for ensuring roadsides were free of IEDs. Now, his wife says, when he sees garbage on the side of the road, “automatically he goes back there.”

Elizabeth Buck tells Q 13 Fox June 28th was a particularly bad day for her husband.

“I just held him. We just kind of fell to the floor, and I just held him and we just cried together,” she says.

Elizabeth took her husband to the emergency room at the VA hospital in Puget Sound, Washington. After “hours” of evaluation, Sgt. Buck was released and a follow up was recommended.

They scheduled the check up, but they say the appointment dates “kept getting pushed back.”

Elizabeth says after “hours” on the phone, she was finally able to get her husband an appointment — a full 9 days after his ER visit. They say the appointment delay was “alarming,” especially because of Sgt. Buck’s suicidal state.

They believe he deserves better from his government and from the leaders for whom he was willing to die.

“We shouldered up, we did our job, and please just do yours,” he tells the news station.

The VA Puget Sound said it couldn’t comment on “individual cases.”

Meanwhile, veterans trying to get into the Madison, Wisconsin VA are also experiencing increased wait times.

“We have seen a larger number of new patients,” hospital chief of staff Dr. Alan Bridges, tells the Wisconsin State Journal. “I firmly believe this is related to veterans choosing the VA as their accountable care organization, requiring them to sign up for health care.”

That “requirement” stems from the Affordable Care Act, which requires everyone to obtain a health care plan “or pay a penalty.”

And despite only seeing a 2% increase in appointments, the Madison VA hospital wait times have “more than doubled.”

The paper reports:

In June 2014, after veterans were reported to have died waiting for care at the Phoenix VA, a national audit said the average wait for a new patient to see a primary care doctor at the Madison VA was 51 days. It was 24 days at the VA hospital in Milwaukee and 17 days at the VA hospital in Tomah.

The VA’s wait time target was 14 days.

Recent VA system audits don’t include the same statistic, and Bridges said the Madison VA doesn’t track it.

But Madison VA officials said the average wait for all primary care visits — not just new patients — is now 3.6 days, up from 1.61 days a year ago.

The average wait for specialty care is 3.87 days, up from 1.58 days last year.

All this, despite an increase in staff.

The Madison VA has added “57 staff members, including six doctors, started evening and weekend hours at some clinics, and boosted use of telemedicine,” according to Public Affairs Officer Tim Donovan.