“You sure you’re okay?” he asked her, lingering for another moment before he left.
She nodded, forcing a confidence she didn’t quite feel. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “You go. Your text seems important.”
He paused and looked her over, seemingly trying to gauge the truth in her words. Her skin tingled from each place his gaze landed, but then he nodded and headed back inside the lodge. She hoped it wasn’t anything serious. God only knew that this place had been through enough as it was.
“Hey, you want to give me a hand with these flowers?”
Sarah turned to see Hannah sitting back on her heels, a smile on her face. Sarah couldn’t help but return it. Hannah always had the brightest, bubbliest energy, especially when she was outside working on her flower beds. She was so proud of the blooms she had managed to bring out this summer, and Sarah could hardly believe that time had passed so quickly as to see them in full bloom like this.
“Is everything alright?” Hannah asked her gently, nodding back up toward the office. Sarah pulled a face. She didn’t really want to talk about it again—she felt raw and exposed enough from Lawson’s comments. She couldn’t really talk about it, anyway, not with Toby being a client.
She knew Hannah had seen how he charged out of her office like his ass was on fire, though he had every right to be upsetwith her. The moment his triggers had kicked in and he’d started getting agitated, Sarah had started to panic. She’d withdrawn into herself and flashed back to Jed. She hated how scared she’d become when he had started pacing her office floor, clenching his fists at his sides. She’d felt useless, like all her training had suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke, and she had no clue what to do to calm him down.
Him seeing her frozen and pale, with a shocked look on her face hadn’t helped, either. He’d given her a look of disappointment and then stalked out the door. This was her job, the one thing she was good at, and she’d failed him. Failing herself and the lodge in the process.
“Sorry, it’s a doctor-patient thing. It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Sarah muttered, trying to shut down the conversation before it went any further. She knew Hannah was just trying to help, but it was hard to see it as anything other than prying into her private business.
“I wasn’t talking about the client-thing, Sarah. I meant you. And you matter to me,” Hannah told her, crossing her arms over her chest and hitting her with a serious look. Damn, at times like these, she really reminded Sarah of Lawson.
Hannah and Lawson carried themselves with the same seriousness, like they were ready and willing to take on the world given the chance. And neither of them was going to let Sarah get out of this situation without sharing the truth of what was going on in her head. Sarah pulled out the band from her hair and ran her fingers through the curly blond strands.
“I just… I feel like I’ve been floundering lately,” she confessed. “After what happened with Jed, I mean. I thought… I felt confident in myself and my abilities, and now, it’s like the ground was ripped out from under me and I’ve been sinking in quicksand. Like the ability to do my job and the security I’ve always known here are suddenly gone, you know?”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Hannah agreed, her brow furrowed. “It screwed me up for a while, too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sarah replied.
Hannah cocked an eyebrow. “Hey, we’re not talking about me right now,” she reminded her. “We’re talking about what’s going on with you. You could take some time off, you know, figure out how to handle it.”
Sarah closed her eyes and sighed. “That’s what Lawson said. I don’t want to leave my patients like that,” she remarked, shaking her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. They need stability and continuity for their treatment to really work, and that’s not going to happen if I just vanish off the face of the earth.”
“Yeah, but they’re not going to receive proper treatment from you if you’re freaking out all the time, either,” she pointed out.
“I know, I know,” Sarah conceded. “I feel like I’m more like my patients than a therapist right now. Normally, I’m in control, but now, I just don’t know how to handle myself.”
“You should consider seeing a therapist yourself,” Hannah suggested. “You could find someone in town, I’m sure of it—”
Sarah shook her head again. She knew it was likely a good idea, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to up and leave the lodge high and dry like that. Plus, what would it say about her and her ability to help others if she ran away? This was her job and Warrior Peak Sanctuary was her home. She wasn’t going to be run off by her own insecurities. She’d find a way to deal with them.
“I just need to think about this logically,” she replied. “I have all the skills I need to get this under control, I just have to find a way to implement them. Grounding exercises, breathing control, stuff like that. Techniques I’d suggest to my own clients.”
She could sense the doubt in Hannah’s mind before she even made eye contact with her, but she didn’t want to deal with it right now, not when she had already been dealing with herown traumatic issues. Hannah was doing much better in her struggles. Sarah had seen tremendous improvement in her. She didn’t want to set her back by pulling her into her own mess.
She was telling the truth, after all. She knew exactly how to work through trauma, at least on a technical level. She had served as the touchstone for so many people who’d come and gone through Warrior Peak’s therapy program. People who’d relied on her for support and help in their hardest, darkest times. Why couldn’t she just…do the same for herself now, too?
Maybe she just needed more exercise. Take a look at her diet, make sure she wasn’t getting too much caffeine, which could be putting her on edge. There were plenty of steps she could take before she would have to look elsewhere for help, and she was determined to do everything she could to focus on them rather than allow herself to get involved with something outside this place.
“So, need help with the flowers?” she asked, nodding to the beds in front of them, trying to change the subject back to Hannah’s initial question.
Hannah glanced down at them, as though she had almost forgotten they were there. “Sure, but I don’t want to interrupt you getting something to eat.”
“No, I’m good. I don’t think I could eat right now, anyway.”
“Then, yeah, I could use some help. But let me know if you change your mind about eating,” she added, handing her the shears.
“You’ve done such a good job with these,” Sarah remarked, shifting the conversation to something else. The more time she spent focused on her freak-out in Toby’s therapy session earlier, the more likely it was that it would turn into harmful rumination, and she really, really didn’t need that right now.
Hannah brightened up as soon as she mentioned the flowers.
