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“About not being okay. I’m fixing it. I’m still not okay, but I’ll get there.”
“Oh. Okay.” She nodded.
“Will you be there when I get to okay?”
“When you get to okay?” she parroted back and he realized it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but before he could say anything else, she nodded. She must have understood his rambling well enough.
“Yeah. I’ll be here.”
“Good,” he said and walked out, walking with a hell of a lot more purpose to his step as he made his way to his office. It felt really good to be starting to get to the other side of “not okay.”
Chapter 10
The flashback took him completely off guard. One minute he and Ernie were playing pinball, and suddenly the stench Logan would give anything to erase from his body’s memory overwhelmed him.
It was the smell of fire and char and acrid smoke—of death. It was a smell he would never try to explain to anyone because he would never want anyone who hadn’t experienced it to have to live with it.
And it engulfed him now as images flashed before him. An explosion, the bodies of three of his teammates going down. Irreparably injured.
Then, the noises. The screaming, his commands and the commands of his team as they worked to save lives slipping away faster than they could grab and hold them, coupled with an underlying silence. The silence of what nobody wanted to say.
The feel of Dopey’s body hanging limp over Logan’s shoulder. The weight of him as Logan carried him out of harm’s way only to find no more harm could come to him. He was beyond reach now.
“Logan, you with me, buddy?” came Ernie’s soft, steady voice. The low lilt of it soothed as Ernie drew him out of the flashback.
“I want you to focus on the room we’re in, Logan. Notice the desk and the papers. The chairs and pool table. The pool balls. The refrigerator. Can you take a look at those things for me? The carpet under your feet? The feel of the chair arms in your hands. Focus on it all.”
Logan looked around at all the things Ernie named, but he knew his gaze was frantic, almost panicked, as he tried to find the items Ernie listed.
There was a vise grip on his chest, his lungs. There wasn’t any air getting in. Panic rose up and swallowed him whole.
“Let’s take a few deep breaths now, Logan. Breathe with me—in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
As Ernie spoke to him, Logan felt himself coming out of it, his heart still racing, but the sense of being in another time and place, a place he couldn’t control, eased.
“That hasn’t happened in a while,” he said, his eyes meeting Ernie’s as frustration and anger swamped him in the wake of the emotional beating of the flashback.
“They should come with less frequency over time, but one of the most important things will be for you to learn to pull yourself out of them if there isn’t someone there to do it for you. You’ll need to coach yourself to do the things we’ve done together. Focus on your surroundings. Deep breathing. Some people find it helpful to do some tactile exercises, such as touching your thumb to each finger slowly, as you take a breath.”
Logan nodded, but his jaw clenched in frustration. Over the past three weeks, he’d felt like his sessions with Ernie were helping, like he was getting better. He started driving to work at times that were slightly closer to typical commute times. Not peak, but closer.
Hell, he’d even thought about asking Samantha to go on a real date with him. He thought maybe he was ready to take a chance on them. On them being together, finally.
They spent every lunch hour together and he’d even hung out at her house with her after work a few times, but he hadn’t kissed her again because he knew he needed to do better by her before he let that happen.
And now this.
Ernie handed him a fresh bottle of water and took a seat across from Logan on the couch.
“Tell me again about Dopey’s flag burning speech,” Ernie said, in the start to what Logan was recognizing as a repeated pattern.
Ernie asked Logan to repeat that discussion again and again over the past few weeks, even having him describe things like the smell of the room, who was sitting where, who wore what clothes, and so on. Every detail he could remember over and over again.
Logan launched into the recital now and realized, again, that it got easier in the retelling of it. The ache at again hearing Dopey’s words in his head lessened each time.
When he finished this time, though, Ernie went on to ask him to do something much harder. “Now tell me about the memory you just lost yourself in a minute ago.”
Logan looked up at him in horror. He couldn’t go back there. No freaking way.
