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“I already signed documents saying I waived any conflict of interest for your office.” When Shelby called and asked her to come in for some final questions about the shooting, Elisa had hoped she’d be able to shift the meeting’s focus to Josh’s messed-up life.
“I get that. Just... I expect the lawyers representing Maxine’s estate and family to start pressuring the hospital soon. There will be a lawsuit and discovery.” Shelby took a paper off the top of her stack and slid it across the table to Elisa. “This is a letter explaining all of that and recommending you take certain steps to protect your rights.”
Elisa understood Shelby had to do this to protect her business. She put the paper to the side without reading it. “Lawyer. I need one. I got it.”
“Elisa...”
“I really hate talking about the shooting. It... I think about it and...” Elisa didn’t know how to make anyone understand that just the mention of that day brought the pain and breath-stealing terror rushing back. She could smell the coffee cart. Hear the traffic nearby. See that look on Keith’s face right before he fired the gun. All in slow motion. All in her head. All the time. “It never goes away.”
The throwaway comment didn’t come close to telling the whole story. She battled daily to keep from drowning in guilt and fear. Hell, most days she battled just to get out of bed in the morning.
Depression and anxiety. She’d read about the subjects, seen movies with characters who dealt with them, but none of it touched her or her life before the shooting. Her mother’s death the year before she met Harris taught her how dark, how profound, grief could be. Nathan would never know the comforting warmth of a grandmother’s hug or the fun of sleepovers at her house. He’d been denied that piece of childhood, and his loss magnified Elisa’s.
She thought losing her mom would be the low point by which she measured all other low points, but the shooting reminded her how horrors waited and could jump out when you least expected them. Its aftermath taught her that fanciful notions about how smiling enough, being grateful enough, deciding to be happy, could chase away depression were insulting platitudes told by people who didn’t know better.
Some days she backslid. Her mind scolded her and self-defeating beliefs about how she would be okay if she were stronger lingered. Ridiculous, but the ideas refused to stay banished.
“Learning to live with trauma and maneuver through it takes time,” Shelby said.
Elisa’s hands clenched against the mug. “I don’t want to live with it. I want it to go away.”
Shelby made a humming sound. “Trauma is—”
Elisa groaned. “I hate that word.” Hearing it twice in a few sentences gave it power, and that’s what scared her.
“Why?”
Elisa rubbed her arm. The soreness had eased a long time ago but sometimes she felt a phantom pain. She didn’t need the reminder, but there it was.
“The shot and all that blood, those details... my memories.” She didn’t even know how to explain it without sounding clueless or harsh.
Shelby didn’t jump in or move on. She seemed willing to sit in the resulting quiet.
Elisa longed to shut down and turn this conversation in a different direction, but the words kept spilling out. “It’s this huge sucking hole and everything gets dragged into it. There isn’t a part of me that it doesn’t touch—the mother, the wife, the friend, the responsible professional. The roles and the anxiety get all warped and twisted, and I don’t know how to separate it all out.”
“I’m not sure you can.”
Elisa refused to accept that answer. “But what happenedon that sidewalk is this one thing. Why does it taint everything?”
“That’s how grief works. Grief, depression, trauma. They overwhelm. They’re louder than the good things happening in your life. You can’t compartmentalize the darker aspects and put them in a box and think they won’t leach into the rest of your life.”
Elisa heard voices in the hallway and leaned in closer to Shelby, dropping her voice. “I should be able to wall it off and—”
“Elisa.” Shelby put her hand on the table but didn’t move any closer. “I won’t pretend to be a mental health professional, but I’ve been where you are and the one thing I learned is that you need to give yourself time. You’re going to have terrible days and okay days, and you will not know which one you’re getting until it’s too late to duck.”
Elisa sat back in her chair. She studied Shelby’s concerned expression and thought about the words she said and how familiar they sounded. “You’ve been in my position.”
“That story I didn’t tell you about my business partner being my ex-husband’s uncle?” Shelby rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s long and tedious, but it’s about a shitty, brutal man who terrorized me. It took years for me to rediscover the person you see in front of you. Years of putting myself back together, learning how to trust, letting others help me.”
This was most women’s nightmare. Elisa couldn’t imagine anything worse than finding out the one person who pledged to love you no matter what had no intention of keeping that vow.
“I’ve been divorced for seven years,” Shelby said. “Been taking self-defense classes ever since.”
“Oh my God.” Elisa let her head fall back as she took in the horror of that statement. “I’m so sorry for everything you went through. I can’t imagine doing this for years.”
“You don’t really get to decide. You can’t just will all of this away, forget it and move on. The trauma is part of you now.”
Elisa listened, knowing every word rang true, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear them. She needed to believe there was a light ahead of her and if she drove hard enough and fast enough, she could move on.
