All For Anna (21 page)

Was this yet another
failed connection? No.

I had done my part this
time.

**********

My escape was work.

For the next three days
I did nothing but work and sleep. The overtime hours filled every nook and
cranny of my day. I didn’t have time to talk to Stacie, Kai, or anyone else. Instead,
I tried in vain to sort out my thoughts alone.

By Sunday night I was beyond
drained—both mentally and physically. My shift had started early, but had ended
just after midnight. I’d left the house while Stacie was in the shower,
avoiding yet another conversation. Her texts had blown up my phone during the
last seventy-two hours, to which I responded I was
fine
and needed at
the hospital. I told her we would talk Monday—tomorrow—though I still was
unsure what should be said.

I was too tired to think
any more about it tonight.

As I dragged myself to
my car half asleep, I saw him standing there, waiting. I wasn’t sure how he
knew when I was off or where I had parked--those questions were too hard for me
to process at the midnight hour. Despite my latest conspiracy theory regarding
him, I couldn’t stop the wild flipping in the base of my stomach or the way he
made me want to free fall into his arms and forget
everything
.

His face was conflicted
as I approached.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Kai said,
standing there, hands in his pockets.

At his casual stance,
my irritation was quickly re-kindled. I wanted to strangle the girl inside me
that was so willing to give in without explanation just seconds ago. I pushed
her down and silenced her.

“What’s up?” I asked,
keeping my distance.

“I’m hoping you can
tell me. I’ve called you several times, Tori, and your sister doesn’t seem to
know what’s going on with you either,” Kai said.

My sister, of course!
Naturally, he would call my family.

“Well, maybe I can
start by telling you to stop going to my family members to snoop out
information on me!”

My voice was hard and
angry. Stewing for three days was probably not the best way to have a calm and
rational conversation. His head jerked back a bit as his eyebrows shot up in
surprise at my accusation. I held my ground, crossing my arms over my chest.

“What
information
are
you referring to, Tori?” Kai asked.

“Jack told me about
your little
conversation
before our date last weekend. You
knew
about
my accident even before the lake day and yet I was the idiot who had to recount
to you at the fireman's ball. No wonder you didn’t want to talk more about it
that night! You already
knew
everything!” 

I threw my hands up in
the air, adrenaline coming alive in me like a charged bull. There would be no
reason to start pretending with him now. If a relationship wasn’t based on truth,
then there was no relationship. For once I had actually followed those
guidelines. I had taken the risk, laid it all out there and I wasn’t about to
let that go unnoticed.

“Are you finished? Or is
there more you need to say?”

Why can’t he just yell
back like a normal person?

The fight in me
deflated as he waited patiently for my answer.

Confused, I put my hand
on my hip and shook my head slowly, “No, not at the moment.”

“Okay, then. Jack
didn’t
tell me about the accident. He told me you’d had a very hard year, and not
to pressure you if you weren’t ready to talk to me about it. He said he’d
watched you pull away from a lot of people and that I needed to give you space
to breathe, allow you to decide when to trust me—if ever,” he said.

Oh wow. I am an idiot.

I leaned against my car
with a thud wishing again that I had the power to rewind time, to take back the
ugly things I had said, and how I had said them. I grimaced, thinking about how
I had treated Jack. He did have my back—just like he always had.

“Jack
didn’t
tell you?” I asked again, my voice so weak it was hardly audible.

“No.
He
didn’t
tell me, but Tori, I-”

“No, I’m sorry. I was
way off in my thinking. You may as well know the
rest
of it,” I said,
throwing my hands up and slapping them back down on my thighs.

“The rest?” he asked,
looking startled.

I might as well tell
him.

“Yes...I’m seeing a
therapist here for PTSD. I guess I’m semi-insane or
something
, but you
should know that before you decide to take this any further with me—if you
haven’t already seen enough that is.”

He nodded, absently. I
wasn’t sure if he’d heard me.

“I have a form of PTSD,
Kai. Post Traumatic Stress Dis-”

“Tori, I know what it
is. I suspected something was up the day you didn’t scream for help when that punk
tried to violate you. It’s not as uncommon as you think it is. I have a lot of
buddies who have walked that same path. It’s a hazard that comes with jobs like
ours, but it doesn’t mean you’re
insane
.”

“Well, I’m still trying
to wrap my head around it. I haven’t...I haven’t told anyone yet, except you,”
I said, realizing the weight of my words.

I really did
trust
him.

I trusted a man that I
hadn’t known for longer than a month.

“I’ll help you, Tori…if
you’ll let me. You’re right, your family is
your
business, but I do
think you should at least tell Stacie about this. The more support you have,
the sooner and fuller your recovery will be,” he said, taking a step closer to
me.

“Yeah. That’s what my
therapist keeps telling me,” I said.

“Good, I like her
already. Now, I do have one favor to ask you,” he said, leaning in.

My nerves grew wild in
anticipation. As he inched closer to my face, our lips were just shy of
touching when he turned his head and whispered into my ear instead.

“Can I get a ride
home?”

I laughed and pulled
back, hitting him in the chest. His laugh bellowed though the parking lot.

“You were
that
confident
we’d make up that you actually had someone drop you off here?” I asked, mouth gaping.

“Well, I would say I
was pretty
hopeful
, yes. I knew that Briggs wouldn’t be nearly as
patient to wait for my hot girlfriend to get off work as I would be. There
wouldn’t be quite the same pay-off for him,” he said, winking at me.

This time he came
closer and pulled me into a hug. I rested my tired head on his chest and
listened for a moment to his heartbeat. There was safety with Kai, a concept
that had been completely lost on me for quite some time. As he pulled back, he
slipped my keys out of my fingers.

“May I drive, please?”
he asked.

I gawked at him, doing
my best to act appalled.

“What? You’re against
women drivers?”

“No, but I am against drivers
who almost fall asleep on me when I hug them. You look like you haven’t slept
much this weekend, am I right?”

I smiled weakly,
refusing to verbalize how right he was. He kissed me then on my forehead and I
was gone—gone to a happy place where boys like Kai could fall for girls like
me. Girls, who had made mistakes beyond repair, were certifiably insane, and were
entirely too stubborn.

He drove me home, calling a buddy from the
station to pick him up from Stacie’s after we arrived.

And that was the night he called me his
girlfriend
for the very first time.

I sat up, soaked in
cold sweat.

My sheet and blankets
lay twisted on the floor. It had been nearly four weeks since my last flashback
episode on the Jet Ski and I was beginning to grow quite accustomed to
dreamless slumber. This one though had been bad, really bad.

It wasn’t full of the
usual gruesome details that were looped on repeat. Instead, it unleashed a new
kind of horror. Anna wasn’t the only victim that lay helpless in a field, but
Kai, Stacie, and Jack were there as well. All had critical injuries. I couldn’t
move fast enough.

None of them could be saved
if my efforts were split.

Stacie had been the
logical choice. Saving her would be saving
two
lives. When I got to her
though, her eyes filled with terror and she screamed so loud I had to cover my
ears against the sharp shrill pain. It was then my own fear began. My ears were
wet with a thick, sticky substance. I felt my face and head in a panic. Nothing
was dry.

I didn’t want to see
them, the hands that were now covered in red—my hands—but it was too late.

My eyes focused.

Blood was everywhere—on
everything.

I woke up screaming.

I was grateful for the
fan that Stacie used in her room at night, also for the two closed doors in
between us. It was only five in the morning, but I couldn’t risk going back to
sleep. I walked downstairs through the dark house and flicked on a lamp by the
fireplace.

It was then I
remembered the books that Dr. Crane had given me two sessions ago. Guess this
was as good a time as any to crack them open.

At my last appointment
she’d mentioned them again, giving me a stern yet professional reprimand for my
procrastination. She had also encouraged me to journal my feelings as they came
to me.

Journal? Right.

Wonder what she’d think
about the nightmare I just had.

Dr. Crane had continued
to prod and ask questions about what my flashbacks entailed—their themes—but
until this morning I was still unclear about their
common
denominator
.
This nightmare though, proved what she had suspected all along: fear.

It was my fear that
recycled through each flashback, my fear of not being enough to save her—or in
this case, anyone—myself included.

Kai told me more about
his friends that had experienced PTSD—both from work-related incidents. We had
walked together around the pond about a week ago as he recounted the details of
each of their stories and their “paths to recovery” as he called it. Though I
knew he was trying to be helpful and supportive, there was one glaringly
obvious fact that I couldn’t seem to overlook. Neither of them had been the
cause
of a death. Sure they had both seen horrific tragedies, but at the end of
the day, the blame was not theirs to own.

I kept that fact to
myself.

As I read now in the
quiet of the morning, I struggled to focus. I’d never had an issue studying in
the past. Learning was one of the only true passions that had stayed with me
when all else was lost. Page after page I tried to lose myself in the words and
descriptions. I even tried to read it like I was helping a patient, but I
wasn’t fooled by my own deception.

I was the patient.

The issue wasn’t that I
didn’t believe in the diagnosis or even in the
process of recovery
. The
diagrams and explanations of the brain were all medically sound and
logical—nothing I could deny. But I also couldn’t deny what I knew I would
never find in a book: the remedy for guilt.

I decided after
skimming through the stages of recovery, that I would keep my expectations low.
Regaining sanity and living life functionally, without further decline, was all
I was after. If the walls in my mind had been built up, then I would have to
tear them down, piece by piece. If isolation and withdrawal had cemented my
stubborn will of self-reliance, then I’d slowly have to open up my circle of
influence.

This, of course, was
easier said than done.

I searched for an
answer to rid my mind of the flashbacks and nightmares, but the only help
offered was continued therapy and time. I wanted desperately for that to be
enough, but my gut told me otherwise.

If my flashbacks were
indeed tied to my guilt, my mind might never be my own again.

**********

A little after seven
o’clock, I headed up the stairs. I passed Stacie’s room where I hoped she had
slept well. We’d been on good terms for the last few weeks, moving past my
impulsive blunder that had occurred on
ultrasound day
. I had apologized
for storming out of the house, and for my anger toward Jack.

I also shared with her
about my therapy appointments with Dr. Crane.

I made her promise she
would keep that information confidential. She was happy to oblige, relieved I’d
taken our honesty pack seriously—or at least as seriously as I could take it.

I sorted through my
laundry in search of clean running shorts, planning to make a date with the
washing machine later in the day. I was grateful for a day off, a feeling that
surprised me. Kai unfortunately started his forty-eight hour shift today, so
I’d likely not hear from him until this evening when he called.