Battlefield of the Heart (26 page)

 

 

Cindy parked Danny's truck in the parking garage at the VA hospital and shut off the engine. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes and sighed. Between taking her midterm, worrying about Danny, and reminding him over the phone that she loved him, it had already been a long day. Now, she had to find the energy to walk a ridiculous distance just to go see him and hope things went more smoothly than they had yesterday. He'd sounded fairly upbeat when she called him that morning, but yesterday had proven how quickly his mood could change.

She pulled out her cell phone and stared at it. Should she call before she made the trek to the psych ward? What if he told her not to come? What if she went in without calling and found him ready to start a fight with her? The need to be prepared won out, and she dialed before she could change her mind. The nurse who answered assured her Danny was in a good mood and looking forward to seeing her.

Thank You, Lord! Cindy smiled as she tucked the phone in the glove box and headed for the elevator. Since he was still in a good mood, maybe he was recovering from whatever had gone wrong last Saturday and made him disappear for so long. Her heart lifted as she made her way through the halls, excited to see Danny's normal side. She missed it.

As soon as she entered the locked ward, Danny left his place at the table closest to the door and wrapped her in a hug. “It is so good to see you. I miss living two floors below you.”

She leaned against him and met his gaze with a smile, relieved to see evidence of his improving mental state. “You're not the only one who misses having you in Wyatt.”

He shifted to drape an arm around her neck and guided her toward an empty table. “Tell me what's going on in the outside world. Not the stuff they show on the news, but the stuff like what's happening on campus, which midterms you're stressing about, how our friends are doing… you know, the boring stuff that makes life so interesting.”

She took a chair beside him, aware of a handful of other patients around the room. Danny appeared to be the youngest, and the oldest looked to be around seventy or eighty. Few of the other men had visitors, and Cindy wondered if their families would come later. She prayed they would; these men looked lonely, and if they were anything like Danny, they needed all the support from their loved ones they could get.

She returned her attention to Danny and started talking about life outside the hospital. He asked her about things she said, and it felt so good to have a regular conversation like the dozens they'd had before the fateful miniature golf outing. As she talked about the outline she was still working on for Dr. Brixton, an older man wandered over and sat down at their table. She glanced at him, wondering what he wanted, and found him studying her intently. He shifted his gaze to Danny and spoke in a raspy voice.

“This your wife?”

Danny smiled and draped his arm across the back of Cindy's chair. “Nope, she's my girlfriend.”

The other man nodded and sighed. “Must be nice to have her visit.”

“It is.” Danny tilted his head to the side. “Have you heard from your wife today?”

“Yeah, she had to cover for some kid who didn't bother to show up for work.” He shook his head. “If it's not one thing, it's another. At least I know she'll come this weekend. She never has to work weekends.”

He stood and wandered over to another table. Cindy turned to Danny. “That was weird.”

“Not really,” Danny said, shaking his head. “Carl's been here for a couple of weeks, and his wife has only come to see him twice because of working double shifts. He's lonely. A lot of the guys up here don't get visitors regularly, if they get visitors at all.”

Cindy wanted to cry. How could their families just ignore them like that? Then again, the families needed to take care of themselves, too. One thing she had quickly learned was that when someone required hospitalization, it was a difficult situation for everyone involved. She had no doubt Tom and Linda would visit Danny every day if she weren't visiting him, but she was sure not everyone had extra family available to visit. “That's so sad.”

Danny shrugged, giving the impression he'd gotten used to the idea. “This is the darker side of mental health care that no one ever talks about, if they even know about it. I mean, people know the psych ward exists, but it's a mysterious place to a lot of people, and they think everyone in here is dangerous or insane. Most of us are just having trouble dealing with life for one reason or another, and we'll be fine after a couple of weeks or so.”

She laid her hand on his clean-shaven jaw. Even in the midst of his own problems, his compassion for his fellow man shone through, and she loved it. “You seem to be doing better.”

He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “I am. I still feel terrible about the way I treated you yesterday, but I talked to a chaplain and one of the therapists earlier. They gave me some ideas so I don't do that again. For once, I think their ideas might actually work.” A smile lit up his gray eyes, and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It's amazing what a tiny spark of hope can do for a man's outlook on life.”

The man she'd fallen in love with was back. She smiled and kissed his cheek before laying her head on his shoulder. “Keep focusing on that hope and every other hope you can find, and I think we'll make it.”

He put his arm around her. “Are you going to be okay if I get all depressed and need to be reminded that I have a reason to live?”

She could feel the tension in him and laid her hand on his chest, glad she could honestly give him the answer he needed to hear. “Danny, as long as you don't try to run me off or intentionally make me cry, I can deal with it. I'm not going to wimp out on you. Okay?”

“Okay.” He relaxed a little and spoke softly. “Do you understand that I was completely out of control yesterday and should have told the nurses I wasn't up to any visitors? I thought about it, but I wanted to see you so much that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Because I was selfish, you got hurt. Can you forgive me for that?”

“It's already forgiven.” Cindy straightened up to look him in the eye — a misty gray eye. “My biggest problem was not knowing how to handle it. I talked to Josh, Halbert, and Alex after I got back to campus last night, and then I ran into Corbin this morning and he told me a little about how Monique handles his bad moods. If you ever have that hard a time again, I think I'll be able to deal with it better and maybe help you get back under control.”

He nodded and blinked a few times. “Do you still want to talk to someone together? The therapist I talked to earlier said he'd be glad to talk to both of us. He also said we could talk to any of the others. Apparently, they want to make sure the patients' families know how to handle their loved one and can survive whatever got the patient sent up here in the first place.”

She considered the offer. Now that she'd had time to calm down and think she didn't know if insisting on counseling would be in their best interest. Danny had kept his promise to talk to someone on his own, and he was obviously doing better now that he'd been given some suggestions for how to cope. And what their friends had told her sounded a lot like the advice she'd already gotten from Alan… “What do you think? I mean, I'm feeling a lot more hopeful today myself, and I've already received some excellent advice. Do you think it would help you to talk to someone together?”

Danny remained quiet for so long she began to wonder if he'd gotten lost in a memory. Finally, he spoke hesitantly. “I've got trust issues. It helps to know you're willing to talk to a therapist about how to keep our relationship healthy. But I'm the one with the problems. I don't know that you actually need to talk to anyone. But then I start thinking of all the strange advice people can give, and it makes me wonder if what people told you is the same thing a therapist would say.”

 

 

Midterms finally ended, Dr. Brixton liked the term paper outline, and Cindy was on her way to pick up Danny. He'd stabilized after that one bad day, and they decided to release him Monday morning. She had offered to get his parents to pick him up, but he'd insisted he'd rather wait for her to get out of class.

It didn't take long to get Danny out of the hospital. He'd already been discharged, so all they had to do was make sure he had the clothes his parents had taken down and the few other personal items he had with him. Cindy walked beside him toward the parking garage, her heart light.

“So,” she said as she pulled the keys to his truck out of her pocket, “do you want to drive, or do you want me to?”

He stopped by the tailgate. “Hmm, trying to drive with my right hand in a cast or getting to find out whether you're a good driver… If you don't mind, I'll let you drive. At least your cast won't get in the way of starting the engine.”

“All right.” She unlocked the doors and slid behind the steering wheel as Danny dumped his bag behind the seat. Once they were both buckled in, she started the engine and glanced at him. “Do you mind if we stop at a fast food place on the way to your parents' house? I haven't had a chance to get lunch yet.”