Fade to Black - Proof (7 page)

Just sick. Not
nuts. Thank God.

“Well, no
apology necessary, Jack. We just want to be sure you’re okay.” He looked stern
again. “But go home, Jack. Rest up for the doctor’s appointment. And stay home
until you are well enough to be here.”

Anderson
walked over to Jack and clapped him gently on the back.

“Try and take care
of yourself, Jack. No one is indispensable for just a few days. But we can’t
afford to lose anyone for the year.”

A threat or
just worry?

Anderson
glanced at Cratchett, his look signaling her that they were done, and the two
walked out. The nurse gave him a once over as she passed. Then she looked away
impassively and followed the principal out, leaving the door open behind her.

Chad stayed
behind, watching Jack with genuine concern. Jack met his eyes for a moment, but
then his eyes fell.

“I’ve got to find
my students and explain what happened,” Jack said.

“Jack, I’ll
take care of it. We’re interchangeable to those kids.” He smiled. “How about if
I call Pam to come and get you?”

Jack shook his
head.

“No, please
don’t, Chad.” The thought of Pam hearing this story was frankly more than he
could stand. “I don’t want her to worry. I took some Tylenol for the fever. Give
me a half hour to get my stuff together and leave a lesson plan for the sub,
then I’ll be a good boy and head home. And Chad…” Jack held his friend’s eyes
with a pleading look. “Please don’t say anything about this to Pam. She’s
pissed enough that I refused to go to the doctor on the weekend.”

Chad laughed.

“Women!” he
exclaimed, relieved that his friend seemed to be himself. Then he left and closed
the door behind him.

Jack slumped
down in the little chair. What the hell was he going to do? He sure as hell
couldn’t go home. What would he say to his wife? That dead Simmons walked by
his class and made him lose his shit, scaring the hell out of a room full of
kids? Should he tell her that the ceiling had spun into a purple sky, that he
could taste the dust and feel the grit on his teeth?

Not a chance.
He would instead stop by the Starbucks out on Route 143 for coffee and a snack,
and wait for his appointment with Dr. Barton.

They had a TV
there, didn’t they?

Chapter

8

The coffee house had a TV, but
it was tuned to some ridiculous talk show where two middle-aged women chatted
about being middle-aged women with semi-celebrities. Jack ate a plain croissant
chased with two cups of black coffee, and sat in a corner alone with his
thoughts. He mostly thought of how and what to tell Dr. Barton about what was
going on with him and, frankly, that scared the shit out of him.

What if Barton
told him he was crazy? Jack sure as hell couldn’t tell him, their family doctor,
that he was having waking hallucinations—visions of dead buddies he never
actually knew stalking him at school. That would be a one-way trip to inpatient
therapy, locked in a room and heavily sedated. Sane people just didn’t chase
dead Marines down the hall in front of kids they were entrusted to teach.

You belong
with us, Casey. Come back Sar’n. We need you.

Jack felt the
shudder which was becoming way too familiar.

Jack tossed
back the last lukewarm swallow of coffee and headed back to his car, parked on
the street in front of the coffee house. Worse than the short drive to Dr.
Barton’s office was the wait in the clean waiting room. After signing his name
on the clipboard at the front desk, Jack settled into an uncomfortable vinyl‐covered
chair. Fidgeting in his seat, Jack flipped through a
Woman’s Day
magazine, afraid that
Time
or
Newsweek
would contain an article
or picture from the war that would flood him with images, or worse, bring his
friend back for a visit. It wouldn’t help his cause to lose his shit in the
waiting room, to scream at invisible ghosts in front of the woman with a two
year old in her lap. He looked over at the old man who stared at him
suspiciously. Jack smiled at him uncomfortably but the man turned away and then
coughed and spit green snot into a handkerchief, which he wrapped up carefully
and slipped back into his jacket pocket like it was some valuable gem. Jack
glanced back into his lap at the article about coping with period depression (
I
should have your problems, lady
), his leg bouncing up and down nervously.

Barton greeted
him like an old friend, although he had probably only met the doctor a handful
of times and couldn’t really remember the last time he had been here. It seemed
strange, but the young doctor really did feel like a friend of sorts, and Jack
relaxed as they chatted about Pam and how great little Claire was doing. They
sat beside each other in plastic chairs, Jack avoiding sitting up on the exam
table like an actual patient. Finally Barton plunged in.

“So what’s up,
Jack?” he asked, a friendly hand on Jack’s shoulder.

As he knew he
would, Jack kept the school encounter with Simmons and the anxiety attack from
last Friday to himself. He confessed to the nightmares and admitted that they
haunted him during the day. It seemed more okay to be haunted by nightmares
about bloody corpses than by
actual
bloody corpses, right? He told
Barton about the anxiety he felt, and even his burning need to watch the news,
hoping to catch images of the war, knowing it would fill him with fear. He
didn’t mention that he was hoping to hear the names of the dead from Fallujah,
and his certainty that he would recognize those names. No sense in pushing it.

Jim Barton (“Relax,
Jack. Call me Jim”…yeah, like that would help) reassured him that his anxieties
were not unique, and that many people were deeply affected by the war that
flooded into their lives through newspapers and TV (Katie Couric nodded
knowingly in his mind). He was not the only one who had trouble coping with
those images. Barton claimed to have several patients with similar nightmares.

Any of them
getting visits from theirs at work?

Doc Barton
told him that it was a “bit” out of his field and gave him a referral to “a
good friend of mine, really good at this stuff.”  He also gave him a
prescription for Effexor to help with the anxiety.

“Isn’t that an
antidepressant?”

“Well, yes,
but we use it for lots of other things, too.”

Yeah, right
.

The other
prescription was for Ambien to help him sleep.

“Ambien won’t
disrupt the normal sleep and dream patterns, Jack. You’ll rest, but won’t feel
hung over in the morning.”

Jimmy definitely
didn’t get it. He could get to sleep just fine, thanks very much. The truth was
he didn’t want to sleep. Not tonight. Not ever again. He was terrified by the thought
of falling asleep.

Got a pill for
that?

The Doctor put
his arm around Jack’s shoulders just like Chad had done—maybe like everyone did
when they thought they were dealing with the deeply disturbed—and showed him
politely out of the exam room.

“Hey, thanks for
everything, Doc…I mean Jim.”

“No problem,
Jack. Just try and relax and make sure and call Dr. Lewellyn today. I’ll call
him, as well, so he’ll see you right away.”

Jack shook the
offered hand and hurried out of the office. Then he sat in his car with the
engine running and Today’s Country blaring on the radio for nearly twenty
minutes, tears running down his face, his prescriptions wrinkled and clutched
in his fist.

On the radio,
Dierks Bentley seemed excited to see where the night might lead.

Fuck you,
Dierks
!

He pulled out
of the crowded parking lot and headed home, with a quick stop at the Rite Aid.

Jack walked
into his house with his very best forced smile and “everything is fine now”
look on his face.  He had a small white paper bag, full of little oral bullet
solutions to all his problems, clutched in his right hand. He realized he held the
bag unconsciously out in front of him like he was carrying a little bag of dog
shit, and dropped his hand to his side, trying to look more relaxed. He was
greeted by his smiling little girl (gratefully oblivious to Daddy’s slipping
sanity) and his beautiful wife, her forced smile in no way masking the concern
in her eyes. Jack dropped his bag of cure on the coffee table as he hugged his
wife and kissed Claire on the forehead.

“Hey, guys,”
he said. Pam held him a moment longer than usual.

“Hey, baby,
how was your day?”

Did Dr. Barton
purge your demons? Did he rescrew your head on?

“Okay,” Jack
answered as he collapsed onto the couch, fingers pulling on his tie. Pam
dropped Claire into Daddy’s lap, her squirming feet kicking into the soft spot
in his crotch and earning her a painful grunt instead of a hug.

“Kisses, Daddy…MMMMM…MAAAAAAA!”
Her mouth was wet on his cheek and smelled of fruit cocktail. It was wonderful
in a way that only a parent would understand.

“Kisses,
Claire Bear,” Jack responded, kissing his baby on her soft cheek. He looked up
at his wife, who watched him tentatively, not wanting to ask. Jack shifted
Claire to his knee and unconsciously blocked another foot shot to his package.

“Well, good
news,” Jack said more casually than he felt. He Eskimo kissed Claire, who
giggled. “Daddy’s not crazy, little buddy.”

Pam grimaced.
“No one thought you were crazy, Jack,” she said, shaking her head as she joined
him on the couch. “What did Dr. Barton have to say?”

“Well, you
were right, baby. Doc says he has several patients with this same problem. He
says that it’s a reaction to the flood of war images coming into the house,
just like you said.” Claire grabbed his nose. Jack kissed her little fingers
gently.

“Noze,” she
said.

“That’s right,
buddy! Nose—Daddy’s nose.” He looked at Pam, who waited patiently for more.

“He gave me
some head-shrinker pills to help me with the anxiety, and some sleeping pills.”
Jack felt his left eye tick a bit at that. Pam nodded and waited for more.

“He thinks
that will help?” Her voice sounded full of hope.

“Yep! Says it
will.” Jack kissed Claire on the ear. “Ear—Claire Bear’s ear!”

“Air,” she
answered, delighted. Jack continued.

“He’s also got
me an appointment with a Dr. Lewellyn, a friend of his who kind of specializes
in this sort of thing.” Pam hugged her husband tightly and Claire squirmed to
hug them both.

“Thank you, baby,”
Pam sighed, her relief palpable.

“Thank you, honey,”
Jack answered, breaking the group hug and kissing his wife gently on the mouth,
tickling her upper lip with his tongue. “Thanks for sticking by me.”

Pam chuckled a
light “don’t be silly” chuckle.

“Yeah, well, I
guess I love you a bit,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “You can pick
your friends, but you’re stuck with your family.” She rose from the couch to
head for the kitchen, and Jack grabbed her hand. She turned to face him and he
looked her in the eyes deeply.

“Seriously,
Pam. Thank you. I love you so much.”

Pam closed her
eyes gently, embarrassed by the attention, then looked back at her husband.

“I love you
too, Jack.” She squeezed his hand and headed for the kitchen.

Jack held his
daughter up in front of him, her legs kicking joyfully in the air.

“Belly!” he
announced and pressed his lips to his little girl’s soft tummy, blowing a
ripping belly fart.

“Beddy!
Beddy!” Claire answered, squealing with delight. Jack hugged her tight and his
gaze fell on the little bag on the coffee table. He closed his eyes tightly,
his face changing to a grimace.

“Love you, Bear,”
he said. He held his little girl and tried desperately to ignore the subtle
smell of Iraqi dust and the far off sound of gunfire.

*   *   *

Maybe the Effexor
helped. It sure as hell wasn’t the Ambien, which Jack had taken from the pillow
where Pam had left it for him, and flushed it down the crapper—feeling a twang
of guilt—when he went for his pre-bed piss and brush. Whatever it was, he had
slept the dreamless sleep of the righteous, that was for sure. In fact, he
awoke in the exact same position he had drifted off to sleep in, his back
aching and his throat dry, like waking up after a second bottle of wine before
bed.

Jack had slept
well, but he realized he hadn’t slept long. Before slipping into a deep sleep,
he lay in bed staring in the dark at the shadowy shape of the spinning ceiling
fan for several hours, begging the night not to let it morph into the powerful
blades of a UH-60 Blackhawk. He lay still in the dark, not wanting to disturb
his sleeping wife, who had watched him quietly for a while before falling off
to sleep, her arm across his chest, her leg across his waist. He had nearly
woken her up after the first hour, thinking the distraction and subsequent
relaxation of wild sex might help take his mind away from his dread of sleep
and what the night might hold in store for him. In the end he had concentrated
instead on the rhythmic musical snore that only sexy women can pull off, and
thoughts of his pretty little girl, sleeping the deep sleep of the innocent
down the hall. And then somewhere in the night he had drifted off to sleep.

He woke ten
minutes before his alarm, glancing at the clock and silencing it before it
could shake the quiet with its jarring whine. Pam had rolled on her other side
sometime in their slumber, and he rolled stiffly onto his own side and wrapped
his arms around her, feeling the soft curve of her hip against him in all the
right ways. He pressed gently against her, feeling a comfortable stirring, and
she squeezed his arm.

“Mmmmm,” she
sighed. “I guess I know how you are feeling.” She rocked her hips backwards
against him, and he pressed into her again, his hand pulling her into him as he
caressed her belly gently. Pam rolled over to face him, raising her head to
look at the time. Satisfied with what she saw, she pulled his hand down between
her soft thighs, which she opened slightly, and closed her eyes. “How’d you
sleep, baby?” she asked, her own hand now drifting slowly down his hip, then
turning inward.

“Great,
actually,” he answered honestly, then closed his eyes and moaned as her hand
found her way to him. He rolled over onto his back at her gentle urging, and
she straddled him, pulling her nightgown up over her head.

*
* *

While Pam went
to start the coffee, her face glowing and happy, dressed in one of his T-shirts
and a pair of postsex “granny panties” (as she called them), Jack went to get
Claire. She had started cooing for them and talking to herself before they had
finished making love.

“Daddy!” she
announced as he picked her up from her crib.

“Hey, big girl,”
Jack said as he laid her on the footrest of the rocker and pulled off her damp
pull-up. He dressed her in his favorite outfit, big girl Levi’s and a pink Polo
pullover. He loved how much she looked like Pam dressed like that. Then, he
swept her up and carried her downstairs.

He walked into
the kitchen with his baby in his arms, tugging on his “Air,” and was greeted by
the smell of fresh coffee and frying bacon. He came up behind Pam and playfully
reached under the oversized T-shirt, squeezing her gently.