Trauma (8 page)

David's cell phone buzzed.
Anneke
.

“Hmmm, I might be asked to leave another group,” David said, setting Gabby down on the floor. “Go play for a bit. I have to talk on the phone.”

Gabby ran over to the toys.

“Anneke,” David answered, sounding chipper and cheery. “I was just going to call you.”

“Because your e-mail doesn't work? No worries. I've got a pen. You can dictate it to me.”

“Ha, that's actually kind of funny.”

“I'm a real gas. Where's the story, David?”

David could picture Anneke's scowl by the tone of her voice. She was fifty-something, fit and slim from running and Pilates, with shoulder-length blond hair. Poor Anneke walked under a black cloud; everywhere she went, it was raining deadlines. And David was only adding to her misery.

He'd make it up to her. A bottle of Chianti and she'd forget this little lapse. She owed him a pass anyway. His first story for her was supposed to be a puff piece about a bright foster kid from Lowell who won some creative writing contest. The fifteen hundred words she asked for turned into a high-impact story that ran over several days and exposed a huge scandal involving the Department of Children and Families. David could always tell where the real story was, and he knew this particular assignment should not be about one triumphant marine.

“The story is in progress,” David said.

“Have you interviewed Sergeant Thompson yet?”

Sergeant Jesse Thompson was a Billerica native who'd lost an arm to an IED and was helping other vets overcome their PTSD symptoms with some success.

“Almost.”

“How can you almost interview somebody?”

“I've thought about calling him, but I'm working on a different angle right now.”

David was more interested in the staggering numbers of vets with PTSD. The problem was approaching epidemic levels, with one out of four servicemen and -women returning from combat significantly
different
.

“This isn't
The New York Times,
” Anneke said. “We're a local paper. We've never won a Pulitzer, and I don't think my boss really cares if we do.”

“Never say never,” David responded.

Anneke sighed. “How much longer do you need?”

Small community paper or not, he and his boss were still cut from the same stock. Both of them wanted to do good work, important journalism. If a story were here, Anneke would want David to find it.

“Give me a couple weeks. Sergeant Thompson isn't going anywhere. We can do a flashy piece on him anytime. But I want to explore this a little bit more.”

“You're thinking series.”

He pursed his lips. “The phone's not ringing to send me back to Syria.”

“What's your plan?”

“I'm going to talk to some vets. The guys who haven't been helped.”

“Give me some names.” Testing to make sure David was actually working.

Luckily, he had his notes handy. “How about I give you three?” David said. “William Bird, Max Soucey, and Adam Bryant.”

Click
. Anneke had hung up without a good-bye. It was David's signal to get to work.

 

CHAPTER 10

The house hadn't changed much since Carrie left for college. The wall-to-wall carpeting had long ago been replaced with hardwood flooring, and Carrie's bedroom had been converted into a guest room, but those were minor adjustments. Everything here, down to the round oak table in the kitchen, was familiar.

The framed pictures on the walls reflected a close-knit family. Usually they filled her with nostalgia, but today they made Carrie think about Leon Dixon. How many memories had Carrie erased with her mistake?

Carrie broke free of such painful, paralyzing thoughts to look at photos of herself and Adam through various life stages. She especially loved the vacation pictures. Some photos recorded ski trips to the mountains of New Hampshire and Maine, others showed their European adventures, a few had been taken in the Caribbean, and one displayed Howard and Adam riding elephants side by side on an African safari. There were probably as many photographs of Puckels, the shaggy and much-beloved family dog who had died a few years back, as there were of the kids. Carrie had encouraged her father to go to the shelter for another animal, but Howard quoted the comedian Louis C.K., who called puppies “a countdown to sorrow.”

Carrie noticed Adam's military portraits were missing. In their place Carrie's mom had hung a couple landscapes she painted herself. Carrie was impressed by her mother's latent artistic ability, though Irene credited her teacher for her rapid progress.

After some time, Carrie wandered into the kitchen, where Howard was warming up the soup. Her dad had a full head of hair, but it was more gray than brown, and thinning. Carrie's mom had once bought him a color treatment, but Howard never opened the box. “Vanity is a young's man game,” he'd say. Steam from two hot mugs of green tea fogged up the glasses on Howard's round face, magnifying two of the kindest eyes Carrie had ever seen.

“Your mom will be home in a bit, but you and I can catch up.”

When the soup was ready, Howard sat at the table. Carrie joined him. The tea was a perfect temperature, and the soup smelled savory and delicious. Carrie had been living off cafeteria food for so long she'd all but forgotten what home cooking tasted like. She took a sip of tea.

“Your hands are shaking,” her father said. “I know it's hard to see your brother like this.”

Carrie set her tea down. “It's not just Adam, Dad.”

Dad.

The word was a safety net. It allowed Carrie to let everything out. Her eyes closed tight, a sob escaping, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

Howard pulled his chair close and put his arms around her. “What's going on, honey?”

Carrie took a few ragged breaths. “Something really awful happened.…”

It was not an easy story to tell. For most of it, Carrie struggled to get the words out. At first she cried a lot, breathing hard, short of breath, but eventually she settled and managed to tell it all.

Howard looked impressed as Carrie recounted Beth's surgery and the DIC episode. Details about Leon's surgery were fuzzier, perhaps because Carrie had blocked them out, but she remembered Dr. Metcalf's worried expression as he tried to locate the tumor.

Howard did not flinch when Carrie revealed her mistake. His eyes held no trace of judgment. He was full of compassion when she told him about the meeting that followed and her resignation.

Carrie could not have asked for a better confidant. Her father had spent years honing his listening skills. He had long believed that what a patient said, and how they said it, was sometimes more telling than the actual examination. These were skills that he had imparted to his daughter, and they'd been working well. But even Howard, who always seemed to know just the right thing to say, looked at a loss for words. In the prolonged silence that followed Carrie's story, he poured them both more tea.

“I've let everyone down,” Carrie said, an all-too-familiar tightness creeping back into her chest.

“Sweetheart, right now is not the time for advice or instruction. Just know I am here for you. And your mother is, too. And in a way, so is Adam. We love you, and we'll stand by you through all of this.”

Carrie embraced her father again, and Howard kissed the top of her head.

“Tell me what you need. Anything.”

Carrie laughed because she could not believe what she was about to ask.

“With my student loans and no income, I just don't have the money to afford my apartment. Not without a job.”

Howard nodded. “I can lend you whatever you need. Mom and I can cover your rent for a while.”

Carrie shook off that idea. “Some doctor I turned out to be. I'm twenty-nine years old and I need my parents to pay my rent. No, thank you.”

“Don't let pride get in your way. Think of it as a loan.”

Carrie tossed her hands in the air. “It's not pride. It's practicality. How am I going to repay it?” she asked. “I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm completely lost here.”

“Then don't repay it.”

Carrie shook her head again. “I can't accept that. Not without a plan. It wouldn't feel right to me. I might not even want to stay in town. Maybe I need to go get a research job, something in academia. I don't know.”

“Then what do you want to do in the interim?”

Carrie sensed her father already knew. Again her thoughts went to Adam. They had taken two different paths, and yet found themselves at the same destination. It must be discouraging for her father to have worked so hard to raise independent children, only to have them turn out unable to function in the world.

“I spoke to my landlord,” Carrie said. “He'll let me break my lease and give me my deposit back.”

“That's fine, but where are you going to go?” Howard asked.

Carrie shrugged and tried not to look so crestfallen. “I'd like to move back here for a bit, if that's okay with you and Mom. At least until I figure out my next step.”

Howard put his hand over Carrie's. “This is your home, sweetheart,” he said. “It'll always be your home.”

 

CHAPTER 11

Carrie glanced out the sidelight window at an unfamiliar car, a Zipcar rental, parked in the driveway. The Bryants hadn't had many visitors in the two weeks since Carrie had moved home. No one had rung the bell, so whoever it was must have come to see Adam.

Good
. Carrie was still in her pajamas, and didn't feel like making small talk. Since she had gotten home, she'd done next to nothing except watch old movies with her dad. She wasn't feeling cute, clean, or the least bit congenial—hardly ready to face the outside world.

For all the recent tumult, coming home had been seamless. Adam had helped with the move, such as it was. The U-Haul truck she had rented was far too big for her few possessions. Everything Carrie owned—a futon, two bookcases, three boxes of books (mostly medical texts and some fiction), a flea market coffee table, a small color television and scuffed TV stand, some clothes, a few framed pictures, and a dresser—fit into a small corner of her parents' basement. It was depressing to realize her life's accumulations could take up so little space. For so long, her focus had been on nothing but medicine. Carrie wondered what could possibly take its place.

Carrie had settled in her old bedroom, but it was far from cozy or comforting. Limbic, Carrie's goldfish, swam unfazed in his large bowl, which rested atop the same blue dresser she'd had as a kid. It was still her childhood bedroom, even with all her old memorabilia boxed up, and the twin bed covered in the emerald green Tibetan quilt Carrie had bought on her travels to the Far East. Living here again was dispiriting, though better than living in Boston with her parents paying the rent.

Stress had triggered insomnia, which in turn triggered a new dependence on Ambien that left her perpetually exhausted. Her runs, if they could be called runs, were uninspired and dangerously close to being brisk walks. She was probably clinically depressed, but Carrie wasn't going to get help for it. She didn't deserve to feel better. Carrie's actions had substantially reduced Leon's quality of life. It was unclear whether his symptoms would improve over time. Carrie deserved to feel lousy.

Carrie's mother, Irene, a petite sixty-year-old woman, entered the foyer through the dining room, rubbing lotion on her hands. She was dressed in a blue denim shirt and khaki pants, the uniform of a passionate gardener.

“Who's here?” Carrie asked.

“A reporter from the
Lowell Observer,
” Irene said. “Here's here to interview Adam for a story.”

Carrie's eyes narrowed. “Adam?” Since his discharge from the WTC, Adam preferred solitude. Friends rarely came over. This guest was a surprise to her.

Irene said, “I got a call from Everett Barnes, the director of veteran outreach for the Home Base Program, asking to see if Adam would tell his story. I told him about it and I guess he agreed.”

Carrie understood now.

Home Base had been set up by the Red Sox Foundation to give clinical care and support services to Iraq and Afghanistan service members, veterans, and their families all through New England. It dealt specifically with veterans and their families affected by stress or traumatic brain injuries sustained on deployment or in combat. Sadly, the organization could not grow fast enough.

“I'll go see how it's going,” Irene said, pushing her bangs off her forehead and tucking a strand of dark, shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “Oh, and your father is in the kitchen. He wants to speak with you.”

Carrie found her dad sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from a mug of steaming coffee. He drank his coffee no-frills; the whole family did. Was this learned or inherited?

Carrie poured herself a cup. “You wanted to speak with me?”

Howard's face tensed.

Carrie ignored a tic of anxiety and sat down, preparing herself for anything.

“I've been thinking about things,” Howard began, choosing each word carefully. “And I think you've come too far to quit now.”

Carrie folded her arms and looked away, her instinct for self-preservation kicking in. This felt like an ambush. She had made it abundantly clear that reconsideration was not an option. To be a great surgeon required great confidence, and Carrie would be a danger in the OR.

Still, this was her dad, and the soul of kindness. He deserved that she sit still and listen.

“You are a gifted neurosurgeon,” he continued, “with only one more year to complete your residency. I know that you had your heart set on that fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic, and then who knows what? I don't want to say something trite like ‘everybody makes mistakes,' but I honestly can't think of one successful person, especially not doctors, who hasn't gone through a personal hell of some sort or another. Sleepless nights. A crisis of confidence. Not one.” He picked up his coffee cup again and took a long drink.