Brandon
She’s been screaming, and now her eyes fly open. She’s covered in sweat, and even as I hold her tightly to me, I can feel her heart slamming away in her chest. She screams and claws at me as I hold her. But I won’t let go. As it is, she’s almost about to fall out of the bed at first.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, hoping my voice will snap her out of it. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
These words help, at least a little, but she still struggles against me. Fights to get down to something. Even so, I don’t release my grip on her. I hold her tightly, moving her back onto the bed some. Just so long as she’s not falling. “You’re safe. I promise.”
Finally, she comes to. Shakes out of her waking nightmare. And when she does, all she can do is apologize.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry for all of this.”
“Sorry,” becomes a soft, urgent mantra under her breath. When her eyes meet mine, they’re like two frightened dots on her face. “I was having a bad dream. A really bad one,” she says. She shivers in what’s left of my hold, feeling even more fragile. “It was so real.”
Though I want nothing more than to run my hand through her hair — stroke her cheeks and the top of her head — I resist. No matter what my protective, almost fatherly instincts are toward her, I know she doesn’t like me getting too close. I’m a stranger to her. But maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to be a scary stranger anymore. Maybe she’ll understand now that I just want to protect her.
“You were having a night terror,” I say, feeling like she needs to know this specific piece of information. “They can be your body and mind’s response to a traumatic event.”
She nods, but I can tell she’s not really with it. She doesn’t completely understand what I have told her. She just hears it. “How do you know?” she finally asks. “How do you know that’s what’s going on with me?”
I shrug. In my head, I think, I used to be just like her. Night terrors every night after I returned from being deployed. Terrible stuff. All of it. But I don’t want her to have to worry about that yet. Or at all. I just want to be someone she feels safe around. Not someone who is a fellow “survivor.” She needs me to be her hero right now, and I can’t really do that if she knows that I was once where she is. Maybe later, but not right now.
Returning from out of my thoughts, I decide to ask her a blunt question. Probably too blunt, given how long we’ve known each other, but I have to ask. I have to know.
“Are you having a mental breakdown right now?” The woman avoids my eyes. Tries to shift in my grasp. What’s left of it. “Just be honest with me, please. I don’t mean to be rude, or to put my nose in business that isn’t mine, but I need you to tell me if you’re feeling suicidal, okay?”
Silently, I’m grateful for Harlow’s training on how to deal with someone in distress. It’s coming in quite handy at the moment. I just always thought that when the time came for me to try out the training, it would be on a fellow vet. Not a mysterious woman, I think.
“I wasn’t on the cliff because I was gonna kill myself,” she says. “I was just going there for the view. Because my dad and I used to go there all the time when I was little… And I was just… I don’t know… Wanting to go back to a good time. A good memory.” She sighs, and I hear the tremble of sadness in it.
“That’s a very isolated place to go for a look-out point,” I tell her, half incredulous, half impressed.
“My dad was in very good shape,” she says. “And we both liked to hike.”
I nod, letting the fact that she was speaking in past tense sink in. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell her.
“I feel guilty. I wish I would’ve been able to tell my dad how much I appreciated the view, appreciated the time with him, but I was young and dumb. And now…” She pauses, swallowing something heavy. “Now, I just wish he could still see that view with me…”
At this revelation, my heart begins to pound. Since we made contact, this is the most she’s ever said to me. This is the most she’s ever opened up. Not just to me, but probably to a lot of people in her life. And now that she has, it’s like her words are coming out in a stream of consciousness.
Part of me wants to keep her talking about it, even though I know it’s painful for her. In the end, I know that that’s going to be one of the only ways she can heal from it. So, I say, “Your dad sounds like a great guy. What happened to him?”
She’s mumbling now. Barely paying attention to me again. She’s lost in herself. And worst of all, she’s gone quiet. Not even mumbling anymore.
Great. I guess I jumped the gun on that.
But at least now I understand there’s a reason behind this state that she’s in. She’s not just some loon looking to commit suicide. She is someone going through a lot of grief and tragedy. And that is something I can completely understand.