A Broken Kind of Life (25 page)

“Okay, stop there. What do you think triggered the flashback? Was it the pain, or running into the person? What are some other factors? Were you tired or stressed at all?” Dr. Thomas asked as he scribbled furiously in his little pad.

Aaron tried to think back to that moment and remember with perfect clarity the classroom where he and Spencer showed Dr. Mayer their project. Things had been going so well until Dr. Mayer brought up the subject of being a TA.

“I think it started with the stress and humiliation of the conversation,” Aaron reasoned. “A normal person could have talked to their professor about working for him, but all I could think about was how horribly I would fail. I couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be counted on. Rainy days leave me incapacitated in bed, and then what would he do?”

“So, it started with a fear of failure.”

“It started with me being a coward,” Aaron argued and sank deeper into the chair, trying to get lost in its depths.

“You. Are. Not. A Coward!” Spencer cried, and Aaron looked over at him, startled. He noticed that Dr. Thomas was also watching his son. “You. Are. So. Brave. Just. For. Living. I. Do. Not. Know. If. I. Could.”

“That isn’t bravery, Spencer. I don’t have any other choice,” Aaron clarified. Spencer rocked back and forth slightly in his position on the floor but didn’t make any move to get up or move closer to Aaron.

“Have you had thoughts of suicide?” Dr. Thomas asked, and Aaron hesitated. He had—many of them, but he didn’t trust the good doctor enough to voice these episodes aloud. He knew that if Dr. Thomas thought him a danger to himself, he’d have no choice but to lock Aaron up somewhere. He’d be in a cell away from his family, away from Spencer. His throat constricted around the answer, but he couldn’t lie.

“Doesn’t everyone from time to time?” Aaron answered evasively.

“That. Is. Not. An. Answer,” Spencer said quietly, and Aaron saw the desperate sadness in his friend’s face. Aaron traced the creases in the arm of the leather chair with his fingers, staring intently at his progress. He didn’t have an answer they wanted to hear, so he decided on the truth.

“Sometimes,” he whispered. A long line in the leather near the edge of the chair took an inordinately long time to draw with his finger, while silence stretched in the rec room. All Aaron heard was the ticking of a clock somewhere in the room. He counted along with the seconds, trying to distract his mind from the dark thoughts that threatened to invade it.

1… 2… 3… 4….

“Have you ever tried?” Dr. Thomas asked.

8… 9… 10… 11….

“No.”

“Do you have a plan of how you would do it? A time? A place?”

15… 16… 17… 18….

“I’ve thought about hanging myself in the garage, but I can’t stand the thought of one of my little brothers finding me, or my mom, or really anyone in my family. I’ve put them through so much. They don’t need that in their heads forever. I have enough in my head for all of us.” Aaron’s voice cracked with the weight of just exactly what was in his mind.

24… 25… 26… 27….

“Aaron, while I don’t think it’s healthy for you to have these thoughts, it’s not unreasonable given what you’ve been through. You don’t have a concrete plan. You don’t have a history of suicide attempts. You’re starting to form a support network. You’re working through your emotions in therapy. I’m concerned, but not to the point where I would have any legal basis to admit you for observation. That scares you, doesn’t it?”

Dr. Thomas dropped his notepad on the couch and sat forward with his elbows on his knees. His hazel eyes, so like his son’s, were intent on Aaron’s. Aaron nodded. Glancing over, he saw the concern and fear in Spencer’s eyes and for a moment forgot about counting the seconds. An overpowering need to hug Spencer took hold of Aaron’s heart. He couldn’t think of anything else.

In the next second, it was gone.

“Let’s get back to your triggers. Your flashback at the school appeared to be caused by a combination of stress and bumping into the other student,” Dr. Thomas said as he picked up his notebook again and began writing. “What about a flashback you’ve had before that. Do you remember your last one?”

Aaron thought back. The subject made his skin crawl with unpleasant anxiety. He remembered seeing Allen standing in the living room with his date. He remembered with horrifying accuracy the look of rage on his brother’s face as he lost control. God, he hated ruining Allen’s first date, one of his first real chances at normalcy since Aaron had screwed up his life.

“What is it?” Dr. Thomas asked, no doubt having read the flickering emotions on his face.

Aaron took a deep breath.

“Whatever it is, you’re safe from it here. Nothing is going to hurt you.”

He snorted. The good doctor didn’t understand that Aaron wasn’t safe anywhere, not from the men who had stolen his life because they were still roaming free, not from the screaming in his head, and certainly not from the crash he’d experience if Spencer decided Aaron just wasn’t worth the effort. Aaron blinked, unsure where the last thought came from. Trying not to revisit that idea, he answered Dr. Thomas.

“I’d taken a nap in the afternoon and had a really bad nightmare. As I woke, I heard someone knocking on the door or ringing the bell—I don’t remember exactly.” Aaron closed his eyes, concentrating on the memory so he could relay it accurately. “I went downstairs because I thought the men had come back for me. I didn’t want them to hurt my family. Allen was standing at the door with a date. He wore his letterman’s jacket, just like the one I’d been wearing. I freaked out and had a complete meltdown in the living room. I’m pretty sure the poor girl hasn’t spoken to Allen since.”

“So you’d woken from a dream and were already vulnerable and stressed. You saw someone who looked like you had the night you were attacked. So stress was a factor, just like in the flashback in the classroom, and there was also a visual reminder.” Dr. Thomas’s voice was thoughtful as he wrote. “That’s enough to work with for today. We’re coming up on an hour, and I don’t want to take on too much at a time. Tonight, I want you to find a safe place in your house and try to think of other triggers. You can write them on a piece of paper or put them on the blog, but make sure you’re not alone when you work. Tomorrow, I want to work on a few stress reducing exercises, because that is usually a common trigger for individuals suffering with PTSD.”

“I can do that. My mom will love it if I do some homework at the kitchen table. I haven’t done that since we worked through my homeschool stuff together. I think she feels like what I’m doing now is out of her league.”

“Do. You. Want. To. Play. A. Game?” Spencer asked as his father gathered up his stuff and wandered out of the room. Aaron wasn’t sure if he wanted to give them some time to talk or if he had something else to do.

“No, Joshua,” Aaron said with a smirk as Spencer stared blankly at him. After a minute, the smile faded from Aaron’s face. “It’s from
Wargames
.”

“I. Know. Where. It. Is. From.” He slammed the lid on his laptop and shoved it across the table. Turning away from Aaron, he walked stiffly to the side table near the rec room door and grabbed his keys. “People. Have. Made. Fun. Of. The. Way. I. Talk. My. Whole. Life. I. Did. Not. Think. You. Would. Be. One. Of. Them.”

Aaron’s face flushed. He hadn’t been making fun of Spencer at all. Unmoving, Spencer just stood waiting, but Aaron could see his friend’s hands were shaking. Walking around to stand in front of Spencer, he waited, but the other boy wouldn’t look up.

Aaron held out one hand just inches from the bare skin of Spencer’s arm but couldn’t make himself touch—no matter how badly he wanted to.

The flashback still floated just beneath the surface of his mind, and he felt incredibly vulnerable. Breathing deeply in and out for nearly a minute, he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans.

AARON:
I wasn’t making fun of the way you talk. I don’t even notice a difference. It was WHAT you said. Please don’t be mad at me. I can’t take it today on top of everything else. Please
?

Aaron heard the phone buzz in Spencer’s pocket and watched with growing apprehension as he checked the display. Then, almost too slowly, Spencer looked up, and Aaron felt a rush of warmth over his face, like he’d stepped into the sun. Spencer opened his arms, and without the hesitation Aaron expected, he stepped into them and rested his head on his friend’s shoulder. A tentative hand rested on his back, but the comfort wrapped itself around him, and he sighed just as he heard Spencer’s voice in his ear.

“I. Could. Never. Stay. Mad. At. You.”

S
PENCER
stood in front of Aaron, soft chestnut curls spiraling around his downcast eyes, his manner so pregnant with supplication, so tempered by defeat, that Aaron’s heart ached with it. When he could not stand it even one moment longer, Aaron did not stomp his foot as others might to get his attention. Instead, he reached out with no thought other than Spencer’s comfort and touched his face. A tingling sensation, as if his hand had suddenly gone to sleep, startled Aaron, but he didn’t pull away.

The warmth of his hand on Spencer’s cheek caused Spencer to look up. An unreadable expression, shock maybe, flitted across his handsome features, and Aaron smiled. As their eyes met and Spencer held his gaze resolutely, Aaron had a wild impulse to kiss Spencer’s slightly trembling lips. In fact, his stomach burned with the intensity, the need of it. A white hot tingle of anticipation tore down his spine in a violent shiver.

Was it Aaron’s imagination, or were their faces closer?

He didn’t know if he had moved closer or if Spencer had, but neither of them, it seemed, were willing to pull away. Aaron couldn’t mistake the momentary look of longing that passed over Spencer’s face or the way his eyes darted subtly to Aaron’s mouth. Then Spencer leaned forward slightly in silent invitation.

Tilting his head almost imperceptibly, the sweet surprising sting of hope coursed through him as Aaron felt Spencer’s breath on his face, hot and unsteady.

His lips touched Aaron’s, soft and subtle….

A
ARON
’
S
heart raced as the dream clung to him and refused to recede into the dark part of his mind where hope lived. His breath came in short, quick pants as he sat straight up in the bed, disoriented at being alone. Spencer had been right there with him, so close that the other boy’s presence loomed large in the room. With mounting fear, he half expected Spencer to come back from the bathroom to crawl into bed with him. He was hard against his sweats, harder than he had ever been, and Aaron could feel nothing but confusion. The room, almost unbearably warm, seemed different in the diffused light from his window. The monsters that normally loomed in the shadows were harder to see, the angry scars on his face and body slightly diminished by the image of Spencer in his mind.

Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, Aaron sat on the edge, holding tight to his sheet, trying to stop his world from spinning. Not once in two years had he dreamed of wanting to have any kind of physical or sexual contact—with anyone—and he had no idea how to handle it. Panic rose in his chest, and he took a deep breath in through his nose and blew out hard from his mouth just as Dr. Thomas had taught him. In through his nose, and out through his mouth. The panic swelled higher, like an ocean storm, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Then he closed his eyes and tried again. In through his nose and out through his mouth. Again and again he breathed, slowly and deliberately. The tightness in his chest lessened, and he could have wept, if only he were able.

“Aaron, honey, are you okay?”

Aaron looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway, her oversized pajamas making her look like a teenage girl, the way she pulled her hands into the sleeves and stretched the material as she stood nervously at his door. The way she bounced just a little on the balls of her feet told Aaron how much she wanted to come into his room and comfort him, but she kept her distance.

“I’m okay, Mom, it was just a dream,” he said quietly to the floor, and breathed in slowly through his nose. She came in then, no doubt drawn by the fear and pain she heard in his voice. Making sure to keep a good foot between them, she sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t look up, but simply blew out hard.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Her voice sounded small and quiet in the dark, not like her usual call-to-attention mom voice. Normally, she had a way of making three nearly grown boys and one man do whatever she wanted merely by changing the inflections of her tone. Aaron knew she expected him to say no, and he nearly always did, but the confusion and the pain in his heart made the words tumble out in a rush.

“I dreamed that I kissed someone,” Aaron whispered into the darkness. The deep breathing exercise stopped, and he blushed, though he hoped his mother wouldn’t see.