Restoration 01 - Getting It Right (22 page)

A grunt from the bedroom drew him back across the hall. Nathan had his pillow in a death grip against his stomach, his entire body curled around it. He’d thrown off the covers, his skin glistening with sweat. James swore he heard his teeth grinding. Unsure if he was sick or asleep, James turned on the bedside lamp.

His slightly fuzzed brain allowed him to reach out and touch Nathan’s shoulder despite something deep down warning him against it.

“Stop it!”

The crazed shout burned in James’s ears, and then the world upended. He landed hard on his back, a heavy weight holding him down, hands curling tight around his throat. He tried to say Nathan’s name, but the pressure on his windpipe was too severe. Too punishing. He flailed, unable to break the strong grip, everything telescoping into the wide, crazed eyes of his best friend.

Then Nathan howled—a heartbroken combination of a scream and sob, and the horrible suffocation ended. Nathan was gone. James rolled onto his side, coughing, wheezing, too dizzy to understand what the fuck had just happened. Adrenaline was beating back the calming effects of the whiskey, leaving him shaking and cold.

And scared.

“Nate?” The raspy sound was weak, and he tried for more force. “Nathan?”

“Jay?” A hand squeezed his shoulder, another touched the side of his head. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Shit.”

“S’okay.” His throat hurt, his back hurt and he kind of wanted to vomit, but nothing hurt as much as Nathan’s voice. The shame and fear in it. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not. I was choking you. Christ, I should call an ambulance.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

James didn’t protest Nathan tugging him into his lap, wrapping trembling arms around his chest. He was still too stunned to react. A punch in the nose was one thing. Thirty more seconds and he would have lost consciousness. Nathan’s beard rasped against his scalp, his breathing as labored as James’s. They sat that way for a while as the world stopped feeling quite so underwater.

“Tell me about the nightmare,” James said.

Nathan shuddered. “I don’t remember much. I was being held, and it was good. I was safe. And then I was alone, only I couldn’t really move, and someone was dragging me toward a van. I’m so fucking sorry, Jay.”

“I know. I know you are.”

“Dr. McMillian is going to shit over this.”

The department shrink. Screw that. Nathan needed to get back to work more than

anything else. He needed his routine back. “Don’t tell her. It was an accident, babe.”

“She’ll ask. She did both other times. She asked if I’ve had any incidents.”

“Did you tell her about punching me on Saturday?”

“No.”

“So let this stay between us too.”

Nathan’s palms splayed across his bare chest. “Would you ever advise a patient to keep something like this to himself?”

“Fuck no. This is me being your boyfriend, not your counselor. The boyfriend knows how much you want to get back to work, to find your new normal. He knows this is important to you, and he wants you to be happy more than anything in the world.”

The boyfriend also feels guilty for sneaking off to have a drink, leaving you alone in your
dream and in your bed.

Could someone ever truly stop being an asshole?

“What’s the counselor think?” Nathan asked.

“He thinks he’s going to refer you to a colleague because you need to talk to someone about this who is less directly involved with your job. I deal with PTSD all the time, babe. This is serious.”

“I know.” Nathan kissed his temple. “Should I get some ice for your throat? Shit, what if it bruises?”

“I wear a tie every day. No one will notice.”

“Let’s get you into bed. I’ll get ice.”

Nathan helped James onto his feet long enough to shuffle to the bed. He relaxed back into the mattress, grateful for the comfort of something besides a wooden floor. Nathan tucked the sheet and blanket up to his chest, misery etched in every line around his eyes, every crease on his forehead.

James had done that.

He snagged Nathan’s wrist and waited until Nathan met his gaze. “I’m sorry, Nate.”

“For what? This wasn’t your fault.”

“I left you.”

“To what? Take a piss? That doesn’t excuse my—”

“I went downstairs to have a drink. Two, actually.” His gut churned, the alcohol no longer playing nice with his nerves.

Nathan stared down at him, some of his sorrow melting into surprise. Then a blanket fell over his expression, and James couldn’t read him anymore. “I’ll get you an ice pack.”

Nathan was gone a long time before he came back upstairs with a plastic bag of ice cubes wrapped in a kitchen towel. He arranged it on James’s throat, then turned off the light. He crawled into the other side of the bed, curled away from James.

Twelve inches of distance had never felt so much like a mile.

“Thank you for fitting me in today,” Nate said.

“Well, James never calls in his favors, so I was happy to make room.” Dr. Michaela Sands shook his hand from behind her glass-top desk, which was overrun with files, notebooks and medical journals. With her free hand, she pushed a pair of black-framed glasses back up her button nose. The mess in front of her dwarfed the small woman, but she still had a presence that commanded the entire cluttered office.

She looked more like a beleaguered college professor than a psychiatrist, and it eased some of the tension he’d been carrying since his last appointment with Dr. McMillian.

“I’m clearing you for active duty.”

Part of him had wanted to make her reconsider. The rest of him couldn’t wait until Monday.

“Please have a seat, Detective.” Dr. Sands waved her hand at an assortment of chairs in a circle around what looked like a sawed-off log with a piece of glass on it that stood in as a coffee table. None of the chairs matched.

The office was nothing like James’s carefully decorated, rented unit. Dr. Sands had nestled her space into the back room of her own house.

Nate picked a hard plastic chair that reminded him of middle school. It helped him sit up straight, not slouch. Focus.

Dr. Sands sat across from him in a wicker armchair. She had a spiral notebook in her lap and a pencil tucked behind her ear. “So, James wasn’t terribly specific when he called me this morning.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you’ll be a challenge for me, and I never back away from a challenge.” Her bright expression went briefly fierce. “He also told me you were physically assaulted four months ago on the job, and that you’re having flashbacks.”

“Flashbacks? I’ve never had a flashback.”

“Detective, flashbacks aren’t often experienced how they’re depicted in movies. It’s not always images in your mind, or being back in the moment. Sometimes it is as instantaneous as a touch and
bam.
You’re reacting, protecting yourself.” She pushed those glasses up again. “Sound familiar?”

Shame heated his cheeks. “I strangled him last night.”

“Who?”

“James.” Her lack of surprise was an unexpected relief. “He told you about us?”

She smiled, showing off a slightly crooked front tooth. “He told me when I asked why he wasn’t treating you himself. You’re the kind of patient who challenges him too. Even if he does have a soft spot for teenagers.”

“May I ask how you know James?”

“We interned together with Dr. Abbott, and we kept in touch. Occasionally we refer each other patients. And you’re changing the subject.”

“What were we discussing?”

“Don’t treat me like a suspect, Detective. This isn’t your interrogation. We’re here for a chat.”

Nate could pick her up and snap her in half without breaking a sweat, but she’d just schooled him in less than twenty words. He liked her immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell me about last night.”

My lover snuck downstairs to have a glass of whiskey and I freaked out because I was
alone in bed.

“I was asleep. Dreaming. The dream turned scary. James had gotten about of bed,

apparently, and he was coming back. He tried to wake me up. I knocked him down and tried to choke him to death before I really woke up and realized what I was doing.”

“Have you had reactions to being woken before?”

“Twice. My dad both times, and then he learned better.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Scared more than anything. Scared the hell out of me too.”

“How do you feel about what happened last night?”

“Ashamed of myself. James is the most important person in my life and that’s the second time I’ve hurt him in a week.”

Dr. Sands arched a slim eyebrow. “When was the first?”

“Last Saturday, less than two hours after inserting myself back into his life.” Her frown prompted him to fill in some of the backstory. “After the assault, I went home with my parents to recover. Southern Delaware. The last time James and I spoke prior to that, we’d had a misunderstanding, and I think part of me wanted to punish him. I ignored his attempts to communicate with me for more than four months.”

“And last Saturday you came back?”

“Yes. We talked a lot. Got a lot of things between us straight, but there was a moment where I got lost in thought. Then someone touched me and I was back in that van. I punched James in the nose. Knocked him down.”

“How did you feel afterward?”

“Embarrassed. Mostly angry.”

“At James?”

Nate snorted. “Hell no, at myself. He said he should have known better than to come up on someone who’d been through what I had. He figured out the PTSD almost right away.”

“Well, I’ve heard he’s pretty okay at his job.”

“I’ll keep that between us.”

She poked at those glasses again. “Detective—”

“Please, call me Nathan or Nate.”

“Nathan, your reactions are completely normal for someone who’s been through a trauma like yours. Taking time away to heal helped you physically, but it may not have been the best thing for you psychologically. You left the city completely, put the scene of the crime behind you, so to speak.” She went quiet a moment. “How have you been sleeping since you got back?”

“I sleep fine when I’m with James.” It was strange admitting that to anyone, especially a stranger, but part of his job was reading people. He trusted her discretion. Plus the whole doctor-patient confidentiality thing.

“Have you slept next to James every night?”

He appreciated her phrasing. “All except the first night I got back. I came in Friday, and I spent most of the night cleaning my house, instead of sleeping.”

“Did you have the same trouble sleeping at home?”

“Not always. My GP prescribed a sleep aid, but the damned things make me sleepwalk, so I don’t take them.”

“How frequently is not always?”

Nate picked at a thread on the seam of his jeans. “My parents’ house hasn’t been this clean since it was built.”

“Translation?”

“I have a hard time sleeping at night, even if I leave the lights on.”

“Were you able to nap during the day?”

“Sometimes, when my family wasn’t pestering me to play board games or watch

movies.”

Her lips quirked. “Families can be like that. Why do you think you’re better able to sleep during the day?”

He shot her a glare full of
duh
. “The attack happened at night. Even I can put that one together.”

“Just keeping us on the same page.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be talking about that?”

She peered at him over the top of her glasses. “Talking about what?”

“The attack.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because when you tell me about the assault, I want you to be completely honest with me about what happened and how you feel about it.”

Damn, she was good. “Fair enough.”

“So last night. You attacked James because he tried to wake you from a bad dream.”

“Yes.”

“Have you had bad dreams before when he’s been sleeping next to you?”

“None that I remember. James never mentioned anything.”

“Would he?”

Nate rolled his eyes. “Hell yes, he would. He’d want me to talk it out.”

“So you were fine until James got out of bed.”

“Yes.” His cheeks heated. “It sounds idiotic, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“That one person can keep the nightmares away.”

“It isn’t idiotic at all, Nathan. Maintaining personal connections is very important to recovery. Not all of my patients have someone like James in their lives, and if he helps bring you some measure of peace, then I’m doubly glad.”

“But?”

She pushed the damned glasses up. “But sometimes our support systems can become a crutch, and I will advise you against allowing that to happen.”

“I don’t want crutches, Doc. I want to walk again, on my own, without jumping at shadows.”

“Good.” Dr. Sands smiled. “I think this will work out, then. I won’t be easy on you.”

“That’s fair, since I probably won’t be the best patient.”

“I like a man who’s self-aware. Now, what kind of appointment schedule is going to work best for you? I’m very flexible.”

“I’m not sure. I’m starting back on desk duty, so I’ll be off most days by four thirty or five, but once I’m back in the field I won’t have a set schedule.”

“Okay.” She snagged a leather binder off her desk and flipped it open. “How about Mondays and Thursdays at five thirty? We’ll start there and see how it goes.”

“Twice a week?”

“Unless you think you need more.”

Nate lifted one shoulder in a loose shrug. “I guess we’ll have to see if I try to strangle my best friend again.”

“The fact that you stopped on your own says something, Nathan. You reacted, yes, but then you recognized a friend and you stopped.” She plucked a business card out of the sleeve of the binder. “And if you ever have a moment that you can’t deal with alone, call me, anytime.”

He slipped the card into his wallet. “Thank you. So are we done?”

She glanced at a clock behind her desk. “I have a few extra minutes if you have anything else you need to get off your chest.”

As much as he wanted to get her advice on James’s drinking, it wasn’t his place to say something to a colleague. He and James would deal with it on their own. “No, I’m okay.”