by Tara Sivec
“You’ve seen firsthand what PTSD can do to someone. You know how it can break a person, make their entire personality change, and make it really fucking hard for them to remember how to wake up each day and want to take another breath. He might not have fought in a war, but he still struggles with his own form of PTSD. Everett saw things no one should have to see. He saw people he knew die right in front of him with their blood on his hands, he held parents as they cried in his arms because he couldn’t save their child, and then he dealt with the guilt of not knowing his best friend was dying, not being able to save him either.”
My head starts shaking back and forth with the reality of what he’s saying to me. I don’t want it to be true, but I know it is. I can see it written all over his face. He wouldn’t be saying something like this if it wasn’t the God’s honest truth, and I feel like an idiot. I’ve been so wrapped up in my anger that Everett would just show up here out of the blue after almost five long years, and then overwhelmed with hurt when I found out he’d been here for nine months before he came to me, that I didn’t even stop to think why. I just assumed. I never once thought about what all that time overseas would have done to him, or what he would have seen and lived through. I never looked at him and saw anything other than the old Everett. The man who, as an adult, was always strong and sure and confident. The man who wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his dreams. I didn’t look at him and see someone hurting and vulnerable. I didn’t want to think of him as someone who couldn’t handle anything, but I should have known. Jason is right. I’ve seen firsthand what PTSD can do to a person, and sometimes, it isn’t pretty.
“It also didn’t help that he learned one of his best friends had died after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and that best friend forbade anyone from telling Everett that he was sick since he wanted him to come back for the ‘right’ reasons, and not just to watch him die, and so he couldn’t get back for the funeral and he never got a chance to say good-bye. It just got to be too much for him, and it broke him,” Jason tells me softly, turning away to look out at the horses. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he was here, but I couldn’t. I wanted him to come to you, believe me. I begged him to get his shit together and go to you. I knew you of all people would have been able to get through to him, but he was lost. For a while there, I didn’t think I’d ever get him back, Cameron, and it scared the hell out of me.”
Just when I think I don’t have any tears left, they come pouring out of me so quickly that Jason’s face becomes a blur. I should never have agreed to Aiden’s demand not to track down Everett as soon as we found out he was sick. Aiden knew he didn’t have much time left, and he was adamant that he didn’t want Everett to see him that way, so weak and frail and confined to a bed. As angry as I was with Everett at the time, it killed me that he wasn’t here to say good-bye, and I can only imagine the guilt he felt about not being by Aiden’s bedside right along with me.
“I’m such a bitch,” I mutter, wrapping my arms around my waist to hold myself together. “I smacked him across the face. I screamed at him. I told him I didn’t care and I told him to go home.”
Jason chuckles under his breath and glances over at me.
“He probably deserved a little bit of that. I even warned him that you’d probably punch him in the face when he showed up here.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me against his side, rubbing his hand comfortingly up and down my arm.
“I didn’t tell you this to make you feel guilty, Cam. I just wanted you to understand that he didn’t stay away these last nine months because he was an asshole and didn’t care about you. If anything, his problem is that he cares too much, and he didn’t want you to see him like that.”
We stay like this for a few quiet minutes until I’m finally able to speak.
“How bad was it?” I whisper, resting my cheek against the side of his chest.
“Really bad. Do you remember a few months ago when I was here fixing the porch railing and Amelia’s ex-husband showed up?” he asks softly.
I nod against his chest. I’ll never forget that day. Amelia had been doing so well and had been so happy for so long, that I almost forgot she had a husband who wouldn’t get help for his PTSD and almost ruined her and their son, right along with him. He was so drunk he could barely stand up, stumbling around the camp with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, screaming for her and cursing at the top of his lungs. She’d recently filed for divorce, and the papers had been delivered to him that day. It took three men, including Jason, to get him under control and get him away from her. Amelia handled it better than I thought she would, and I had never been prouder of her for standing her ground, telling him he needed to get help, and that she didn’t want to see him or speak to him again until he did.
“Multiply that by about a thousand, and that’s what Everett was like the first couple of months after he got home,” Jason tells me.
I squeeze my eyes closed, not wanting to have that picture of Everett in my mind. Not wanting to know how badly he struggled when he came home, how hard he must have fought to get better, and how much it must have hurt him when he showed up here today and I threw it in his face and made him feel guilty.
I should have known better. All these years, all of my training working with soldiers, and I couldn’t separate from my own pain long enough even to consider that Everett might have been hurting just as badly, even if he wasn’t a solider. He must’ve seen so many horrible things when all he wanted to do was save lives. He lost people right in front of his eyes, and then he came home and had to deal with losing one of the most important people in his life. Knowing that he couldn’t do anything to help him.
“I’m a horrible person.”
Jason laughs again, pulling away and grabbing my arms, turning me to face him. He bends his knees and looks directly into my eyes.
“You’re not a horrible person. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now and it’s my fault for convincing Everett it would be a super idea to just show up here without giving you some kind of warning or explanation first. I’m not excusing him for being a complete asshole for signing up with Doctors Without Borders when he was supposed to come back here and refusing to come home even for one weekend. Don’t get all sappy on me now and let him off easy for that shit. Just give him a break for the last nine months; that’s all I’m asking.”
Jason kisses the top of my head and walks away, leaving me alone again with my thoughts…a place I really don’t want to be right now.
Chapter 16
Everett
My body jerks upright in bed with a scream dying in my throat as I pant heavily and try to get my bearings.
It was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream…
Scrubbing my palms over my face, I try to rub away the images that won’t leave my head, knowing it wasn’t just a dream. It was memories. Nightmares of my own personal hell that will never go away.
The four-year-old boy with chocolate brown eyes, who taught me how to play soccer, taking his last breath while I furiously pressed up and down on his chest after the infection in his body spread to his brain.
The pregnant mother who always brought me a small trinket when I examined her, who had the translator teach her how to say “handsome doctor,” who bled out right in front of me when I didn’t have the tools I needed to repair her torn uterus.
The self-appointed grandmother of a village I visited, who could never have children of her own and, therefore, “adopted” everyone else’s children, spending every cent she had to buy them special treats. The sound her lungs made when they filled with blood after being shot by an insurgent, and the feel of her heart against my palm, taking its final beat as I held my hands against her chest to try and stop the bleeding.
I wish I could forget their faces, all of them blurring into a hundred other faces of everyone I couldn’t save. I wish I could forget the way they looked at me, so sure that I would save them, with so much trus
t in me that I didn’t deserve.
Flinging my sweat-soaked sheet off of my body, I get out of bed and pad across the floor of my dark bedroom, knowing I’ll never be able to get back to sleep now.
I don’t even bother turning on the light in the bathroom when I enter it. The soft pinkish-purple glow of dawn from the sun just beginning to rise off in the horizon peeks through the window next to the sink and gives me enough light to see what I’m doing as I reach into the shower and turn the handle to the coldest setting. I don’t need to turn on the bright, overhead light to know what I look like in the mirror. I’ve seen it too many times since I came back home and another nightmare wreaked havoc on me. The bloodshot eyes, the ashen skin, the misery, the guilt…
Yanking my boxer briefs off, I step under the shower, hissing when the icy water hits my skin. Pressing my hands against the wall under the showerhead, I drop my head down between my shoulders, willing the cold spray that rains down over my head and drips into my eyes to freeze away my memories or wash them down the drain, but it doesn’t work. It never works.
The dream is still fresh in my mind when I finally give up an hour later. I turn the water off, grab a towel from the shelf above the toilet, and with my teeth chattering and my body aching with the tremor of shivers, I wrap the towel around my waist and make my way back into the bedroom.
It’s been a while since I had one of those dreams. They still show up randomly, usually when I’m overly stressed or upset about something. My interaction with Cameron last night was definitely stressful and upsetting.
“You’re out of milk.”
“JESUS CHRIST!” I shout, spinning around from my dresser to find Jason lounging against the door frame to my bedroom.
With an irritated huff, I secure the towel from my recent shower more tightly around my waist.
“What the hell are you doing here so early?” I complain, turning away from him to grab a pair of boxer briefs and jeans out of my dresser drawer.
“I got hungry,” he shrugs, as I glare at his reflection in the mirror above my dresser. “And I didn’t really feel like I was at the top of my game with my pep talk last night. I want a do-over.”
Jason’s “pep talk,” if you can call it that, was just him stopping by the house the previous night and calling me an asshole for an hour. I tossed and turned all night and got maybe a total of two hours sleep, and then those two hours were interrupted by a damn nightmare. I was in no mood for his pep talk then, and I’m definitely in no mood for another one now. Last night over coffee, I stupidly told him everything that happened with Cameron, hoping he’d maybe side with me and tell me I had every right to be feeling the way I am now, but that didn’t happen.
“I already know I was an asshole, I don’t need a recap,” I mutter, stepping into my boxers and sliding them up under my towel, repeating the process with my jeans before unwinding the towel from around my waist.
I felt like shit when Cameron walked away from me last night, and like a fool, I obeyed her wishes and went home, where I spent the last twelve hours getting pissed off instead of being sad about the way things went down. She has every right to be mad at me, but she didn’t even give me a chance to explain. It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park for me to gather up the courage to tell her what I did to myself when I got home. I haven’t been looking forward to her staring at me in pity or having her feel like she needs to walk on eggshells around me, but I was going to suck it up because I knew she needed an explanation. I knew she deserved an explanation as to why I didn’t come to her sooner.
But she didn’t give me a chance. And that pissed me off the more I thought about it. I know I haven’t been the best friend to her lately, and I pretty much cut her out of my life, but I’m back now and I’m trying. I’m fucking trying to push aside my hurt and my jealousy because I know I have a lot of making up to do with her. Being her friend trumps everything else right now. I need to help her heal from losing Aiden, and do whatever I can to help her save the camp. Those things have to come before my bullshit hang-ups and insecurities, and before her stubbornness and anger, and she’s just going to have to deal with it.
Yanking a T-shirt out of my drawer, I slam it closed harder than necessary.
“You’re in a bad mood. I’m thinking that going back to the camp and telling Cameron you’re not going anywhere isn’t the best idea right now,” Jason states.
“I really don’t give a shit what you think,” I tell him, tossing my shirt on top of the dresser and turning around to face him.
Jason shrugs, backing out of the doorway.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. That woman is going to chew you up and spit you out once she stops being sad.”
His boots thump against the floor as he disappears around the corner and down the stairs. I wait until I hear the front door slam closed before I let out the breath I was holding. I refuse to think about the picture he painted for me during his “pep talk,” how he went to the camp last night to fix whatever Cameron needed help with, and found her crying out in the back pasture. It was bad enough watching her cry and fall apart right in front of me, I didn’t need that image of her being all alone with her sadness, knowing someone else was there to comfort her when I’d walked away. Again.
That shit stops right now. I’m done walking away from her, whether she likes it or not.
As soon as I turn to grab my discarded T-shirt, I hear a knock at the door.
Cursing under my breath, I leave my bedroom and head downstairs, calling Jason every name I can think of. He waltzes in my house any other time, but of course he chooses now to be a fucking gentleman and make me open the door for him.
“What the fuck do you want now?” I growl when I fling open the front door, shock replacing my irritation when I see Cameron standing right in front of me.
My tongue gets stuck to the roof of my mouth, and every thought in my mind flies right out of my head as I stand here staring at her. She’s wearing a pair of tiny jean shorts that show off every inch of her gorgeous legs, and a form-fitting Camp Rylan T-shirt with a wide neck that hangs off one bare shoulder. Her hands are shoved into the back pockets of her shorts, and the position pushes her breasts out and makes my eyes want to do nothing but stare at them all day and my hands itch to feel the weight of them in my palms. The sun rising in the distance is partially blocked by her body, making the bright rays surround her like a halo.
Fucking hell. Does she ever have a bad day, or does she always roll out of bed looking like a goddamn Disney princess? A hot Disney princess that I want to pull into the house and shove up against the wall next to me.
“Can I come in?”
Her voice penetrates my lust-filled thoughts and I realize I’m still standing here in the doorway with my tongue practically hanging out of my mouth. With an irritated sigh, I push the door open wider and step out of the way to let her inside. Closing it behind her, I turn and lean against the wood, crossing my arms in front of me while I make myself remember why I was mad at her just a few minutes ago, instead of thinking about stripping her out of those damn shorts.
She pulls her hands out of her back pockets and starts wringing them together nervously in front of her, twisting that damn ring around her finger, looking down at her feet instead of at me. I should say something and break the tension floating around the room right now, but she came to me, and I need to let her do the talking. After a few minutes, she finally looks up and lets out a huff of annoyance, flapping one of her hands in my direction.
“Can you go put on a shirt or something?” she complains, still refusing to look right at me as she stares at a spot over my shoulder.
I can’t stop the smirk that tips up the corner of my mouth when the first thing she says is something I least expected. I’m not gonna lie—the fact that me without my shirt on is making Cameron uncomfortable is more than a little surprising, but a great boost to the ego. Sure, I know I’m not a bad-looking guy, and the years overseas, hefting around medical e
quipment, lifting heavy boxes of supplies when we got deliveries, and having to carrying everything I needed to work on a patient with me no matter where I went gave me a pretty damn good fit and muscular physique, but after years of having all those one-sided feelings for the woman standing in front of me who is doing everything she can to avoid looking at my shirtless torso, it makes me more than a little cocky.
Dropping my arms to my sides, I push away from the door until I’m standing right in front of her.
“What’s wrong? You look a little flushed,” I tell her, my concern laced with more than a little amusement.
She steps back away from me, crossing her arms in front of her with another huff of annoyance when she finally looks up at me. “You’re an asshole.”
“Did you come all the way out here to tell me that?”
The glare she’s giving me turns arctic and it’s almost powerful enough to throw a layer of ice around the room, making me want to go put a shirt on instead of ignoring her request.
“Yes, I drove all the way out here to remind you, just in case you forgot,” she fires back.
So much for thinking she was going to look at me with pity in her eyes.
I almost tossed my brother through the wall last night when he told me he said something to Cameron so she wouldn’t be so angry with me about staying away the last nine months. He swore he didn’t go into detail, but felt like he needed to say something so she’d know I wasn’t exactly a fully functioning member of society who just didn’t give a shit about her when I got home. He knew I wanted to be the one to tell her everything, but I couldn’t stay mad at him for not being able to keep his mouth shut when she was so angry at me and didn’t know at least some of the truth.
Standing here now, watching her irritation with my cockiness grow, I’m more than a little happy Jason was the one to say something to her first. It looks like he made it possible for me to skip right over the pity party and move on to pissing her off in more fun ways.
