Before There Was You

by Denise A. Agnew

  MacPherson’s sheer masculine presence sent those two sensations through her again. Avoidance and attraction. No, no, no. She couldn’t afford an entanglement. It would never work in this environment, and she couldn’t date or act on attraction when she didn’t have her act together.

  His eyes were cool and still watchful as he released her hand and turned back to his seat. It was almost as if he waited for something, and that made her even more nervous than she’d been earlier when he’d walked in the door. She sensed danger around him, and that uncertainty meant she had to stay away from him. She shifted on her chair as the hard plastic seemed to dig into her muscles.

  They went silent, waiting for the others. Soon they straggled in, all on time. Lana watched them one by one. A tall man in his twenties with dark long hair, a limp, and a cane walked into the room. A short man with a round face under a mustache and beard and a few extra pounds entered, wearing a rather large backpack over one shoulder. He sat next to Addy.

  A woman wandered in who appeared around fifty years old, her salt-and-pepper hair in a bun, her face coldly beautiful. She was tall, thin, and wore a stylish maxi dress with a rainbow of colors. Last but not least, a tall, good-looking blond man walked in the door with a big smile. He wore a shirt, tie, and khakis and sat next to Lana. Lana was flanked on the other side by the man with the limp. Addy began the session by describing the parameters of the group. Each of them would introduce themselves. Because this was a group for PTSD sufferers, if they wished, they could reveal how the PTSD had occurred.

  “I’m Magnus George,” the roundish, bearded man said as he shoved his backpack a little farther under his chair. “I’m thirty-two and I’m a computer software engineer for Data Technicians. I had PTSD diagnosed just last month. I found out when I…”

  When he trailed off and went silent, it seemed as if the entire room held its breath. Lana dared look over at him.

  “Go ahead, Magnus,” Addy said, her face full of encouragement. “You’re among friends. But if you don’t want to tell us, that’s okay too.”

  Magnus had a pencil-thin mustache, and he ran his index finger over it. “My father beat me when I was a kid. He broke my right leg and collapsed my right lung. Lots of other things happened when I was a kid too.” He shrugged. “My psychologist said I haven’t dealt with what happened.” He shrugged yet again. “But I think maybe he’s nuts.”

  “All right. We’ll work on that. Welcome to the group, Magnus.” Addy nodded.

  Magnus brushed his finger over that mustache again. “Thank you.”

  Addy scribbled a couple of notes and gestured to the man with a limp. “Elliot?”

  Elliot gave a genuine smile, his expression gentle and untroubled. “Hi, everyone. I’m Elliot Trainor. I lost a leg two years ago when my wife and I were driving my daughter to a dental appointment. A car hit us head on. My wife…” He swallowed hard. “My wife and daughter were killed. I’ve been in and out of rehab for my leg. My physical therapist and I talked, and he thought I had PTSD. I went to a psychiatrist and he diagnosed it.” He threw up his hands and smiled. “So here I am.”

  “Thank you, Elliot. Richard, what about you?” Addy asked.

  The blond man smiled and leaned forward, his forearms propped on his thighs. “I’m Richard Carter. You probably all remember the tsunami in Japan in 2011. I’m a filmmaker and I was doing a documentary on Japanese martial arts. We were in Japan when the tsunami came through. The only reason I’m even standing here today is that my cameraman realized what was happening and got the crew to higher ground. I participated in group therapy for PTSD right after the disaster, but it didn’t work. I’m trying again.”

  Addy’s head bobbed in a nod again as she scribbled. “I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work for you. Every group isn’t successful with everyone. Roxanne?”

  The beautiful, regal older woman nodded. “I’m Roxanne Bucks. My story is pretty shameful. I killed a woman the first time I drank too much and chose to drive a car. I’d never gotten a parking ticket or a speeding ticket in my life. I was charged with involuntary manslaughter and served five years in prison. I’ve been trying to get my life together ever since. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD.”

  Roxanne’s cool tone as she told her story made Lana wonder if the woman truly regretted her actions.

  “Thank you, Roxanne. Lana, please go next,” Addy said.

  Lana took a deep breath, her mind awash in the realization that everyone here suffered in one way or the other. She felt inadequate to the task and almost unable to speak.

  Lana forced words. She cleared her dry throat and reached down to take a sip of water from her water bottle. Her face heated. She held the bottle between both hands like a lifeline. “I’m Lana Burns. I was kidnapped by bandits who attacked my tour bus in Costa Rica four months ago. They took me and left everyone else. I was a prisoner for two weeks at their compound.”

  When she spoke, a hush seemed to fall over the room. She didn’t look anyone in the eye.

  “You’re the woman who was rescued by Navy SEALs,” Aaron MacPherson said.

  Lana’s attention jerked to him, her gaze once more ensnared with his. He didn’t look away, and she saw a flash of understanding and maybe sympathy cross his expression.

  “Yes,” Lana said.

  Addy broke in. “Thank you, Lana. Aaron, tell us your story.”

  Aaron kept his posture, including the crossed arms. Lana half expected him to refuse to engage.

  “I’m Aaron MacPherson.” His expression was closed. “I’m a marine…retired after twenty years. I spent time in Iraq, but mostly in Afghanistan off and on over ten years. I’ve been ordered by the court to work on my issues.”

  He stopped right there, and Lana almost held her breath waiting for more information. He didn’t elaborate. Fear tickled the back of her neck, and curiosity made her wish he would explain what court had to do with his situation. Had he robbed a bank? No, that didn’t make sense. He’d be in jail right now.

  “Wait a minute, I didn’t know there would be violent people in this group,” Magnus said, his round face filled with indignation.

  Everyone stared at Aaron as if he’d bust out a machine gun and kill them all. Lana felt the tension increase, everyone stiffening with apprehension. She drew in a deep breath as paranoia seemed to fill the room.

  “I’m not violent,” Aaron said quietly, his face a mask of cool and collected.

  “But marines kill people,” Magnus said in a deadpan voice.

  Lana saw Aaron’s eyes go glacier cold. “Marines also save people’s lives.”

  Addy held up one hand. “All right now. Let’s not start our group with confrontational statements or assumptions. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I want to give the parameters for how we’ll engage each other in this group.”

  Aaron said, “Good idea.”

  Addy threw him a solid look that offered no condemnation. “Here are the rules. Everyone here will respect each other. No attacking. No name calling. Each person will take turns talking about how they feel today. What they want to accomplish by coming here. No one interrupts when an individual is speaking. I’ll chime in only when I feel it’s needed. After each person expresses themselves, other members of the group can ask questions or make comments.”

  Lana wondered how that could work with people like Magnus and Aaron in the group.

  “Let’s begin. Elliot, you start,” Addy said.

  Elliot cleared his throat. “This is hard.” He leaned forward in his chair and his ponytail fell over his shoulder. Dark circles marred the underside of his eyes. When everyone stayed silent, he said, “I have guilt every day about my wife and daughter. We were married ten years before we could have a child. Sandra was born when my wife was thirty-five. We were thrilled. I can’t tell you how much she…how much our child meant to us. Sandra was five years old when we had the car wreck. Obviously I’d like to accomplish…healing. It’s been a while and I’d love to heal.”


  He stopped, and Lana could see he had no intention of continuing.

  “All right.” Addy scribbled on her notepad. “Does anyone have a comment for Elliot?”

  “Why did you have the wreck?” Lana asked, surprising herself with the question.

  Elliot’s gaze snapped to Lana. “My wife and I had started to have problems. Arguments over money. She wanted me to move into a management position in civil service. I wanted to stay in the job I had. I was distracted and…” His throat worked. “A garbage truck ran a stop light, and I didn’t see it in time. I tried to stop. The truck hit on the passenger side.”

  A single tear dripped down his face, and Lana felt the sympathy rising inside her. Her eyes moistened, but she held back. No way would she start blubbering.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Richard Carter said.

  Everyone else remained silent.

  Addy wrote on her pad again. “What compelled you to get help for the PTSD? Did you realize you had PTSD before it was diagnosed?”

  Elliot put his head in his hands and stared at the floor. When he looked up, his eyes were clear but tension lined his mouth. “No. Like I said earlier, it was my physical therapist that figured it out. I’m grieving, obviously.”

  “Beyond your grief, what happened to make him think you had PTSD?” Richard asked.

  Elliot shook his head. “Too much stuff. I had a nightmare every night that kept me from sleeping. I dreamed about the wreck over and over. But in the dream, my wife and daughter got out of the car. They weren’t even hurt. They escaped and I helped them. I’d wake up thinking they must really be alive. A couple of times I actually got out of bed and looked around thinking they were in the house. I’d realize they were dead, and it would crush me again.”

  Quiet as hushed as a funeral viewing descended on the room. Lana half expected to hear sobbing in the background. Instead her throat tightened as she acknowledged his awful pain. What could she say to him that could take away his grief? Nothing. Nothing at all, and it twisted a tiny piece of her into a painful knot. Elliot brushed away tears before they poured down his face.

  On instinct Lana scanned the group and noticed their reactions to Elliot’s story. Magnus sat to her right, and his short, pudgy legs bounced in a nervous movement. Richard sat to her left, and he didn’t move. He was a statue. When she glanced at him, his face showed a warmth and understanding. Roxanne, though, had taken the statue look to a new high. Her frosted beauty included a cool façade. She didn’t smile. Aaron might have been Roxanne’s son, a man with no feelings. His eyes were cool, his face granite. How did someone who’d been in battle do that? How did he keep his composure in the face of such punishing grief?

  “Thank you, Elliot.” Addy nodded his direction. “Who wants to go next?”

  Magnus held up his hand.

  “Go ahead,” Addy said.

  Magnus twiddled his thumbs. “As I said before, my father was a creep. He was the most disgusting human being I’ve ever met.”

  He went quiet. Everyone waited.

  Addy finally asked, “What did your father do exactly?”

  “Molested me.”

  “I thought you said he broke your leg and beat you?” Elliot asked.

  Magnus’s face turned pugnacious, and for a moment he looked like a bulldog. Stumpy. Stubborn. “My real father died when I was a baby. He was a drunk and fell down some steps. Mom married my stepfather two months after my real dad died. Anyway, stepdad…we think he molested me from the time I was a toddler. He was the one who broke my leg and beat me.”

  “Oh, God,” Lana whispered, unable to keep the horror out of her voice.

  Magnus threw her a look, one that said she’d gone against the rules. She’d talked out of turn. “Pretty nasty. My mother caught him and made him stop, but she didn’t kick him out of the house. When I was eleven, I got in an argument with him, and he shoved me down the stairs where my father had died years before. I broke my leg and punctured my lung. My stepdad left that day and…he was a trucker and he crashed his truck ten miles down the highway. Cops said he fell asleep at the wheel, but I think he committed suicide.”

  Lana didn’t feel the same pain for Magnus that she did for Elliot, but she didn’t know why. Maybe it was his attitude. Holy hell. Talk about a life full of baggage.

  Addy didn’t miss a beat. “All right. When did you realized you had PTSD?”

  “I read a book on it and realized I had most of the symptoms a person could have. Everything like a laundry list. I went to a psychologist a month ago and he confirmed it.”

  Addy nodded. “Does anyone have comments?”

  No one said a word, no one even shook their head. Lana glanced at Magnus. He looked peeved.

  “All right then.” Addy didn’t sound the least concerned that no one wished to ask Magnus a question. “Who is next?”

  Richard held up his hand. “I’ll go.” He drew in a deep breath, loud enough everyone would hear. “My PTSD has taken a while to figure out. I didn’t lose anyone when the tsunami came through. As I said earlier, I was with a group making a documentary about Japan. It’s a huge subject, but my sister…my adopted sister was from Japan, and I wanted to see her old country and learn what I could about it through film. We were on the last day of our trip filming when the earthquake hit. I’d been in earthquakes in California, but nothing like that one, of course. It lasted forever. We were standing on this hill, and for a moment I wondered if it was going to crumble, and we’d slide all the way down.”

  Magnus threw out a question. “Why would it crumble?”

  Lana looked at Magnus. “Liquefaction.”

  Magnus glared at her. “Liquid what?”

  “She’s right,” Aaron said. “It’s when the ground turns to a sort of mush during an earthquake. They saw a lot of it in the ’64 earthquake in Alaska.”

  Lana smiled at Aaron, appreciating the support.

  “Please go on, Richard,” Addy said.

  Richard glanced at all the people in the circle, his throat working as he swallowed hard. “Anyway, we didn’t slide down the hill. We went down to help people, but that’s when the cameraman said we were crazy and had to get to higher ground. He mentioned tsunami. When we saw the water draw back, we were already heading back up the hill. Once we were up there, the chaos that came afterward was horrible.” Richard leaned forward and buried his hands in his hair a moment. His voice wobbled and turned harsh. “We saw bodies in the water, rolling over and over. Cars floating by rapidly, ships ramming into buildings. They say the damned wave was at least a hundred and thirty-three feet in some places. There’s no escaping a bitch like that. The water went as far as six miles inland. It was the end of the world.”

  Richard’s face went from normal to stricken in a heartbeat, as if the memory seared him.

  Addy filled a page on her notepad. “It’s all right, Richard. We’re taking this one piece at a time. Only say what you’re comfortable saying today.”

  When Richard nodded and didn’t say anymore, Lana asked, “Did you recognize the PTSD right away in yourself?”

  Richard shook his head, and he twisted a gold band on his wedding ring finger. “No. It was my wife. She realized that since the tsunami I was taking riskier and riskier assignments into places like Iraq, Afghanistan, the Congo. I was jumping anywhere and everywhere looking for the next dangerous story. She told me to figure this out or she’d divorce me.”

  Magnus snorted. “Not supportive.”

  Lana tried to hold back a glare at Magnus but failed.

  Addy said, “We can’t judge Richard’s wife. We’re here to help Richard in his journey through this. We need to be supportive of him.”

  Something new struck Lana. “You said your adopted sister was from Japan?”

  Richard pinned Lana with a hangdog look. “They adopted Akiko when I was three because they thought they couldn’t have any more children after I was born. Anyway, she was jealous of me at first. We finally became good friends. She was
hit by a car one day when I was ten. My parents were never the same after that.”

  Lana swallowed around a lump forming in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”

  Richard looked at the floor, but didn’t say another word.

  Addy scribbled, as she always seemed to be doing, and then she looked at everyone in the room. “Most of you have heard that those who’ve suffered multiple traumas in their lives are more susceptible to PTSD later. How many of you have more than one trauma in your life that occurred before this last event that sent you into therapy?”

  Everyone but Roxanne and Elliot raised their hands.

  Addy said, “Well, that proves that theory. Let’s move on. Who wants to talk next?”

  Lana held up her hand. She wanted this over with. Her stomach did a toss and turn. “I’ll go. Well…um…I’m not sure where to start. I did have a trauma a few years ago. Back when I was twenty-eight my husband drove his car into an electric pole going a hundred miles per hour. But it was only four months ago that I…as I mentioned before, I was kidnapped while on a tour bus in Costa Rica. I went with a friend. I’d saved up for a long time, and I was looking forward to it.” She couldn’t say it, and she glanced at the floor. She worked her throat, but the words wouldn’t escape. “I…”

  “It’s all right,” Addy said. “Take it slow.”

  Mortified in a way she hadn’t felt in years, she tried to find her footing. Her brain wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t form the words she needed. Her gaze caught Aaron’s, and for a moment she saw understanding in his eyes, as if the ice in his eyes had melted. Wildly, she thought she saw encouragement there too. How crazy was that?

  She continued. “Our tour bus went into an area that was known for extremist group activity. None of us on the tour knew that. We’d only been on the trip two days.” She shook her head, jumbled memories of the trip competing in her memory. “Anyway, we found out later the bus driver was in on the kidnapping. He stopped the bus in a remote area, and this group of fifteen men with semi-automatics charged the bus.” Lana closed her eyes, remembering the other women on the bus screaming. She’d never been a screamer, so she’d simply frozen in her seat, unable to do a damned thing about what happened next. “This guy who turned out to be the leader went through the bus and grabbed me. I tried to resist and my friend Jillie tried to stop him, but he just knocked her unconscious.” A tremor ran through Lana’s body. When she opened her eyes, she felt everyone’s attention on her. Only the air conditioning clinking on made a sound in the room. She sought out Aaron again. Maybe she’d imagined the understanding in his gaze. He’d gone back to ice man. “They dragged me away. We marched a day to a camp occupied by the extremists. I was in captivity in this vermin-infested hut for two weeks before the SEALs got me back.”