Come on, she chastised herself with disgust, holding on tight to the railing as she forced herself to climb the rest.
Her head poked through the attic floor first and she paused to take stock of the space.
The slope of the roof made it too small for Declan to stand upright anywhere but in the center. There was a small window at either end, but it was too overcast outside for even moonlight to come in and give the sense of the outside. The only illumination came from a single bare bulb.
That light was way more than she’d had in the school cave-in, though. So that was better...
Another deep breath and she went all the way into the attic, trying to ignore the tightness that seemed to wrap around her rib cage, trying to ignore the sound of her heart pounding hard and fast in her ears. Trying harder not to think about being knees-to-chest in that other confined space...
“Just hold it,” Declan said when he had the plywood in place.
Emmy dropped the towels and managed to do as she was told, listening to the rain, trying to picture herself out in it, in the open air where she could breathe...
Except that there was such a heaviness in her chest that she wasn’t sure she could.
And suddenly she was so dizzy, so light-headed.
Her hands were tingling, her palms were so damp she wasn’t sure she could keep her grip on the plywood.
And those sloped walls...they were closing in on her.
And just about the time Declan had pounded in the third nail, she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Are you okay?” he said, ceasing his hammering when she started gasping for air.
His scrutiny only made it worse.
She couldn’t talk, but she didn’t seem to need to for him to realize what was happening.
Suddenly his voice was quieter, softer, and that big hand that had been on her shoulder earlier was on her back, firm and strong, pressing in just enough to ground her as he said, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Cup your hands over your nose and mouth, purse your lips and breathe through them...”
He gave her a moment to do all that and she complied, desperate to have this end.
“Feel the floor under your feet,” he went on then. “Know there’s plenty of air, just let it come in. In and out. Slow and easy...”
His voice meant everything to her right then. Calm. Deep. Comforting. The way it had been that day long ago.
“It’s okay,” he was saying. “It’s okay... You’re okay...”
He repeated that over and over again, and Emmy mentally held on to it like a lifeline until breathing into her cupped hands did begin to stop the hyperventilation.
When Declan could tell she was breathing more normally, he said, “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Oh God, how she hated herself for letting this happen! For letting him see it!
But the same way she couldn’t have gotten out of that rubble in Afghanistan without him grabbing her and pulling her free, she couldn’t get out of that attic without him leading her to the stairs, helping her down into the hallway.
Total humiliation took over then and with what air she now had in her lungs she said, “Go! Go!” and motioned toward the attic.
“It’ll wait,” he assured, still in that soothing tone.
Emmy shook her head vehemently to let him know she just wanted him to get back to it.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Go!” she said again, wanting those blue eyes off her.
He still didn’t move for another long moment, watching her. Then he finally took her at her word and went back into the attic.
Apparently the three nails that Declan had pounded into the plywood before she’d gone to pieces had been enough to keep the board in place because the sound of more hammering came while Emmy contended with the remnants of her fright.
She bent over and braced herself with her hands on her bent knees, letting her head hang.
Little by little she shed the terror, reveling in the fact that she could breathe without difficulty again.
The cold sweats stopped and so did the racing of her heart.
When she could, she took a really deep breath, held it for a minute and then exhaled, unsure what was worse—the panic attack or the fact that Declan had witnessed it. But there was nothing she could do about it now, so she stood up straight again and returned to the bathroom connected to her bedroom.
She filled her cupped hands with cold water and splashed her face over and over. Then she took a hand towel from the cupboard under the sink and patted her face dry.
She felt drained. Exhausted. And she just wanted to hide so she wouldn’t have to face Declan.
But even if she locked herself in her bedroom now, she couldn’t stay there past the morning. She couldn’t hide forever. Might as well get the conversation over with now.
She dropped the towel to the counter and looked at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was mussed, so she ran a brush through it—mostly in an attempt to give her a feeling of control.
Then, knowing she was going to have to answer for herself, she went back out into the hall.
The door that hid the attic stairs was still open, and although the pounding had stopped, she could hear Declan moving around up there.
Rather than just waiting for him in the hallway, she opted to go downstairs.
If it hadn’t been raining, she would have gone outside, into the open air. But since it was storming, she went through the kitchen to the mudroom in the back and opened that door instead, standing at the screen to be as close to the outdoors as she could get.
That was where she was when she heard Declan coming downstairs.
“Emmy?” he called quietly.
“Mudroom,” she answered without much force.
A few more minutes lapsed before Declan joined her. He leaned a shoulder against the door frame, looking at her profile while she steadfastly stared out the door, only seeing him peripherally.
“Just a splash of whiskey,” he said, holding out a small glass to her. “I thought maybe you could use it.”
Looking at the glass rather than at him, Emmy accepted the drink and took a sip. “Thanks,” she said, watching the rain again.
“I was thinking about that little boy at the school in Kandahar,” Declan mused then, out of the blue. “The one who had a crush on you. I was thinking about how he kept trying to get you all to himself. How he took your hand that one day and pulled you into that tiny little closet with him and wouldn’t come out until his teacher made him.”
Emmy recalled the four-year-old but only raised her chin a notch to acknowledge Declan’s words.
“Being in that tiny little closet didn’t bother you at all. But that was before the explosion...”
So that was his lead-in.
Emmy didn’t respond to it. She merely went on watching the rain.
“I’ve seen PTSD, Emmy.”
“A lot of people don’t like small spaces,” she rationalized. “That doesn’t mean they have PTSD.”
“Okay,” he said as if he accepted that. “I know you had your sister thinking you’re okay—when you wouldn’t see me before you left Afghanistan, I had Topher ask Mandy how you were doing. Word always came back that you were good, so I’m betting she never saw what I just did.”
“I had an experience that changed a few things for me, is all,” Emmy said. “Other people have been through worse. Kids even.”
“So...what? You don’t think you earned PTSD?”
“I don’t have PTSD,” she said more firmly.
“Well, you don’t seem to have lost interest in things, and you also don’t seem withdrawn or detached—not with your mom, not with the kids. As far as I can tell, you sleep all right...don’t you?”
“I sleep
great.”
“You don’t have any problems concentrating,” he went on. “You aren’t jumpy or jittery—if you’re not in an attic...or other small spaces?” The end of that was probing.
Emmy ignored it and challenged, “Let me guess—those are the signs and symptoms of PTSD and you think you’re an expert on it?”
“No, not an expert,” he said patiently. “But I told you I’ve been evaluated for it myself—more than once. Maybe I couldn’t write a book on it, but I could write a pamphlet.”
She tried to muster up a smile at his joke because it was a pretty good one.
“How about nightmares? Are you having those?” he asked.
“For a while I did but not anymore,” she answered honestly.
“Anything else—besides the small-spaces thing?”
“I wasn’t sure what it might be like to see you again at the wedding,” she admitted. “Hearing your voice at the hospital—I could hear it when you first came and wanted to visit afterward, even though you didn’t know it—hearing your voice again then was the first time I freaked out so I wasn’t sure if seeing you, hearing your voice at the wedding, might be a reminder. But I did okay through that. And since then I’ve made a few adjustments—”
“Okay... And what about counseling—you asked me if I’d done that. Have you?”
“I’ve talked to my friend Carla. I don’t need to talk to anybody else.”
From the corner of her eye she saw him nod before he said, “Does any of your family have any idea?”
She shook her head.
For a moment neither of them said anything and Emmy had the sense she was being evaluated. She braced for his conclusion and for the argument she was ready to mount to defend herself for not having sought out therapy or other avenues of treatment.
But then he said, “Well, I’ve known guys who can’t get through half a day without problems. Some who can’t function, who are wiped out by emotional and mental stuff. Just having an occasional event...that would be a huge win for them. I still think you can call what’s going on with you PTSD, but it isn’t as debilitating as a lot I’ve seen. Not by a long shot. So it doesn’t seem like you’re doing too bad with it.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected. It wasn’t even what she got from Carla—who fretted about the fact that she had any lingering effects at all.
And Carla hadn’t seen what Declan just had.
It was strange, though, because listening to what he had to say—knowing he knew about the real thing—and having him take what he’d just witnessed in stride, was a relief of sorts.
And it provided a kind of support she hadn’t found even with her friend because it confirmed what she thought about herself.
Yes, she hated what had happened to her, hated that it had changed her at all, hated that she had these fears now and could be thrown into a panic attack. But she honestly didn’t feel as if she had any life-changing emotional issues from it—she didn’t find any less joy in life or in her family or the kids or even in the happy occasions her clients invited her into to photograph.
Yes, at first she’d been overwhelmed by what had happened and what had followed it. But time had taken care of some of that, and she’d done a lot of reading about anxiety, a lot of research. She’d put everything she’d learned into practice. She hadn’t buried any of her feelings—despite the fact that she’d concealed some of them from her family. She’d talked and talked and talked to Carla. And she’d gotten better.
She just wasn’t completely home free yet.
But she had hope that in time the rest of the lingering effects would resolve, too. And here was someone who seemed on that same page.
It was also freeing that Declan knew now what was going on and he wasn’t alarmed. He was acknowledging that she hadn’t come out of the explosion unscathed and unaffected, but he wasn’t making anything a bigger deal than it was.
The muscles in her shoulders unbunched.
She took another small sip of the whiskey to help things along.
“But that couldn’t have been fun for you upstairs,” Declan said then.
It would have been silly to deny that, but he went on before she had the chance to say anything.
“All you had to do was tell me you didn’t want to get up into that attic, you know?”
“I was hoping I could just push through it.”
“Yeah, but if you had told me ahead of time, we could have taken it a little easier getting you up there, and maybe then you could have pushed through and conquered it. One of the things I’ve seen that really works is to take it a step at a time when something potentially triggering comes up. Kind of inch into it.”
When she thought about it, that was sort of what she’d done with him at the wedding. She’d kept a great distance from him at first, only furtively looking at him from across the expanse. Then she’d looked a little more directly at him. She’d moved in slightly. She’d maneuvered herself into a position of being able to eavesdrop on him just so she could test what the sound of his voice did to her.
Passing each trial without incident had given her the courage to take things a little further until she’d felt as if she really could see him, talk to him and not have the reaction she’d had initially.
Still, what he was suggesting—that she could have opened up to him even before the panic attack—was something she’d done only with Carla. Carla, who she trusted, who she could confide in. But this was Declan Madison—someone she’d learned to keep at arm’s length. Not someone to trust or confide in.
“So I should have told you?” Emmy said skeptically.
“Yeah, you could have. There’s no judgment here,” he said. “I was there, you know? I know where you were, I know how bad it was for you—hell, I was scared silly I wasn’t going to get to you in time. Or that you’d be trapped under something I wouldn’t be able to move. Or that in the middle of getting you out everything would cave in... I get that it was a thousand times worse for you and it makes perfect sense to me that you came away from that with some aftereffects.”
She hadn’t thought of that experience in terms of having shared it with someone, but she guessed that she had. And it helped to realize that, too.
“I understand that you don’t want to make it into something more than it is,” he went on. “But sometimes you make a problem worse by not just airing it out. So if something else pushes a button for you, let me know and we’ll work through it.”
The orchard came to mind.
But still she was hesitant to confide in him of all people. It was one thing to accept his participation with the kids and the farm—he’d been like a brother to Topher, he was Trinity’s godfather and he actually knew how to farm. She had no problem admitting that he was a huge help and that he had every right to be there.
But when it came to her personally? That was a different story.
And yet as it sank in that he—unlike anyone else—understood what was going on with her and viewed it the way she did, she began to wonder if he might be the one person other than Carla who she could trust with this.
Maybe.
What if she kept it very clear in her head that trusting him with this didn’t change anything between them on any other level? What if she kept it very clear in her head that there was nothing romantic in any of this? That it was like seeing a doctor for a wart—no relationship existed beyond that. When she put it in those terms, it didn’t seem impossible.
And it might even be beneficial. Especially with the work on the orchard looming.
“Okay,” she said then, a belated agreement to his suggestion.
“So is there something else you can give me a heads-up about before we get into another sticky situation?”
“The orchard,” she confessed in a voice that was almost inaudible because she still so, so hated admitting it.
> “What about the orchard?”
“I’m not sure I can go in there under those broken branches. Every time I even look at them I think about them falling on me...”
From the corner of her eye she saw him nod. “Okay. I could probably take care of it myself, but when we get to that, how about we try to get you in there? See if we can’t work you through it? If not...you can leave it to me.”
So no pressure. There was also relief in knowing that if she couldn’t do it, there was another option. That he could and would. That the burden and responsibility wasn’t solely and completely hers.
Just knowing that gave her a bit more courage. “Okay,” she agreed.
“Is there anything else?”
“No,” she said honestly.
Silence fell then and there was only the sound of the rain as the whiskey helped Emmy calm down until she didn’t even care that Declan was studying her from the side. In fact, she was beginning to completely unwind.
“I’m a little curious about some other things,” he said then.
“Like what?” she asked, relaxed enough not to be daunted by whatever he wanted to know.
“When you wouldn’t let me visit you right after the bombing... Every time Mandy delivered the message that you weren’t up for it, she still swore to me that you were doing well, that the concussion was mild, none of the cuts were deep. She said she didn’t know why you weren’t up for it, but you swore you weren’t. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d done something wrong... But it was that the sound of my voice gave you flashbacks?”
“You didn’t do anything except get me out of that rubble, and I was grateful for that,” she said as confirmation. “But yeah, I couldn’t stand to even hear your voice,” she reiterated quietly. “It didn’t make any sense but the sound of it... I heard you ask where I was that first time you came to the hospital, and then I looked out and saw you and... I knew it should have been all good. The sight and sound of the person who had saved me? How could it be a bad thing? But something about you just shot me back into that hole in the rubble—”
“Flashbacks,” he repeated as if the light was dawning for him.
“I didn’t mean to be rude, but—”
The Marine's Family Mission Page 10
