Tapped (Totaled Book 2) (9 page)

            It was like taking a bullet. I’m not sure she even knew what she was saying before it was out. She thought of me as a single girl now, right there with her. But my heart wasn’t single. Not even close.

            “I’m sorry,” she offered once she realized how my mood changed with her comment. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

            “It’s okay. It just sucks. This all blows. I’m sorry that I asked you to get me the phone earlier. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I was being selfish and I’ve already asked enough of you.” I moved to wash the paint off of my hands at the sink, needing to busy myself and hide my threatening tears.

            “Bree, that’s not it at all, and you know it. You know I would do anything for you,” she defended, walking over to stand next to me. “Talk to me. Tell me why you want it. Try to step out of your own head for a minute and look in on this whole situation. Do you really think it’s a good idea to contact him?” she challenged. “What if it were me in your shoes? If the circumstances were reversed, what would you have said to me?”

            Her confrontational stare made me crack. I couldn’t fight the emotion any longer.

            “I don’t know!” I shrieked. “I just know that what’s in my head and what’s in my heart right now don’t match. I want to get through to him. I
need
him to know I’m okay. I
need
to know that he’s okay.” The salt in my tears stung my cut as they rolled down my cheeks, but it paled in comparison to the pain in my chest. “And you’re my person. You’re my
only
person! The Gayle to my Oprah. You’re who I would ask to help me. You’re who I
did
ask to help me and I’m so thankful that you came for me that night. I just don’t know what else to do. He’s all I can think about.” I tried to catch my breath and calm myself, but it was no use. My body’s normal threshold for keeping it all together was shot to hell and I was sick and tired of fighting it all the time.

            Sue walked away to retrieve something from her purse. I caught her in my peripheral tear-blurred vision, coming back over with a plastic package in her hand. She timidly laid it down onto the counter in my line of sight. It was a phone. A red disposable phone.

            “There are five hundred minutes loaded on it and that card tells you what to do to load more,” she explained softly. “I trust you. I don’t like this
at all
, but I trust you. And I will
always
be your person. I’ll always do whatever you need me to do whenever you need me to do it. Especially if you say ‘jellyfish.’ But I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to pretend to support horrible decisions. I won’t lie to you and tell you what you want to hear. I believe that this is a mistake. But if it’s what you feel like you have to do, I’m here.”

            I hugged her tightly, making her pull back slightly when I loudly snorted my snot back up into my nose. “Thank you,” I whispered. It was all I could say.

            “Okay,” she said gruffly, pulling back from the hug. “Let’s get your face cleaned up before the male Murphys get home. You never answered me earlier. Has your dad seen you yet?”

            “I think so. We haven’t talked face to face, but I think he came into my room early this morning before he left for the gym. I heard him creep in and just stop. I pretended to be asleep still. I think he whispered ‘Jesus,’ when he finally saw me. I’m not sure if he was cussing or praying, but either way, it wasn’t good.”

            “Aww, man. Well, let’s go see what kind of magic we can work with a little foundation and concealer to make you somewhat presentable for dinner,” she announced, determined as ever.

            I followed silently, hoping she could perform a makeup miracle.

Chapter Twelve

DREW

            It wasn’t a simple question to answer. I mean, I knew why I was there but it suddenly wasn’t so easy to say out loud to a complete stranger.

            “Relax, Drew. I just want to know what you want to achieve by coming to see me. I know a little bit about your situation from my brief conversation with Mick, but I was hoping to hear from you, in your own words, why you feel you need to speak to a professional,” he defended.

            The lump in my throat suddenly felt like it was the size of a bowling ball. Here we go.

            “I’m having nightmares. A lot. Several times a week, from what I can tell. I’ve had them for months now but recently, I had a bad one.”

            “What do you mean ‘a bad one’? What about this particular nightmare made it bad?” he clarified.

            “I was sleeping next to my girlfriend at the time and I became…violent…during the dream. I hit her,” I admitted, ashamed.

            “Do you remember what you were dreaming about?” he inquired, jotting things down in his notebook.

            “Not exactly. I don’t remember that night’s dream, but I suspect that I was fighting my father in my nightmare and ended up attacking Bree in real life.” I’d been trying desperately to remember something. Anything. For days now, I’d tormented myself trying to recall, but it just wasn’t there.

            “Bree, that’s your girlfriend?”

            “Yes, sir. Well, she was.” I missed her smile. I missed her voice. I missed everything about her. This was going to be brutal torture.

            “Have you ever struck her before?” he asked. “During and/or not during a state of sleep,” he clarified.

            I felt accused.

            “Absolutely not. I would never intentionally strike a woman. I love her,” I proclaimed proudly.

            “I see. I don’t doubt that you do. I’m simply trying to get the whole picture here.” He shut his notebook, taking his reading glasses off, and sat forward in his chair, pausing for a few moments. “I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself. Perhaps you’ll feel more comfortable opening up to me if you know me a little better. Sound good?”

            “Sure.” I was interested to hear what he had to say.

            “I’m a licensed clinical psychiatrist and I’m certified to treat a variety of mental illnesses. I’ve spent the majority of my career in social work. More recently, I’ve been working with veterans, most of which are trying to get reintegrated into civilian society but are suffering from PTSD. Are you familiar with that term at all?”

            “I think so. Post-traumatic stress disorder, right?” I’d heard the term on television before but didn’t know much about it. I pictured a soldier whose leg had been blown off by a bomb or something reliving the explosion over and over again.

            “Yes, that’s right,” he confirmed. “I’m not violating any sort of patient privacy laws since he gave me permission to talk about it with you, but that is how Mick and I met. Mick was suffering from PTSD after the death of his son in the war. I counseled him for a period of time, until he felt like it was manageable enough to only see me on an as-needed basis. I’m not quite sure what exactly has led you to having these nightmares, but Mick felt like I may be able to help. If you feel comfortable and want to continue talking to me, I’m confident we can get to the bottom of it.”

            I didn’t know much about this guy yet, but for whatever reason, I
did
feel comfortable. And Mick’s recommendation certainly didn’t hurt. I trusted Mick to do what was right for me.

            I snickered. “Well, Doc, where do we start?”

            He smiled warmly, picking up his spiral notebook and clicking a little point of lead out of the mechanical pencil. He sighed. “At the very beginning.”

            So I told him my life story. Where I was born, where I grew up,
how
I grew up. I told him about my childhood, being brought up and working as far back as I can remember in the bar our family owned. I spoke of my mother fondly and felt myself relaxing more and more when I talked about her.

            And then we got to my father.

            Dr. Greiner just let me talk, interrupting with a small question only when I started to get off track. He wanted to know everything, details I wouldn’t have otherwise thought to include, like how my father grew up and what his parents were like. He wanted to know whether or not I ever remembered seeing my parents being physically affectionate with each other and asked if I thought they loved each other despite the last years of the marriage. I didn’t know how anyone could possibly perceive what they had as love, so I answered honestly. Dr. Greiner wrote more and more on his notepad. 

            When we got to a lull in the conversation, he finally asked me the dreaded question: “How did your parents pass?” No judgment or condemnation present on his face, just a simple straight forward inquiry.

            I asked for a glass of water and got up to get it, seeing from the wall clock that it was 5:50. We’d been talking for over two hours already. It didn’t seem like that long.

            He must’ve noticed me looking at the clock and chimed in suggestively, “I know we’ve been talking for a while longer than my usual sessions, and probably a lot longer than you expected. If you feel you need to stop, I completely understand. But if you’d like to keep going, I’m fine with that too. I’d prefer we tackle this next topic a little before ending for the evening.”

            I meandered back over to the couch and sat back down, anxious just to get it all out in the open. “Sure. We can keep going.”

            “Great. So bring me to the main event.” His eyes were wider, not necessarily more interested (he wasn’t disinterested before), just more eager. Like he knew it was about to get good. It was that part in the movie just before a big action scene when you’ve anticipated that something’s about to go down.

            “The main event?” I thought his choice of words was kind of funny.

            “Well, I gather that your parents passed in some sort of tragic manner, which I suspect is what’s haunting you. So yes, the main event. Let’s get to the meat of the story. I feel a climactic moment on the horizon,” he jabbed, leaning forward in his seat.

            So I got to the meat.

            “I guess it’s time I told you about the worst, most horrific night of my life. Well…it was the worst night up until the other night when I pulverized my girlfriend to a bloody pulp in my sleep. I suppose that’s the new worst night of my life.”

            There was no point in me trying to make light of the situation. There was no easy way to tell the story or sugarcoat just how awful it all was. So I didn’t try. I told the doc everything. How I went on my run, how I returned to see both cars in the driveway and how it felt to know that something was so incredibly wrong. I recalled and reported the scene I walked in on—the food smashed on the walls, the broken TV and shattered glass coffee table, the blood everywhere. There was so much blood. Everywhere. I told him about the screams I heard, the ones that haunt me to this day. The sounds of his fists pounding into her, the way her screams started off loud and screeching and faded off into nothing as he choked her. I summoned the memory of his face when I yelled for him to GET OFF OF HER and how he grinned with pleasure at my challenge. I described how all I saw was red and how I kept hitting and kicking and hitting and punching and hitting and… 

            “Drew?” his firm, commanding voice interrupted my thoughts and I found myself standing and pacing. I didn’t even realize I’d stood up.

            “Drew, I’m sorry to have interrupted you, but I think you need to take a moment to catch your breath. I want to know what happened, but I don’t want you to get so worked up and lost in your own memory that you lose control. Not yet,” he added, causing my eyebrow to raise suspiciously.

            “I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t mean to lose it,” I apologized. My heart was racing out of my chest. My palms had grown sweaty and I felt like my skin was on fire.

            “No problem. You didn’t get out of control. It sounds like it’s quite an intense memory to relive, so I understand. I just didn’t want it to get out of hand for you or for me,” he explained. 

            I hated feeling like people were scared of me. The only place I wanted anyone to fear me was in the octagon.

            “Take a moment to collect yourself and we can continue. Can we try something?” he asked.

            I sat back down onto the couch and growled, “Try what?” I wanted to burst out of my skin. I wanted to run. I wanted to fight and feel my fists connecting with something or someone, but I fought the pandemonium in my head and listened to what he had to say.

            “I want you to sit up very straight. Try to imagine that there’s a steel rod attached to your spine and it’ll hurt like hell to bend away or against it.” I nodded and did what he described. “Good. That’s very good. Now I want you to try to fill your lungs up slowly with air, but not how you would normally breathe. When you inhale, try to fill the bottom of your lungs first. Try to make your abdomen puff out and expand with your breath, but don’t let your chest or shoulders rise at all.” I did as he asked and he added, “Now, close your eyes and continue to breathe just like that. Slow your breaths down. Slower and slower, nice and steady. Feel your lungs fill from the bottom up. Feel that diaphragm push out and feel your body relax.”

            He stopped talking and I continued breathing. For a few minutes, nothing but the sounds of our deep breathing filled the room until he softly interrupted the quiet by asking me, “Do you feel calmer?”

            I kept my eyes closed and responded, “Yes. Much.”

            “Do you think you can continue the story now, seated and relaxed, breathing just like you are now, as you tell it?” he encouraged.

            “I can try,” I offered.

            “Please continue then.”

            “I was saying that I remember seeing red. Everything was red. I’ve never felt fury or rage like I did in that moment. He was taunting me and even laughing. The son of a bitch was laughing in my face as we fought.”