CHAPTER 1:
An Ex-Soldier and an Aspiring Engineer Walk into a Psychiatrist's Office…
Hal looked over at the man who was sitting next to him, trying not to look too obvious as he held tighter to his bag. The receptionist called out for the 12:30 appointment with Dr. Hunter. Hal stood up, but heard a shuffle of movement next to him as he did, and he looked over at the man who was also now standing up. Weird, but even weirder when they both walked over to the door at the same time.
"Um, I think there's been a mistake…" Hal muttered, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose and feeling his cheeks get warm.
"Obviously." The man said, his voice a low growl. Hal pushed his hair behind his ear and walked to the receptionist's desk.
"Hey, um, we were accidentally put down for the same appointment, and I was wondering what was going on." The receptionist was a young Asian woman whose nametag told them that her name was Mei Ling.
"Alright," she muttered, "let me see…" She picked up the phone next to her and punched in a number expertly. As Hal and the brown-haired man stood there in awkward silence, the woman chatted on the phone with someone. She hung it up after a few minutes and looked at the two men.
"Well?" the stranger asked.
"Dr. Hunter is on vacation. You both must have been marked down by mistake. I can reschedule you at different times for next week though." Hal nodded and sighed as he signed some forms for Mei Ling.
Hal ran his fingers through his thick black hair and pulled his keys out of his pocket, getting into his old 60s style car that used to belong to his mom. She left it for him when she had divorced his father, which was only kind of a good thing, seeing as his dad was paralyzed from the waist down. Every time he got in the car, he always smelled the old leather seats and the ancient car freshener that should have faded out by now. Still, after all this time it kept going on. Hal supposed they had that in common.
It was kind of sad that he related to an air freshener.
Still, he pulled out of the hospital parking lot, wondering if his girlfriend was off work yet.
When he got home, there she was, blonde and beautiful and sitting on the couch with their dog.
"Hey Ver," he muttered as he sat down next to her and scratched the dog's tummy.
"Hi Hal. You're back early. Hunter decide you're cured?"
"Yeah, I wish." He replied. Their dog was a scruffy, almost wolfish thing. They'd found him wandering the streets of New York, and it had been Vera's idea to take him in. Hal agreed, partially because the dog had won him over as well, and partially because Vera absolutely loved dogs. They'd been living together for about a year now, but dating since they met in college. She was working on her doctorate to be a vet, and he was working on becoming an engineer. They had met completely by accident when he accidentally ended up on the wrong side of campus and she had shown him around. Vera was stubborn, but loyal and kindhearted as well. Hal had fallen for her almost instantly, but she was kind of clueless in the way of love. Still, here they were a few years later. Hal had since given up on the whole engineer thing when everything fell apart last year. Still, he had majored in the STEM field, and knew enough to get a job as a science teacher at a local middle school. It was a living, but Vera brought in most of their livings. Not that Hal had a problem with that. She had a way with animals that was almost like magic, and he knew that she loved what she did. After a dinner of Hal's "world famous microwave popcorn" while watching Ghostbusters, they crawled into bed and went to sleep.
David lived alone. His apartment was dingy and needed to be cleaned (as his best friend Meryl reminded him almost constantly), but hell, it was better than living in a box. His dinner most nights was nonexistent, but he couldn't bring himself to give much of a damn. It wasn't like he couldn't afford it, having an army pension and all, but his current career was nothing worth bragging about. He was barely hanging on to his job as a waiter at a swanky restaurant, but even that didn't pay as much as some people thought. Still, he had a roof over his head, and that was something Meryl always reminded him to be grateful for. When he got back from the hospital, he shuffled in from the rain and threw his coat down on the floor. He didn't care that it was wet; winter in New York was on its way, and he could easily tell by the harsh storms and the wind that whipped at you like razor wire when you went outside. David kicked his mud-caked boots off and flopped down on the couch. A half-finished beer sat over on the coffee table, and David reached over to take a drink. It was warm, and it burned when it went down.
"Hey Mer, Dave's back." David's other roommate Jack announced from the kitchen. It took three of them to pay the rent. Meryl worked odd jobs, sometimes as a waitress or a mechanic, other days she was a stripper. Jack was the building's matenince man, but not a bad cook. Three sometimes felt like a crowd, but they were all each other had. Jack's fiancée had ditched him for a much older man who had turned out to be Meryl's dad. David, however, hadn't talked to anyone in his family in years. He had never met his mom, and his dad had raised him along with his brother James. James was kind of an asshole, so David had pretty much just up and left to join the military as soon as he turned 18 and got his degree. That was where he met the two people who had become like a brother and sister to him, the people who saved him.
The nightmares started after they got back.
They had all decided on renting a place together, and David's first night back had been a sleepless one. Every bump in the night from the heater turning on or the damn building settling was like a fucking gunshot in his mind. After that were the night terrors and the hallucinations…
The therapist was Jack's idea.