div class="content" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; color: #545454; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; background-color: #a1a1a1;"I couldn't breathe through the pounding of my heart. I tried to steady it by doing what I'd been taught so many years before "Count your heartbeats," my commanding officer would tell me, gently guiding my hand to my chest. "Even if you can't feel them. Put your hand over your heart and count to four over and over until it's steady."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /But I couldn't move my hand now. It was busy clutching the rifle I had pressed against my chest. I could feel my sweating fingers slipping over the heavy, deadly machine. I knew that gun better than anyone. I'd spent endless hours pulling it apart and putting it back together. Learning the way it felt and the way it worked, so I'd never be caught off guard. But at that moment, I couldn't bear the weight of it in my hands. I wanted to throw it aside. I was afraid of what it could do. Of what it could make me style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Something's wrong," I said as I followed my commanding officer toward the sound of gunfire. Captain Russell was a broad man with dark hair and equally dark eyes. I trusted him with my life. He'd trusted me when no one else did. Believed me when no one else did. Ohio born just like I was. Rough around the edges, but warm with style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Just follow my orders, Hayes," he responded. I could tell by his voice that he wasn't as afraid as I was. When I'd spoken, the words tumbled out of my mouth in a shaky and terrified tone. He was as steady and calm as a mountain. This was just a regular mission for him. He didn't feel like it would be his last. Not like I style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"No, I don't mean—it's not fear. Something is wrong. Call it—intuition." He was the first person who'd ever told me to trust my gut. He claimed the brain had ways of noticing things that we otherwise wouldn't have the time to mull over. It was science, he said. Not magic. And it had gotten him out of more scrapes than he could style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /Right now my intuition was telling me that Death was nearby. I didn't know if it was me or him or someone else. Shots had already been fired so the feelings might be natural. But it felt like more than that. A nagging in my brain. Like a dark little creature burrowing at the base of my skull. As if eyes were tracking me as I followed my Captain through empty style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /He turned back around to face me, hearing the urgency in my voice. The rest of our team had scattered as soon as the first gun fired. He told me to stick with him, and we'd snaked through alleyways in silence as the sound of battle grew louder and more violent. Now he turned his dark eyes to mine. They were almost black usually, but with the midsummer sun shining on his face, I could see the rich brown style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"What is it?" he asked. My fingers were trembling. I'd never had a problem with that before. We'd been on other missions together. Some more dangerous than others. Sure, people didn't usually die, but it was always a risk. This mission was obviously more serious than I was accustomed to, but the situation wasn't entirely new. I'd been doing this long enough to not tremble at the sound of rifle style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"My ears are ringing," I told him, speaking the only words that I could form at that moment. My gun was rattling in my hands. I could hear it tapping against the metal on my chest as my hands shook. "It feels like—something—is bouncing around inside my skull. I can't breathe." He reached out and put a comforting hand on my style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"You're just scared, Hayes. You'll be fine. We're all going to be okay. I'll do whatever I can to make sure we get out of this, alright?" I shook my head. He wasn't getting it. The feeling was unnatural. Like the sound of a breath in a dark room when you think you're style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I'm not saying figuratively. I've been scared before. This is different. This isn't fear—this is—something more."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /Even if I could explain it in a way that made sense to him, he seemed too distracted to understand me. Of course he would blame it on fear. I was the smallest and physically weakest in our squad. The only girl in a group full of rough and burly men. It was the whole reason he'd asked me to stay with him instead of sticking to formation. I was a style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /My skin was crawling. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. There was something in the air I'd never felt before. Like an electric charge in the air right before lightning struck. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and my fingers weren't shaking from fear. They were trembling as I fought the urge to point the gun to the center of his forehead and pull the trigger. As soon as I realized what the problem was, my gun lifted and pressed against his style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /My breathing had gone ragged like I'd just run a marathon. He was armored and the bullet wouldn't kill him, but at this close of a range, it would definitely knock him out. Maybe break a few ribs. I could hurt him, and I didn't think I really wanted to. But I couldn't stop myself as my finger slipped over the trigger. I shook as I told myself not to do style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"What are you doing, Hayes?" he asked, suddenly no longer distracted. I looked toward his face, desperate for an explanation. I hadn't asked my hands to move. I was asking them to move away. They weren't style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"There's something wrong with me," I told style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /I almost pulled the trigger. And if I'd been given a few more seconds, I probably would have. But I heard footsteps pounding on the cobblestones behind style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Captain? Captain!" a voice was saying. The voice of my friend. He couldn't see what I was doing yet, and he'd never get the chance. Before I could stop myself, I spun around and pulled the style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /I watched the light leave his eyes the moment I did it. His body dropped to the stones with a sickening thud. I heard a bomb ignite a street away. The foundation beneath my feet shook, and I lost my style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Hayes, give me the gun!" Captain Russell shouted over the sound of falling debris. I couldn't do it. I'd never meant to kill Tran. He was my friend. His wife had just given birth to twin boys. I'd never wanted to kill anyone. I didn't know why I did it, but I couldn't risk doing the same thing to Russell. I had to get away before I could hurt anyone else. So I clutched the gun to my chest and took off at a run down the style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Johanna," I style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /But it wasn't Russell's voice this time. It was somewhere else. Somewhere closer. I blinked and brought myself back to the present. I was no longer on the battlefield. No longer murdering my friends. I turned to the woman seated on the chair before me. She was smartly dressed, in a comfortable (if clinical) office. It was still difficult for me to trust her. The last time I'd put my faith in someone like her, they'd been someone else style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Where are you?" she asked, knowing I was miles away even while in the same style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /I looked back down at my fingers in my lap. They were no longer trembling, but I could still feel the memory. The way the gun vibrated through my bones as it fired. The spray of blood on my face as I shot one of my closest friends in the style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I don't know," I told her. I was being honest. I recognized the memory, but couldn't name the place. She gave me a soft, if slightly condescending, smile anyway. Her office was flooded with warm yellow light, despite how cold and gray the city looked through the windows. It was always friendly and welcoming there, but I still couldn't get comfortable. There was a chemical scent in the air. Everything too clean. Carpets too hard. Metal too shiny. A doctor's office disguised as a friend's living style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I know it's going to take you some time to develop trust with me," she said, stating the obvious, but acknowledging my discomfort. "I know you still feel betrayed by what your last doctor did to you. I don't expect us to build trust overnight, but you are paying me a lot of money to sit here with you. You might as well make that worth it." I nodded slowly and picked at my fingernails. "We can talk about anything you want," she style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /I'd been back in DC for a total of one week. My sister Clara had only let me out of her sight under the strict demand that I immediately set up an appointment to see a therapist. Of course, the last time I'd seen a therapist, it turned out she was working for Hydra and feeding all of my personal and most intimate thoughts to them. But this woman worked for the Veterans Hospital and Clara, Tony, and even Sam said there was a slim chance she'd betray me. I still couldn't get myself to open up to style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I used to have dreams a lot," I finally admitted. Pushing through some last mental defense just to get the words out. I focused on my fingernails so she couldn't stare at me. I hated when they stared too long. Like they were reading something I didn't know I was showing. "About that day. When everything went wrong. I could see the little girl who died in my arms. My friends. Colonel Talbot taking a shot to the leg." I shook my head. "I still have the dreams. But something's different. I see things I don't remember seeing before. Instead of watching them die—I kill them myself…" I tapered off and she waited for me to continue. When I didn't, she took a deep style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"You're seeing yourself as responsible for the deaths of your squad?" she questioned. I nodded. "That sounds like survivor's guilt to me, Johanna. It's a normal response to an event like this. You blame yourself on a subconscious level. It's manifesting as visions and dreams." I nodded again, style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It feels so real, though," I explained. "I feel the sun, sweat, the fear."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Of course it feels real while you're experiencing it. The same way that a vivid dream feels real while you're dreaming. It's only when you wake up and remember all the unusual or extraordinary things that you realize it can't be true. But what you see in your nightmares seems plausible to you in a waking state. Maybe there's no monsters or bleeding walls. So you determined that it must be real. But they're still dreams created by your subconscious. You can't dream memories. Not really." I didn't believe style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"This is healthy, Johanna," she said after another long pause. "Dreams are our way of making sense of our waking life. Of sorting out information and feelings. Your mind is trying to make sense of what happened. You told me that you've had recurring dreams about this event before. That was your mind refusing to let it go. The dreams are changing because you're working through something new. The guilt you refuse to acknowledge in your waking state."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I know. It's just—with everything that's happened this year—sometimes I'm afraid that it might actually be real. What if I really did kill them?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"There would be a record of that, wouldn't there? I don't know how it correlates to what happened earlier this year. We've only discussed your time in the military. And only very briefly." I pinched my lips shut, my mental defenses locking back into place. "You're not ready to discuss it yet. I understand. But I am here when you're willing to talk. In the meantime, we can talk about anything you want. Tell me about your house. How are you handling the move back home?" I shrugged my shoulders. The fresher wound jolted with style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Fine, I guess," I told her. "Stark had everything taken care of. I hardly had to do anything myself. Feels almost back to normal now. I'm just not sure if I really wanted it or if I was just desperate to get away from my sister."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Do you and your sister not get along?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"We get along great. We just have different lives and goals. I didn't want to drive a wedge between her and Stark. I want to be my own person."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"And you're staring your new job today, aren't you? Are you excited about that?" I shook my head and then laughed. I turned my attention back to the window where I could see the newly rebuilt parking garage. Most of it had to be reconstructed after a bomb took out part of the roof. And destroyed my car. The rest of DC seemed calm, windy, and style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I don't think I'm ready for it, to be honest," I admitted. "I don't feel like I'm cut out for this line of work."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Why not?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It's more your thing, don't you think? I have no real training. No experience."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"No. But you understand. That's more than most people can give."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"But how can I help them get their lives back together if I don't even know how to do it for myself?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Maybe you shouldn't look at it that way," she suggested. "Look at this as a chance to help yourself as well as them. Sometimes just being near someone who understands your trauma is enough to help you move past it." That sounded uncomfortably familiar. That, I at least, understood perfectly style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I had that once. Or at least, I thought I did. It didn't turn out so well for me."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"What happened?" I'd led myself right into a trap. I took a deep breath and let it go style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"He shot me." She style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Are you ready to tell me about it yet?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"No."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"When you are…."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I should probably get going actually. I still need time to set up before everyone arrives."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Of course. And I'll see you on Thursday?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Yeah, I'll be here." She nodded and followed me back out into the waiting room. Even though our session was over prematurely, she put a comforting hand on my shoulder and offered me that kind and professionally trained style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It isn't real, Johanna," she told me. "I know it feels real, but it isn't. You can't trust your subconscious to be accurate. And if you need my help, even in the middle of the night, call me. I can't guarantee I'll always answer. But leave a message. I'm always here for you." I style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Thank you. I appreciate it."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"And I can't wait to hear more about your first day of work." I smiled awkwardly and pulled away from her. I headed out of her office without another word./div
border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I don't know," I told her. I was being honest. I recognized the memory, but couldn't name the place. She gave me a soft, if slightly condescending, smile anyway. Her office was flooded with warm yellow light, despite how cold and gray the city looked through the windows. It was always friendly and welcoming there, but I still couldn't get comfortable. There was a chemical scent in the air. Everything too clean. Carpets too hard. Metal too shiny. A doctor's office disguised as a friend's living style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I know it's going to take you some time to develop trust with me," she said, stating the obvious, but acknowledging my discomfort. "I know you still feel betrayed by what your last doctor did to you. I don't expect us to build trust overnight, but you are paying me a lot of money to sit here with you. You might as well make that worth it." I nodded slowly and picked at my fingernails. "We can talk about anything you want," she style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /I'd been back in DC for a total of one week. My sister Clara had only let me out of her sight under the strict demand that I immediately set up an appointment to see a therapist. Of course, the last time I'd seen a therapist, it turned out she was working for Hydra and feeding all of my personal and most intimate thoughts to them. But this woman worked for the Veterans Hospital and Clara, Tony, and even Sam said there was a slim chance she'd betray me. I still couldn't get myself to open up to style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I used to have dreams a lot," I finally admitted. Pushing through some last mental defense just to get the words out. I focused on my fingernails so she couldn't stare at me. I hated when they stared too long. Like they were reading something I didn't know I was showing. "About that day. When everything went wrong. I could see the little girl who died in my arms. My friends. Colonel Talbot taking a shot to the leg." I shook my head. "I still have the dreams. But something's different. I see things I don't remember seeing before. Instead of watching them die—I kill them myself…" I tapered off and she waited for me to continue. When I didn't, she took a deep style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"You're seeing yourself as responsible for the deaths of your squad?" she questioned. I nodded. "That sounds like survivor's guilt to me, Johanna. It's a normal response to an event like this. You blame yourself on a subconscious level. It's manifesting as visions and dreams." I nodded again, style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It feels so real, though," I explained. "I feel the sun, sweat, the fear."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Of course it feels real while you're experiencing it. The same way that a vivid dream feels real while you're dreaming. It's only when you wake up and remember all the unusual or extraordinary things that you realize it can't be true. But what you see in your nightmares seems plausible to you in a waking state. Maybe there's no monsters or bleeding walls. So you determined that it must be real. But they're still dreams created by your subconscious. You can't dream memories. Not really." I didn't believe style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"This is healthy, Johanna," she said after another long pause. "Dreams are our way of making sense of our waking life. Of sorting out information and feelings. Your mind is trying to make sense of what happened. You told me that you've had recurring dreams about this event before. That was your mind refusing to let it go. The dreams are changing because you're working through something new. The guilt you refuse to acknowledge in your waking state."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I know. It's just—with everything that's happened this year—sometimes I'm afraid that it might actually be real. What if I really did kill them?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"There would be a record of that, wouldn't there? I don't know how it correlates to what happened earlier this year. We've only discussed your time in the military. And only very briefly." I pinched my lips shut, my mental defenses locking back into place. "You're not ready to discuss it yet. I understand. But I am here when you're willing to talk. In the meantime, we can talk about anything you want. Tell me about your house. How are you handling the move back home?" I shrugged my shoulders. The fresher wound jolted with style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Fine, I guess," I told her. "Stark had everything taken care of. I hardly had to do anything myself. Feels almost back to normal now. I'm just not sure if I really wanted it or if I was just desperate to get away from my sister."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Do you and your sister not get along?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"We get along great. We just have different lives and goals. I didn't want to drive a wedge between her and Stark. I want to be my own person."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"And you're staring your new job today, aren't you? Are you excited about that?" I shook my head and then laughed. I turned my attention back to the window where I could see the newly rebuilt parking garage. Most of it had to be reconstructed after a bomb took out part of the roof. And destroyed my car. The rest of DC seemed calm, windy, and style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I don't think I'm ready for it, to be honest," I admitted. "I don't feel like I'm cut out for this line of work."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Why not?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It's more your thing, don't you think? I have no real training. No experience."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"No. But you understand. That's more than most people can give."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"But how can I help them get their lives back together if I don't even know how to do it for myself?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Maybe you shouldn't look at it that way," she suggested. "Look at this as a chance to help yourself as well as them. Sometimes just being near someone who understands your trauma is enough to help you move past it." That sounded uncomfortably familiar. That, I at least, understood perfectly style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I had that once. Or at least, I thought I did. It didn't turn out so well for me."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"What happened?" I'd led myself right into a trap. I took a deep breath and let it go style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"He shot me." She style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Are you ready to tell me about it yet?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"No."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"When you are…."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"I should probably get going actually. I still need time to set up before everyone arrives."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Of course. And I'll see you on Thursday?"br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Yeah, I'll be here." She nodded and followed me back out into the waiting room. Even though our session was over prematurely, she put a comforting hand on my shoulder and offered me that kind and professionally trained style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"It isn't real, Johanna," she told me. "I know it feels real, but it isn't. You can't trust your subconscious to be accurate. And if you need my help, even in the middle of the night, call me. I can't guarantee I'll always answer. But leave a message. I'm always here for you." I style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"Thank you. I appreciate it."br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px;" /"And I can't wait to hear more about your first day of work." I smiled awkwardly and pulled away from her. I headed out of her office without another word./div