Title: After Effects 1/?
Author: AutumnRain email: autumrain4@yahoo.com
Rating: At the very least an R (will keep a toned down version posted on the "shipper" group)
Summary: Harm has some lasting after effects of his crash and has to find a way to deal with them.
Warnings: Product of an extremely boring Food Science and Nutrition class this morning…This does not follow exactly events of the show. I took a few liberties here and there with events.
Disclaimer: All characters are property of DPB and company. I am just borrowing them for a little fun and absolutely no profit.
Feedback: Feedback is good. I enjoy it and it lets me know people are reading it and either loving it or want me to stop LOL.
Archive: you can find this story and others I have written or am working on at:
http://Stories.Com/authors/autumnrain
Oh yeah, I haven't forgotten about my other story Pajamas and Letting Go- more will be out soon (
Harm's Apt.
North of Union Station
0415
The nightmares persisted although it was rapidly closing in on a year since my crash. It wasn't that I didn't expect my latest accident to give me bad dreams every once in awhile, but even after my first crash, the one that had cost me my wings, the nightmares hadn't been this severe nine months after the fact. If anything I could argue that they were getting worse. Worse not only in the vividness of colors and sensations, but also worse in the way the feelings they evoked, were coming to me while I was wide-awake in the middle of the day.
The first few days and nights after the SAR chopper picked me out of the ocean, they weren't that bad. I guess I was too doped up on pain medications to really care. I am convinced the "temporary amnesia" that the doctors said was due to the trauma I had suffered had more to do with the copious amounts of morphine they were injecting into my system. HAH- I will never forget that look Renee gave me when I looked at her standing at my bedside as I came to and called her Mac. At least she hadn't slapped me like she had on one or two times, okay, okay in all honesty, the three or four times when I had let Mac's name slip out at the most inopportune moment. If only I had nightmares about that. That I could handle, hmmmm, those fantasy sensations of being deep inside and wrapped up in the safety and heat that is Sarah MacKenzie would be worth having, even if only to be awakened by the crack of my ex-girlfriend's hand across my cheek.
God, it is 0435. I am so tired. I had woken up three times already tonight / this morning due to these friggin' dreams. If the dreams themselves don't drive me over the edge, the lack of sleep is going to pry my fingers off the last tenuous handle I have on my sanity. How does Mac function? She has told me she often makes do on three maybe four hours of sleep a night. All my thoughts lately seem to come back to Mac- back to some conversation we had, some assignment we were on, some almost hallmark moment we shared, heck even some arguments we had…. Man she is soooo sexy when she is pissed, well, when she is pissed at someone other than me. I don't like the scary hollow feeling that comes over me when those dark chocolate eyes are flashing fire at some hurtful remark I, in my infinite wisdom, spit out in her direction without thinking. ENOUGH- I could keep running our relationship, whatever it is, around and around in my head and it is no more sleep inducing than the sensations of hitting the icy waters of the Atlantic, fighting desperately to breathe, fighting to cut the cords threatening to strangle me if the ocean doesn't drown me first. Jesus…, just thinking about it…. I have the overwhelming urge to scream and run but only end up pacing my apartment breathing so shallowly and fast I am on the verge of wheezing.
The nightmares had begun in earnest about two days after I left the hospital and decided to stop taking the codeine the doctors prescribed to me. I was expecting them but there was usually a warm body lying in the bed beside me, at least for the first week anyway. The first few nights I guess Renee took on this Florence Nightingale complex. She would get up and wake me from nightmare if I was still trapped there, get me a drink of milk and a towel. After I would drink, she would lay me back down and wipe the sweat from my body, trying to soothe my nerves with her fingers. It did help chase the nightmare away, for that I was grateful and because I was grateful I pushed the feelings of emptiness her touch was actually eliciting from my body, to the back of my mind. I tried not to pretend it was Mac's hands wiping away my fears, that it was Mac's breast my head would find itself cradled on, that it was Mac's hands gently rubbing up and down my back and it was Mac's voice taking stand against and banishing my memories of the accident, that it was Mac's body keeping me safe and sane.
After about a week Renee complained she wasn't getting any sleep and it was starting to negatively affect her work. She tried to get me to take a myriad of sleeping pills or at least a couple of her xanex before going to bed, but I refused. I had stopped taking the pain medication the doctors prescribed because I knew how easy it was to get hooked on them and I certainly wasn't going to risk an addiction to sleeping or nerve pills. Damn it, I am a strong man, emotionally and physically, I should be able to put this all behind me. There shouldn't be a cause for me to take those kinds of medications.
So, Renee started sleeping on the couch- that lasted about two nights and then she would come over for supper and after a movie or an attempt at getting my body to respond and perform acts it really wasn't ready to do, she would leave. Part of me was relieved. I really wasn't in the mood for sex or even just a bit of playing around and physically, my hip and leg, not to mention my ribs, were not ready for that kind of activity and I couldn't make her understand it. I thought the routine about men and their "needs" were bad…. Renee was obnoxiously persistent and usually she would fly out of my apartment in a huff because "obviously I didn't find her attractive anymore". Jeez, but you know what? The more I think about it, what was so attractive about her? Yeah, she was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but as the days unfolded after my crash I found out her personality wasn't all that.
It all came to a head 16 days after my release from the hospital. That night, a particularly bad nightmare really hit me hard. I awoke as my body met the floor on my injured side. I was sweating and had obviously been thrashing around, fighting the waves that had surrounded me in my mind so hard that I had fallen out of bed. I tried to handle the pain and fear the dream had caused but I needed someone. I needed to hear a friendly voice. I grabbed the phone and automatically started to dial Mac's number. Just as I was about to punch in the last digit, reality set in. Why was I calling Mac? Mac wasn't my girlfriend, and at the way we had been acting around each other I had my doubts as to how much a friend she would call me. Not only that, but then I realized Mac was halfway around the world, TDY on the U.S.S. Guadalcanal. Had she been home, I am sure she would have talked to me, she probably would have been knocking on my door ten minutes after I called, despite the precarious edge our friendship was perched on, but I cleared her number and dialed Renee's. As I was doing so, another wave of irrational terror swept over me, not unlike the cold ocean waves I had been battered by in my nightmare mere minutes before.
"Renee" I gasped completely in the grasp of my fear as I heard the phone picked up on her end, not even waiting for her to say "hello".
"Who in hell is this???? This had better be freakin' good. I have a meeting first thing in the morning and I don't need little dickheads pulling prank calls on my number at 2 friggin' A.M." Renee practically yelled into the phone.
"It's me, Renee" I say, managing a normal voice as the anger she radiated through the phone line seemed to dissipate the terror that had come over me.
"Harm? Do you have any idea what time it is? I do have an early meeting in the morning." She whined.
"Sorry Renee, I, I…" I didn't know what to say. I was sorry I had woken her up, but at the same time feeling a bit sorry for myself, I needed to talk to someone. Also fighting for a spot was shame, I mean what 37 year old, decorated Naval aviator lets terror come over him like that, so bad that he wakes his girlfriend up?
"Well? Do you need something?"
"No, never mind. Sorry I woke you up." I slammed the phone back down and painfully hauled myself back into my bed. I would be lying if I wasn't half expecting / wanting the phone to ring, with Renee on the other end apologizing herself asking me if I was okay.
The next morning I showed up at Renee's makeshift office after her meeting and told her that it wasn't going to work out. I don't know exactly what I had expected, perhaps more of a fight on her part to keep me just because of the way she had wormed her way into what she could of my personal life in the time that we were together, but I wasn't all that surprised by her reaction. She had just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and told me that I was right and that I wasn't the man she had met over a year ago, that I had changed drastically in the past month. Well, no shit, I had wanted to say, that is what almost drowning tends to do to most people. Then she proceeded to tell me in exactly what ways I had changed. An experience I could have done without, as I was already doubting myself. Suffice it to say her opinion was that I wasn't as confident and that I should get some kind of professional help before I went over the edge and that was putting what she said to me in nice, polite terms. I guess my needing her at 2 AM was not a quality she was looking for in a man.
Sitting here, now at 0505, eight months later I have a revelation. I have been the strong one for the past 37 years in all my relationships, even the relationship with my mother from the age of six. Forgive me if I need to lean on someone every now and then. Scary as that thought is to me, it is less scary than the feelings of helplessness and terror that have been washing over me for the past month while I am in the middle of cross examining a witness, having lunch with Lts. Roberts and Sims, driving to work, working on my Stearman, being chewed out by the Admiral, just about every routine daily activity I engage in, it happens. Without warning and it leaves me either sweating profusely, gasping for air, and or shaking like a leave. It doesn't last long. The worst one lasted about fifteen minutes, but it has to stop.
TBC if you want.
Author: AutumnRain email: autumrain4@yahoo.com
Rating: At the very least an R (will keep a toned down version posted on the "shipper" group)
Summary: Harm has some lasting after effects of his crash and has to find a way to deal with them.
Warnings: Product of an extremely boring Food Science and Nutrition class this morning…This does not follow exactly events of the show. I took a few liberties here and there with events.
Disclaimer: All characters are property of DPB and company. I am just borrowing them for a little fun and absolutely no profit.
Feedback: Feedback is good. I enjoy it and it lets me know people are reading it and either loving it or want me to stop LOL.
Archive: you can find this story and others I have written or am working on at:
http://Stories.Com/authors/autumnrain
Oh yeah, I haven't forgotten about my other story Pajamas and Letting Go- more will be out soon (
Harm's Apt.
North of Union Station
0415
The nightmares persisted although it was rapidly closing in on a year since my crash. It wasn't that I didn't expect my latest accident to give me bad dreams every once in awhile, but even after my first crash, the one that had cost me my wings, the nightmares hadn't been this severe nine months after the fact. If anything I could argue that they were getting worse. Worse not only in the vividness of colors and sensations, but also worse in the way the feelings they evoked, were coming to me while I was wide-awake in the middle of the day.
The first few days and nights after the SAR chopper picked me out of the ocean, they weren't that bad. I guess I was too doped up on pain medications to really care. I am convinced the "temporary amnesia" that the doctors said was due to the trauma I had suffered had more to do with the copious amounts of morphine they were injecting into my system. HAH- I will never forget that look Renee gave me when I looked at her standing at my bedside as I came to and called her Mac. At least she hadn't slapped me like she had on one or two times, okay, okay in all honesty, the three or four times when I had let Mac's name slip out at the most inopportune moment. If only I had nightmares about that. That I could handle, hmmmm, those fantasy sensations of being deep inside and wrapped up in the safety and heat that is Sarah MacKenzie would be worth having, even if only to be awakened by the crack of my ex-girlfriend's hand across my cheek.
God, it is 0435. I am so tired. I had woken up three times already tonight / this morning due to these friggin' dreams. If the dreams themselves don't drive me over the edge, the lack of sleep is going to pry my fingers off the last tenuous handle I have on my sanity. How does Mac function? She has told me she often makes do on three maybe four hours of sleep a night. All my thoughts lately seem to come back to Mac- back to some conversation we had, some assignment we were on, some almost hallmark moment we shared, heck even some arguments we had…. Man she is soooo sexy when she is pissed, well, when she is pissed at someone other than me. I don't like the scary hollow feeling that comes over me when those dark chocolate eyes are flashing fire at some hurtful remark I, in my infinite wisdom, spit out in her direction without thinking. ENOUGH- I could keep running our relationship, whatever it is, around and around in my head and it is no more sleep inducing than the sensations of hitting the icy waters of the Atlantic, fighting desperately to breathe, fighting to cut the cords threatening to strangle me if the ocean doesn't drown me first. Jesus…, just thinking about it…. I have the overwhelming urge to scream and run but only end up pacing my apartment breathing so shallowly and fast I am on the verge of wheezing.
The nightmares had begun in earnest about two days after I left the hospital and decided to stop taking the codeine the doctors prescribed to me. I was expecting them but there was usually a warm body lying in the bed beside me, at least for the first week anyway. The first few nights I guess Renee took on this Florence Nightingale complex. She would get up and wake me from nightmare if I was still trapped there, get me a drink of milk and a towel. After I would drink, she would lay me back down and wipe the sweat from my body, trying to soothe my nerves with her fingers. It did help chase the nightmare away, for that I was grateful and because I was grateful I pushed the feelings of emptiness her touch was actually eliciting from my body, to the back of my mind. I tried not to pretend it was Mac's hands wiping away my fears, that it was Mac's breast my head would find itself cradled on, that it was Mac's hands gently rubbing up and down my back and it was Mac's voice taking stand against and banishing my memories of the accident, that it was Mac's body keeping me safe and sane.
After about a week Renee complained she wasn't getting any sleep and it was starting to negatively affect her work. She tried to get me to take a myriad of sleeping pills or at least a couple of her xanex before going to bed, but I refused. I had stopped taking the pain medication the doctors prescribed because I knew how easy it was to get hooked on them and I certainly wasn't going to risk an addiction to sleeping or nerve pills. Damn it, I am a strong man, emotionally and physically, I should be able to put this all behind me. There shouldn't be a cause for me to take those kinds of medications.
So, Renee started sleeping on the couch- that lasted about two nights and then she would come over for supper and after a movie or an attempt at getting my body to respond and perform acts it really wasn't ready to do, she would leave. Part of me was relieved. I really wasn't in the mood for sex or even just a bit of playing around and physically, my hip and leg, not to mention my ribs, were not ready for that kind of activity and I couldn't make her understand it. I thought the routine about men and their "needs" were bad…. Renee was obnoxiously persistent and usually she would fly out of my apartment in a huff because "obviously I didn't find her attractive anymore". Jeez, but you know what? The more I think about it, what was so attractive about her? Yeah, she was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but as the days unfolded after my crash I found out her personality wasn't all that.
It all came to a head 16 days after my release from the hospital. That night, a particularly bad nightmare really hit me hard. I awoke as my body met the floor on my injured side. I was sweating and had obviously been thrashing around, fighting the waves that had surrounded me in my mind so hard that I had fallen out of bed. I tried to handle the pain and fear the dream had caused but I needed someone. I needed to hear a friendly voice. I grabbed the phone and automatically started to dial Mac's number. Just as I was about to punch in the last digit, reality set in. Why was I calling Mac? Mac wasn't my girlfriend, and at the way we had been acting around each other I had my doubts as to how much a friend she would call me. Not only that, but then I realized Mac was halfway around the world, TDY on the U.S.S. Guadalcanal. Had she been home, I am sure she would have talked to me, she probably would have been knocking on my door ten minutes after I called, despite the precarious edge our friendship was perched on, but I cleared her number and dialed Renee's. As I was doing so, another wave of irrational terror swept over me, not unlike the cold ocean waves I had been battered by in my nightmare mere minutes before.
"Renee" I gasped completely in the grasp of my fear as I heard the phone picked up on her end, not even waiting for her to say "hello".
"Who in hell is this???? This had better be freakin' good. I have a meeting first thing in the morning and I don't need little dickheads pulling prank calls on my number at 2 friggin' A.M." Renee practically yelled into the phone.
"It's me, Renee" I say, managing a normal voice as the anger she radiated through the phone line seemed to dissipate the terror that had come over me.
"Harm? Do you have any idea what time it is? I do have an early meeting in the morning." She whined.
"Sorry Renee, I, I…" I didn't know what to say. I was sorry I had woken her up, but at the same time feeling a bit sorry for myself, I needed to talk to someone. Also fighting for a spot was shame, I mean what 37 year old, decorated Naval aviator lets terror come over him like that, so bad that he wakes his girlfriend up?
"Well? Do you need something?"
"No, never mind. Sorry I woke you up." I slammed the phone back down and painfully hauled myself back into my bed. I would be lying if I wasn't half expecting / wanting the phone to ring, with Renee on the other end apologizing herself asking me if I was okay.
The next morning I showed up at Renee's makeshift office after her meeting and told her that it wasn't going to work out. I don't know exactly what I had expected, perhaps more of a fight on her part to keep me just because of the way she had wormed her way into what she could of my personal life in the time that we were together, but I wasn't all that surprised by her reaction. She had just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and told me that I was right and that I wasn't the man she had met over a year ago, that I had changed drastically in the past month. Well, no shit, I had wanted to say, that is what almost drowning tends to do to most people. Then she proceeded to tell me in exactly what ways I had changed. An experience I could have done without, as I was already doubting myself. Suffice it to say her opinion was that I wasn't as confident and that I should get some kind of professional help before I went over the edge and that was putting what she said to me in nice, polite terms. I guess my needing her at 2 AM was not a quality she was looking for in a man.
Sitting here, now at 0505, eight months later I have a revelation. I have been the strong one for the past 37 years in all my relationships, even the relationship with my mother from the age of six. Forgive me if I need to lean on someone every now and then. Scary as that thought is to me, it is less scary than the feelings of helplessness and terror that have been washing over me for the past month while I am in the middle of cross examining a witness, having lunch with Lts. Roberts and Sims, driving to work, working on my Stearman, being chewed out by the Admiral, just about every routine daily activity I engage in, it happens. Without warning and it leaves me either sweating profusely, gasping for air, and or shaking like a leave. It doesn't last long. The worst one lasted about fifteen minutes, but it has to stop.
TBC if you want.