Don't know if this will help, but I'm going to try to go back and put dates in chapters. This chapter takes place Saturday, July 2, 2005.
He balks when Doc recommends a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, but buys them anyway, two days before the 4th. He should have bought them earlier; every house within a mile of his has been setting off fireworks for a week now, at all hours of the day or night, and his flashbacks have been BRUTAL.
The boys had been thrilled to go with him, and take turns passing the headphones between their car-seats, trying them on—they're way too big for their little heads—and then yelling at each other.
He has a headache by the time they get home. He should've bought two pairs, but this pair was NOT cheap.
He dry-swallows two Advil, then makes lunch for the boys and puts them down for their naps.
He's cleaning up after lunch and debating whether he has enough clean socks and underwear to not do laundry, when Linda gets home from yard-sale-hopping with Erin.
She's waving a lawn sign above her head, and he takes it, kisses her.
The sign is red, white, and blue, and reads: "Combat veteran lives here. Please be considerate with fireworks."
He drops it on the floor like it's on fire. "Where the hell did you get this?"
"Your friend Michael Jones' mother was one of the people having a yard sale; she said she didn't need it anymore, gave it to me for free. Along with some other veteran paraphernalia you might like."
Michael Jones…"Jonesy"…had been his best friend. They'd enlisted together, fought together…the kid had died during surgery, hours after they'd been rescued.
He turns away from Linda, grips the back of the chair so hard his knuckles turn white. "No, Linda. That is not going in our yard."
"Danny, if it helps…"
"No. Give it back to Anne. We don't need to advertise to the whole neighborhood that there's a loose cannon living here."
He stares at a jelly stain on the table, but suddenly it's a bloodstain on the floor of the filthy hut where he and twelve other Marines were being tortured.
He shakes his head as Linda says, unhelpfully, "Danny, you're not a loose cannon. Most of our neighbors know you're a veteran; this is just to remind them to not set off fireworks at 2 a.m."
The jelly/bloodstain is growing, and he wants to put the headphones on right now, but he doesn't think they'll cancel the sounds of screaming men and flailing whips and breaking bones, because those sounds are all in his head, and nothing is going to make them go away.
"I just bought the damn noise-cancelling headphones; I don't need the sign. Please get rid of it."
He wants to run, to squeeze his eyes shut, but that's just going to make this worse, so he grabs Linda's wrist and pulls her to him in a bone-crushing hug. He buries his nose in her hair, inhaling her perfume, trying to focus on that.
Linda's perfume…not the coppery scent and smell of blood and death and men who haven't been allowed to relieve themselves for three days.
Her hair, tickling his face…not the searing pain of a whip on his back.
She pulls his head down and kisses him. The ice cream she'd eaten…not the taste of blood where he'd bitten his cheek so he wouldn't scream.
Her muffled "Danny, what's wrong?"…not the machetes.
She whimpers, and he pulls away. "Sorry. Didn't mean to hurt you. Please get rid of the sign."
"Okay, I will. But I need you to tell me why you don't want it."
"No, you don't. You want me to tell you, but you don't need me to tell you." He looks at his watch. "I gotta get cleaned up, I'm meeting Jamie and Joe for darts."
"Danny, it's not even 1 p.m. You're meeting them at 5."
"I know, but…I'm seeing Doc at 3:30. He wants to talk strategy before Monday."
He's feeling more confident than he has in a while when he gets to the bar for drinks and darts with Joe and Jamie. (Well, he'll be sticking to soda for the night, because he can't mix alcohol with whatever-the-hell anti-anxiety/anti-depression crap he's on.)
He'd just left Doc, and while it had been a rough session, Doc had said something that had left him riding high.
"I'm proud of you," Doc had said.
Apparently going to ask the next-door neighbor kid to stop revving his engine had taken "intestinal fortitude" and was "a strong indicator that you want to get better."
He'd snapped a little…why the hell was he in therapy if he didn't want to stop the panic attacks and flashbacks?…but it had meant a lot. Pathetic, probably, feeling touched by his shrink being proud of him.
He shakes his head, plasters on his best "Everything's-fine" face, and gets out of the car.
Joe's Chevelle roars up just then.
They do the hug/fist-bump/slap on the back greeting they always do, and it takes every ounce of self-control in him to not coldcock his younger brother when Joe fake-punches him in the back, right over the scars.
He's still breathing heavily when he walks into the bar.
He sees a familiar back at the bar, and almost bolts.
Then his father turns. "Danny."
He jabs Joe in the ribs. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
Joe shrugs and orders a round of drinks.
"They didn't know I was going to be here. I haven't seen you since the parade."
"You see me at every Sunday dinner, Dad."
"Where you have refused to look in my direction or say more than five words to me since your mother collapsed."
"Maybe because you blamed me…said my storming out caused her to collapse."
"I'm sorry if that's what you thought I meant. You need to…have a drink with your brothers, loosen up a bit."
"That's why I'm here," he mutters, walks to the dart-board.
He's lining up his shot when his father says, "You need to put all of that…Fallujah, your depression, your suicide attempts…you need to just leave that in the past, Danny, and focus on what you have now: your family."
He turns slightly, aims the dart.
It flies a hairsbreadth past his father's face, and jabs in the wall.
Jamie grabs him. "What the hell, Danny?" and he shakes him off and stalks out of the bar.
He peels out of the parking-lot and goes to another bar.
He's halfway through his second beer when Joe and Jamie get there.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"We're going to sober you up and play darts and eat chicken wings and forget that Dad said anything to you at all."
"I'm not drunk," he says, but drinks the coffee Joe has snuck in from somewhere, eats the wings, and loses all five games of darts.
He tells Linda what his dad said, and she's thoroughly pissed (he loves her when she's angry), and the only things keeping him from flying off the handle are her making love to him until he can't remember his name, and the echo of Doc's words: "I'm proud of you."
Sunday dinner, if he decides to go tomorrow, is going to be fun.