A/N: Tag: in between chapters 53 and 54 of Drowning—they're still at Frank's house; Danny has been home for six days, after his stay in the psychiatric ward.
I was having major writer's block on this, and then another OC waltzed her way onto the screen.
She holds Danny close.
She hates seeing him so…broken. "Broken" isn't even the right word; Danny is strong, tough, but ever since Corporal Russell's suicide, he has been…it hasn't even been three months since Corporal Russell's suicide.
She started counting each day the night after that…"gesture" with the gun in the middle of the night—there's something that's equal parts comforting, steadying, and terrifying, in counting each day that Danny has continued leaving and breathing.
"Gesture"—not a suicide "attempt," but a "gesture"—that's what the quack psychologists call it—the ones she stumbles upon late at night when she can't sleep and ends up surfing the Internet. Which is a dangerous thing to do when you're married to a suicidal veteran with PTSD.
When she's sure he's asleep—his breathing deep and even, the lines of pain on his face evened out—she goes downstairs to ask Frank to take the boys to church, then goes back into the bathroom, closes the door, and cries quietly.
On some level, Danny is better—he says he doesn't want to kill himself anymore, and she's trying to believe him—but he's not sleeping, and he's shutting her out.
She needs to call someone—she knows she needs to talk to someone; that had been one of the things Dawson had stressed, the importance of making sure she had her own support system; but all her nurse friends are busy with their lives. She knows some of the cop wives, but not well enough—this is precisely the kind of thing they DON'T talk about on their very rare coffee meetings—but maybe it should be.
She scrolls through her contacts until she finds the number for the wife of Detective Greene. All she knows about Matt—his name is Matt, right?—is that he did two tours in Afghanistan, a few years later than Danny—and he's an alcoholic.
She counts to 20 to pep herself up, then hits "call."
"Hello?"
"Hey, Heather, it's Linda, Linda Reagan. Do…you have a minute to talk?" She chokes down the lump in her throat
"Yeah, my mom and Matty took the boys to the park for the day. He's decided we're no longer going to church. So I went to an early service. What's wrong?"
She opens her mouth, and then the sobs and the words come, and by the time she's finished, she isn't sure what she said or if Heather understand any of it.
"Linda, where are you right now?" Heather asks, sounding concerned.
"We're…we're at my father-in-law's right now. Danny's sleeping; I…can't leave him."
"Hon, have you left his side since he got home from the hospital?"
"Yeah," she sniffles.
She has, hasn't she? To help the boys with their homework, and cook, and do laundry, and talk with Frank, and shower, and…
"For more than 10 minutes, Linda."
She sighs.
"Who's home right now? Can someone stay with Danny, while you and I go get a cup of coffee?"
She can't ask the family to stay home from church…
In the end, she invites Heather over for a cup of coffee—Heather insists she's buying the coffee and bringing it over, and Linda isn't to lift a finger—and soon they're seated at the kitchen table with the biggest cinnamon roll Linda's seen in years, and two cups of delicious hazelnut coffee.
Heather fills her in on the boys and on Matt, and she's pleasantly relaxed by the time her coffee's gone.
She pulls another piece off the cinnamon roll. "I feel like a new woman. Thanks for this, Heath."
"Of course. You should have called weeks ago; I would have come over."
She scoffs. "Like you called a month after Matt got home from his third tour? I'm pretty sure it took you six months."
Heather's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. You know how it is; Matty insisted nothing was wrong; and then when he did finally admit it—more like, when I found out about the drinking—he insisted I couldn't talk about it—you know, it would bring shame upon the family, upon the NYPD, upon the Marines, if they knew. By the time I called you, he'd been through three of the department's shrinks."
Linda nods. "You have no idea how good it is to talk with someone who gets it. I…" she wipes her eyes. "Danny's family is a little weird about the therapy and meds, but I think they're coming around now. But talking to you—you know what it's like from my side, being the wife of a cop."
She starts to say something else about cops' wives, then stops. "So…Matt burned through 3 of the department therapist? Who'd he end up with?"
She shrugs. "This old, wizened guy with a beard. I can't remember his name, but he really helped Matty. What about Danny?"
"This guy named Dawson. He's not a department therapist, but he does anger management for the cops. And then he's in private practice. He's…good."
Heather pushes the last piece of cinnamon roll over to her. "You had one of those lightbulb-epiphany moments; I saw the look in your eyes…whatcha thinking?"
She shakes her head. "Just…an idea I had. That probably requires way more time and energy than I could spare, and definitely more energy than I have right now. Call me in a year—but definitely let's not wait that long to do this again."
"No way," Heather says just as her phone rings, and she says she has to run.
Linda finishes the cinnamon roll, then goes upstairs.
She takes the laundry out of the dryer, glares at it, throws it in the hamper, and goes to lie down next to Danny. Sean can fold his own laundry when he gets home.