A/N: This chapter takes place one week after the previous chapter, so on Monday, September 19.
He triumphantly crutches his way out of PT.
Three weeks after he twisted his ankle horsing around with his sons, and one week after twisting it at Doc's, he's been cleared to start weight-bearing again.
And not back at 25% like he'd feared—Nate's given him the all-clear to put 50% of his weight on his bad ankle. As long as he doesn't do something stupid to sprain, twist, or otherwise re-injure his ankle…he has 32 days left with the crutches and the boot. Just under 5 weeks. Then he graduates to the boot, no crutches…and he's not sure for how long that will be.
If he could do a jig, he would.
Except for the tiny little fact that the past week has been a veritable hell of nightmares and flashbacks, cold sweats and puking.
He's exhausted, and he hopes an earthquake or other natural disaster will prevent him from going to Doc's tonight. He's supposed to talk to Doc about his flashback —the one Linda keeps saying is a "repressed memory"—the one she knows every detail of now because she'd copied out his illegible notes.
He'd rather break his other ankle than talk to Doc.
He gets in the car carefully, closes his eyes. "You have to work tonight, don't you?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. We'll take the boys to your dad's after school, then I'll take you to Doc, then Erin will take you and the boys home while I go in to work early."
"Then I'm rescheduling Doc for a night you're not working. I can't…I can't be alone after…"
"Danny, you haven't gotten more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep at a time since last week. You can't afford to reschedule Doc."
"Talking about the hell I wrote about last week—which you read—isn't gonna help me sleep, Linda."
She grabs his hand gently. "It might. What happened last week, that memory coming to the surface, was like…breaking your ankle, but with a piece of bone sticking through the skin."
That mental image makes him want to gag. He forces his eyes open, swallows thickly. "Lovely."
"The nightmares and everything you've been having this past week…are because you're not letting anyone get near enough to the wound to put the bone back together and patch you up."
He sighs. "And talking to Doc is…letting him…fix my ankle?"
"Yes. And I think you need to talk to Doc sooner rather than later."
"So tonight. What are we gonna do about the fact that I don't want to be alone in this house after that session?"
"Let me make some calls when we get home, see if I can swap with another nurse."
"I'm sorry I'm being so…"
They're at a red light, and he jumps when her hand covers his mouth. "Stop it, Danny. Stop apologizing. You have nothing, nothing to apologize for! You didn't go off to Fallujah thinking 'maybe I'll come back with PTSD and a crap-ton of repressed memories; maybe I'll deliberately break my ankle.' And for the love of all that's holy…stop calling yourself names! You are a combat veteran with PTSD—that says hero and strong and warrior, not pathetic and weak and whatever other words were about to come out of your mouth. Got it?"
When Linda gets that tone in her voice, it's best not to argue. He nods.
"Can I touch you?" a voice says from far away.
It's Linda.
He nods, beyond grateful that she had been able to swap shifts with another nurse. She has to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, but he'll manage.
He blinks, tries to swallow his tears. He had held it together all through his session, all through the drive home, all through the hour it had taken Linda to get the boys to stop horsing around and to go to bed.
He had planned to hold it together until she was asleep, but evidently his brain had had other ideas.
And, anyway, isn't this why he'd admitted he didn't want to be alone after that session?
Her arms come around him, and he takes a shuddering breath. "I couldn't…"
"Shhh, just let it out, Danny. We'll talk later."
He fists her shirt, terrified she'll decide he's too pathetic to stay with, and cries—for his fellow Marines, for the innocent Iraqi children, and for himself.
By the time he's cried himself dry, his head is pounding and his voice is hoarse. He takes the Tylenol Linda hands him without protest, drains the entire glass of water.
"Thanks," he rasps.
"You're welcome. Do you want to talk about it?"
He shrugs. "You heard everything at Doc's, up until you left so he could do EMDR."
"Yes, but that was therapy—you telling Doc. I'm your wife. Talking to me is different than talking to Doc."
He lies down, lets her pull him close, and tries to flex his ankle. He needs to hurt, needs to distract himself. But with the boot on—he has to wear it even at night—he can't bend his ankle.
"I…hate EMDR."
"I know. But you understand why Doc's doing it, right?"
"Yeah. I still hate it."
"You need to tell Doc that."
"I failed," he whispers. "I failed to keep my buddies and those kids safe."
"And yet you couldn't have done anything more than you did, Danny. You've talked with Doc about that incident; I thought he'd helped you see that it wasn't your fault…"
"He did. Until I remembered the music…"
She starts humming their wedding song, and he realizes what she's trying to do. She's trying to distract him from the memories so he doesn't have another flashback.
And now he's going to cry again because the anti-depressant makes him teary, and because Linda's too good to him, and because he's so gosh-darn tired of all of this.
He falls asleep thinking of their wedding day.