The next two days dragged by in a grind of phone calls, surveillance videos, and paperwork; and he sighed in relief when Linda picked him up at 5 on Thursday. He leaned over to kiss her. "Thanks for picking me up. This not being able to drive is getting damned annoying."
She kissed him back. "Give it another week or so, Danny."
He nodded, clicked his seatbelt. "How was your day, babe?"
"Good. Slept, spent some quality time with Henry. What time did Dawson change your appointment to? Was it 7?" He nodded, and she said, "Okay. The boys and I'll pick you up at 8, and we can go home."
The minute he walked in the door of his dad's house, the boys ran at him, and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out when they tackled him. "Hey, boys. How was school?"
"Had a math test. Math sucks," Sean groused.
Danny cuffed him gently on the side of the head. "Language, kiddo. Jack?"
His older son shrugged. "English test. It was hard."
"I'm sure you did fine," he said, and let the boys drag him to the table.
His grandfather had made Italian Wedding soup; and, to his own surprise, he ate an entire bowl, plus two pieces of crusty bread.
After dinner, Linda went upstairs to pack. She was almost finished when a photo album caught her eye, and she pulled it off the bookshelf, sat on the bed to look at it.
She was laughing at a pic of Danny's cake-covered face at what appeared to have been his first birthday party, when he walked in, sat down next to her. "Do you have a minute, babe?"
She closed the album. "For you? Always, babe. What is it?" She turned to face him, but he wouldn't meet her eyes. "What's wrong, Danny?"
He was staring at the floor. "I…I'm sorry for putting you and the boys through all this. I'm sorry you have to put up with me."
She leaned in to kiss him, then held his face in her hands so she could look him in the eye. "I love you, Danny Reagan. I am not just 'putting up with you'; I love you. And you have nothing to apologize to me for. When I married you…you'd been in the Marines, you were a cop…I knew PTSD was a possibility. I love you despite all that."
"You didn't know I'd go off the deep end."
The self-loathing in his voice broke her heart. She swallowed hard. The last thing he needed was her breaking down on him. "Danny, you haven't 'gone off the deep end.' You're struggling, you're having a really hard time these days—but you are not crazy."
He pulled away, shook his head. "Linda, I just…I want all this to be over. I'm tired."
Fear shot through her. "What do you mean, you want 'all this to be over'?"
"I don't…I'm not talking about…" He let out a shaky breath, rubbed at the back of his neck. "I want to go back to the way I was before John Russell, when my post-traumatic stress wasn't eating me alive every second of every day, when it was buried and I could live and work, and, and…and f-g breathe!"
She wrapped her arms around him. "I know, babe. But you're going to have to talk about it in order to work through it; you can't just bury it again." She let him think about that for a minute, then asked very, very gently, "Have you talked with Doc at all about being depressed?"
His shoulders slumped. "No. Not really. He's mentioned it in passing; even asked me, in the middle of the case, if I was depressed. I couldn't answer him. Now, I…" He trailed off, shook his head.
"You'll talk about this with him tonight?" He nodded, and she kissed him.
Alex Dawson was filing papers when there was a knock on the door. He shut and locked the filing cabinet, pocketed the key, and stood up. "Come on in, Danny."
The door opened slowly, and an exhausted-looking Danny Reagan walked in, shut the door behind him, and walked over to his usual chair. He sat down. "Hey, Doc."
"Good to see you, Danny. How you holding up?"
The detective shrugged, winced. "I don't want to be here."
Alex nodded slowly, sat down in his own chair. "Okay. Thank you for being honest with me. Why don't you want to be here?"
"I don't want to talk about…anything. It's not like talking's gonna help. This is just a waste of time."
Alex Dawson leaned forward to lock eyes with the detective. "Talking won't solve your problems, Danny; but it will help you start to process things. Why did you call me three weeks ago?"
"Because I was drowning."
"And you're not drowning now? You're safely on shore, solid ground under your feet?"
He sighed—a tired sigh, not his usual, angry sigh. "I…I didn't say that, Doc! I…Why does it matter if I'm drowning or not? I'm tired of fighting!"
"It matters because you have people who love you and care about you."
Danny flinched at that—the first sign of emotion he'd shown since walking in—and looked away. "I …I told John that right before…" He shook his head. "It was one of…the last things I said to him."
"And it's as true for you as it was for him. None of your family wants you to drown, Danny."
Danny let out a shaky breath. "Linda thinks I'm depressed. I mean…you saw my score on that stupid depression questionnaire the GP made me take; think I got an A, or I guess an F. I'm so blasted tired of…of everything, Doc. I was fine…well, I was surviving…up until three-and-a-half weeks ago. I'd managed to keep the PTSD to a manageable background noise; now, it's all I can hear."
"I know. I wish I could tell you that there was an easy way around this; but you can't sidestep the issue, you have to face it head-on. The Zoloft will help, but it's going to take a while before you start feeling any improvement. Meanwhile, talking about the memories, the things that make you depressed, the things that upset you and anger you and make you want to give up on life, will help. I promise you." He cleared his throat. "We'll tackle this bit-by-bit, but for now, I want you to tell me one thing about Iraq that has been on your mind for the past few weeks."
Danny sighed. After a few minutes he said, slowly, quietly, "At dinner the night John Russell…killed himself…my niece asked me…about the medal I got…for my time in Fallujah, and…I couldn't answer her."
He shuddered. After a few minutes, he let out a shaky breath. "All I could see was…the faces…of the guys I lost…the insurgents I killed…the kids we lost. Nikki's question…made my stomach churn."
"What medal did you get, and why?"
He shook his head. "What does it matter? The twelve men in my unit who didn't make it home… they deserved the medals they got. I don't."
"Why do you think you don't deserve the medal? Because you survived?" Danny just shrugged, and Alex went on, "What about your father? He has the Marine Corps Achievement medal, correct?"
Danny nodded.
"Did he not deserve that medal because he didn't die in combat?"
"I didn't say that, Doc."
"I know. I'm trying to get you to think here, Danny. Does surviving combat automatically mean that a veteran should not get a medal?"
"No."
"Are Marine Corps medals awarded only to Marines who died in combat?"
"No."
"So why do you think you don't deserve the medal?"
Danny looked up at that. "Because I made it home!" he half-shouted, half-whispered. "I came back alive, to my wife and my boys. Those twelve other medals—sit in boxes, are held by grieving widows, kids who'll never see their dads again. Mine's stuffed in a box where I have to see it every damn time I get my gun."
"Seeing it daily must hurt. What medal did you get, Danny?"
He leaned his chin on his hands, stared at the ground. "Bronze Star."
"Thank you for telling me."
Danny didn't say anything for several minutes; he just sat there, and Alex could almost see the older man wrestling with himself.
Then he said very, very quietly, "I'm ready to talk about Iraq."
"I'm listening, Danny."
And that's exactly what he did for the next hour as Danny told him about the horrors he saw in Fallujah, Iraq; as the seasoned detective cursed, paced, and yelled; and as he had to hold the older man back twice from putting his already-battered fists through the wall.
It was well after 8 when Danny sank into a chair, covered his eyes with his hand.
There was a knock on the door, and Alex rose, opened it. Linda and the boys stood there. "Is everything okay? I tried to text Danny, but…"
"Boys, can you give me a minute with your mom?" They hung back. "Danny really opened up. He told me everything about both of his tours. He's exhausted, Linda."
She nodded, and walked towards the chair where he sat; and Alex squatted down to chat with the boys. "Is my dad okay?" Jack asked.
"He will be. He had…to talk about a lot of stuff that really upset him."
"But you're a doctor! You're supposed to make him better, not hurt him!" Sean said, and Alex smiled at the eleven-year-old.
"Well, I hear your brother gave a really good presentation for school a couple weeks ago. Is that right?" he asked and the kid nodded. "Your dad told me all about the presentation, including what Jack said about when someone keeps things inside. When you keep everything inside for so long, it really hurts when you finally talk about it. Your dad was very brave tonight—he talked about the stuff that hurt him."
Danny and Linda were walking toward them, and Danny held out his hand.
Alex Dawson gripped it, locked eyes with the older man. "Thank you for your service, Danny."
Danny didn't say anything, but his eyes said Thank you and I'm sorry.
Alex nodded to him. "I'll see you Monday."
Lips pressed tightly together as if he were trying not to cry, Danny nodded back, put his arms around his boys' shoulders, and walked with his family out of the office.