He pulled into the parking-lot of his precinct at 8:29 a.m.
It had been a long night; he'd lain awake for hours, and when he did finally fall asleep, it was only to face nightmares. Linda had had to wake him three times.
The morning dragged by, and he was glaring at the sandwich Linda had packed for his lunch when his phone buzzed. Dinner and darts tonight? My treat. It was Jamie. Linda must have suggested this to him when she talked to the family on Sunday.
He sighed. Sure. I get off at 5, meet you at Cooper's at 5:30?
Sounds great.
Jamie had gotten to the bar before Danny, and he watched surreptitiously as his older brother came in. Danny had lost even more weight; there were dark circles under his eyes and his face was pallid under his stubble; and while he was still dressed in his suit, there was a disheveled look to him, as if he'd worn that same shirt two days in a row.
"Where are these darts?"
"Dinner first, then we play." He wanted to make sure Danny got some food in him before they started to really talk.
Danny huffed. "O, all right."
He was pleased to see Danny eat all of his salad, most of his burger, and half of his fries. As a concession to Danny's not being able to drink alcohol, he'd ordered ginger ale for both of them.
Then they headed for the dart board.
Danny lost the first game so easily it was like he wasn't even trying.
Jamie walked up to the board, pulled out the darts, then stood next to his brother again. "You're off your game tonight, Danny. What's going on?"
He threw his first dart, but his attention was on Danny, and he missed.
His older brother shrugged. "Nothing. Long day."
Jamie threw his next two darts, then walked up to the board. "You're riding a desk, Danny. I get that it's boring, but…what's really going on?"
He pulled the darts out, handed them to Danny, who shook his head. "You don't wanna…"
"I asked because I do wanna know. What's going on, Danny?"
Danny shrugged, threw the dart. "Nothing you need to worry about."
"Less than two weeks ago I found out that my older brother is depressed and suicidal. Excuse me for worrying." Danny threw the second dart, missed, cursed under his breath. "Even a blind man could see how much you're hurting, Danny."
"I'm…" Danny choked on whatever he'd been about to say, threw the last of the darts so blindly it hit the edge of the board and clattered to the floor.
A car backfired outside, and Danny moved backwards, squeezing in between the chair and the table, until his back was against the wall.
His eyes swept over Jamie twice, unseeing, wild; and Jamie felt a stab of fear. His older brother—hot-tempered, but otherwise level-headed—was having a flashback.
Slowly, he moved next to his brother, in his line of vision. "Danny. Can you hear me?"
The older man kept staring, and Jamie felt another pang—of relief—that Danny was on modified. This would have been a lot scarier if Danny had had his gun.
He kept talking quietly, for what felt like hours.
Then he realized Danny was holding his breath. Damn all the rules about not touching people when they were in the middle of a flashback!
He put his hand on Danny's shoulder, rubbed it gently. "Take a breath, Danny. Come on, you've gotta breathe, brother."
Danny's hand shot up to grip his wrist, but then he took a shaky, shuddering breath. "Good job, Danny. Can you hear me?"
Danny let go of his wrist, his hand dropping back to his side. He blinked. "Jamie? What…what-the-hell happened?"
"Easy, Danny. You know where you are?"
"Cooper's, throwing darts with you." He let out a shaky breath. "Dammit. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. You just grabbed my wrist when I touched you, I'm fine, Danny." He supposed he should be glad that's all Danny had done; with his training…he could've done a lot worse. "Are you okay?"
"Sorry you had to see that, kid. I'm good now." He stepped away from the wall, swayed, and Jamie put his hand out to steady him.
His brother's eyes were glassy, and Jamie said quietly, "I'll drive you home. Give me a sec."
"No, you don't…"
"Can you honestly tell me you're good to get behind the wheel right now?"
Danny stalked towards the door, and Jamie hurried after him. "Danny, wait!"
"I'm not driving home right this second, kid." He held his phone up. "I'm just gonna make a phone call," he said, and went outside.
Jamie got in front of him so he couldn't get in the car.
"Doc told me to call him if I needed to. So I'm gonna talk to him until I'm good to drive home."
"And you actually listened to your shrink? Since when did you get so self-aware?" Jamie asked, and instantly regretted it when he saw the walls going up over Danny's eyes. "Danny, I'm sorry, I didn't…"
"No, you're right. Serves me right for letting my family know I was seeing a shrink. Thanks for dinner, kid. Now please go to hell,"
He shoved Jamie out of the way, unlocked the car, got in, and slammed the door shut.
Jamie slowly walked to his car. He'd had a chance to be there for his brother, and he'd blown it.
He got in his own car, dialed Linda. "Hey, Jamie, everything okay?"
"No. I screwed up, Linda. We had dinner, we were playing darts; Danny was losing, as usual; then a car backfired and he had a flashback. I offered to drive him home, but he said he was gonna make a phone call, admitted it was his shrink, and I…stuck my foot in my mouth."
"What did you say to him?" Her tone was icy, and he flinched. Hadn't heard that tone since he and Jamie got into it a few years back on Mother's Day.
"I…asked him when he'd gotten so self-aware. He thanked me for dinner and told me to go to hell."
"O, you definitely screwed up there, Jamie. For heaven's sake, weren't you listening to me at all on Sunday? I told you not to push his buttons. He's teetering on the edge right now, Jamie—but at least he's talking to Dawson, he's opening up. Do me a favor and stick around 'till he leaves; then follow him to make sure he comes home."
"Linda, I don't know…"
"If you want to make this better, you need to do this for me, Jamie. Make sure he comes home to me, and doesn't go back inside that pub and get drunk and drive his car into a tree. Can you do that, Jameson?"
He winced. "Yes, I can do that. I'll follow him home, I promise. I'm sorry, Linda."
"I'm not the one you need to apologize to. Give Danny a day or two to settle down, then reach out, apologize, and offer another game."
She hung up, and Jamie looked at the blank screen of his phone. That couldn't have gone any worse.
Danny locked the car doors, leaned his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes. Dammit.
He'd lied when he'd told Jamie that he was fine. For ten minutes or however the hell long that had lasted, he'd been back in Fallujah. Even now he was shaking inside, his stomach was churning, and he'd had to fight to keep his breathing steady so Jamie didn't notice.
If this didn't stop, he wasn't going to get his shield back.
That thought made his stomach give another lurch, and he unlocked the car and made a mad dash for the garbage can, where he promptly lost every bite of that blasted burger.
"Dammit," he muttered, wiped his mouth, and got back in the car.
When he could breathe again, he called Doc. "Hey, Danny, what's wrong?"
"Sorry to bother you."
"It's okay, Danny. What's wrong?"
"I…went out for dinner and darts with Jamie tonight. A car backfired or something, and I had a flashback. Jamie offered to drive me home. I told him I was gonna call you, I'd be fine after I talked with you."
"You did the right thing by not trying to drive home while you're still so shaken. And, yes, I can hear it in your voice. Can you tell me about your flashback?"
"Fallujah." There was so much more to it than that, but the one word was really all he could talk about now—here, in his car, in the parking-lot of a bar.
"What brought you out of it?"
"I don't know. He'd put his hand on my shoulder and I grabbed his wrist."
"What did Jamie say when you told him you were going to call me?"
He shrugged, even though Doc couldn't see him. "He did what I woulda done—asked me when I'd gotten so self-aware. I told him to go to hell."
"That was very insensitive of Jamie; he didn't see how much these memories and flashbacks are hurting you, did he?"
His mouth went dry, and he shook his head.
"What was happening in Fallujah, in your flashback?"
He let out a shaky breath, squeezed his eyes shut. "We were going through the town, house-by-house, clearing it. It was my turn to go in first. I got shot in the shoulder, minor wound."
"It must have hurt. What else happened, Danny?"
"Doc…"
"Danny, I know you've been shot on the job. You hear cars backfiring pretty often in the city. What happened this one time in Fallujah that you're still remembering it nine years later?"
"I can't…" He shuddered. "If I'm…so messed up that a car backfiring sends me into a flashback…how am I gonna get my shield back in 4 weeks? I can't do the job like this. I'm shaky, and all I wanna do right now is walk back inside the bar and drink until the memories are dead and I'm numb."
"Drinking yourself into a stupor isn't going to cure your PTSD. And you can't mix alcohol with the Zoloft."
"I know that, Doc! I didn't say I was going to do it; I said I wanted to!"
"Okay, I'm just reminding you, Danny." He paused. "I think what you need right now is to go home and see your wife and your boys. Remind yourself why you came home, remind yourself that you deserved to come home."
He flinched, but he was too tired to argue that point with Doc, so he simply nodded. "Okay. Thanks, Doc."
"You're welcome, Danny. I'll see you Thursday."
"Copy that," he whispered, and hung up.
As soon as he pulled into the driveway, the front door opened. He got out of the car, trudged inside, then leaned back against the door as Linda wrapped him in her arms. "Danny, what's that smell? You know you can't drink alcohol while you're on the Zoloft…"
He pulled away and walked over to the couch, sat down. "Really, Linda? The first words out of your mouth are have I been drinking?" He shook his head. He was too tired to fight with her tonight.
"I started thinking about how there's no way in hell I'll get my shield back, and I lost my dinner." Honestly, losing his dinner had more to do with the flashback, than with thinking about losing his shield, but she didn't need to know that.
She reached for him, and he didn't pull away when she kissed him. "I'm sorry, Danny. I shouldn't have jumped to that conclusion." He nodded, let out a shaky breath.
"I won't ask if you're okay, 'cause I can tell you're not. Go shower, I'll heat up some of the casserole for you."
He stood up. "Thanks, but I'm not hungry."
He was halfway up the stairs when he remembered what he'd wanted to tell her. "I called the doctor on my lunch break. He wants to see me at 8 a.m. Thursday. That'll put me working the 10-6 desk shift, and I'll see Dawson right afterwards."
"Good. That's good, Danny. You really need to put some weight back on, babe."
He nodded, and trudged up the stairs for a hot shower.