After a couple of restless hours…courtesy of a nightmare of the roof 72 hours earlier…he'd actually slept.
He poked at the scrambled eggs. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry; he just didn't see the point of eating.
He took a sip of coffee as Linda put her plate in the dishwasher. She walked over to him, rubbed his shoulders. "I just saw Doc's car pull up. I'll be upstairs doing laundry, okay?"
He nodded.
He stood up, kissed her, and put his almost-full plate in the sink. He'd scrape it into the garbage later.
She went upstairs just as there was a knock on the kitchen door. He opened it. "Hey, Doc."
"Hey, Danny. How are you?"
He shrugged, took a turn around the kitchen. "How the hell do you think I'm doing, Doc? I hate this! I'm hurting my family, I'm scaring myself, and I'm really sick and tired of feeling like this!"
"Okay, sit down and tell me about it," Doc said calmly.
He stopped pacing, turned to face the younger man. "You're not going to leave, tell me you can't work with me?"
Doc shook his head as he sat down at the kitchen table. "Nope. Actually, I'm glad to see you're angry."
He frowned, sat down heavily. "No one's ever glad to see me angry, Doc; so why are you?"
"Depression has been defined as anger turned inwards. Letting the anger out, turning it away from yourself and towards the depression, will help you heal. What got under your skin, Danny?'
He couldn't have held the flood of words back, even if he wanted to—everyone was flooding him with advice, none of it helpful; he'd gone from being angry to wanting to cry in less than five minutes; he didn't want to hurt his family; Linda was too supportive and he didn't deserve her; and he didn't trust himself to be alone.
Doc let out a long breath. "I think we can channel this anger to fight your depression. I want you to take one of these thoughts and say it out loud—but instead of saying 'I should have died in Fallujah,' say 'You should have died in Fallujah.'"
"What-the-hell, Doc?"
"This exercise puts some distance between you and the depression, between your own point of view and the depressive point of view—because it's as if someone else is saying it to you. Try it."
He kicked the table leg. "Come on, Doc, don't go all Freudian on me!"
"I'm not. This is actually a relatively new technique. Give it a try, Danny."
He glared at Doc, then pushed his chair back and stood. He walked over to the kitchen sink, leaned on it. He had a vague idea this was going to cause…emotions, none of which he wanted to deal with…and he didn't want Doc to see his face.
He stared out the window, heaved a sigh. This was stupid and a waste of time, but if he didn't do it…Doc would give up on him. Linda would leave. And the waves would swallow him up.
And that thought scared him. "'You don't deserve to be alive,'" he whispered.
"Good job. Come sit down, please."
"I'm good over here, Doc."
"Danny, part of therapy is me being able to see your body language and your facial expressions. Right now, all I can see is your shoulders, which are telling me you're angry enough to hurt someone—or yourself. Please sit down."
He cursed, but turned and sat down.
"Thank you, Danny. Now, say it again, a little louder."
"Why, Doc?"
"You remember how I told you anger hides a lot of emotions? Well, so does depression. There are emotions hidden under that voice that you need to face."
"What do you mean 'that voice'? I'm not hearing things, dammit, Doc!"
"It's not an external voice, Danny. It's the negative thoughts, and the anger you feel toward yourself."
"I don't f-g deserve to be alive—that's a fact, Doc!"
"Is it?" Doc asked calmly.
He kicked a chair, sending it flying across the room. "'You don't deserve to be alive!'"
He hadn't meant to yell.
A wave of anger and sadness and all-out pain crashed over him. "Dammit!"
"What's wrong?"
He shook his head. "I…I can't…"
"Saying that out loud like that, made you feel things, didn't it? What are you feeling right now, Danny?"
"You know I hate that question!"
"I know, but you're doing good, Danny. Tell me how those words make you feel."
He shrugged.
He was surprised when Doc didn't push. Instead, the younger man asked him, "Is it possible, Danny, that…the little voice in your head telling you that, telling you that you don't deserve to be alive, is lying to you? That it's not really you thinking that, but something else?"
"Like what?"
"You tell me. When's the first time you thought to yourself that you should have died in Fallujah?"
That wasn't hard. He knew the exact time and place he'd first had that thought.
"When I found out…when Padre Donovan told me…that I was the only one of my unit who survived."
The hand on his shoulder made him jump. "Good job, Danny. You're doing good. We've been at this for a good while. Take a break, get a drink of water."
He stood up. He was trembling. He stumbled over to the sink, took a glass from the dish-rack, and filled it. He drank two glasses, then walked back to the table, sat down.
"If Linda, or Jamie, or Detective Baez, or anyone else, told you: 'I don't deserve to be alive'…what would you say to them?"
He shuddered. "That…that they were…that that little voice in their heads was lying to them."
"So, you wouldn't tell Linda or Jamie that they don't deserve to be alive?"
"No!" he said, sharply.
"Then why is it okay for you to tell yourself that you don't deserve to be alive?"
"Because…!" The pain was strangling him; he couldn't…
"Danny, that little voice in your head is lying to you. I want you to tell yourself what you would tell Linda or Jamie."
He shook his head. He wasn't sure what Doc meant. "'You deserve to be alive?'" he whispered, and flinched.
"You're on the right track, Danny, but I want you to say it in the first person: 'I deserve…'"
He shook his head. "I don't…I can't…"
"Five words, Danny. You can do this. Then I'll call it a day. Five words."
He leaned his elbows on the table, put his head in his hands. What would he say to Jonesy if the younger man were still alive and were contemplating eating his gun?
"I deserve…"
He let out a shaky breath. It was a bunch of hogwash. He couldn't do it.
"Take a breath, Danny. You're okay. What's keeping you from saying the words?"
He swallowed. Doc's stupid drowning analogy. "A ten-foot high wave is slamming into me."
"Okay. How does that wave make you feel?"
"Angry. And…scared."
"Why?"
"Because…if it's true for them…if they deserve to be alive and they're not…then why am I alive?"
"I don't know why you're alive, but I know you are alive, and you deserve to be alive. Say these five words, and I'll stop bothering you."
The coffee was churning in his stomach.
His mouth was dry, and he swallowed thickly. He really needed that coffee to stay down. "I… deserve…to be…alive?"
It came out as a question, not a statement.
He gagged.
He stood up blindly, knocking his chair over, stumbled toward the sink. He heaved, bringing up the little breakfast he'd eaten. Dammit!
A firm hand was on his shoulder. "Breathe, Danny."
"Why…?"
"Physical reaction to emotional tension. It's normal."
Great. Just peachy.
Tears were stinging his eyes. He blinked, but seeing the mess he'd made in the kitchen sink, on top of his uneaten breakfast that he'd never scraped into the garbage can, just made him gag again.
He closed his eyes as his body continued to try to turn itself inside out.
"You finished?" Doc asked after what felt like hours.
He nodded.
Doc pressed a glass of water into his hand.
He rinsed, spat, still keeping his eyes closed.
Doc turned him away from the sink, led him to the table. "Come sit down."
"Are we done?" He opened his eyes, blinked. The light seemed brighter, harsher, than normal. His eyes stung.
"We have a couple more steps to go through, but I'll let you stop here and we'll come back to them tomorrow. You did good, Danny." Doc took a sip from the thermos he'd brought with him. "Where's Linda?"
"Upstairs."
"I don't want you to be alone right now, Danny. Will you go upstairs and get her when I leave?"
He nodded.
"I can let myself out," Doc said.
He felt like he'd been run over by Jamie's patrol car—twice.
He stood up, cleaned out the sink.
Then he walked to the stairs. Each step felt like an entire flight, but finally, finally, he was at the top.
He could hear Linda moving around in the laundry room. He wanted to call out to her, tell her he needed her, but that required energy, and he had none.
So he walked into their room, turned down the covers, and without taking off his shoes, crawled under them.
Maybe he would fall asleep and just not wake up.
He pulled the covers more tightly around himself.
He was shaking. He wasn't cold; he wasn't crying. He was in shock—he'd felt it before—and there was nothing he could do for it. Well, a stiff shot of whiskey would help, but his dad's whiskey was downstairs.
So he lay there and shook, and cursed his weakness.
Linda walked into the room, turned on the light. He shuddered under the covers. He didn't want her to see him like this.
"Danny! What's wrong?" She rushed over to him, sat on the edge of the bed.
He wanted to tell her it was okay, he was just tired after his session. But he wasn't okay, and it was so much more than just being tired after the session with Doc.
He shook his head.
Everything was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
He was wrong.
She ran her hand through his hair, kissed him, then stood up.
She walked back to the door, closed it and locked it.
Then she came back to the bed and crawled under the covers next to him.
He tensed, expecting her to berate him for going to bed in the middle of the day.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around him, and held him.
He had no tears left to cry. Even if he had, he wouldn't have known what he was crying about. All that was left was pain—pain like he had never felt before. So he lay there and shook in her arms.
"I'm here, Danny. You're safe. I love you."
She whispered the words over and over again.
She was here, he wasn't alone.
He lay there, listening to her heartbeat and her quiet words, and the regular bonging of his dad's grandfather clock.
Doc had left at 11.
The clock had just struck 1 when he finally found his voice. Quietly, hesitantly, he told her about Doc's blasted new-fangled therapy session.
"One of these days, you'll be able to believe that, Danny—to believe that you deserve to be alive. And until you can, I'll believe it for you, and Doc will, and your dad will. So lean on us when you can't stand."
She kissed him, and he fell asleep clinging to her.