He had hoped to take a nap after telling Doc about his flashback, but then Doc shifted in his chair, stretched, and said firmly, "You said that you don't want to die. Can you tell me about that, Danny?"
He stared at the cast on his arm. Sometime, before he'd woken up, Linda had written on it: Love you more, L.
He was dry as the Sahara—all the stupid pills.
"Can I have some water, please?"
"Just a sec."
Doc brought him a paper cup.
He drained it, looked pleadingly at Doc.
Two more cups of water later, he squashed the cup in his hand, leaned back on the mattress.
"You said that you don't want to die," Doc reminded him.
"I…I…I don't know where that came from," he muttered, suddenly embarrassed.
"It's a good thing, I'm glad to hear that, Danny. Tell me what's going through your head."
He unfolded the cup, began tearing it into tiny pieces. "Do I have to?" Damn, he sounded like a whiny kid.
"It'll help, Danny."
"I…can't…"
His breath was coming in harsh, wheezing gasps.
He kicked the railing on his bed.
Damn, his ribs hurt.
The warm hand on his arm. "Slow your breathing down, Danny. You're safe."
The bed creaked, and Doc was sitting next to him. "Breathe with me, Danny. Try to match my breathing, okay? In through your nose…one, two, three, four. Out through your mouth…one, two, three, four, five."
"Can't…breathe…"
"Yes, you can, Danny. Less talking, more breathing. Breathe with me, okay?"
He tried to match Doc's breathing.
The pain was making dark spots dance before his eyes.
Doc was talking about the snow outside and the game of chess he planned to play with Danny later.
Chess in the psych ward…that was just peachy.
Chess.
He always played chess with his grandfather.
Was his grandfather still alive?
Or was he blaming himself for what Danny had done?
"Pops?" he gasped.
"He's fine, Danny. Worried about you, but fine. I saw him yesterday. Talked with him for a while."
Doc kept talking…snow, and chess, and weather forecasts…calm, relaxed, there.
Finally, finally, he could breathe.
"Padre told me that the only way to heal…was to stop burying the memories. I…buried everything for nine years, and it exploded in my face. That's why I drove my car into the barrier: I wanted…the pain, and the memories, and the nightmares, and the flashbacks to stop! I can't face them!"
"Danny, you already are facing the memories. I know they're scary and they're overwhelming, but I'll help you learn to manage them, keep them from holding you underwater."
He took a shaky breath. "Water?"
Doc handed him another cup.
He drained it, crushed it in his hand, stared at the blanket.
"I don't wanna die, Doc! And I don't know why not, because four days ago, I wanted to end it all! I just want…to stop hurting! I wanna be able to sleep through the night for once! I haven't…not since John Russell…"
His voice broke, and he closed his eyes, seeing the look in John's eyes in those final seconds.
He shuddered.
"Good job, Danny. You're seeing that there's a difference between wanting to die, and wanting the pain to stop. Hope is the difference—having hope that life will get better."
He opened his eyes, threw the cup toward the trashcan, scoffed. "Stop with the platitudes, Doc. If you're gonna sit there and tell me everything's gonna be fine, you can go the same way Trautman did. Except I promise not to throw anything at you."
"Danny, I want to try our old question-and-answer routine. You up for that?"
He shrugged.
Doc stood up, walked back to his chair, and sat down. "Would you say that you've hit the ocean floor—you've drowned, you can't go any lower than this?"
He nodded.
"But you're still alive, you're still breathing, right? Even though you're at the bottom of the ocean?"
"Yeah."
"You have two options, Danny. You can give up and let yourself drown—or you can reach out and grab the life jacket that your doctors, your family, and I, are holding out to you. Which is it gonna be, Danny?"
He didn't want to drown. He didn't know why, but he didn't want to drown.
"You're gonna think I was just trying to get attention Friday…" he whispered.
"No, I won't, Danny. Friday night, you were in more pain than you'd ever faced before in your life, more pain than you knew what to do with. That's why you crashed your car. You were not just trying to get attention."
He swallowed thickly. His mouth was still dry. "I want…I want a life-jacket, Doc! I want to see my boys grow up. I don't want them to grow up without me because I was too weak to handle the memories and the pain! I don't want to be another veteran statistic, another cop statistic!"
He didn't know when he'd started crying. "I don't wanna die, Doc! I just wanna stop hurting!"
Doc's hand was warm on his arm. "I'll help you. The next time the pain becomes overwhelming, you have to reach out—okay, Danny? I understand why you were too ashamed to face your grandfather Friday and why you bolted—but you have to reach out. Telling someone 'I need help, I can't be alone right now'—takes incredible strength. I know you have that strength, because you reached out for help—you called me—the night John Russell died."
He swiped at his eyes, picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "Padre told me…that one day I'd be able to think back on Fallujah without having a flashback, and…be grateful that I'm alive. I don't know…how that can happen! I can't talk about Fallujah anymore, Doc! Six f-g weeks of flashbacks and nightmares and telling you about Fallujah, and I've tried to kill myself three times! I can't…!"
"Okay, Danny, I won't make you tell me anything new about Fallujah. But we are going to revisit some of the memories you've already told me about, and figure out how to face them without freaking out."
He listened as Doc talked him through some process called CPT.
He was flagging, and he hoped Doc was about to end the session.
The younger man stood up. "I'll let you rest now, but I want you to think about this: You deserve to be alive for your own sake, Danny—and nothing that happened in Fallujah can change that."
He squeezed Danny's good shoulder. "I'd be happy to talk about this with you, but I think you should talk to Padre Donovan—it's more up his alley. He'll be in to sit with you in a minute."