Notes:
This chapter includes a slur which may be a trigger for some. It was written with the utmost consideration and is included for reasons important to the plot. No offense is intended. Please be advised.
There's nothing but the sound of rushing water and whirl of his own heartbeat in his ears, pounding loud and fast like a healthy heart on a fetal monitor. Danny breaks the surface, sucking in lungs full of chlorinated air at the same moment his fingertips reach the tile, and he flips, his arm stroking out, muscles quaking with exhaustion as he pushes for one more lap. Just one more. He can do one more.
He does sixteen more.
Danny clings to the edge of the pool letting his body float, his face pressed against the cool ceramic. His watch is lying on top of the towel in front of him. He wants to reach for it, to find that he's let the time get away from him, that there's no way he can possibility make it. He wants it to be an honest mistake.
Once he catches his breath, the sound echoing inside the unusually deserted indoor pool at the Y, Danny can't wait any longer. He lifts himself up and drapes the towel over his shoulders before looking. It's 2:33. Damn it. There's plenty of time still.
After the first time he thought the feeling was a fluke, just something he had to get used to. He felt good by the time the second appointment came. He would be fine. Except he hadn't been. The second appointment had been nearly two weeks ago and it has taken all twelve days for Danny to not feel raw, like an exposed nerve.
He feels okay right now, like he can take a deep breath and things are normal, he's normal, and he doesn't want to go back and fuck that up. It clearly isn't helping if he feels more miserable than ever afterward.
Danny walks into the showers resolved to blowing off the appointment. Fuck it.
Danny walks out of the showers remembering that only weak men blow off their commitments. He hates himself. He's going to therapy.
"Good afternoon, Danny. How are you doing today?" Dr. Franklin is unusably chipper. It's grating.
"Fine." Danny's legs are tired from the hour and a half in the pool followed by the walk here, and with the muscles tight when he sits it's more like a flop, the chair scraping back against the hardwood enough to make him wince.
She eyes him neutrally and joins him in the sitting area, writing tablet clutched in her hand. If she's waiting on him to start his own torture they'll sit here in silence for the next hour. "You seem tense today. Everything alright?"
"Fine."
She smirks at him and it's irritating enough he takes the bait. "What?"
"Nothing. Monosyllabic. You are clearly fine." She's openly smiling at him now and aren't shrinks supposed to be less antagonistic?
Danny pushes a hand in his hair and decides to be honest. "Look, no offense, but I don't think this is helping. As a matter of fact, coming here is actively making me feel worse. I'd rather be basically anywhere but here right now."
"It's overwhelming when you come here? Painful? Where it takes days and days to recover before having to do it all again?" she asks, her voice sounding completely non-judgmental.
Danny sits up a little straighter. "Yeah. That's it exactly. It's nothing against you. You're nice enough and all. I'm glad you understand. So, should I just go? Or?..."
Dr. Franklin crosses her legs and there's a twinkle in her almond-shaped eyes he doesn't like. It gives him a weird feeling like she knows something he doesn't and he's playing somehow into her hand. "You're an OB/GYN, right?"
"Yeah."
"On average how many breast exams do you administer on a weekly basis?"
It's lame that the question makes him nervous. His swallows hard and really wishes he knew where she is heading with this. "Um. I don't know. Depending on if I have deliveries that week . . . a lot, I guess."
"And when you give an exam and you find a lump or abnormality that hurts the patient when you press on it what do you do?"
Is she asking for free medical advice? Because he's not using up the rest of his hour and copay because she's overdue with her gynecologist. "Well, if there's a lump we'd do x-rays and then probably a biopsy. Then surgery if needed. Do you need an appointment? Because there are some of my colleagues I can recommend."
"No," she chuckles, and he's making this way worse for himself and he's not even sure how. "I just wanted to be clear - if you have a patient who has an issue that hurt when you pressed it, your advice wouldn't be to just 'not press it', but to actually find out the cause of the pain and remove it."
Fuck.
He hates everything.
"Fine."
"Back to fine. We are making some excellent progress today."
He pushes out of the chair and strides over the the fireplace, just wanting to get away but feeling too caught to actually storm out. "What do you want me to say? You got me. I'm a chickenshit if I leave now. Are you happy?"
"No."
"Well then what the hell do you want from me?!"
She turns in her seat to address him. "I want you to be smart and put the same amount of work into yourself as you would your own patients. And it would be nice if maybe you would stop looking at this like some kind of trick or sham, and treat it like the healthy medical solution to what is too painful for you to even touch right now."
"Fine. Not fine - I mean -" Danny sighs and tries not to sound petulant. "Tell me what to do. How do I fix this?"
"Well, you can't just 'fix' it."
"Then what's the point?" he growls. So much for not sounding petulant.
"You can't just fix it; can't erase the things in your life that have hurt you. But you can work towards mending them. So that's what you do. You work."
He's always been better with paper and ink. Typing is a hassle. It has nothing to do with him being bad at it. Danny thumps the end of the pen on the lined yellow paper and wonders if it's cheating if he pours himself a drink before he starts.
Probably.
He does it anyway. Doc didn't say he couldn't lube his words up first.
It startled him when she suggested he write letters, like somehow she knew he already did and was testing him. It's a real thing though apparently, a technique used to help find the source of a problem and work through it. Danny's supposed to write, without necessarily sending them, letters to everyone whose relationship has caused any underlying issues in his life. Then he's supposed to do the same to all of the people whose lives he feels like he may have had a similar negative impact. He is supposed to try and at least go through the motions of making amends with all those who have hurt him, and those whom he has hurt.
It isn't the easiest thing he's ever done, but Danny can write the letters to the people who've hurt him. He writes them out, page after page. One to Christina, one to his dad, to Derek Sabria from middle school who used to beat the shit out of him for taking dance, to his priest from his catechism class. Even one to his mom, for hurts real but too petty to ever say to her. He burns them all except for the one to his dad. That one he folds as many times as possible, making it small and thick, and then shoves it into the middle of one of his copies of Catcher In The Rye. It will break the spine.
Then he gets to work on some tougher ones. Like the letter he really doesn't want to write to Christina admitting that maybe he could have been a better husband and that neither of their failed attempts to be together landed solely on her shoulders. He burns that one the fastest. Even though every word is true and he is genuinely over her, Danny still doesn't want to allow even the slimmest possibility she may ever have the satisfaction of reading his regrets.
The letter he writes to Pinky Simpson he thinks very seriously about sending before deciding it would probably do more to ease Danny's conscience than it would make the other man feel better. In 7th grade after Pinky, so called because of his round cheeks permanently stained red due to rosacea, made some crack he doesn't even remember now, Danny called him a faggot in front of their whole grade. Everyone laughed except Danny and Pinky. It felt bad at the time and he always meant to apologize, but was too chicken to bring it up. When Richie came out Danny's sophomore year of college the memory lodged somewhere in his heart and he hasn't been able to move it since. He saves that letter thinking maybe he'll give it to Richie as an apology for a million different dickheads like himself who have said the same kind of ignorant things to his baby brother.
It takes him a long time to get through them all, but he does it.
Almost.
There's one letter though, one that deserves him giving a really good explanation, that he can't write. Which is weird; he's never had a hard time writing to her before.
It remains unwritten for nearly three weeks. Danny puts it off until it festers so much it hurts without even having to push on it. He has to get good and drunk to even start.
She has gotten very good at schooling her features. When she sees him on the train, on the mornings she's running too late to alter her schedule to avoid him, Mindy falters only a single second before plastering her face with what looks almost like a genuine smile.
This morning it's less than a second, if he even saw it at all. Mindy looks happy to see him and it makes his heart feel light and the folded pieces of paper he's transferred from pants pocket to pants pocket for more than a month now feel as heavy as a stone.
Danny would tell her, would give her all of the words written out in a shaky, drunken scrawl that may or may not be smudged with tears, if it wasn't for the fact that he would do anything at all right now to keep her smiling at him like this forever.
"Hey, Danny, I was -" She pushes his door open slightly just as he's adjusting the messenger bag strap over his shoulder. "Oh. You're heading out. Never mind."
"No, I'm - Well I was just going to . . go to the gym," he lies. "What's up?" He jerks the bag over his head again and tosses it on his desk.
"Nothing. Doesn't matter. I was just going to see if you wanted to grab a very late lunch. We can go some other time."
She's already down the hall, out of view, when the moment comes where he can't wait anymore. "Mindy!"
"What?" She comes striding back into the room with a frown pulling down at her brow but a smile playing at her lips. Mindy's looking at him like he's crazy and somehow that makes it easier to admit that maybe he is a little.
"I, uh." Danny fumbles with the words as he fumbles pulling the paper out of his pocket. "I'm not actually going to the gym. It's something else. An appointment. Um." He walks around to the door, grabbing his bag back off his desk hastily, not wanting to be late. "Here. This is for you."
Mindy begins to unfold the edges, all four corners worn down from being shuffled around. "Don't read it now," he says. "Do it later, when you're alone maybe. It will explain some things."
"Danny, are you okay? 'Cause you're starting to freak me out a little. Oh God!" Her hand flies to her mouth, eyes wide. "You're not dying are you? Danny, you'd tell me if you were dying. Is this your will? Here, take it back. Take it back."
She shoves the paper against his chest and he barely catches it before she pulls her hand away. "Mindy-"
"I don't care if you left me everything. Whatever it is, you're going to make it."
"Mindy. Stop. I'm not dying."
"Oh."
"And this isn't my will." He pushes the letter back in her hand.
"That was a mean joke to pull then. Why would you do something like that, Danny?"
"I never -" he stops, not having time to get sucked into this. "Just read it later. Okay?"
"Yeah, sure." She's bobbing her head, her eyes still regarding him sharply. "Promise me you're fine first, though."
"I'm fine - well." He can't help smirk a little, hopeful. "I'm going to be fine. I'm working on it."