Chapter 2

A/N – This chapter contains rather graphic descriptions of war and injury. Again, in his sessions with Ella, italics represent John's thoughts and memories. None of these are voiced out loud.

John had thought the previous week had been boring but at least he had had a list of tasks, like finding a flat and setting up bank accounts, that needed doing. His first appointment with Ella had been the last thing on that week's to-do list. This week John literally had had nothing to do. What had Ella said last week about feeling of isolation and loneliness? Check the box for those. He could not remember another time in his life when he had been so idle, so bored or so utterly alone. He had put himself on a schedule as much by nature as by Ella's suggestion. He woke early, did his PT exercises, read the papers, walked and practised his handwriting, but the days were still endless and the nights were even longer.

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The second session ...

"So, John, how was your week?" Ella began directly after John had seated himself. He regarded her for a moment before answering, his stone mask firmly in place.

Endless, tedious and gray.

John gave a small gesture with his hand, "Um, fine."

Ella raised her eyebrows, an expression John would soon come to hate. No other tool in her arsenal, no word or action, was as piercing or insightful as Ella Thompson's raised eyebrows.

"Really?" she said mildly, skeptical. She waited a beat for elaboration but none was forthcoming.

"Were you able to get started on your blog?"

It had taken him less than an hour to choose a blogging website and set up his profile but he had nothing to post, not a single bloody thing. The highlight of his week had been getting a haircut. The low-light was smashing a jar of jam on the floor of Tesco because his hand had started to shake and he couldn't maintain his grip. Neither were particularly post-worthy.

"Yeah. I mean, I set it up." John answered truthfully. Ella nodded.

"Good, good. Remember, your posts needn't be anything grand. Just jot down things that happen to you as a start." She asked for and made note of the blog's URL.

"Anything else?" she encouraged looking up from her notes. John returned her gaze. His mouth twitched in an attempted smile but he said nothing.

Ella Thompson had spent her career getting people to talk. She knew all the types. There were those who talked freely and vociferously at the slightest provocation. There were those who were reticent to start but once she hit upon the right question or topic they opened up like flood gates. Then there were those who interleaved periods of quiet reluctance with periods of angry or teary outbursts. Finally, there were the John Watsons, patients who never revealed more than asked and who never lost control. They were the most challenging and, often, the most at risk, like the man across from her now.

"How is you physical health?"

"Fine. Good."

"So, you're fully recovered? No outstanding treatments, then?"

John's first memory as he slowly awoke from the anesthesia after the third surgery was the pins and needles sensation spreading down his left arm and out through his fingers. No, that wasn't right. The surgery was supposed to fix that. It must be the post-operative swelling that's still causing some impingement. It would get better. But it didn't and it wouldn't. Later that afternoon both Norman Zu, the orthopedic surgeon, and Celeste Parker, his neurologist, came to his room. His current roommate, a 23-year old lieutenant, with moderate traumatic brain injury, had just been taken down for another CAT scan. An ice-cold lump formed in the pit of John's stomach when Celeste turned and closed the door. Norman dropped casually into the visitor's chair and leaned forward a bit.

"Well, John, we removed the floating bone chips, eight in all, and repaired the coracoclavicular ligament like we discussed. That should reduce the discomfort and free up your range of motion a bit," he began in his no-nonsense style.

"But?" John had said softly in to the space not really wanting to hear the answer.

"As Norman said, your range of motion should improve and be quite good, actually. But, there was no impingement on the axilla as we thought, nothing to relieve," Celeste continued. John recognized that she was dropping in to professional bad-news mode.

"Fortunately, as you know, none of the three cords* were severed. Amazing that, really, given the state of your clavicle. But, the posterior cord is visibly damaged." The cold lump in John's stomach fell through the floor.

"I'm sorry, John, but I don't think there is anything more that can be done."

"No," John said succinctly. Ella wasn't completely sure which question he had answered but suspected, perhaps, both. She decided to let it pass for now.

"Medications?" she asked.

"Carisoprodol and lidocaine plasters." John replied his voice flat. Ella made note of medications. Pain, both real and psychosomatic, was often a positive indicator for depression.

"How is the pain?"

"It's OK. It's just the leg most days and that's ... I don't take the Carisoma for that," John answered.

"On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your pain level at right now?" Ella inquired. John paused, again reluctant, but he needed to address this. This was why he was here.

"While sitting here? A three." He shifted in his chair.

"Point to the pain." Ella said. John cleared his throat and shifted again..

"There's nothing wrong. I know it. I do. I try ..."

"John, where does it hurt?" her voice was calm but insistent. John reached down and rubbed his right leg just above the knee.

"Is that the site of injury?" she pointed with a pen to where John's hand still kneaded his leg.

"Hyper flexation, a tear in the patellar tendon, fixed arthroscopically. It's fine, completely healed." John said without inflection. He forced himself to sit straighter in his chair and return his hand to the arm rest.

"How did it happen?" she continued. John felt irrational embarrassment rising, coloring his face and the tips of his ears. Why was she pressing this? He bloody well knew the leg was physically fine. That wasn't the problem here.

"I fell on it, just landed funny. That's all. It's nothing. I ..."

"When you were shot," Ella interrupted her voice even but firm.

John stilled. He felt his muscles tense and his breath quicken.

"What?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"You fell on it, landing funny, causing an injury which required surgery when you were shot. Is that correct?" she cocked her head to the side slightly awaiting a response. John blinked rapidly three times. One blink for each shot that echoed distantly in his head.

If asked, John would have described being shot exactly as most people describe traumatic injury, a sudden explosion of pain which registered in his brain as a blinding, white-hot flash. That was his overwhelming impression. Yet, in the dark of the night, when he allowed himself to think further about it, he could also recall each instant separately and distinctly. He could actually remember his surprise at the bullet punching through his scapula and feel its spiraling trajectory through the soft tissue of his shoulder. This then culminated in the agonizing shattering of his clavicle before the round ripped its way out of his body only to be stopped by the inside surface of his body armour. Irony, that. Underneath all of this, however, was the pain of his right knee flexing unnaturally and his tendon tearing as he was unable to stop his awkward, twisting face-plant into the dirt.

John cleared his throat before answering, "Yes."

"That is not nothing," Ella said bluntly. John blinked again and looked away.

"John, you're a doctor, I don't have to tell you that pain is a funny thing. It's a serves as both a warning and a reminder. And it's notoriously imprecise, especially in the case of severe trauma. The mind and body are not nearly as compartmentalized and separate as people like think. The pain is real because the experience was real."

John paused unsure how to react to this affirmation.

"Yeah, but it's healed now. I know it is. There's no reason ..." he began gesturing to his knee.

"It. Happened." Ella interrupted again. John looked down briefly before forcing himself to look back up.

"Don't we have this the wrong way 'round? Aren't you supposed to be telling me it's all my head?" John quipped causing Ella to smile. She pulled out her best line.

"Of course it is in your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"** she quoted ruefully. John's eyes narrowed in confusion then quickly widened in recognition. He chuckled and cracked a small but genuine smile. Ella was struck by how the smile transformed his face. Seeing this glimpse of what she assumed was his normal, warm visage made his current dissociated despondence seem all the more unnatural and wrong.

"Our minds tend to get stuck, John, living in memory and continuously drawing us back to the moment of trauma. They will continue to do so until new thoughts, new patterns of memory supplant the old. Staying in the present, living in the present, and not at the moment of trauma is essential if we're to move past the event. That's another reason for keeping the blog. It will help keep your mind in the present by focusing on what is happening to you now." Ella looked earnestly at her patient but John had reasserted his flat stone mask. He made no outward acknowledgement. She wondered if her words were having any effect.

John worked his jaw. All he had was memories. Part of him wanted to scream but he was a soldier and would never give in to that sort of nonsense. His expression remained outwardly unchanged. He knew that Ella was honestly trying to help and that she believed what she said. It also felt surprisingly good, better than he would ever admit, to hear someone, a professional therapist no less, acknowledge his pain. The doctors and physio therapists at Queen's Hospital had been great. They were skilled and tough and had pushed him hard. He knew that he owed both his life and his high degree of function to them, but they had also had been very blunt and dismissive about what they termed his "phantom" ailments. He truly appreciated Ella's acceptance. He understood her line of reasoning about developing new patterns of thought, too, he really did. However, he also recognized the fundamental flaw in her logic.

Nothing was happening to him now.

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A/N

* According to my Googling there are 3 major cords of nerves that cross the shoulder.

** This is a paraphrasing of Dumbledore's statement to Harry near the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

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I would never dream of laying any claim to these characters.

Not beta'd or Brit Picked.