Milos

Petra held my hand in the spa-like entry way of the therapist's office. At least that is how she described it. I had never been to a spa. Petra had looked into therapists that primarily worked with prisoners of war, but I insisted I wanted to see the same woman she saw. She could clearly be trusted with secrets, Petra seemed to like her. That was all I needed.

The doctor herself waved us into a private room off the atrium. Unlike the white on white waiting room, this room was panelled in mahogany with two large Chesterfield couches facing one another.

"I'm Doctor Linda Martin." The therapist said, extending a hand. She was in her mid forties, petite and stylish. She peered over her glasses, evaluating me.

"Milos." I answered simply, shaking her hand. My fingers had mostly mended, the cast on my arm was finally gone.

"Petra has told me why you're here in general terms. I don't know specifics. We'll talk not only about what you went through, but any emotional issues you might find yourself with, related or not. Any questions?" Petra and I remained silent, our hands laced together. I just wanted to go home. "Well I have one. Petra, may I use the information you've told me in your sessions as groundwork for his sessions?"

She nodded, her golden waves lightly bouncing. "Of course."

"Excellent. Then you can wait outside now. Thank you." Linda said.

My angel turned to me with a sweet smile, rubbing my back as she stood. "I'll be right outside."

I watched her leave the room, looked on as the door closed behind her. It was insane, but I missed her already. I hated being without her, even for a moment. My hand literally felt cold without hers in it. I needed her, I longed for her. I could feel her absence acutely in my very soul. Every time she left it was like the air in the room went with her.

"How are you feeling. Right now." The therapist demanded.

"Empty." I answered reflexively.

"And do you feel that way all the time?" She prodded.

I shook my head. "Only when Petra leaves. I'm fine when she's around."

The doctor picked up the pen and pad from the table. "What does Petra mean to you?"

What did Petra mean to me? What a ridiculous question. "Everything."

Dr Martin raised her eyebrows. "Everything? That's a lot for one person to be. How did you meet?"

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Did she not tell you?"

The doctor wrote something down. "She did. I just want to hear your version."

Petra standing in the snow flashed before my eyes. "I saw her playing the violin."

Dr Martin shrugged. "I liked Petra's telling better. How about this, if you tell me your favorite moment with her, I'll trade you Petra's favorite memory of you."

"Are you haggling with confidential information?" I asked.

"That depends. Is it working?" She quipped.

I nodded. "It was two months before the Magda acid incident, a month before her mother lied to her saying that I had cheated. We had been together for a little over two years. It was almost Christmas. We were in Berlin for Weihnachtsmarkt, in the Castle Charlottenburg. We kissed while the snow fell."

"Your version was definitely more concise." She said after I finished.

"Petra had the same answer." A warmth spread through me.

"Yep." She looked intently at me over her glasses. "Now be totally honest. Do you actually want to be here?"

"No." I started. "But I need this. I have to get better, be better for Petra."

"And why do you want to be better for Petra?" She lifted her pad and pen again.

I glared at her. "Petra is my angel. She's the love of my life, my reason for living. No one has ever made me happy like she does."

Her lips pursed as she looked up at me. "How about you, Milos? Have you ever made you happy? Why aren't you your 'reason for living'?"

I went to bite out a terse response, but stopped. I promised Petra I would really try, and I would never lie to her. I took a long breath in and out. "I've never made anyone happy, least of all myself. My mistakes drove Petra away."

The therapist was scribbling on her note pad again. "Let's try an exercise. I would like you to spend five minutes talking about your life, not relative to Petra. So instead of saying you returned to Petra, you would say you came back to the United States."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Where do I begin?"

She smiled. "Eight years ago."

Eight years ago I met Petra. I was smarter than her game. "I was working in my industry. I worked in item procurement and transportation."

She crossed her arms. "That wasn't five minutes. What else was going on? Friends, hobbies?"

I thought back. It was all very bleak back then. I hadn't gotten into martial arts yet, though I did spend a significant amount of time fighting. "I had one friend, Ivan. He was eventually murdered. Mostly we worked."

Her eyes flicked up to mine. "That must have been very hard for you. So you worked together?"

I nodded. "He was my second in command."

She put her paper down. "You didn't answer that first part, Milos."

I scowled in return. "Yes, it was unpleasant. But I had other things to worry about. I was in jail. Petra was being falsely accused of murdering him."

The second the words left my mouth I regretted them. She was Petra's therapist, of course she already knew about the murder charge. I could have easily avoided losing the challenge.

Her fingers bridged before her. "Petra being accused of murder doesn't need to lessen the loss of your friend. You are entitled to your individual feelings."

"I put my feelings before hers too long. It drove her away."

"You were emotionally and verbally abusive." She said neutrally.

I nodded. "I was. I have been through a lot of counseling for that. Anger management. I will never hurt her again."

"And how did your own needs translate into abuse for you?"

She looked very interested, like this was a quiz and there was a right answer. "I was selfish, I was jealous. Any attention she paid to anyone else, I became enraged with jealousy. Even if people just looked at her, I got so angry. I was desperately afraid that she would leave me for someone else, someone who deserved her."

She nodded, perching her head on her hand. "Do you still feel that jealousy? And can you think of any reason why you would be so afraid of someone leaving you? Did that same fear occur when Ivan left?"

I thought about Petra's smiling face. How she cried with joy at my return. "No, I'm not afraid of Petra leaving me any more. When we started seeing each other last year I was able to manage my anger. I haven't felt jealousy since returning from... Where I was. She is my actual angel. She would never hurt me."

The therapist frowned. "Petra is only human."

I shook my head. "No. You don't understand. I would not have survived without her. She is more than just a person. She is my seraph."

She spent a while writing things down. "Let's move on, we will definitely come back to this later. Did you feel a fear of abandonment when Ivan went missing? And why are you afraid of people leaving, do you think?"

I frowned. "Ivan disappearing was not a huge surprise. Our former industry was high risk. My anger management counselor thinks my insecurities are mother-related."

She stifled a laugh. At least she had a sense of humor. "At the risk of being cliché, tell me about your mother."

I hated talking about her. I sucked in another deep breath. "My mother moved to Czechoslovakia from England. She fell in love with my Russian father while he was working near Staffordshire. She was disowned by her family when she went back to Czechoslovakia with him. They lived in abject poverty, she grew to hate him. Until she died my mother swore finding out she was pregnant was the worst day of her life. My father was stabbed to death just outside of our apartment building just before I was born. My mother tried to give me away, but when she went by the police station the next day I was still laying outside in a blanket. So she picked me back up and brought me home. She despised me. She started drinking heavily and eventually it killed her. I don't know if it was alcohol poisoning or falling or killing herself. I came home from school one day and was moved into state care."

"And how old were you?" She asked quietly.

"Eight? Maybe ten." I grabbed a glass from the table and poured myself some water.

"That must have been difficult." She murmured.

I laughed bitterly. "Not as hard as everything after. State care, my work. The only thing that has ever been wonderful in my life was Natalia-Petra. She is the only person who has ever loved me."

The therapist gently placed her notebook on the table between us. "Well, Mr Dvoracek, you've given us a lot to work with. I would like to see you here twice a week for a two hour session. Possibly three sessions, we'll see how things progress."

I looked at the clock. Four hours had somehow passed. I tentatively nodded. "Okay. I will see you on Thursday."

I left the room to find Petra furiously pacing the atrium.

"-The price of tuna isn't negotiable. No, no it isn't. If she can't afford four hundred cuts of ahi at one hundred and eighty five dollars a cut, maybe she shouldn't have special requested it!" She was quiet for a moment, rolling her eyes and nearly stomping her feet as she paced. She couldn't be any more perfect. "Tonya, Tonya. Listen. We both want the bride happy. We just can't take a loss on food, especially food the bride requested we fly in from Japan!"

I leaned against the doorframe, watching her work. Petra was a force to be reckoned with. She knew her worth, she wouldn't be talked down to or into anything she didn't want. She tucked a loose strand of hair back into her chignon, the silver of her wedding band glinted in the sun.

I was back in the Homestead. I couldn't breathe. There were two men. One of them had a hammer. He swung it around with one hand, holding my wedding band in the other. He was saying filthy things about my wife. The other one grabbed my arm, holding my hand palm-down against the floor. The one with the hammer cackled, pocketing my ring and raising the hammer as he approached. I tried to take a breath but couldn't. The hammer arced through the air, it was going to crush my hand, I waited for the sickening crunch of bone-

"Milos? Milos!" I blinked a few times and Petra materialized in front of me. The warm sun was back on my face. I was in Miami.

"I'm okay." I assured her. My breath started to even out.

"What were you thinking about?" Petra asked. She didn't understand every time I talked about it I relived it.

I swallowed thickly. "They stole my wedding band. I miss having it."

She gently took my hand in hers. "You came back, Milos. That's all I care about. We can get you a new one."

I shook my head. "Those rings, they were plain because I bought them in Berlin, when we were at the Weihnachtsmarkt. Then when you left I kept them. I was so certain we would be married."

"So was I." Petra nearly whispered. "Until you threw that acid. I never believed her, you know. I knew you would never have an affair. I was so certain we would get married. I told her I wanted to marry you when we got back from Berlin, that she needed to find work to support herself. That's when she told me she'd seen you with another woman. It's almost funny it's so ironic; I was defending you to her when I saw that koruna on the street. The koruna you threw. So maybe the band was sentimental, but what we have now? It's much healthier than what we had then. Stronger."

I squeezed her hand as best as I was able. "You're right. I have you."

Our faces were so close. I could feel her breath tickling my lips. I wanted to kiss her. I couldn't. Not while I was such a mess, not at my worst. She deserved so much more. I needed to be that man first. It was my motivation.

Almost as if she read my mind, Petra looked away. "Are you still going to be okay for your physical therapy?"

I nodded. "Yes, we should go."

An hour later I regretted those words. Physical therapy was its own form of torture. My "coach" was about twenty four and obnoxiously muscle bound. "Two more sets! You got this!"

I curled the pathetic ten pound dumbbell again. My arm felt like it was on fire, my hand was shaking from the exertion. I started the last set, sweat covering my body. "Eight... Nine... Ten."

Petra handed me my water bottle. "You're doing great. Only ten more minutes until we go home and soak in the tub."

The trainer smirked at me. I ignored him. Petra had wanted to go to a physical therapy facility, but I convinced her the downstairs gym at the hotel with a licensed PT was far enough for me to hobble. When "Coach" Kevin couldn't get me in the communal hot tub during the first session, Petra had volunteered to help me do my stretches in our suite's tub. In the two months since we started with this arrangement, he hadn't stopped making jokes about it. Fortunately for him and I both, he kept them relatively appropriate.

"Mr D, you're going to tell me where you found her some day." He joked as Petra left to take a call and we moved to the open part of the room for goblet squats.

"Not likely, Kevin." I growled, taking back my pathetic ten pound dumbbell.

"Coach Kevin." He reminded me as he wrote my progress down in his little notebook.

"'Coach' Kevin," I said mockingly. "Why is it that I can do ten thousand squats but I can't have any form of physical contact with my wife?"

"Looking at your chart, I assume your doctor is jealous." He laughed at his own joke while I started my second set of squats. "Squats work nearly every muscle group in your body, and can help increase mobility your hips, which is essential after your bed rest. Sex has no benefits for muscularity or flexibility and puts pressure directly on your pelvis. You don't want that until your bone fragments are fully fused again."

I finished my last set and handed him back the dumbbell. "More misery on Thursday?"

"You'll be doing twelve pounds. Get pumped!" He laughed at his own joke. Again. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. "Oh, right. Not for three more months, bro."

Petra returned before I could respond, breezing into the room with her usual grace. Her light blue dress had short sleeves that fluttered when she moved. She looked like a nymph. "Ready for your stretches?"

I nodded, heading for the elevator.