February 1, 1991
She joined a gym. She hadn't wanted to. She had thought having Lady would give her back running. She loved running- the steady pace, the feeling of her muscles burning, the way her lungs filled with oxygen and her heart pumped. It was her happy place. He took it. She hates that he took it.
She had tried to run. She had Lady on the leash. She went to the National Mall. She started light. Her feet pounded the sidewalk. Her breath came in huffs. Lady seemed happy to have her back, but then the panic set in.
The memory flooded her senses. She could feel his hands, his knees. Before she knew what was happening, she was bent over a trash can throwing up. She could still feel his hands and smell his breath.
She can't run. So She joined a gym. She let that man change her life and her routines. But she has to admit the spin class—filled with other women—has a nice vibe. The instructors are all young and fit. They are women her age, and it feels good to be with people her age. She's used to spending time with men, but this is a nice change of pace. She doesn't feel exposed or watched.
She has four days until her rescheduled fitness test. She's nervous- not about the push-ups or the sit-ups, not that she won't pass. She's nervous for the mile. The last time she ran, she ended up puking over a trashcan in public. She can't risk that. She can't do that in front of the proctors. She refuses to let that man take the CIA from her. It was not a career she knew she wanted, but she is so close to being a part of something bigger than herself. She wants to serve her country. She can't have it taken from her. She won't let him take it.
She pushes the pedals and feels her leg muscles burn. It feels good. She flips the page on her newest read—a much too dry academic book on the Islamic Revolution and Middle Eastern cultures—as she peddles. She's preparing her mind as well as her body. She will become everything she was meant to be.
February 8, 1991
She's crushing it—eighteen pushups in one minute, twenty-nine sit-ups in one minute, 180-pound 100-foot dummy drag in one minute, and forty-nine seconds. Two events left. Both require her to run.
300-meter dash. She needs to do it in one minute and eight seconds or less.
One and a half-mile run. She needs to do it in fifteen minutes and twenty seconds or less.
She's not worried about the time limits. She's run a lot of track in her day. Her legs are luckily long. She has a naturally long stride. She's not worried about making time.
She's worried about losing her lunch over a trash can.
"Alright, McCord," the proctor—a large man named Johnston with a southern accent—says, "You're up for the 300-meter dash,"
She follows his instructions and stands at the starting line. One loop around the 300-meter track. One minute. She can do it in one minute. Add another 100 meters to make it a standard track, and she could still sprint the loop in the allotted time.
"You got this, McCord," Johnston shouts as he hits the start button.
The electronic buzzer sounds, and she starts running. She pumps her legs. Her breath comes out in puffs. She pushes her body hard. She will not allow her mind a moment to falter—not for the sprint. It'll be over so quickly. She finishes the lap with a flourish.
"38.6 seconds," Johnston reads from his stopwatch.
She smiles. She can feel the sweat running down her forehead and between her shoulder blades.
One more thing. She can do one more thing. She's almost grateful that all of the psychological evaluations happened before that man brought her down. Her psyche evaluation was spotless—no mental health issues. There is no record of that morning on paper. It exists purely in the images she sees in her mind every night.
She gets her water bottle and takes a long pull from it. She gets a two-minute rest before the mile and a half. She gathers every single bit of her compartmentalization skills. He will not invade her mind. She will not allow it.
"Alright, McCord, you're up,"
She gets into position and watches the timer on the stopwatch. The second the buzzer sounds, her mind goes quiet. She sets her pace—steady, strong. Her muscles are warm. She's not running. She's floating. The only noise is her heart pounding in her ears and her steady breaths. She keeps her stride. She feels like she's barely exerting herself. They give her enough time—she can scrape two minutes off and still be comfortable at her pace.
As her body makes an effort to let the man force himself into her head, she takes comfort in the math: one and a half miles around a 300-meter track. One mile is approximately 1,609 meters. Half of 1,609 is 804.5. Two thousand four hundred meters divided by three hundred is eight laps. She has seven left.
On lap two, she repeats the digits of pi as many as she can, and as fast as she can. It's an exercise that she learned to focus her mind on.
On lap three, she changes it up—counting by threes.
Laps four and five—times tables.
Lap six—Fibonacci sequence.
Lap seven and eight—prime numbers.
And then it's over. She's finished. She's done. She bends over, resting her hands on her knees.
"Thirteen minutes and seven seconds. Good job, McCord," Johnston says, "You're a goddamned CIA agent."
She lets out a small laugh. The fact that she's passed doesn't even fully sink in. She can barely process the compliment. She passed, and she is ecstatic about that. But the physical and mental exertion of this morning is catching up with her. She needs to sit down and catch her breath. She needs to be happy. He didn't take this from her. But he is clouding it—and that's breaking her heart.
January 6, 2019
Dr. Sherman allows Elizabeth to shed her tears. She doesn't ask questions. She doesn't offer a tissue. She waits patiently as Elizabeth holds her head in her hands and cries. The woman's whole body is shaking with her tears. She has been holding in these emotions for too long.
Elizabeth hates crying. She hates it. Her father used to say to her- every time she fell off a horse- 'Tears aren't for cowgirls.' She learned his lesson. Every single time she fell, she didn't cry. She climbed back on. It didn't matter how many bruises or scrapes or broken bones. She was an Adams, and she did not give up or break down.
She hadn't even cried this hard when after the accident- not in front of anyone, anyway. Only one thing has ever made her entire body feel the need to shed its pain with violent sobs. Her parents' death had been a dull, constant ache that still act up every once and a while. But this- her secret that she's kept buried for thirty years- has caused the dam to break with its sharp, acute pain.
"I don't want to keep crying like this," She whispers through her tears, "I feel weak. I've never felt weak."
"It's not weak to cry, Elizabeth," Dr. Sherman says softly.
Elizabeth shakes her head, "It is,"
"Elizabeth, weak is the last word I would use to describe you. You stepped up at fifteen to raise your little brother after your parents died. You were a CIA analyst with one combat deployment that you told me about. You went to Iran to stop a coup and watched as your Iranian counterpart and your detail leader died in front of you. You were raped. None of those things come without their effects. You're not weak, and you shouldn't punish yourself for having emotions,"
Elizabeth takes a deep, shaky breath, "What if Henry... I saw him reading articles this morning about helping your partner through trauma, and, um, I don't want him to see me differently now that he knows. I don't want him to think I'm weak,"
"When you told him last night, did he give you any indication that he thinks that?" Dr. Sherman asks gently.
"Other than reading the articles? Why else read them if he doesn't think I'm broken?"
"Henry isn't here. And it's never my place to speak for your husband. But I want to challenge you with a thought," Dr. Sherman pauses for a moment, "Why do you think Henry is reading those articles?"
Elizabeth is silent. She's not sure how to answer that question.
"Elizabeth, you were raped in 1991. For nearly three decades, you have carried this alone. Henry found out this happened to you yesterday. He probably has a million questions he doesn't know how to ask. And he is processing. I doubt very seriously that Henry is reading those articles because he thinks you're weak. He is doing his best to understand the situation."
Elizabeth nods and swallows, "Are you telling me I'm projecting?"
Dr. Sherman shrugs, "Maybe. I'm not going to tell you anything you're feeling isn't valid. What I will tell you is that you can't make decisions about how Henry is processing based on what you're feeling. How did your talk with him go?"
"He was Henry," She says, reducing him to his simplest definition, "He was supportive and kind and gentle. He knew exactly what to say... I always wonder how he does that," She trails off.
"So he gave you no indication that he feels any differently about you now that he knows than he did before," Dr. Sherman prompts.
"No," Elizabeth admits.
"Did he say or do anything that made you feel like he was blaming you?"
"No," Elizabeth says again, "He said..." She takes a deep breath, "He told me it wasn't my fault. I mean… I know Henry. He would never be mad at me for getting hurt,"
Dr. Sherman nods, "Right, so we've talked about this before. You and Henry cannot make assumptions about each other's feelings if you are concerned about how he feels. It would help if you asked him."
"It's hard," Elizabeth admits, "I've kept this secret for so long. It was easier to keep it hidden. He has always been so patient with me—from the moment I met him. I love him so much, and I am so lucky to have him, but I feel guilty. I feel like I don't deserve him. I have this ugly secret that I've kept from him for years, this thing that happened after we were married. It happened after I vowed to share everything with him. And I didn't. I was too ashamed. And I don't know how to move past that guilt,"
"Elizabeth, you might've not told him until last night, but you've been married to him for thirty years. Do you think he had no idea?" Dr. Sherman asks, knowing she shouldn't be asking such a leading question. But sometimes Elizabeth needs a little heavier of a push to crack through her hard head.
"I don't know. His first R and R after Desert Storm was a little weird. I was busy learning the ropes at the CIA, and he was just back from flying combat sorties and dropping bombs. But I was still having nightmares pretty often then, and Henry is a light sleeper; the Marine Corps will do that to a person. But he never asked me. He was there when I had them, but he never asked about them. If he had any suspicions, he never asked."
June 11, 1991
Henry's coming home. He has five days of R and R, and she'd be lying to say she isn't nervous. She's not sure why. Her husband is making it home. He flew through the most successful air campaign in US history. His reward should be coming home to a wife who is more than ecstatic to see him. Instead, her stomach is in knots. She's not sure how to be the person that he left six months ago.
She's not sure what he'll think about her. She's not the same. She's decided she's not going to tell him why. He has three years of active duty left. Telling him would mean for the next three years every time he leaves her, he'll be wondering if it will happen again. She decided it wouldn't be fair to him to throw this big awful thing at him, not when he has his life to focus on.
On the upside, she's already burying it. She's making it blurry under the weight of work and being the best dog mom she can. Work is intense. It requires so much focus and effort. She's learning more and faster than she ever has before. She's becoming something bigger than herself, and it feels good. It's also a little scary to be privy to so much information—information in which, if she and everyone around her do their jobs right, the public will never know. She's become the kind of person she was afraid of becoming—someone who could keep secrets. And the scariest part is she's good at it. Her job is to collect, organize, and interpret the massive amount of intelligence data from the scarily unstable and, as she now knows, soon to fall Soviet Union and then report it up the chain.
So, she's fallen into a routine. Gym with Lady way too early in the morning. Then breakfast at the coffee shop by work. Then, a long, arduous day of collecting and interpreting information. Then she picks up Lady from her doggie daycare on her way back home. She takes her on a walk, and they play ball. They have dinner—usually scrambled eggs or Kraft Mac and Cheese. She spends some time snuggled up with Lady while she reads either an unclassified translation of a Moscow paper or the State Department's latest human rights report on Eastern Europe. And then, her mind can finally quiet, and she can sleep—if for no other reason than she's worked herself into exhaustion.
She's fine. Henry doesn't need to know.
She's nearly pacing as she waits for him in Dulles. The nerves to see him are so new and almost foreign. Henry is the one constant in her life, and it's weird for her not to know exactly what is going to happen. He was fighting in a war. And while he doesn't know it, she's been fighting her war, too. When she lays eyes on him-his tired eyes and big smile, his duffle bag over his shoulder, and his cap under his arm-he is the same. But she's not. She's a different woman than the one who said goodbye to him at the Naval base.
But he doesn't need to know that. For the first time in her life, she has faith in some higher power- it could be God, or it could simply be their love for one another. There is something in the way that he rushes toward her, drops his bag on the ground, and opens his arms to her, telling her they will always make it through.
She falls into his arms, and all of her senses are overwhelmed. She hasn't been touched other than a handshake here and there. And while it's been months, he feels so familiar and safe. It's home. He is her home. She wraps her arms around his neck, and it's like he's absorbing all of her broken pieces.
"I missed you so much," She whispers on the edge of tears.
"Hey," He breathes, pulling away to look at her, "What's wrong?"
She shakes her head, "I just missed you,"
"I'm here," He assures her. He cups her face and as he leans in for a kiss- a real kiss- she backs away and kisses his cheek instead. She's not ready for the intimacy yet. She's not ready for him to know how much she's changed.
"Let's get you home, Marine," She tells him, hoping to wipe the look of rejected hurt off his face.
"Please," He says softly, intertwining his fingers with hers.
June 13, 1991
Something is wrong with his wife. He can feel the tension of the tightrope she seems to be walking. She's quiet and reserved which are two words he never would've used to describe her before. But she's changed. She's still Elizabeth- she can't cook, she beat him at Scrabble tonight, she gloated after the win. But she yawned through the game. She's tired. She's lost weight, and there's a little darkness under her eyes that wasn't there before.
She keeps telling him it's work. She's tired because of work. He can't refute her claim. He's been home for two days, and she's worked twelve hours a day for those two days. It's given him a chance to bond with his new dog. He can tell Elizabeth has doted on Lady. This dog has the best of everything- from her food, bed, and toys to the training she's gotten. Elizabeth has done a great job with her. He's always liked the idea of getting a dog, but he does have to draw the line somewhere. Lady is between them in their bed. She is effectively creating a wall between them.
And now Elizabeth is curled up against her dog instead of his chest. He's wide awake at two in the morning, watching her sleep. There's a thought that she's having an affair crossing his mind at this late hour. She sure hasn't shown any interest in having sex with him since he got home. The two kisses he got were short and sweet. She's always been affectionate, so it's odd to him that she's holding back. And it's unlike her to not want sex. They tend to have pretty matching sex drives, and he's been gone for six months. But maybe his deployment has changed things for her. Maybe the distance made her realize that she doesn't want to be with him.
He watches her sleep as he prays he's not losing her. He can't bear the thought of losing her. She's his best friend. She's the person he trusts with his life. And it's killing him that he's losing her.
Elizabeth's face contorts with discomfort, and her lips part with a soft whimper. He observes how Lady snuggles closer to his wife. He can tell by the way Elizabeth subconsciously wraps her arms around the dog that this happens often. Elizabeth whimpers again, and her face is scrunched. It's not a pretty sight, but he can tell she's in pain.
"Baby," He whispers, touching her arm. She jerks away from his touch in her sleep.
He runs through the worst-case scenario in his mind as he watches Lady settle his wife. She whimpers, and her legs twitch as she buries her face into the dog. But then Lady nuzzles her nose against her owner, and the nightmare passes. Elizabeth takes a deep breath as she settles.
If someone hurt her, she would tell him. That's what he tells himself thirty seconds after the scenario enters his head. If someone had hurt her, she would've told him. His denial begins as he makes other excuses for her new behavior. He leaves again in three days, and he's not sure he can leave her if something's wrong. So what he thinks he knows, he doesn't know.