Out of the Blue (14 page)

I was a fucking wreck.

Sleep for me was intermittent at best, and today I was more irritable than usual.

Linda had more patience than I gave her credit for, though, and I could sense it coming: I was going to snap and spill my guts. Linda was like a vulture picking at the bones of my carcass, looking for an alternative way to ask the same damn question. The look in her eyes told me she knew she was on the right track, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I cracked. It scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t talk to anyone I knew about what I saw that night of the accident and how it felt to have my soul ripped from me. So how was I supposed to tell a virtual stranger?

In the end it didn’t matter because it came out of my mouth whether I wanted it to or not.

“You look tired, Lieutenant. Did you not sleep well last night?” Linda’s polite manner pissed me off.

“I look tired every day.”

“Yes, you do. Why is that?” We had another staring contest when I remained silent. “Tell me about Jake. Does he know you’re not sleeping properly?”

“Why do you keep asking about him?” I demanded.

Linda looked at me for a long second, and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. I should have known better. “Tell me, why is it that you’re happy, eager, even, to talk about Jake’s family, work and experiences you’ve
had
, but you’re unwilling to speak about him in the present tense? According to your record, you live together. Your reluctance tells me that Jake is the source of your current lack of sleep and possibly the reason you’re having sessions with me in the first place.”

My anger bubbled over and the heat rose in my face. “I’m having sessions with you because the Chief won’t put me back on active duty until I get
your
clearance.”

Unperturbed, Linda leaned back in her chair and looked at me with that knowing glint in her eye.

“Okay, I wasn’t going to go here yet but since you brought it up—tell me why you’re here.”

“Because Chief sent me.” Short and to the point.

“Chief Maloney sent you to me because you’re having trouble keeping your head on the job and have made some errors in judgment. You’re avoiding calls and have been less than the professional lieutenant you normally are. Tell me why that is.”

Her lips parted slightly and I swore I could see the canines descend, ready to strike. Crossing my arms, I remained silent. I was quite good at this staring contest; after all, practice makes perfect.

“Tell me why you’ve been having trouble with tasks that would normally be second nature to you,” Linda pushed, and when I didn’t answer, she continued in that polite voice that grated on my nerves. “Is Jake aware that you’ve been put on administrative duty?”

My skin crawled, making my hair stand on end and sweat glisten on my brow. I felt it coming and I was powerless to stop it. It started in my toes and rose hot through my limbs until I exploded. I stood abruptly, my chair falling backward with a muffled thud on the carpeted floor.

“Jake doesn’t
know
anything. He left, he moved out because I’m a coward and can’t tell him shit. Tell me,
Doctor
, how do you tell your partner of almost ten years that every time you see him or sometimes even just
think
of him, you see him broken and bloody, dying in your arms? How do I tell him without bringing up the memories of his parents’ accident? When is a good time to tell him?” Unable to stop myself, I let it all come out. “Every time you
try
and tell him, your throat closes with fear, and it feels like if you give that fear voice, as irrational as it might be, it will come true. It’s like a premonition. I can’t save him, and despite my so-called skills as a firefighter, he dies in my arms, his dead lifeless eyes questioning why I couldn’t save him. Every time it rips my heart out to the point that
I
think I’m dying? Shit!”

My breathing was rough and my shoulders heaved. I wiped my eyes and wasn’t surprised to find moisture, yet despite my outburst, I no longer felt angry. I felt… drained, lost, and beaten. Something shifted inside of me and my chest tightened. My knees buckled, and I hit the floor next to my upturned chair, sobbing. Hugging my knees, I rocked back and forth and I cried for the complete disaster I created.

Jake was the other half of me, he was my life. How did I live without half of myself?

Linda handed me some tissues but otherwise remained silent. She let me recover from my crying jag on my own. All these emotions had been building in me for some time, and I was powerless to stop the flow once it started.

I told Linda everything from my position on the floor: from the accident where I encountered James Montague’s lifeless form, that was so eerily familiar, to the panic every time the alarm sounded at the station. From my shitty mood and asshole behavior, to the kiss with Kris, and to Jake leaving and not answering my texts. It took a few sessions to get it all out, but it was out and I felt like I’d stepped into weak sunshine after a bitterly cold winter.

“There’s one thing I want you to do first.” Leaning forward in her chair, Linda rested her arms on the desk. “Stop texting Jake.”

“What?” I blurted. No, I couldn’t do it.

“Does he ever respond?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Sadness overwhelmed me again.

“See, that there.” She pointed at me. “That’s the reason you need to stop texting him. Jake not answering is making you feel worse and is not conducive to you helping yourself.”

She had a point. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to do it, but I’ll try.”

“Try hard, Cameron. You need to have a clear mind if you want to stop the nightmares and get your life back on track.”

I tried. I didn’t always succeed, but my texts to Jake dwindled over the week. Sometimes once a day, sometimes not at all, but it was hard to stop completely. If I could talk to him, even though he never responded, I felt a connection to him I was reluctant to let go. Stopping all contact felt like giving up, something I would never do.

Linda advised taking up yoga as ‘it centers the body and clears the mind.’ I told her that beer also centers the body and clears the mind if you drank enough of it. She wasn’t impressed as she handed me a prescription for a low-dose antidepressant. She also told me the pills weren’t a cure and that the only cure had to come from within. I questioned what the point of the pills were if they didn’t cure me.

“The medication will help to calm your mind so you won’t feel so on edge. But to be able to deal with the images that cause your anxiety and nightmares, you will need to learn different coping skills. That’s my job. If pills were a cure-all, I’d be in the unemployment line.”

Linda explained ‘Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy,’ which meant I had to think about one aspect of the traumatic event—the smell, broken glass, congealing blood, broken bodies; hell, pick one—and replace the emotional reaction with a more balanced and professional viewpoint. If I could look at the accident like I could any other call I had attended, I would be able to detach myself emotionally from it. She also instructed me to read through the Incident Report of the accident, so I could review the event without all of the emotion, as the report was filled in by various emergency services professionals that had attended that night.

What Linda said made sense, but it was hard to do, and while the medication helped a little, when it came time to do my ‘exercises,’ I was left in a sweaty puddle of my own misery.

I was an active guy, so Linda suggested hiking on one of the many hiking trails in and around San Francisco. “Hiking is a great way to keep fit and it connects you with nature. Your mind will benefit from the seclusion, relaxation, and peace that come from being in the natural world.” I told her she didn’t strike me as being a tree-hugging-hippy. She wasn’t impressed with my lame attempt at humor.

Other ‘exercises’ included listening constantly to the sound of the fire station alarm she had recorded. Linda called this ‘saturation,’ and in theory if I heard the alarm enough, my brain would re-align itself to not panic every time. It made sense, but I felt like a bit of an idiot listening to a fire alarm in my living room. I wondered what the neighbors thought.

I had to look through the photo albums I had on the bookshelf for thirty minutes each night and stare at images of Jake, especially close-up ones where I could see his features. I had to focus on Jake, study his features, picture him as a young man and try not to look away even if it made my stomach clench, which it did, all the damn time. I also had to time how long it took me to look away with the hope that every time, it would be longer. I quickly finished with the albums on the shelf but I was sure there were some more in our bedside tables.

I did my exercises diligently every night, took my medication on time, and little by little, over a number of weeks of this new routine before bed, my mind improved. I was far from cured, but I was getting there.

Jake

The second month without Cam was more of the same, although Caroline’s patience was coming to an end.

“Jesus, Jake, you need to do something,” she blurted one night.

“Like what?” I snapped, instantly on the defensive.

“I don’t know. You’re miserable without him. Call him, talk to him. See someone else.” She paused for a long moment. “Here, give me your wallet,” Caroline demanded as she held out her hand, and confused, I pulled it from my pocket and gave it to her.

She plucked a small foil square from her purse, placed it inside, then slapped the wallet into my hand. “There. Now you can go and find someone else.”

The thought of being with someone other than Cam made me shudder, but if Cam and I couldn’t fix us, what then? I’d have to move on eventually, but Cam not being in my life hurt too much to think about. I missed him like nothing else. I missed the way we used to be, the feeling of his arms around me and the sense of safety they’d bring. I missed his shining amber eyes and the love I would see in them, just for me.

Caroline was right. I was miserable without him, to the point I didn’t recognize myself anymore. The man staring back at me in the mirror had pale sallow skin and huge sad eyes. His features were lined and haunted.

My shoulders slumped, and Caroline’s voice softened. “I know you’re hurting, and it hurts me to see you like this. Yes, Cam screwed up, but he needs you and I know you need him.”

“You’ve spoken to him.” It wasn’t a question. I knew she had, but she never mentioned the calls.

“Yes. He’s called me a few times to check on you, make sure you’re okay.”

“What, he’s checking up on me now?” Aaand… I was back on edge.

“Oh for god’s sake, Jake. You’re his life, he wants to make sure you’re okay.”

I crossed my arms.

Caroline threw her hands in the air. “Oh, for crying out loud. He’s worried about you. He always worries about you whether he needs to or not.”

“So… what? You’re taking his side now?” I couldn’t believe she’d do this, and my face flushed with my boiling blood. How could she take Cam’s side when he was the one in the wrong and she was
my
best friend?

“No, I’m not taking his side. I’m not taking your side either. I’m on
Jake and Cam’s
side. If two people were ever meant to be together, it’s you two. I saw it from the start back in college. Christ, don’t you see what you two have? You can’t throw that away. If you can’t make this work, then what’s going to happen to me?” she yelled, wiping away angry tears.

My anger fled and confusion took its place. “What do you mean? Nothing’s going to happen to you, or to us. We’ll always be here for each other.”

“You idiot,
we’ll
be fine,” she snorted through her tears. “I mean what will happen to me? How am I ever going to find my
one
and make it work if you and Cam can’t figure it out? Don’t you see what you’ve got? You found the love of your life, your other half, and you can’t tell me you’re not feeling his absence. I can see it written all over your face.
You miss him.

“
You miss him so much you don’t know how to do anything by yourself anymore. How many times have you tried to go to work without your tie or even your socks on?
That
is why he calls me. You aren’t thinking straight, Jake. Cameron messed up, I know that, he knows that. But is what he did so bad that you can’t get back to where you were? He kissed someone else. No, he let someone
else
kiss him. It was a kiss and it was a mistake but it wasn’t planned. It’s not like he’s screwed around on you for the past nine years.” Caroline sat on the sofa and pulled me down beside her. She squeezed my hand, her voice soft. “He’s not Luke.”

My tears threatened to fall. “Cam kissing Kris was just the catalyst for me leaving, you
know
that,” I stated. “I can’t ignore the fact that he doesn’t see me anymore or that he’s a different person from the one I fell in love with. How am I supposed to get past
that
? I
don’t know him anymore… the Cam I knew and fell in love with is gone.”
My voice cracked past the lump in my throat.

Caroline’s shoulders heaved with her large sigh. “Look, trust me, okay? Don’t write him off. The old Cameron is still there and he’s fighting his way back to you. He’s hurting too but he’s working on his problems and he’s confident he can fix things. Please?” Despite her brashness, Caroline could pull off the puppy-dog eyes like no one else.

“I hate you,” I whispered as she hugged me.

“I know. I hate you too.”

My work-run-sleep pattern didn’t change, and if anything, I worked more, stayed later, and took on more clients.

Cam’s messages had dwindled to about two a week. He said he loved and missed me and he was sorry. I didn’t know what to think anymore, and my fingers itched with my need to reply, but I never did. My runs got longer and longer; most nights I didn’t return until long after Caroline was in bed.

One morning I was called into a meeting with Jenny, my boss. That wasn’t unusual, since we often had meetings about clients, so I didn’t suspect anything was wrong. I’d known Jenny since I’d started with the company about eight years ago, and we’d always gotten along well. She was in her late fifties with salt-and-pepper hair that fell loosely to her shoulders. She loved Aunt Cece’s wines, so I’d always bring her a bottle or two when I visited the Napa vineyard. I thought of Jenny’s love of wine as I approached her office, and it gave me an idea.