To Love and Heal (The Power of Love Series) (15 page)

"Well, to sum
it up, I tried every means possible to arrange for her to fly back with me, but
I was repeatedly told it wasn't allowed, and eventually I ran out of time and
had to leave without her."

"And yet,
here she is with you now.  What finally happened to make that
possible?"

Anna took a deep
breath, clutching the couch arm for support even though she was firmly planted
in the seat cushion and clearly going nowhere.  Caleb looked directly into
the camera, his eyes seemingly searching for a reply.  He had to have
known that this question was coming, Anna thought, and yet it almost appeared
as though he were caught off-guard and unprepared to answer.

"There was
someone who knew how important Haley was to me – how I had to leave her behind
even though she helped save my life.  She got in touch with Representative
Lawton, who helped get the ball rolling and one day …"  Caleb paused
for several moments, his voice choked with emotion when he resumed. 
"One day out of the clear blue sky, I was doing some work in the yard and
she came running over to me with a big red bow around her neck."

"That must
have been quite a surprise!"

Caleb visibly
struggled to keep his composure, glancing up at the ceiling before hardening
his resolve and again facing the camera.  "I can honestly say it was
the happiest day of my life.  I was not only reunited with this incredibly
special dog who I thought I'd never see again … but it reminded me that there
are some pretty amazing people in this world, too."

"And the
message that you want to get out today is that more needs to be done to help
bring some of these dogs back – is that right?"

"Exactly. 
Even if they don't save lives by running off a suicide bomber like Haley did,
they help save lives back home with soldiers who suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder.  There are veterans who have been prescribed one
medication after another to try to keep PSTD at bay, but they make more
progress in one month of dog therapy then they do in years of drug
therapy."

"Dog therapy
– I like that term. So why do you think that is?"

"The dogs
help calm them and many times they can sense when a flashback or panic attack
is coming on.  They'll nudge the soldiers or pull on their clothes when
this happens, and it can help pull them back into the present.  It's a
special bond that helps ground returning soldiers who are still being affected
by their time in Afghanistan and Iraq."

The reporter
turned to face the camera.  "It looks like that's all we have time
for, but I think Caleb has done a great job of explaining the importance of
these dogs both for soldiers still in Afghanistan and Iraq … and once they
return home.  One of the major roadblocks to bringing these dogs home is the
high cost – about four-thousand dollars per dog.   In order to
significantly reduce this expense, Caleb is in the process of organizing a
group that will work in conjunction with airlines and local veterinary services
to help make his and Haley's happy ending one that will be possible for many
more soldiers and dogs."

 Anna stared
numbly at the television as the station switched to a commercial.  Still
looking straight ahead, she felt around on the couch cushion for the remote
control.  One click later, her eyes were glued to a blank screen as she
struggled to comprehend what she had just witnessed.  To say that Caleb
was clearly in a better place now was an understatement.  The last time
she had seen him, he had collapsed on the floor of her hospital room in the
midst of an emotional breakdown, no longer able to cope with the images and
memories of a war that had followed him back from Afghanistan.  And now,
three months later, he was in front of a television camera and speaking openly
about a subject matter that he previously never would have allowed to escape
from his lips.  It was all for a good cause – in Anna's opinion, one of
the best – but she couldn't help but have conflicting feelings about what she
had just observed.  Caleb was healing – the one thing that she had wanted
most for him all along – and for that, she was grateful beyond words. But the
other half of the equation … the equally pointed reality that was now tearing
her heart in two … was that she no longer factored into Caleb's life. Not even
enough to merit a mention of her name.  Instead, she was merely
"someone".

As Merlin hopped
back on her lap, she stroked his silky fur, finally breaking a smile when he
tapped her hand with his paw after she had paused for a moment.

"Okay, okay,
I'll keep going," she said affectionately.  "Boy, you're
greedy."

As she drew
comfort in his presence while he nestled deeper into her lap with a contented
purr, it dawned on her that maybe it was never meant to be more than what it
was.  She had brought Caleb and Haley together again, and in doing so, not
only were two lives – one human, one canine – infinitely better off, but it
would also have a trickle-down effect now that Caleb was making it his mission
to help reunite more soldiers and dogs. 

And yet as tears
rolled down her cheeks, she realized that despite this inner declaration, there
was a part of her that still held on to hope that he would come back to her,
that perhaps he just needed a little more time to feel that he was completely
whole again … but it was a hope that was hanging by the thinnest of threads.

Caleb thanked the
reporter once the cameras were off and then let out a deep sigh, relieved that
the interview was over.  He was grateful for the chance to spread
awareness about the dogs left behind in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he couldn't
deny that he would probably feel more comfortable having a root canal without
Novocain than talking at a camera under the glare of blindingly harsh lights.

As he and Haley
left the broadcast station and headed out to his truck, he couldn't help but
feel as though he had just passed a major milestone in his post-war life. 
Just months ago, he appeared to be outwardly moving freely through life, but
inwardly he was paralyzed, a self-imposed death sentence that he nevertheless
couldn't escape, no matter how hard he tried.  And now, he was feeling
stronger and more in his own body with each day, the veil of depersonalization
slowly but surely lifting away. And the war that he previously couldn't talk
about … the war that had almost become a living and breathing entity that
continued to suck the life out of him?  Now he was on camera reaching
perhaps tens of thousands of people and having that very conversation without
his stomach knotting up or his lungs clamping shut.

He waited for
Haley to hop over to her seat before hoisting himself into the truck, shutting
the door behind but not yet starting the ignition.  After securing Haley
in her seat, he leaned back and closed his eyes as thoughts and emotions
tumbled inside him.  Yes, he had made plenty of progress, but he wasn't
going to kid himself that he was "cured".  In fact, he would
never go back to being the same person that he was before the war.  So
much had happened, and on such a large scale, that he could never quite look at
the world the same again.  But at least he was functioning now – and not
with one foot still on the Afghanistan battlefield, ready to pull him back at
the slightest sensory trigger or haunting memory stuck on replay.  Therapy
– both one-on-one with Dr. Blake and group sessions with other veterans
suffering from PTSD – had done much to help desensitize him to the previously
crippling images and memories.  Particularly effective were Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing sessions with Dr. Blake, in which she would
wave two fingers back and forth as he followed with his eyes while recalling
the distressing images that continued to plague him.

She had explained
to him how traumatic experiences could overload the brain's coping mechanisms,
and instead of being processed normally, they became stored in an isolated
memory network where they felt as real in the present as when the traumatic
event actually happened.  EMDR helped process these "stuck"
memories, relegating them to the past so that the negative response was
neutralized when they were recalled in the present.  It was considered a
controversial therapy despite its endorsement by organizations such the
Veterans Administration, the Red Cross and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
but Caleb couldn't care less about the naysayers.  In a million years, he
never thought he would be sitting in front of a psychologist and darting his
eyes back and forth like a squirrel honing in on a dangling peanut, but what
the heck – it was working, and that's all that mattered. 

As Haley tapped
the car seat arm with her paw, Caleb turned and smiled at her obvious ploy for
affection.  He could never look at Haley without also thinking about Anna
– then again, when was he
not
thinking about her? But it was only now in
the privacy of his truck that he could allow himself to think about the
possible repercussions if Anna had watched the interview.  He knew she
typically checked the news online while working on her computer, but he also
couldn't rule out that word about the interview would somehow get back to
her.  As his chest tightened, Caleb realized this was one emotional
subject matter that he couldn't distance himself from since it was still very
much in the present.  He had wanted so badly to reveal her name during the
interview and to give her the recognition she so deserved for reuniting him
with Haley, but doing so was the one thing that could have completely derailed
his composure, and it would have been a slippery slope to disaster once that happened. 
It was the ultimate irony … if it weren't for Anna, he never would have come so
far, yet she was the one person he could not openly give credit to. 

The months since
he had last seen Anna flashed through his mind, and even he could barely fathom
how much had happened in such a relatively short time.  Not only did he
have a challenging new job, but after staying with his brother and
sister-in-law for two months, he had found himself an apartment just outside
Boston.  It was small and there was no backyard for Haley to run around
in, but he saw it more as a transitional move while he continued to get back on
his feet.  He closed his eyes, recalling the easy comfort of domestic
tranquility that he had experienced on more than one occasion with Anna. 
Both of them playing with Haley outdoors, dinner by a backyard fire, heck –
there was even a time or two when they were conversing easily in the living
room and Anna forbade him to move from his chair because Merlin had turned his
lap into a cat bed.  He shook his head slightly and smiled sadly at the
recollection, his thoughts then jumping to the last time they were
together.  So much of that day was still a blur in his mind, but only
because it was a blur when it was actually taking place.  He had discovered
he was a father and that the unborn baby had died all within the span of an
hour, culminating in a paralyzing breakdown that marked the last time he had seen
Anna. The heaviness of those revelations all at once nearly knocked the breath
out of him, but it was a pain that was still raw, and he needed to let himself
feel it. He had always told himself that he couldn't be with Anna again unless
he was whole, and for her own sake, he had kept to that promise.  There
was one more thing that he needed to do before he could say that he had truly
faced all of his demons from the war, which was the only way he would ever be
at peace.  And since this one would be by far the most difficult, he could
only hope he had it in him to do what had previously been unthinkable.

FIFTEEN

Caleb stared hard
at the doorbell as he stood before the front door of a neat ranch house in a
small Western Pennsylvania town.  He couldn't turn around now, he told
himself, yet mere seconds seemed like hours as he summoned up the courage to
announce his presence.  Taking a deep breath, he finally pushed the
doorbell button, knowing that closure was needed no matter how difficult it
might be.

"Come on
in," a young woman said moments later as she opened the door, one arm
firmly securing a toddler against her side. 

"Thank you
for agreeing to see me, Mrs. Doyle," Caleb said as he entered the house.

"Susan,"
she offered with a smile.  "And this is Christine," she added as
she brushed her fingers through her daughter's wispy blonde hair. "I was
just about to put her down for a nap."

The little girl
giggled as she peered up at Caleb with hauntingly familiar blue eyes.

"She's
beautiful," Caleb said.  "She has her father's eyes."

"She
definitely does," Susan agreed, pride mixed with sadness in her voice.
"Let me just go put her in her room and I'll be right back."

A couple of
minutes later, Susan was back in the living room.  "Have a
seat," she said as she pointed to a large plaid-print couch.  Caleb
did as instructed, and Susan sat down several feet to his side. With freckles,
a short brown ponytail and dressed in jeans and a flower-print blouse, she
physically matched her twenty-five years of age but gave off an air of someone
a decade older.  Perhaps it was all she had been through, Caleb surmised –
a thought that only added to the difficulty of saying what needed to be said.

"So you said
on the phone that you wanted to talk to me about the day that Dwayne
died," Susan said, immediately steering the conversation to a painful yet
necessary destination.

"Yes,"
Caleb replied, followed by an awkward silence.  It was as if he had had
this conversation with Susan in his head since that fateful day on the
Afghanistan battlefield, and now that it was actually happening, the
surrealness was holding his words hostage.   A few deep breaths and
an inner admonition to continue, and his voice returned.  "I'm not
sure what you were told about how Dwayne died."