Chapter 7 #2
Lance turned toward him, seeming to stare somewhere over his right shoulder.
“Well, Dan’s sort of like the house mother, I guess.
He’s a great guy, I think you’d like him a lot.
You’ve met him. He was here, just now. You two have a lot in common.
There’s Chris. You met him at the grocery store.
And Brick—I think he’s going to be leaving soon.
He seems like he’s just kind of hanging around, but I don’t think he’s going to be here long.
He’s really got his shit together. Stanley is newer than me even.
He just got to the house from the ranch.
He was pretty severely burned, and he’s trying to figure shit out. ”
Damn it. That was a lot of pain in one place.
And he hated that so many guys were coming back from all over the world with these damn traumatic injuries.
“They sound like a hell of a crew.”
“Do you like the folks you work with?” Lance asked.
Sloan pondered that. “The chief is a good guy. Ella, she’s the dispatcher, she just hired on before me to replace a lady who retired, so we’re learning together. I’ve met like three of my fellow deputies and one animal control officer.”
“I did want to apologize in person. I can’t believe that I never asked you if you were okay.
I mean, I can because I did it. I was caught up in some deep shit though, and I didn’t know.
I wasn’t able to process it. I’m not sure that I’m able to process it now.
But at least I’m not a prick. I hope that you’re all right, and that if you’re not, you can get help.
” Lance rubbed his forehead then scratched his scars.
“One of the mandatory things if you’re here is therapy…
you know, going to see a therapist and talking? ”
“Is it helping?”
“Sort of, I guess? I mean, I don’t know that talking about it helps, but some of the things I’ve been showed, I’ve learned, have helped.
Does that count? Like I’ve learned when I have a panic attack, what to do, like tools.
” All of a sudden, Lance grinned, and it was as if the sun peeked out through the clouds.
“I got to tell you, there are a lot of fucking tools in this place. A lot of tools.”
Sloan started chuckling, and that chuckle turned into a full-out body laugh. That was one of his favorite things about Lance, that shit-eating grin, and the way he could drop a turd in a punch bowl. Bang. Just as dry as the desert itself.
Lance chuckled with him, the sound a little rusty.
“I had therapy for a while. I think maybe I told you that.” Sloan caught his breath from laughing. “I’m not sure I learned anything. I mean, I tried to, but it didn’t keep from waking up at night in a cold sweat.”
Or from being angry at everything he’d lost, especially with Lance.
“I get that. My stuff’s all more… practical. I get panic attacks. I freak out, then I forget how to breathe, and it wigs people out, so I remember things. ”
“Remember things? How does that help?” He couldn’t imagine. He did everything he could not to remember, to push it out of his memory.
“No, no, not that kind of thing. Not like that at all. I don’t remember what happened during the attack.
I remember things like—name three things that bubble or name five things you remember being red or name three Beatles songs.
Name three movies that made you laugh. That kind of thing.
It just stops everything from staying where it’s at and helps you go somewhere else. ”
He knew he was looking all scrunchy-faced and disbelieving, but he couldn’t help it. Thank goodness Lance couldn’t tell. “Does it work?”
“About eighty-five percent of the time, yeah, it does. Nights are the worst, because you’re pretty much by yourself in bed unless you’re screaming. Then it’s embarrassing. But during the day, yeah. About eighty-five percent of the time it does.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah, try it. Next time you find yourself getting totally freaked out, look for, I don’t know three things that are round or three things that are pink. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you’re thinking about doing that instead of what panics you.”
“That could be handy at work.” He’d passed the psych eval, but he’d found at home when things got tense at work, he did have a tendency to get stressed as fuck. He’d never frozen, but he would have nightmares for a few days, and the cold sweats would hit at weird times.
“Yeah. I bet.” Lance seemed to search for him, eyes moving.
“Sometimes it gets intense, though I rarely get shot at. But the noises…” Sloan shuddered. “Anyhoo, you gonna come sit in the kitchen with me while I make supper?” The guac, to his surprise, was almost gone.
“I’d love to.” Lance grinned at him. “The guacamole rocked. Thank you.”
He took Lance’s plate and grabbed his beer. “You want my arm again?”
“Please, thank you.”
“Not a problem. Abby is following us like she’s hungry,” he teased.
“She’s always hungry, but to her credit, she works hard.” Lance walked with him easily, and he sat Lance at the kitchen table while he went to pull out ingredients.
Tortillas. Hamburger. Cheese. Onions, enchilada sauce, lettuce and tomato…
He could do this in his sleep.
Lance sat, head cocked as if listening, his body relaxed. Abby leaned on his legs.
“She really is good. Should I let her out?”
“You said you showed her the door?” Lance asked.
“Yeah.”
“She’ll let you know when she needs to go.” Lance grinned, loving on her. “She’s smart as a whip. I swear to God, she’s clever.”
“She is. I like her.” He did. He’d had dogs all the time he was growing up, and he’d had a Belgian Malinois in the?—
He swallowed against a rush of nausea. His partner.
Abby went right to him, barking, alerting.
“What’s wrong? Abby? Sloan, what’s wrong?” Lance stood up, the chair crashing down behind him.
He held out a hand to Lance. “No. No, it’s okay. I just got to thinking about Radar, and it froze me up. I’m sorry, honey.” He took Lance’s grasping hand in his. “It made me feel sick.”
“Jesus, Sloan. I’m sorry. I never thought Abby would… ”
“No.” He laughed a little, hand on Abby’s head. “She sure was telling me, huh?”
“She was alerting. She’s not just trained to see for me. She tells me when I’m about to have a panic attack, or she finds someone to help me.”
“That’s wild.”
“Yeah. I mean, you might think about talking to someone about a wounded warrior support dog.”
“Me?” Sloan blinked. Surely not. There were guys who needed those dogs way more than him.
“Why not? You have PTSD. Dogs need homes, man. There’s all sorts of breeds that do PTSD work too.”
It was an idea, but what if it messed with his police work? It wasn’t as if he could explain to his boss, “Hey, I have PTSD. Here’s my dog.”
Although he’d already pretty much figured out he didn’t tend to freeze up on the job. It was at night, or in his kitchen when he was supposed to be seducing his former lover.
“I guess…I guess I could look into it.”
“I’ll tell Luke if you want, he’s got a shit-ton of contacts. He can tell you where to go. Meet the dogs.”
“Thank you.” His cheeks were beginning to heat now, and he was embarrassed as fuck. “I’ll think about it.”
“It’s okay, man. Seriously. I don’t think I have a day that goes by that I don’t have something that happens like this. If anybody understands, it’s me. I was there.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I’m sorry.”
Lance cocked his head. “That I was there?”
“I guess…I guess I’m sorry it wasn’t me. I mean, I didn’t want it to be me, but…”
“I hear you. Survivor’s guilt, it’s a thing. I get it.” Lance looked through him with a serious expression. “I mean that. It’s okay. It sucks. Bad shit happened, but we didn’t do it to each other. At least on that front, we’re both off the hook. We didn’t do this to each other.”
Yeah, but he didn’t want to keep doing this to each other either. He wanted to admit that he was still in love. Sometimes he didn’t get what he wanted, at least not right away.
“I should make enchiladas.”
Lance grinned at him. “Get with the program, man, I’m hungry.
That was something else that hadn’t changed. Lance sure could eat.