Chapter 17 #2
“That’s why I’m recommending her. She’s also former military. Air Force. That matters, in my experience. Having a therapist who understands the culture, the language, and the unique pressures of service removes a barrier that can undermine the work.”
I filed that. Former military. Good. I didn’t want to sit across from someone who’d learned about combat from a textbook. “What’s the timeline? How long before it works?”
“That varies. Some patients see significant improvement in eight to twelve sessions. Others take longer. It depends on the severity, the duration, and the individual. With twelve years of PTSD and with your amount of combat exposure, I’d expect it to be a process, not a quick fix.
But the trajectory matters more than the timeline. ”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning progress isn’t linear. You’ll have good weeks and hard weeks. The measure isn’t whether the symptoms disappear, but whether you develop better tools to manage them and whether the episodes become less frequent and less severe over time.”
I sat with that. The measure isn’t whether the symptoms disappear.
After years of thinking I was either fixed or broken, with no middle ground, the idea of a spectrum—of better without the pressure of cured—felt like someone had opened a window in a room I’d thought had none. “I want to start as soon as possible.”
“I’ll call Sarah today. She typically has a wait of two to three months for new patients, but I’ll ask her to prioritize.”
I heard what he didn’t say, that he’d ask as a personal favor. “Thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome.” Then he looked at me with an expression that had shifted from professional to personal. “Mac, I want you to know something.”
I waited.
“Asking for help is the hardest thing most people ever do. It’s harder for veterans, and it’s hardest for the ones who’ve spent years convincing themselves they’re beyond help.
You’re not beyond help. You never were. The fact that you’re sitting in this chair tells me everything I need to know about the kind of man you are. ”
I didn’t know what to do with that. My jaw worked. My eyes burned. I managed a nod, which was all I could manage, and Dr. Everett accepted my handshake with a nod back.
The hallway of the Forestville Family Practice was narrow, with exam rooms on one side and the breakroom and offices on the other. I was heading for the stairs when a door opened ten feet ahead of me and Arek stepped out.
He was in his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck and a chart in his hand.
His hair was neater than Sunday, combed and professional, and the stubble was gone, clean-shaven in a way that showed the angle of his jaw.
The fluorescent lights were doing him no favors, and he looked tired, but when his eyes came up from the chart and found me, his face did the thing.
The sunrise thing, the warmth that cracked open across his features before he could stop it, unguarded and real and so bright it made the hallway feel small.
“Mac.” Surprise and pleasure, tangled together. “Are you here to get your stitches out?”
The joy hit me like a physical sensation, starting in my chest and radiating outward, warm and liquid and unmistakable.
The simple act of seeing him, of being in the same hallway, of watching his face light up because I was there.
The man I’d been thinking about at four in the morning.
The man I’d painted a porch for. The man whose cheekbone I could still feel under my thumb.
Jesus Christ, I had feelings for Arek Jacobson. I’d admitted it on his porch with a paintbrush in my hand. But standing in this hallway, watching his green eyes find mine and hold, the admission deepened into something I felt all the way through, to the bone.
“Yes, and to talk to Dr. Everett,” I said.
Something shifted in his expression. It was subtle and quick—a flicker of understanding, then warmth, then something careful and hopeful that he tried to tuck away before I saw it. I saw it anyway. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Getting better.”
He studied me for a moment, reading me the way he always did. Whatever he found made the careful hope resurface. “Good. That’s really good, Mac.”
We stood in the hallway. Ten feet apart, then eight as I walked toward Arek, then five. His eyes held mine, green and steady, and full of things I was beginning to think I recognized because I was feeling them too. The hallway was quiet. A phone rang somewhere. The fluorescent lights hummed.
Neither of us looked away.
It lasted longer than it should have, long enough that the air between us thickened the way it had on the porch step, dense and warm and charged with something that didn’t have a name yet but was getting closer to one.
“Come for dinner tonight,” Arek said. His voice was casual in a way that didn’t match his eyes.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No deliberation. Easiest “yes” ever.
His smile spread slowly, real and warm and unperformed, the one I’d learned to recognize as the version he only wore when he meant it. “Six o’clock. The boys will be happy.”
“Just the boys?”
It came out before I could catch it. Arek’s eyes widened a fraction. The smile changed. It was still warm, but now it had something underneath it, a current, a charge, an acknowledgment of the question beneath the question. “No,” he said softly. “Not just the boys.”
The hallway held us for one more moment, the two of us standing in the fluorescent lights of a small-town medical clinic, smiling at each other like men who’d found something they hadn’t known they were looking for.
Then I walked out.