Chapter 28 #2
“You’re okay now,” he repeats over and over as one of his firm hands brushes rough strokes across my back.
“You’re safe with me.” His touch is so rough that my body sways with the motion, but it’s what I need to pull me back to the ground.
I don’t know how long we stay like that.
Me, wailing incoherently against his chest while he murmurs soothing words over me.
I just know that eventually my tears begin to dry, my breathing evens out, and when I raise my head to look at his face, I can see the red lining his lids and the damp skin below his eyes.
He raises one hand, using the back of it to wipe both sides of his face, before he does the same to mine.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened, and you don’t have to talk about it now,” he says, letting his hand fall to grip both of mine.
“But we gotta figure something out, Holly, we can’t have something like that ever happen again, because I just found you.
” He raises his hand to smooth the matted hair from my face.
“I just found you, there’s no way I can lose you. ”
I give him my best watery smile before leaning in, letting him pull me into his lap and hold me. He starts with a slow sway, the minutes that pass bringing some clarity back into my life. Eventually, my legs grow stiff and cramped so I adjust, stretching them out.
“I’m sorry I came,” I mutter, sitting up a little straighter to smooth the damp hair away from my face.
“I’m not,” he responds, reaching a hand up to squeeze my shoulder before moving up to grip the back of my neck. “Wanna talk about what happened?”
“Nothing happened, really. Nothing that isn’t out of the ordinary for me, anyway.
” My eyes well again, and I take in a full, shuddering breath.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I confess, reaching out to grab the hem of his shirt.
I fist the fabric in my hands, taking out my frustration.
“I hate my job. I hate being a doctor. I hate working in the ER and…” I trail off, not knowing how to explain how this feels.
“I hate feeling so helpless all the time.” I pull my feet out from under me, moving to sit on my butt so I can face Grayson, who is seated firmly in front of me, his long legs spread to surround me.
“I hate going to work every day, wondering if every hushed conversation among coworkers is about me, if they think I’m going to panic again.
I hate having to pop a sedative just to function at the job that I spent twelve years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on.
I hate losing patients.” My voice cracks at that one, and Grayson’s hand comes up to squeeze my shoulder.
I reach for a rock in the gravel, grasping it between my pointer finger and thumb to drag it through the dirt.
The smaller rocks part in its path, and I draw an S, exaggerating each curve as it winds to one side, and then the other.
“I feel like such a failure,” I finally admit, keeping my voice so low he might not hear me over the shuffling of dirt.
Grayson doesn’t say anything for a long time, but I can feel him thinking, watching, breaking down my words as he watches me draw swirls in his front drive.
After a long time, he stands, reaching a hand down for me. I peer up at him through tear-soaked lashes, and the look on his face is hard to place.
“Come with me,” he finally says when I place my hand in his. He hoists me to standing, and we simultaneously lean down to brush the gravel off of my scrub pants. “I want to show you something.”
I take his hand, and we stroll toward his front steps. I expect him to pull me inside, but instead, he tugs on my hand and we take the small worn path around his house.
He leads me through a lush green field, and we walk in silence, the only sounds are of the early morning birds chirping their hellos. I let myself get lost in the scenery, in the breeze that rolls over the dewy morning grass and the slight chill that follows.
We walk through the entire back field and a small thicket of trees. Just as I’m about to ask him where he’s taking me, we come across what looks like a single lane gravel road, a trail of some sorts.
“This used to be a railroad track,” he says, tugging my hand to turn me to the left.
We walk hand in hand down the center of the old tracks.
“My grandma used to take us kids here when we were younger. We’d be fighting or wrestling and my mom would be ready to throw us out of the house.
She’d tell us to go find our grandma, and she would always make us go for a walk.
” I chuckle at the image of my stoic, quiet man wrestling with his brothers.
“I don’t remember when the tracks were still here,” he continues. “But I remember being real young and finding a random tie or stake sticking out of the gravel. We’d fight over who got to keep it, like it was some hidden treasure we stumbled across.”
I release his hand only to wrap my arm around his, moving closer so I can rest my cheek against the swell of his shoulder as he talks. He slows his pace not to bump my head too badly, turning to place a kiss on the crown of my head.
“It became almost therapeutic for me as a kid. Not that I realized it at that time, but when I’d start to get restless, irritated with my brothers, whatever it was, I’d ask if she wanted to go for a walk with me.
Then when the walks got harder for her, I just started going by myself.
I often find myself headed this way at the end of a stressful day. ”
He stops and we turn. He points over the edge of the bank and down a ravine that has a decent-sized pond.
Grayson lets go of my hand to look around at the gravel below our feet.
He bends to scoop up one rock, and then another, balancing the weight of each of them in his palm before handing one over to me.
I do the same, balancing its weight in my hand, wondering what he means by all of this when he starts again, “Every time I’m here, I plant my feet and look around at the rocks surrounding them. I choose the biggest one that’s within my reach, and that’s my worry rock.”
“Your worry rock?”
He nods, gently tossing the stone up a few inches, letting it fall back into his broad palm.
“I study it real good. I feel its weight, focusing on each little divot it might have. Or maybe it’s smooth, a rock that looks as if it spent its life in a shallow stream, having cool river water run over it.
I like to feel the warmth of it, the ones that have spent the morning baking in the sun.
” He gestures with a look to me, and I do the same with the rock in my hand.
I notice the warmth, just like he said. The sun has only been up for a few hours, yet it’s already holding in some of that heat.
Mine looked smooth when he first picked it up, and the top part of it is, but when I flip it over, I can see it’s only half a stone.
Cracked right down the center by something even bigger, likely.
I look around at the space below us and the rough area where he picked it up from to see if I can find its other half.
“That stone,” he says, gesturing to the rock in my hand. “It’s your anxiety. Your awful night and all of the fear that’s keeping you on edge.” I nod along to his words, keeping my focus on the rock in my hand, running my thumb back and forth over the jagged edge.
“Sometimes, I make it my sadness. When my dad fell off a tractor years ago and fractured his leg, I’d come out here, and instead of crying or wondering why, I’d toss rocks into the pond.
” He chuckles, a low, almost embarrassed sound.
“This pond is probably half full by now with all the rocks I’ve tossed in.
” He takes one final look at the stone in his hand and tosses it up once for good measure before catching it.
Then his arm is up, pulled behind him before he takes a step forward and lets it fly through the air.
His throw is a perfect arch, and we watch it sail high in the air, wincing when it falls in line with the sun before gravity takes over and it falls, plunking into the pond below with a splash.
“Wow,” I mutter a little breathlessly.
Grayson turns to me, gesturing for me to step closer to the edge. “You’re turn, Hol, give ‘er hell.”
I blush a little, embarrassed to try to throw the rock as far as he did. “I’m uh, not the best athlete. I’m not sure I’ll make it to the pond.”
“You’ll make it. I have faith you have enough fire in you right now to do so.”
I exhale my breath, turning again to face the water.
I toss the stone up in my hand, thinking of last night, yesterday, and the non-stop line of patients I saw.
Of the blood, the broken bones, the children involved with that car accident, and of Harry.
I think of my lunchtime meeting where I was guilted into giving a speech at their obnoxious fundraiser.
With those thoughts rattling around in my mind, I close my eyes, inhale the fresh air that surrounds us once more, and bring my arm back.
With my shoulders square to the water, I whip my arm forward, keeping my eyes closed as I release the rock into the air.
For a second, I think I missed. The only sound I hear is the rustling of the breeze through the leaves, but then I hear that faint telltale plunk, and when I open my eyes to see the ripples still moving through the water, I turn to Grayson with my jaw popped open.
The smile he returns says it all, and he looks around my feet, reaching down to scoop up another rock. “One more?”
We spend the next twenty minutes doing just that. Finding a rock, getting a feel for it, focusing on the porous stone and the stone only until we let it sink into the bottom of the pond. When my arm grows tired, and my lids heavy, I take a step back and watch Grayson toss a few more.