One Year Later
Josie Callahan rubbed her temples in a futile attempt to stave off the impending headache. A pile of paperwork loomed on her desk, daunting in its size. She hated paperwork. Some of it was necessary, of course, but this job demanded an excessive amount.
She’d thought when she’d signed on at this hospital that she’d be making a difference in the lives of troubled teens, that there’d be more actual patient care, but the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork was staggering.
In her professional opinion, it negatively impacted her ability to do her job and made that job incredibly unsatisfying.
The only bright spot to her day today was her upcoming lunch date with Jake Evans and Fiona Flynn. Jake was her brother Charlie’s best friend, and Fiona was Jake’s rock star wife. Charlie and Jake met when they’d first enlisted and had served together on the same SEAL team for years.
A traumatic injury had abruptly ended Jake’s career and derailed his life, but he’d worked hard at his recovery.
Josie liked to think she had a small part to play by nudging Jake toward help when she’d flown down to Maryland with Jake’s former commanding officers, Cam Taylor and Adam Mathison, to stage something of an intervention.
Luckily, it had been successful. Jake now worked at Tactical Solutions International, the private security company Cam and Adam started several years ago, he’d married Fiona, and was now a doting dad to two sweet little girls.
Josie’s brother Charlie had opted for another tour with the Navy. Since Charlie was Josie’s only family, and because Jake lived less than an hour away, he and Fiona made a point to check in on her regularly. She appreciated the sentiment behind the gesture and the routine of it.
After a glance at the analog clock on her office wall, Josie shut her laptop with more force than she intended, opened her desk drawer, popped three Tylenol capsules, and washed them down with her ever-present water bottle.
She shrugged on her sweater, locked her office, and bypassed the elevator for the stairs.
If she were with a group, she’d grit her teeth and ride in the panic-inducing metal box so as not to draw attention to herself, but when she was alone, never. Trotting up and down five flights of stairs was good exercise anyway, or so she told herself.
Outside her building, Josie squinted in the bright sunshine.
It was a rare, perfect spring day, not too hot, not too cold.
Since she’d left a little early, she opted to walk to lunch rather than ride.
While the subway didn’t trigger her claustrophobia like elevators and closets, she’d take any opportunity to enjoy the natural light and fresh air after the long, dark winter and the sterile walls of the hospital.
Josie reached the upscale café on Newbury Street in twenty minutes and recognized one of Fiona’s personal bodyguards discreetly prowling along the sidewalk.
Such was the life of a rock and roll superstar, Josie thought with a small smile.
But enthusiastic fans aside, Fiona also had tight security because several years ago she’d been abducted by a serial killer—an awful spectacle live-streamed for the world to witness.
Josie shivered at the memory, nodded politely at the burly man she vaguely recognized, and stepped inside.
She caught sight of Jake and Fiona in the back corner of the restaurant holding hands across the table. Another bodyguard sat alone a few tables away, with his back to the wall and a clear view of the entryway. He nodded at Josie.
Fiona’s head turned when the bells on the door jingled, and a bright smile lit up her face. Jake stood, kissed Josie on the cheek, and pulled out her chair. Josie sank into it with a grateful sigh. The day wasn’t even halfway over, and it had already drained the life out of her.
After their initial greetings, and a glance at the menu Josie knew by heart, she asked Fiona about the band’s upcoming album.
Fiona launched into an enthusiastic description of the production process, her favorite tracks, and the band’s desire to only do a short three-month promotional tour over the summer, so the band members could bring their families along.
Josie caught the secretive smile Fiona gave Jake and the way Fiona’s hand brushed over her belly. Perhaps there was another reason for the abbreviated tour. Josie’s heart filled with warmth for these two. After all they’d suffered, they deserved a lifetime of joy and happiness.
Josie sipped her water and listened. She always preferred to listen rather than speak, and as a therapist, she was adept at asking just the right questions.
Eventually, the conversation turned to Josie’s work, and she couldn’t hide her disappointed shrug.
Jake and Fiona exchanged a meaningful look, and Jake put down his fork.
“We actually wanted to talk to you about something,” Jake said.
“Oh?”
“You know we started a foundation in support of trauma victims and veterans suffering from PTSD?”
Josie sipped her water and nodded. Jake had mentioned it to her months earlier and asked her opinion on a few things.
“Well, we don’t just want to donate money to established institutions, although there are a lot of places worth donating to.
We want to build our own facility. Not like a hospital.
More like a retreat center. Some residential buildings, but also multiple outpatient therapeutic programs on site, like massage, yoga, art, music. ”
Jake’s eyes sparked with enthusiasm.
“Maybe equine therapy someday or a dog program,” Fiona said, picking up where Jake left off. “We want more than talk therapy, although we’ll offer plenty of that as well. I know for me, making music helped me heal, along with the techniques I learned from Dr. Harris.”
Dr. Harris had been Josie’s therapist as a young adult. She’d introduced him to Jake after Jake had been released from Walter Reed, and Jake had recommended him to Fiona after her horrific ordeal. Josie’s friend group alone probably kept Harris in business, she thought wryly.
“A.J. is looking into a few pieces of property where we could build something from the ground up,” Jake said.
Josie’s face softened in sympathy. “How is he doing?”
Jake sighed. “Better. He’s there for his kids. He’s hanging on at TSI, but honestly, this project seems to be bringing him back to life a little.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Josie had first met Adam years ago, before her brother deployed the first time. There’d been a family barbecue and she’d attended in support. Parties were definitely not her favorite thing, but she’d wanted to spend every second she could with Charlie before he left for a war zone.
Years later, Adam had been the one to call Josie when Jake spiraled into a black hole of depression after his injury.
Together with Cam, they’d convinced Jake to move to Boston and reengage with life.
An image popped into Josie’s head of Adam mopping Jake’s apartment floor and listening intently while she shared pieces of her own painful trauma in hopes Jake would see that it was possible to recover from something terrible.
The last time she’d seen Adam was a year ago at his wife’s funeral.
While not as close to the TSI family as her brother, Josie had attended as a show of support.
She’d lingered in the background, and honestly, she didn’t know if he would even remember her presence.
He’d been engulfed in a fog of grief and in survival mode, which she could certainly relate to.
Her heart had broken watching his two children cling to him with bewildered expressions on their tear-streaked faces. At least they had their father, a solid, loving presence in their lives, to help them navigate the crushing loss. She and Charlie had only had each other.
Josie mentally shook herself. She wouldn’t allow her dark thoughts any traction. Not today. Not ever, if she could help it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t always help it, but she refocused on her friends, both of whom had looked darkness of one sort or another in the eye themselves.
She loved the idea for this project. It sounded like the perfect blend of innovative, hands-on therapies and traditional, proven medicine.
Fiona sipped her water and glanced at Jake before she spoke again. “So, here’s the thing. We’d like you to run the center.”
Josie blinked. “You would?”
That was not what she’d been expecting at all.
“You’d be perfect,” Fiona continued enthusiastically. “You had fantastic ideas when we came to you with the shell of a concept months ago, and you have plenty of clinical experience.”
“Wow,” Josie said. “I’m honored.”
Josie’s mind immediately leaped into gear, cataloguing all the ways she could actually help people rather than struggling with her current, frustrating job.
A twinge of guilt snuck in when she thought about abandoning her patients, but honestly, she was just one of many therapists working with the troubled teens.
She felt replaceable, probably because, in her current position, she was.
“The foundation can pay your salary even before the facility is up and running,” Jake said.
“Dr. Harris has agreed to donate some of his time when he retires later this year, and Liss wants to help out too. We hope to entice other volunteers, but we’ll have a budget for staff besides you.
Honestly, you’d be figuring that stuff out, and you’d have complete control over the volunteers and any new hires,” Fiona added.
Josie blinked back and forth between the couple, still a bit stunned by the offer.
“Take some time to think about it,” Fiona said, toning down her enthusiasm a notch, but Josie didn’t have to think about it.
“I’ll do it,” she said, somewhat shocked by her impulsive yet decisive answer.
Josie wasn’t impulsive. She considered things carefully, often creating spreadsheets, which detailed the pros and cons of a particular decision before she committed to it, but this time she decided to go with her gut, and her gut said this was the kind of work she needed to be doing.
“You will?” Fiona squealed, surprise and delight reflected in her expression.
“I will,” Josie affirmed with a determined nod of her head.
“Well, that was much easier than I anticipated,” Jake said, leaning back in his chair and stuffing a chunk of bread into his mouth.
In addition to being the opposite of impulsive, Josie also wasn’t a complainer, so she merely shrugged and said, “The hospital job isn’t what I’d hoped it would be, and this sounds like an incredible opportunity to build something new and innovative.”
“With your brain behind it, we’re going to do a lot of good,” Fiona said.
That afternoon, Josie crafted her letter of resignation and, with a lightness in her heart she hadn’t felt in a long time, left it on the director’s desk.