Chapter 45
Pulled apart
Finn
The event barn was nearly five years old—rustic stone and natural wood on the outside, flooded with light through the white interior. Luke and Elowyn had done well with the expansion of North Star Ranch.
The consultation room was in the loft level, along with a handful of other rooms. Through the window, I could see the lodge and restaurant a ways off. If I squinted, I could tell it was Mom walking toward the buildings—disappearing into the back entrance of the restaurant’s kitchen.
Elena was already there when I arrived, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs arranged around a low coffee table. Vendor binders and sample books lined the built-in shelves around the room. Someone had lit a candle on the small desk tucked against the far wall—vanilla.
“Good morning, Finn,” she stood to greet me.
“Morning,” I moved to the small sofa across from her, the coffee table between us. Her notepad sat on the side table—casual, like she might not need it.
She would need it.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
“Nervous.” No point lying. “This is different than video calls or office visits.”
“It is,” she settled back into her chair. “But that’s why I’m here. I need to see how you function in your actual environment.”
“Where do you want to start?” I was already calculating how much time we were going to spend together in the next two or so weeks—how much carefully hidden shame she was going to uncover.
“Let’s talk about what happened during the flood.”
My jaw tightened.
“What part?” The tactical details were easy—hours in the rain, physical exhaustion building, the sensory overload. I’d already given her that in our emergency call.
“The part where Alex slipped in the mud.”
The moment everything collapsed.
I flexed my hands against my thighs. “I’d just gotten to the creek. She was working the sandbags. I could see she knew what she was doing. Then her foot slipped and she went down near the creek edge.”
“What did you feel when that happened?”
“Panic. Complete—” I stopped, searching for the right words. “My brain couldn’t separate what was actually happening from what I was afraid would happen. The water, the sound of it. Everything just collapsed into the crash.”
“What were you afraid would happen?”
“That she’d fall in. Get swept away…. That I’d lose her the same way I lost Cisco.”
Elena made a note. I tried not to wonder what it said.
“We’ve discussed that your brain was protecting you,” she said evenly. “It didn’t understand Alex was safe. It only understood threat.”
“Doesn’t change that I hurt her.”
Elena was quiet for a moment. Then, “we talked about what happened in our emergency session. The command voice, ordering her away from the creek. But I want to understand what that moment cost you. Emotionally.”
My jaw worked. “I became the thing I swore I’d never be with her.”
“What thing?”
“Someone who makes her feel small. Incompetent. Stupid and reckless.” My hands flexed against my thighs again. “She’d been proving herself capable all day… all month… and I just… dismissed all of that. Treated her like she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Because your brain perceived her as being in danger.”
“Yes. My brain. Not me,” I huffed. “But she didn’t get to separate those things. She just got the guy yelling at her to get away from the water.”
“Finn, look at me.”
I met her eyes.
“Your PTSD response wasn’t about Alex’s competence. It was about your brain perceiving mortal danger and trying to eliminate the threat. That’s not you deciding to hurt her. That’s trauma hijacking your nervous system.”
“Still hurt her.”
“Yes. But understanding the mechanism helps you build better responses for next time.” She wrote something down and looked back at me.
“Because there will be a next time. PTSD doesn’t just disappear.
We’re building tools to make the episodes less frequent, less severe, and give you both strategies for managing them when they happen. ”
I hated the certainty in her voice—hated that she was right even more.
“What kind of tools?”
“Recognizing early warning signs before you hit crisis. Grounding techniques that interrupt the panic spiral. Communication strategies so Alex knows what’s happening and how to help.
” Elena paused. “But first we need to understand what led up to that moment. Walk me through the hours before the creek incident again. Be specific.”
So I did. The rain that wouldn’t stop, water everywhere, the constant roar of it. Working until my body screamed at me to stop, then pushing past it because the ranch needed protecting. The building sensory overload—wet clothes, cold, exhaustion, pain in my left side intensifying.
“You were already compromised before you got to the creek,” Elena observed.
“I was functional. Got the work done.”
“Functional and safe are different things,” she set her pen down. “What were you telling yourself while you were working? When your body was screaming at you to stop?”
I stared at the window. “That I didn’t have a choice. The ranch needed protecting.”
“Did you actually not have a choice? Or did asking for help feel impossible?”
My shoulders tightened. “Dad was out there. Luke. Mike. They were doing the same thing. Pushing through.”
“They don’t have TBI and PTSD. You do.” There was no judgment in her voice. “Expecting yourself to function at the same capacity isn’t realistic. It’s a setup for exactly what happened.”
“Functional isn’t the same as okay, Finn,” she continued. “You pushed yourself past reasonable limits, which made you more vulnerable to a PTSD trigger.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to say that’s what you do—you push through, complete the mission, worry about the cost later. But that was military thinking. And I wasn’t military anymore.
“So what should I have done? Let my family handle it alone while I stayed inside because I was tired?”
“No. But you could have taken breaks. Asked for help. Recognized when you were approaching your limit instead of waiting until you were past it,” her voice stayed even, clinical.
“You’re not a failure for having limits, Finn.
You’re human. And you’re a human dealing with TBI and PTSD on top of physical injuries.
Expecting yourself to function at the same capacity as before your accident isn’t realistic. ”
The word “realistic” stung.
We kept going. Two hours of unpacking guilt, trauma responses, the way my brain had misfired so completely it couldn’t tell present from past. Elena took notes, asked careful questions, reframed things I thought were character failures as trauma responses.
By the time she said, “Let’s stop there for today,” I felt wrung out. Excavated.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Exhausted,” I rubbed my face. “Like I could sleep for a year.”
“Emotional processing takes a lot of energy. This was intense work,” she set her notepad aside. “Go rest. We’ll meet again Wednesday morning.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I’ll be observing. Watching how you function in your environment, how you interact with family, what your normal rhythms look like.” She smiled slightly. “No formal sessions tomorrow. Just living your life while I observe.”
The prospect didn’t make me feel any better.
I walked back to the lodge, legs heavy, shoulders tight. The sun was warm, but I barely felt it.
Alex was in our room when I got there, laptop open on the desk. She looked up the second I walked in, closing her computer and turning toward me.
“Hey,” she offered me a careful smile. “How was it?”
“Hard,” I sat on the edge of the bed, exhaustion settling deeper. “Really hard.”
She was quiet for a moment, watching me. “I’m going to go grab us some lunch from the restaurant.”
I nodded, grateful she wasn’t asking questions—wasn’t hovering.
“Be back in twenty,” she pressed a kiss to the top of my head before heading out.
I meant to stay sitting. Meant to at least take my boots off.
Instead, I slept.
On Tuesday, I was halfway through changing the oil on one of the ATVs in the equipment barn when Elena appeared in the doorway, sunlight behind her.
“Mind if I watch?” Not really a question, but she asked anyway.
I gestured at the ATV with a wrench in my hand. “Nothing exciting. Just maintenance.”
She pulled up an overturned bucket and sat, notepad balanced on her knee.
The work was straightforward—drain old oil, replace filter, refill. Muscle memory from doing this since I was fourteen. But having Elena there made every movement feel deliberate. I wasn’t self-conscious exactly, just aware.
“You explain things while you work,” she said after I’d walked through the filter replacement out loud without meaning to.
“Old habit,” I wiped my hands on a shop rag. “Everything’s a training opportunity.”
I moved to check the hydraulics next—standard inspection Dad had asked me to handle on all four ATVs this week. The first three had been fine. This one felt wrong the second I tested the lift.
Sluggish response—not catastrophic, but not right.
I worked the lever again. Same delay, and the bucket dropped faster than it should when I released pressure.
“Problem?” Elena asked.
“Maybe,” I crouched down to inspect the hydraulic lines. No visible leaks, no obvious damage. “Bucket’s not responding clean. Could be air in the system, could be the pump wearing out.”
“How do you know which?”
“Process of elimination,” I grabbed a catch pan and positioned it under the hydraulic reservoir. “Check fluid level first, bleed the lines, test response. If it’s still acting up, probably the pump.”
Dad appeared in the doorway while I was draining a sample of hydraulic fluid into a clear container. “How’s it looking?”
“This one’s got hydraulic issues. Sluggish lift, drops too fast.” I held up the fluid sample to the light. “Fluid’s clean though. No metal shavings, no discoloration.”
“Air in the lines?”
“That’d be my guess. I’ll bleed it, see if that fixes the response.”
Dad nodded. “Need help?”
“I’ve got it.”