Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Logan
Istare at Georgie’s text on my phone, and the urge to call her is overwhelming. Something’s going on with her, and not knowing is eating away at me.
So is the memory of Lucas getting hit by that comebacker and dropping to one knee.
So is the reality that I still don’t know what’s going on with Coop.
All of this uncertainty and fear are swirling in me like a tornado, pulling in more and more fears—my arm, my contract, my future; if Georgie will get tired of being a baseball girlfriend or wife; thinking about how my mom isn’t here and how badly my dad misses her; worrying about how Liesel’s worrying about Coop—it’s all too much, too big and loud and heavy.
So, so heavy. It’s pulling me apart and pressing down on me at the same time.
I can’t do this anymore.
My thumb is hovering over the call button—
I can’t call her. That won’t help anything, and I need help.
I drop my phone back into my locker and get up, walking past my teammates, not quite hearing them, aware that by stalking away, they may think I’m a jerk but I can’t add one more worry to my shoulders—
I’m lying. I’ve already added it.
And it’s with all of this crushing weight that I walk down a series of small hallways, the volume from the clubhouse lowering with every step, and stop at an office where an older bespectacled man is sitting and doing a crossword puzzle.
I rap my knuckles on the open door, and Dr. Chang looks up with a pleasant smile. “Logan. I wondered if I’d see you today. Come in.”
I close the door and drop to a chair, grateful that Doug has him available during the playoffs.
“I’m dying out there,” I say. “It’s all too much. I can’t stop my head from spiraling, and I’ve forgotten everything you taught me, and I’m dying.”
“You have a lot on your mind, and it’s understandable you’d feel overwhelmed. Why don’t you try some box breathing? Let’s give your nervous system a chance to settle. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four.”
I try it and give up immediately. “I can’t. I’m not just overwhelmed. I can’t even think. I’m all sweaty. My heart feels like it’s being stepped on. Lungs are too tight. Hands are freezing. I feel like I’m gonna have a panic attack.”
He nods slowly, steepling his fingers in front of his face.
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
“What?”
“I’ll wait while you have the panic attack.”
“I don’t want to have a panic attack.”
“Then don’t fight it.”
“What?”
“Logan, your body is already doing what it’s doing. Fighting it won’t help.”
“But it hurts!”
“Yes.”
I stare in total bewilderment. “What are you doing?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For your body to finish what it’s doing.”
I stare at him.
“One of the worst parts of a panic attack is how it feels like it will last forever. You already know that.”
“I’m not sure I know anything anymore.”
“But you’re still here.”
I swallow.
He studies me but doesn’t say anything else. He watches me with his fingers steepled while I sit there hunched over, my hands shaking, feeling like everything in me is being compressed, run over by a bulldozer, squeezed within an inch of my life—
But I don’t die.
The pain is awful, but it doesn’t kill me. It’s burning me from the inside, but I’m not scorched.
And soon, it stops climbing and starts to pass. My hands are still cold, and I’m weak and raw and jittery.
But the worst happened, and I’m still here.
I’ve never done that before—ridden one out instead of fighting it. I usually white-knuckle it or try to distract myself through it. I’ve never simply … felt it.
It was still crappy. But it didn’t stretch out forever the way it typically does. It was crappy and then it was over.
“There,” Chang says quietly. “How do you feel now?”
“I’m still here,” I say, wringing my hands. Shaking them out.
He nods to them. “Where have you felt that before?”
“Cold hands?”
“Not the cold. Then panic you get when you feel the cold.”
“When Georgie passed out.”
“Before Georgie.”
I frown, and my eyes move around as I try to think, try to cast my mind back—
They stop at the same spot as always.
And this time, holding my own cold hands, I remember.
“My mom. In the hospital.” I shake my head. “I was holding her hand when she … when she …”
“When she died.”
I can’t even nod. He knows already.
Her hand had a hint of warmth, an ounce of strength, and then …
I slam my eyes closed, hating every second of the memory, of the feeling of her being there one moment and the next …
Gone.
Her hand was cold and limp.
And I held on.
“I didn’t let go,” I whisper, the truth dawning on me. I sit with the memory of holding her hand, of not wanting to let go, of my dad pulling me off her, of my family hugging me, all of us crying and clinging to each other.
Dr. Chang doesn’t say anything.
Suddenly I understand why I’ve spent all these months describing fear the same way: holding on. Clinging. Gripping too hard. Being afraid to release.
“I thought …” I wipe my hand across my face. “I thought I was afraid of losing people.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, but that’s not all. My body thinks if I let go, the worst happens. Someone could …”
I don’t want to say it, but Dr. Chang isn’t saying it for me.
“Die.”
“Yes,” he says.
Tears spill down my cheek. “But that doesn’t make sense. I was holding on to her, and she died anyway.”
“Yes, but that may not be what your body remembers.”
“My body thinks if I’d held on, if I hadn’t let go—” A sob tears through me. “Then maybe she wouldn’t have died. Maybe …”
But I don’t finish, and this time, he doesn’t make me. We both know what I’m thinking, and we both know it’s wrong.
The tank. Georgie. My career and siblings and my mom. All this time, my body has been convinced that letting go is the problem, not holding on. It’s been convinced that if I just held on tighter, longer, then the worst would never happen.
But the worst did happen. Here and now with the panic attack, but also that night when my mom passed.
It already happened.
And I’m still here.
“Your body’s very good at remembering pain,” Dr. Chang says softly. “And your brain is very good at trying to protect you from it.” He watches me thoughtfully. “Do you remember the panic you first felt in the tank?”
I nod.
“A lot of people feel it. It doesn’t matter how relaxed they think they are. The body doesn’t know the difference between floating safely in warm water and … floating into an infinite void. At first, those two things feel identical from the inside.”
“That’s what’s happening with me,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“Very likely.” He leans forward. “The important part is knowing that a feeling isn’t proof of danger.
You can be terrified and safe at the same time.
You can be anxious and brave. You can be nervous about the outcome and still release.
And you can love someone completely without knowing how it will end.
The difference isn’t in how it feels but in what’s actually happening. ”
I stare at my hands. They’re still cold, but they’re not holding on to anything. Not right now.
“You’ve been asking me for months how you can tell the difference between holding someone because you love them and holding on too tight. You’ve wanted a test you can run on your own feelings to find out if they’re legitimate. There isn’t one, Logan. There’s only whatever you decide to do next.”
“That’s not very satisfying.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So what am I supposed to do? I’ve been holding all of this—my arm, the contract, Lucas, Coop, Georgie, all of it, at the same time. Am I supposed to just drop it all?”
“Why on earth would you want to hold it all at once?”
I stop, and a short, humorless laugh escapes me. “You sound like Jake. He asked me if I was planning to worry Coop back to health. Said I don’t borrow trouble. I hunt for it like it’s treasure.”
Dr. Chang’s mouth twitches. “Jake Rodgers said that?”
“Word for word, more or less.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“So I’m supposed to not carry the stuff that isn’t in front of me right now? Be here, then be there, instead of everywhere at once?”
He raises his shoulders. “Why not?”
“Yeah, right,” I say. “Like it’s that easy.”
“Oh, heavens no. It takes a lot of practice.” He sits back. “Good thing you’ve been practicing for months, though, isn’t it? The breathing. The tank. The brainspotting. The vergence. You’ve been building the muscle for this exact moment without knowing that’s what you were doing.”
I think about how the moment before I saw Georgie in the stands, how I was doing that exact vergence technique.
This whole time, I’ve worried that maybe it was her, that I was turning her into a totem or an answer, holding on too tight because I was making her the key to my success. But that’s stupid.
I’m holding on because I love her.
And maybe I’m holding too tightly because I’m afraid of losing her, too.
I probably won’t always know the difference, but what matters is what I do with it.
Loving Georgie won’t solve all of my problems. I’ve still managed to find plenty to worry about since we’ve been together. She’s the love of my life, but she isn’t the answer to my problems. To my anxiety.
There is no answer, not really. The key is work. Practice. An exhausting, absurd amount of practice that’s every bit as hard as any physical conditioning I’ve ever done.
And worse still, Jake was exactly right about my trouble-hunting and worrying myself out of a freaking job.
“Well, crap,” I say, rubbing my jaw with one hand. I chuckle, frustrated and annoyed and … freer. Because if I really can’t do anything about all of my fears at once, the least I can do is stop stressing about all the other roads and walk down the one I’m on.
“There it is,” Chang says, giving me a smile that makes his eyes wrinkle. “How are you feeling?”
“Thankful.”
“For?”
“The collective bargaining agreement,” I say. “Whoever fought for ‘confidential sports psychology access in a private space’ is a national hero.”
He gives me a flat look that tells me he’s heard better jokes.
“And you,” I add. “And Georgie. And good team doctors who’ll take care of Coop. And Coop himself. And Lucas and Liesel and my dad and my mom, and heck, even Jake, not that I’ll ever tell him that.”
“You could tell him that.”
“Hard pass, doc.”
That earns a chuckle. “What’s next?” he asks.
“I guess I’m going to wait out a rain delay and then go pitch in the playoffs.”
“No pressure,” he says.
“Tons of pressure,” I say. “But the only thing I can do is throw the ball. And make sure to release on time.”
“That feels like enough to worry about when you’re on the mound, doesn’t it?”
And I finally get what Jake was saying: “‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”
“That’s the Bible, isn’t it? The Gospel of Matthew?” Dr. Chang asks. “It’s good advice.”
“Freaking Jake Rodgers,” I say with a laugh. “Thanks, Doc. I really appreciate it.”
***
As much as I would love to talk to Georgie, I think I need to learn how to be in the clubhouse when I’m in the clubhouse.
So I don’t call her. I don’t look at my phone again or even pull out my book. I drop to the bench across from Lucas in time to hear a trainer call out.
“Still waiting to hear if Coop has a concussion, but they’ve confirmed he has a broken nose and Coop wants everyone to know it’ll make him look ‘even hotter.’ His words.”
I let relief surround me like water in the tank, and I force myself not to think beyond what we know. Coop is up and joking around, but I’m not his doctor.
In this exact moment, the only thing I can do for him is care.
I’m too wrung out for more, anyway.
“How’s it feel?” I ask Lucas, who’s icing his thigh.
“Cold,” he says.
“Dork.”
“Dweeb,” he says.
“Hey, Rodgers,” I call out to Jake. “You have a deck of cards, by any chance?”
Jake’s already shirtless, leaning back in a chair and laughing at something on his phone. “Yeah, why?”
“I’m gonna play cards with my brother. What are you doing right now?”
“Watching treadmill fails on YouTube.”
My pulse is still too fast and thin for a full laugh, but I manage a snort. “I can’t pretend this will be more fun, but want to play poker?”
He sets down his phone and shrugs. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Rojas says.
A couple more guys join in, and soon, I’m bluffing that I have a flush on the river.
“He’s got nothing,” Lucas says, reading me correctly like the jerk mirror twin he is.
“Neither does he,” I say, pushing pennies toward the pot. Turns out a handful of veterans on the team keep rolls of pennies around for poker on rainy days. Lucas shoots me a glare, but then at the exact same moment, both of our eyes widen, and I know exactly what he’s thinking.
We’ll take turns bluffing.
Take them for every penny.
We both drop our heads, and I know without having to look that Lucas is hiding a smile, too.
It’s on.
***
The rain delay ends after three and a half hours, a catered lunch, and several hands of poker, in which Lucas and I come out nine dollars and … twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three cents richer.
We lift up our riches and splash them back onto the bench, laughing like we’re Scrooge McDuck.
“I knew I hated you guys,” Jake says when Joe grabs my attention.
“The field is being cleared. Time to warm up, Fischer,” he tells me. I give him a nod and flex my hands. They’re a little stiff still, but that’s what all this practice with Dr. Chang is about.
Time to see how well it’s working.
“You love us and you know it,” Lucas is saying to Jake, making a heart with his hands toward Jake.
Jake looks at me. “It’s official: I like you better than Lucas.”
“I’m flattered you can tell us apart.”
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re both equally ugly, but Lucas is way more annoying.”
I spread out my arms and look at Lucas. “How do you like them apples?”
“Shut up and pitch, will you?”
“I’ll do my best.”