Chapter Ten
The glowing red numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand shifted to nine forty-five.
Hanson sat on the edge of the mattress, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the changing digits.
Alice had quietly slipped the large, easy-to-read clock into his room earlier in the week.
A clock with numbers large enough to be read from the moon, a silent and deeply appreciated gesture to help him stay anchored in time.
Right now, time was just about the only thing he was sure of.
His first video appointment with the new therapist started at ten.
He knew that. He had known it when he woke up.
Had known it when Alice reminded him at breakfast. Had known it when his hostess had suggested Charlie’s office would be quieter than his room if he wanted to take the call there.
Known it when his mind wandered over to how his buddies had recovered, and then to Gideon and how his therapies might be coming along, and yet, he had checked the clock at least eight times in the last ten minutes.
He looked again. Nine forty-seven. Still.
Careful of the pressure behind his left eye, he scrubbed a hand over his face.
Not a headache yet. More like the warning before a storm, the faint heaviness that told him if he pushed too hard, stood too long, listened to too much, or pretended too well, he’d pay for it later.
This morning had started wrong. Not dramatically wrong.
No nightmare. No waking up soaked in sweat with his heart punching through his ribs and the taste of river water in his mouth.
Just wrong. He’d gone to the dresser, opened a drawer, then stood staring at a stack of T-shirts, unable to remember why his hand was on the handle.
Eventually socks had come back to him after standing there like an idiot for far too long.
Then he’d brushed his teeth, shaved, and had to check the moisture on the brush to determine if he’d already brushed.
Frustration in all its glory had kicked in over all the little—and sometimes big—things a grown man should be able to manage without turning every morning into a scavenger hunt where the prize was basic competence.
His gaze snapped to the clock again before he could stop it.
The numbers blurred for half a second, and he blinked them clear. Nine forty-eight.
Slow, slow, quick, quick. The thought came out of nowhere.
Not nowhere. Kat. His fingers curled against his thigh.
Last night should have been the kind of thing his brain had no room to keep.
The house had been too warm, too loud, too full of movement and music and people who knew exactly where they belonged.
He should have remembered only pieces. Noise.
Color. The ache behind his eye. The window glass reflecting bodies moving in the family room.
Instead, he remembered her. Clearly. Her hand in his.
Her voice, low and steady, saying, “Slow, slow, quick, quick.” The way she had told him not to look down, then didn’t laugh when he had.
The way she had adjusted when he stepped wrong and hadn’t announced his mistake to the entire county.
The way she’d known one more minute was not nothing. He remembered that perfectly.
She hadn’t treated him like he was broken.
She had looked him right in the eye, challenged his Sapper pride, and demanded he trust his own body.
And when his feet had finally caught the rhythm, when the math of the two-step clicked and his muscle memory took over, she hadn’t announced it.
She hadn’t praised him with the overly bright, exaggerated enthusiasm people sometimes used when dealing with the injured.
She had just smiled, adjusted her grip on his hand, and given him one more minute.
One extra minute of gliding across the floor, moving perfectly, and making him feel entirely capable and completely whole.
His working memory might be a damaged, leaky sieve, dropping ordinary tasks and daily routines without warning, but his emotional memory was a steel trap.
He remembered everything about last night in vivid, high-definition detail.
A soft knock came at the door. “Hanson?” Alice called. “You decent?”
He glanced down at jeans, socks, T-shirt. “Depends on the standard.”
The door opened a few inches, and Alice peered in with the careful expression of a woman trying very hard not to look careful. “Charlie’s office is ready whenever you are. I put a glass of water on the desk.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you rather have something warm? Tea, coffee?”
Shaking his head, he glanced quickly at the clock again. “No thanks. Water is perfect.”
“Sounds good.” She smiled. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”
He nodded. His sergeant’s mother left without fussing. That was another thing about Alice. The woman would build a whole safety net around a person and then pretend she’d merely been passing through with string.
Hanson waited until her footsteps faded before he closed the laptop, tucked it under one arm, and stood to make his way to the late Charlie Sweet’s office.
There was work to be done. He had to get his brain functioning again, couldn’t afford to be distracted by a beautiful blonde with a stubborn streak.
No matter how perfectly she fit against his side.
At exactly ten o’clock, he clicked the link on his screen.
The Zoom window popped open, revealing the professional, compassionate face of his cognitive therapist. A woman with short dark hair and rectangular glasses appeared before him.
Behind her was a plain wall, a framed certificate too blurred to read, and a plant that looked more competent than he felt.
“Good morning, Hanson. I’m Dr. Wallace. Can you hear me all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. And I can see you. How are you feeling this morning?”
Loaded question. “Present.”
Her mouth tipped up slightly. “That’s a start. Headache?”
“Not yet.”
“Fatigue?”
“Yes.”
“Sleep?”
Before he could answer, the heavy front door of the ranch house opened. “Good morning, Miss Alice!”
Hanson’s gaze snapped up from the computer screen. The heavy oak door to Charlie’s office hadn’t latched completely. It sat open just a crack, leaving a sliver of the hallway visible. Through that narrow gap, the bright, unmistakable sound of Kat’s voice drifted perfectly into the room.
“Good morning, Kat, honey. Mason is just washing up. He’ll be right out.” Alice’s voice echoed from down the hall.
Hanson stared at the cracked door. He could hear the soft thud of Kat’s footsteps on the hardwood, the rustle of her canvas bag as she set it down on the entryway bench.
His pulse gave a traitorous, entirely involuntary kick.
His ears were perfectly tuned to the sounds in the hallway, his mind slipping back in time to holding her as they danced.
“Hanson?” the therapist’s voice dragged him to the here and now. Too bad he liked last night more than he should.
“Sorry.” Hanson’s deep soothing voice drifted from Charlie’s office close enough for Kat to hear at the kitchen table. “What was that?”
“I asked if you got any sleep.” The new therapist’s voice held no censure, no irritation, just soft, easy patience.
He paused, his silence telling Kat more than what he might say next. “Some.”
“That usually means not enough.”
“That would be accurate.”
Just what Kat had thought. Shifting in place, she felt a tad guilty being able to hear the entire conversation so clearly, but without a kitchen door to close, what more could she do?
“We’ll keep today light. First session is mostly getting a sense of what’s happening in real life.”
“Real life seems to be where the wheels come off.”
“That’s useful to know. Clinic performance and real-life performance can be very different, especially when there’s noise, interruption, fatigue, or too many moving pieces.
” The woman went quiet for a moment and Kat wondered if she was thinking or taking notes.
“Tell me about one moment this week when the thread dropped.”
Thread dropped. The words clung to Kat’s racing heart.
She’d known since meeting him that Hanson had struggled with memory issues.
It had been clear he was trying so very hard to fit into what was once very normal for him.
What she hadn’t realized until the prolonged silence lingered as he considered his answer, just how hard any of this was for him.
“I was helping with feed sacks,” he started. “I knew what I was doing when I started. Lift. Turn. Step. Stack. Then something changed. I don’t remember what, but I looked away. When I came back to it, I couldn’t tell if I was loading or unloading.”
“And what did you do?” The woman’s voice came across gentle and kind, again, no signs of judgment or impatience. Kat liked that.
“Stood there looking casual.” Kat could picture the man hefting one casual shoulder, doing his best to make everything sound… normal.
“Did that work?”
“No.”
“Did it fool anyone?”
A soft chuckle escaped his lips. “Also no.”
Kat could picture his face now. The way he’d accepted all his challenges. Not giving in, not beating himself up. The thought brought a smile to her own lips.
“What you’re describing is consistent with impaired working memory and task sequencing, especially when divided attention is involved. Processing speed too. Executive functioning. The plain version is that your brain can begin the task, but when something interrupts the sequence, the thread snaps.”
So much of what Kat could hear reminded her of the children she worked with and the little she’d been able to research on traumatic brain injuries.
Such a complicated organ, but now, listening to his therapist, the seed of an idea she’d gotten when she was looking into his troubles, took root. Maybe, just maybe, she could help.
“I’m ready!” Mason bounced into the room and took his seat beside her at the table. The tug of war with not wanting to make the effort and the joy of making progress seemed to be easing for the young boy, with making progress taking the lead.
Mason’s attention span before his brain would start to cloud over and shut down was about twenty minutes.
Those twenty minutes coincided precisely with when she heard the latch of the office door shut and Hanson’s booted steps coming closer.
Mason followed the sound too, his pencil hovering above the worksheet. “Is Mr. Hanson done?”
“Looks like it.” Kat tapped the paper lightly. “But your job is right here, mister. One more row.”
He sighed the sigh of a boy asked to haul water uphill in July, but bent over the page again.
Hanson appeared in the kitchen doorway a moment later, laptop tucked under one arm, a half-empty glass of water in his other hand.
His gaze landed on Mason first, then Alice near the sink, then finally Kat.
For one brief second, something unguarded passed across his face.
Not quite a smile. Not quite surprise. More like his mind had been somewhere difficult and found her standing in the easier place.
Then his expression smoothed. “Morning.”
“Morning.” Kat kept her voice easy.
Alice wiped her hands on a dish towel. “How did it go?”
Hanson glanced toward Mason, then gave Alice the kind of answer men gave when they didn’t want to really answer. “Informative.”
Kat bit back a smile, turned to Mason’s last notes on the page. “Looking good.” She offered a high-five the child returned with delight and with his grandmother’s approval, the kid was out the door and racing toward the paddock and the new horse.
“Oh to be that young without a care in the world,” Alice muttered with a smile, turned and wiping her hands on a nearby dish towel, pushed away from the counter. “Have some laundry that will not fold itself. Be back in a jiff.”
“I can help.” Hanson took a step in her direction.
“No need.” Alice held her hand up. “We’d only be bumping into each other in that little room. One of these days I’m going to bump that sucker out into a decent size for this house, but for now, I can do it.” With a smile and wave, she was headed toward the laundry room.
Gathering her phonics cards, Kat’s gaze lifted to meet his.
The tight set of the man’s jaw and the rigid line of his shoulders practically vibrated with cognitive exhaustion.
He moved toward the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water, moving with that same careful, hyper-vigilant control she was learning to recognize.
“The office door didn’t latch all the way. I wasn’t trying to listen.”
“I know.”
The simple trust in those two words did something inconvenient to her chest. “The therapist said something about the thread dropping.”
“Yeah. Working memory deficit.” Hanson sighed, setting the water bottle on the counter, his expression instantly guarded. “They give everything a fancy title. I just need to try harder.”
“Is that what the therapist said?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly.”
“Mm.” She considered her next words carefully. “Effort isn’t the problem. Storage is.”
He went very still.
“If your brain is having trouble holding the order of the day, maybe the order of the day shouldn’t have to live in your brain.”
His brows buckled in confusion.
She reached into the front pocket of her canvas bag and pulled out a fresh, blank stack of heavy index cards and a black marker. She set them on the counter between them. “You trusted a man on belay because the rope was there to do a job. This is just another rope.”
“Funny looking rope.” His words were curt, but curiosity danced in his eyes.
Pulling out one card, she set it down in front of him. “You write the sequence for your task before you start, step by step, on a single card. One card, one task. When the thread drops—and it will—you don’t have to rebuild from nothing. You simply check the card and move on.”
“Like a manual for life.” He looked at the cards.
“Pretty much. They can be as simple or complex as you need. As few or as many as are necessary. In time…”
“Yeah.” He sighed again. Deeper. Slowly, his hand reached out and covered the stack of cards. “Another rope.”
“Just another rope.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered with a smile anyhow.
Slipping the cards into his pocket, his gaze never left hers. “Thank you, Kat.”
“You’re welcome.”
He tapped the card in his pocket and gave her a smile that shouted all would be well. If only everything were that simple.