Page 29 of Actions and Reactions (All It Takes #5)

“I was in the Navy since I graduated high school,” he starts, his words coming out easily. “When I got out a few years ago, I came back home and started working in private security. About a year later I was in a car accident and lost both my legs.”

“I’m sorry. Thank you for your service, Colin.

” The words come out easier this time, and then my breath stalls in my chest. His stoic nod is something I’ve seen in movies countless times, but never in person, and it looks respectful somehow, but I have no idea why he’s showing me respect. I’m no one, I...

“I’m Annie,” the young girl on my other side says in a hauntingly empty voice.

When I turn to look at her, she meets my eyes for a fraction of a second only, but it’s enough to see so much pain that my heart instantly breaks.

I’m pretty sure I’m not ready to hear what she’s going to say.

“I moved to Chicago last fall for college. I have a scholarship for swimming. One of my teammates assaulted and raped me.” And I was right. “I’ve only been here two weeks.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat but it sounds so hollow. How can that be enough? How can anything ever be enough? I keep looking at her, and now I notice the slight bruising under her eye and a red line on her neck.

She still hasn’t fully healed either.

I don’t know what the purpose of this introduction is, but for me, all it’s accomplished is to remind me what a fucked-up world we live in and that what happened to me is nothing, nothing compared to what these people—good people from what I can tell—have gone through.

“Silas?” Dr. Jody speaks again and I snap my head in her direction. “It’s your turn.”

“What?”

Seriously? They’re going to hate me the second I open my mouth—rightfully so too.

“Please share with us what happened to you,” she tells me with an encouraging nod that’s so absurd in this situation.

But I see all their expectant faces and I can’t not say anything, right?

I have to give them something .

“All right.” I clear my head and rub my hands down my thighs.

“Like Colin said, my dad was a hockey player, and that’s what I wanted to be too.

All my life. I don’t remember the first time I put on skates and learned to skate, but I know that from that moment, it’s all I wanted to do.

I was going to do it too because I was.

.. I was very good. It’s all I thought about, so I had to be, right? ”

The room around me disappears while I remember, and suddenly I’m back at home. I’m fifteen and carefree.

“When we were fifteen, my best friend Vinny and I were joking around one day during summer break, only a month before we were going to move to Canada to go to a boarding school that specializes in hockey, and we were on the roof of my house with one of those car toys, the ones you control with a remote, and it got stuck in the gutter. Our parents were having a double date, out for the night, and we were just having fun .” That one word comes out broken, because how can all of what happened next have come from something so simple?

“Vinny was going to slide to the edge of the roof and grab it, but I stopped him and told him we better get a ladder and do it from the ground.

“So we did that, and I was on the ladder, reaching for the toy, but it was really stuck, so I yanked it hard and lost my balance. My leg got stuck between the ladder steps and broke into a million pieces basically. One bone was sticking out of me, and I don’t remember much more, I passed out.

When I woke up in the hospital they told me I was lucky Vinny remembered what the femoral artery was, and that he ran into the house to get a belt so I didn’t bleed out.

Then they told me I couldn’t play hockey anymore. ”

Colin’s face comes into focus and I’m back in the present. He’s frowning hard, and I don’t blame him at all. This is some weak shit compared to him losing his fucking legs.

“They told me I have delayed-onset PTSD, that it only came out all these years later because I’m working for a hockey team now, but I don’t think I have PTSD, or that what happened to me is in any way comparable to what you’ve all been through. I think I’m just wasting everyone’s time here.”

“Loss is loss,” Louis says gruffly.

“It is,” Helen adds, her tone as sad as her smile.

I don’t think it is, but it feels wrong to repeat myself, so I just go back to staring at my shoes.

“I know you don’t believe you’ve lost something significant enough, Silas, but we only have three months.

” Only three, I think to myself sarcastically, but I manage not to roll my eyes.

It seems like an eternity right now. “So I think we should get down to it. You know what the difference is between you and Colin here?”

I look up to see her nod her head in his direction.

I can’t stop my eyes from going to his prosthetic legs this time, but I at least make it quick.

“He has experienced trauma?” I ask genuinely.

“No.” Dr. Jody shakes her head and even chuckles. “You want to enlighten him, Colin?” she asks.

“Sure.” He shrugs then leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees—prosthetic knees?

Fuck, I don’t know. “Every morning I wake up and see my legs missing. Wherever I walk, even if I’m wearing pants, people can see that something happened to me.

I don’t have to defend my trauma to anyone, not even to myself.

Even though I had training and I knew I was risking my life every day for years, I knew this could happen, and still, I know what I’ve lost because I can see it and so can everyone else around me. ”

He straightens then points at me .

“You don’t have that. Even though we can see on your sad face that you lost something, not everyone can recognize it.

Not everyone pays enough attention. And you can’t see the loss so you’re trying to pretend it’s not there.

I can’t pretend, because if I do, then I wouldn’t strap these on in the morning and I’d have to drag myself to the bathroom to take a piss. ”

“That only makes me feel worse,” I tell him, tired of it all.

“What he means,” Dr. Jody pipes up. “Is that your loss isn’t any less real than his even though you can’t see it every day.

You have to believe you lost something before you can work on accepting you lost it.

You have to believe it was important enough to you that your world drastically changed when you suddenly didn’t have it anymore. ”

I keep staring at her, hoping she’ll realize soon that even though what she’s saying seems logical enough, it can’t apply to me because...

“Losing hockey doesn’t count,” I tell her through gritted teeth.

“It’s not a competition,” Annie mutters from next to me, sounding as angry as she looks.

“You don’t get to look at us and think you have it better, because we’re all in the same boat.

We all have to deal with it, and not dealing with it is what got us all here.

It’s what’s making that anger in your eyes fester inside you. ”

She practically spits the last words at me, and yeah, she does look very fucking mad.

“Angrier than I intended to say it,” Dr. Jody says, in an almost jovial tone.

“But that’s the gist of it, yes. This exercise is meant to show you that saying what happened to you is hard, but not as hard as the real work, not as hard as actually dealing with the changes your loss has caused.

So Silas, do you think you belong here now? ”

I’m back in Dave’s office the next day, and yesterday’s group therapy has been on a constant loop in my mind.

So I’m here because I didn’t deal with the loss, not because my loss is so fucking big.

I guess I can get behind that, but...

“What are you thinking about?” Dave asks me, so I tell him all about my first session in group therapy.

He crosses one leg over the other and nods.

“Can I just ask you one question, Silas?”

“Isn’t that what we’re here for?” I’m only half joking, but he laughs like I’m a comedian or some shit, and dammit, that makes me smile back at him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Si?—”

“I mean as a person. What defines you? What do you dream about? What do you want your tombstone to say? Or your obituary?”

“Those are a lot of questions,” I mutter.

“Yes, but you get it. Who are you really? Not who’s son, not how old, not where you live. Who are you ? ”

I really don’t want to tell him the first thing that comes to mind, but it’s like he can see it on my face or something, and I really don’t like that.

“Can you just please tell me what I need to do to get better? Can you give me steps? Show me? I don’t want to be angry at my bo—best friend anymore. I don’t want to punch walls, and I don’t want to quit my job or have to avoid anything that has to do with hockey, so just please tell me.”

He points at me excitedly, and I’m seriously only a second away from losing my shit at him.

“That right there is proof you’re still a hockey player. At least mentally.”

“Wha-what?” I sputter.

“You want to be coached, you expect a playbook, and there are no playbooks in real life. All we can do to get through loss, Silas, is feel . You want to stop feeling that anger? Well, the first step is actually feeling it. And everything else you’re numbing.

The first time you feel everything is going to suck, I’m not here to lie to you, and like I said, I won’t sugarcoat anything, but every time after is going to suck less.

Eventually, you’ll also be able to feel the good things, and that will never suck.

Once we’ve done that, then we can figure out what or who you need to forgive so that anger never shows up again. ”

I stay quiet, processing every word he just said, and it makes sense—I think it does at least—but... I really don’t want to. It sounds awful.

“Hockey is your first love, Silas,” Dave says more quietly, and I look up into his warm eyes, filled with compassion this time, not laughter. “You’re going to get through this when you realize it’s not your only love, and that you don’t have to stop loving it just because you can’t play it.”

“I do love it.” My words come out broken. “It’s all I wanted.”

This time, I’m the one who breaks.