Page 76 of Duty Devoted

“To be able to breathe?”

That was it in a nutshell. “Yeah, maybe.”

We sat at a booth, and the waitress brought us coffee.

“So.” Sophia wrapped her hands around her mug, studying me with that clinical assessment that had always been both comforting and unnerving. “You look…”

“Like my father’s daughter?” I gestured at my pristine white coat, the designer blouse underneath, the carefully applied makeup that took fifteen minutes every morning. “Professional? Put-together?”

“I was going to say exhausted.”

The honesty of it felt like a crushing weight on my chest. Trust Sophia to skip the social niceties.

“Just adjusting.” I focused on arranging the sugar packets into neat rows, edge to edge, perfectly aligned. “You know how it is, coming back from the field. Everything feels…”

“Hollow?”

“And loud.” I nudged one packet out of line, watched how it disrupted the entire pattern. “Everything here is so loud. The machines, the people, the procedures. In Corazón, I could hear myself think.”

“It’s been two months, Lauren.”

“Some adjustments take longer than others.”

She leaned back, that steady gaze not letting me deflect. “Talk to me. Really talk to me. What’s going on?”

The carefully constructed walls I’d built—professional competence, family obligations, temporary circumstances—wavered under her scrutiny. This was Sophia, who’d held pressure on a spurting artery while I’d searched for the source. Who’d covered for me when I’d needed five minutes to sob behind a tree after losing a teenage mother to eclampsia. Who’d been there when the weight of all that need pressed too heavy.

“I’m drowning.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I know I’m safe. I know Mateo is dead. Logan shot him, blew up his boat, I watched it happen. But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching me. Following me.”

“PTSD is?—”

“Normal after trauma, I know.” I pushed all the sugar packets out of formation, scattering them across the scarred Formica. “Hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, intrusive thoughts. I can diagnose myself just fine. Doesn’t make it easier when a car backfires and I hit the ground, or when I check my rearview mirror twenty times on the way home.”

And all of it made me think of Logan. How he’d been dealing with this day in and day out for years. Was it still the same? Had Corazón made his symptoms worse? Had he ever gotten help?

“Are you seeing anyone? Professionally?”

Heat crept up my neck. “The hospital has an employee assistance program.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I met her eyes, seeing my own shame reflected there. “I went once. The therapist wanted to talk about mysurvivor’s guiltandsavior complex. Asked if my choice to work in dangerous areas was related to unresolved childhood issues with my parents.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.” I started building a pyramid with the scattered packets. “I didn’t go back.”

Lady kept trying to get me to process my feelings.No wonder Logan had never gone back to therapy. I didn’t plan to go anytime soon either.

“Where are you living?”

The heat in my face intensified. “It’s temporary.”

“Lauren.”

“My parents’ building. A few floors below theirs.” The admission tasted like failure. “It’s just until I figure out something more permanent.”

Her eyebrows climbed. “The same building where you swore you’d rather live in a cardboard box than?—”