Page 12 of Up In Flames

Oren

“ A nd how are the nightmares?” Joanne asked.

At first I’d avoided the idea of having a therapist, but it didn’t take long for me to see the necessity of one. I’d had no one to talk to about anything. Least of all about the accident. The guilt. The way I’d felt crushed every morning simply for waking up.

Nightmares plagued me since the accident. I’d wake up sweating with the sound of screeching tires still ringing in my ears. Cold, clammy, drenched to the bone. It didn’t matter if it was midnight or five in the morning. The nightmares drove me out of bed and into the shower.

It was the lack of sleep that convinced me to see someone. Joanne specialized in dealing with people who’d been through a traumatic event. Attacks. Shootings. House fires. Car accidents.

“They don’t bother me the way they used to. Maybe they’re not as bad? I don’t know. But I’m sleeping better.”

“That’s good.” She smiled at me.

The thing I liked about her the most was that she seemed genuine. I wasn’t just a job to her. My problems weren’t just a puzzle for her to solve.

“And how’s work? Are you still taking the bus?”

Joanne was certain that if she could get me behind the wheel, my nightmares would stop.

That it would be a physical manifestation of me taking control of the situation or something.

I forgot her exact reasoning, but the idea of driving still made me cringe.

Though if Will was with me, I might manage it.

Will wouldn’t let anything happen to me. He was my friend.

“I’m still taking the bus. I haven’t—I’m not ready to drive yet.”

“That’s okay. One step at a time.”

“I did make a friend, though.” Thinking of Will made my hands sweat, and I wiped my palms down my thighs.

Ever since the accident, I’d been a little obsessed with him.

The obsession had started to fade, though, the better I got.

Until I’d met him in that pub. He was all I thought about now.

Morning, noon, and night. Was it normal to obsess about a friend? To think about them all the time?

“Is it a work friend? You’ve mentioned Hal, and your boss, Simon.”

“It’s not a work friend. He, um—he was there. At the scene.” I held my breath waiting for Joanne to disapprove. There had to be some fancy term about making friends with the person who saved your life. Trauma bonding? But I was the only traumatized one.

“What role did he play at the scene of the accident?” Joanne’s brow furrowed the way it did when she was thinking hard about something. Not necessarily with disapproval, but because she liked to have all the facts.

“He pulled me out of the car.”

It wasn’t that simple. He’d distracted me. Commanded my attention. Comforted me. And when he pulled me from the wreckage, he let me cling to him like he was the only thing in the world that could save me.

“He’s a fireman.” I elaborated for her. It seemed important that she knew. “I was at a work thing, one of the after-work dinners and drinks that you’ve encouraged me to join, and he was at the pub with his crew.”

He’d been easy to spot. I’d thought of his face so often in the days since.

It was easier to think about him than it was to think about Byron and Rita and the smell of smoke.

Burning rubber. Copper pennies. The gentle timbre of his voice comforted me to remember when all I could dream about was squealing tires and sirens.

The details of how the accident happened were still gone.

I doubted I’d remember exactly what happened, and I didn’t want to.

“How did you come to be friends?” Joanne wasn’t the take notes type of therapist who spent the hour staring at a yellow legal pad, drawing doodles or writing down how damaged I was.

Instead she sat in an oversized chair with a giant cup of coffee and a water bottle that was big and heavy enough to use as a weapon should the need arise.

Part of me wished she’d use the yellow legal pad and quit looking at me, patiently waiting for me to untangle my thoughts and give her an answer.

“I saw him at the pub and said hello. I found out what station he works at, and I went there one day. He invited me out to a big fundraiser his station held. It was at the park. There was all kinds of food—he made chili. I’d mentioned it to Hal, who mentioned it to Simon, who thought it was a great idea to get the office out into the community.

Anyway, I went. We ate chili and just walked around for a while. ”

I kept the details to myself. The face painting. The photo booth. The butterflies that had taken up residence in my stomach whenever I thought about him. About that day.

“I let him drive me home.”

Her eyebrows wicked up to meet her hairline. “Really? And how was that?”

“Not as terrible as I thought, but not super great.”

She nodded as though she expected that exact answer. “It makes sense that you’d feel safe with him, given your history.”

As much as she was right, that Will did make me feel safe, like nothing bad would happen with him around, he also terrified me.

I couldn’t breathe around him sometimes.

It was like there wasn’t enough oxygen to fuel my body when he was near.

My skin got tight, and even my hair stood on end like it was reaching for him.

“What’s your friendship with him like?”

“Easy. He gets that I’m still messed up because of the accident.”

Joanne pinned me with a hard look, and I rolled my eyes at her.

“Fine. He understands that I’ve been through a traumatic event, and that I’m still working through it, and he doesn’t hold it against me. Is that better?”

“Yes. How we talk to ourselves matters. You’re not messed up. You went through something scary and tragic. Tragedy changes us. If you were unchanged, it wouldn’t be trauma.”

Heaving a sigh, I leaned back and glanced at the clock. “Looks like our time is up, Doc.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash at the clock. “You’ve made good progress, Oren.

I’m glad to see your quality of life improving.

I want you to work on the way you talk about yourself, especially in relation to what you’ve been through.

You’re not messed up; you’re working through a traumatic event.

You’re not a bad person, you’re a person something bad happened to.

You’ve come too far to participate in self-sabotage. ”

“You mean not only do I have to come back, but I have to be nice to myself in the meantime? Geez, Joanne, I thought you liked me.”

Joanne shook her head, but she had a smile at least. There had been sessions that ended with no one smiling.

“Do you have a therapist? Genuine question. Like, you sit here all day and listen to people who’ve all been through some shit. Doesn’t that, like, get you down?”

Joanne’s curious head tilt was my first cue that maybe I’d asked an inappropriate question. But then her lips stretched into a soft smile.

“You’re kind to worry about me, Oren. Yes, I have a therapist. For more reasons than the job I do. But that’s between me and my therapist.”

I pushed myself to my feet. “Fair enough. Same time next month?”

“You got it. I’ll email you some more in-depth information on self-talk and the effects of it.”

Joanne and I discovered that I often did better if the bulk of the information I was supposed to take in came in written format. It was probably a throwback from all the studying I’d done in law school.

Especially to begin with, the therapy sessions had been too emotionally taxing for me to take in everything.

After a particularly hard session, I’d gone home and found myself googling things she’d said to me, eager to know more.

I’d brought my newfound knowledge with me to the next session.

Joanne had asked if it would be okay, if I thought it might be beneficial, for her to email me information relevant to our sessions.

Things got easier after that. I’d come to therapy and dump all my bullshit—sorry, work through my trauma with her in person, and then she’d send homework to my email.

I let myself out of her office and nodded at the person waiting for their session.

There was an unspoken rule of the waiting room in a therapist's office and that was if you saw me, no you didn’t.

Our eyes might meet, but mostly we let our gazes slide over the other person.

People in Joanne’s waiting room had been through enough shit without feeling like they were being gawked at by other patients.

And half the time the person leaving was a wreck.

I’d walked out of there with blotchy, tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes before. Hair wrecked from shoving my fingers through it. My body held together somehow, despite feeling like broken glass and dust inside.

Today was the best I’d felt after leaving an appointment. Joanne would want me to take credit, but I had to give some to Will. The longer I was around him, the more alive I felt. The more I wanted to live.

To begin with, I’d merely wanted to get through the day without breaking out into a cold sweat or flinching at the sound of a siren.

My goals had changed even before Will came into the picture, but the longer I was around him, the more I realized how much I’d missed out on before.

How much of myself I’d buried into books and studying.

I hadn’t felt lost before, but now I knew that I was.

Other than law school and getting a job at a firm somewhere, I’d had no other goals.

No real relationships other than the ones I was forced to have in school. Except Byron and Rita.

Their absence was a gaping chest wound right after the accident. I’d struggled to breathe. To function. Just getting through each day was hell. Even eight months later—seven months, three weeks, and five days, but I tried not to keep track—I couldn’t breathe through the loss sometimes.

I’d had to take things minute by minute at first. Then hour to hour.

Eventually I’d worked up to day to day. I never wanted to go back there, and until I met Will, I feared that I would.

That the grief would somehow get too big for me and eat me alive.

Even when I’d forced myself to get a job and go to therapy, I worried that I’d slide back down into the abyss and there’d be no one to throw me a lifeline.

Then I met Will. Knowing him didn’t make the fear go away, but I knew if I needed one, he’d be a lifeline for me.

But knowing him also made me feel like maybe I didn’t need a lifeline.

Will saw horrible shit all the time, and he managed to be full of light and life in a way I’d never seen before.

My guess was that because he saw that shit, he was also in the unique position to witness miracles.

The people who jump out of windows and survive house fires.

The cats who fall out of trees but are unharmed when they land.

And the people like me who shouldn’t have made it but somehow did.

I snapped a selfie and tagged it freshly-therapized , then sent it off to Will.

He sent a reply back a half second later.

Therapy looks good on you

Grinning, I tucked my phone away and strode toward my bus stop.