Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(32)

“Would you like a man or a woman?”

“Excuse me?”

“Therapist.”

“Whoa, there.”

“You need to work with someone else. Another professional. I can’t manage your treatment.”

I hadn’t regretted telling her until she suggested a stranger, but how could I be surprised? And how could I have avoided telling her? She was my wife and the target of my… whatever it was. Logically, I couldn’t have avoided this shitty situation. I knew it, but I didn’t have to like it.

“No.”

“Caden. Please.”

“You want me, a surgeon, to tell someone about this and expect them to let me continue working?”

“It’s not affecting your work.”

“I need to work. So no.”

“I won’t treat you. Period.” She crossed her arms. “I mean it. It’s not some arbitrary limit, because believe me, my instinct is to be your primary advocate. I’d step in front of anything for you. But I know, in the end, that won’t serve you.” She put her hands flat on my chest. “You’re everything to me. Everything. I’m too invested.”

Looking down at her, parallel lines of straight hair filtering one brown eye, the strands caught in her dark lashes, I accepted her love. Her professionalism was fine, but when she said she was doing it for me, I believed her.

“I don’t want to tell anyone else about this. Who’s not going to think I’m crazy?”

“Anyone in the field.”

“I’m not going on a hundred interviews.”

“I’ll find you someone right away. It’ll be easy.”

I kissed her temple. “All right.” I held her tight, resting my chin on her head.

“We’re going to be all right,” she said. “I promise.”

“So do I.”





Chapter Fifteen





Greyson - DECEMBER, 2006





Most non-medicinal PTSD treatments focus on desensitizing the patient to the trauma itself. They relive it endless times via sensory stimulation or verbal recall, until it’s old news. The therapies can seem cruel, but the outcomes are consistently good.

Caden wouldn’t take medication. You can educate a man out of his misinterpretations of data (these drugs do not effect one’s ability to perform surgery) but you cannot educate him out of his pride (tell that to the person on the table).

As terrible patients went, he would be the absolute worst.

“How did it go?” I asked from my desk one afternoon in early December. He’d called me after seeing another PTSD specialist.

“Fine.”

“Did you like him?”

“I don’t know. I was only there fifteen minutes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I was late. Anyway, he wants to identify a specific trauma. I don’t have a specific trauma.”

“That may take work but—”

“I have to go.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He hung up.

I stared at the plastic receiver as if that would keep us connected another moment, then I put it back in the cradle with a sigh.

Since he’d told me about what he called the Thing three weeks earlier, I’d defined behaviors that had seemed free-floating before. In the days before the fundraiser, he’d been cold and emotionless. He was so detached and robotic in some ways, yet temperamental and snippy in others. After the dark banquet room, where he dominated my body so brutally I had to hide his bite mark for a week, he was back to almost normal. Not as normal as when I met him in Iraq, but you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

As the weeks passed, he became more and more closed off. There had been three-plus weeks between the first rough encounter in the middle of the night and the banquet hall. I thought nothing of the timing except to note when he’d become alienated from his emotions.

I was about to call the next therapist on my list when Jenn called.

“I need a drink,” she said.

I looked at my watch. It was five thirty already. “I’ve had seven sessions today and my brain is full.”

“Meet you downstairs.”



* * *



That was the mood I met Jenn in.

That was how it began, really. Ronin and his classified secrets, breaking shit to fix it.

Caden had paperwork and opted not to join Jenn and me. Good. I was frustrated with him even though it wasn’t his fault. Never get frustrated with the patient, even if he’s your husband, slowing down before we got to a dead end. I wanted to speed up and find out what that wall was really made of.

I was relieved he didn’t want to come, and then guilty for wanting a reprieve from watching him go through the motions of life.

Jenn pushed her glasses up her nose. She’d shaved her kinky black hair down to the skin, which made her features statuesque. She held up her beer glass. I clinked my wine.

“To an empty brain,” she said.

“Cheers.”

The Wednesday crowd was subdued. The Wall Street douches had had a bad day apparently, and the art school kids huddled over pitchers of the cheap stuff.

“So,” I said. “You know anyone who can see a vet about identifying a trauma?”