by Claire Adams
That was exactly what I was trying to do. Just stay as far away from Ana as possible so I didn’t do anything else that made her afraid. I had dealt with a lot of guys with PTSD, and none of them had been so bad that my voice alone sent them into a meltdown. With the guys and myself, it was always loud noises or smells that triggered us. I thought I would be able to help Ana, but I didn’t know what to do and I wasn’t going to be responsible for hurting her.
Before I could protest anymore Jordan had hung up and I was left on my own again with Ana. She seemed so fragile, like she was going to break at any moment. There was no way I could be around her. I was nervous to say anything because I didn’t want to scare her or make her cry again.
Women were delicate creatures and I loved them dearly. I loved the softness of their skin, the way their bodies looked as they walked, there were so many things about women that were so lovely. But I didn’t like making a woman feel bad and I really hated that I had made Ana afraid like I had. Of course, I didn’t know I was going to scare her like that, but it still made me feel horrible.
Oh, there were so many times in my life that I had hurt women. Not physically, of course; only an absolute asshole would physically hurt a woman. But I had been young and carefree with women’s emotions and I had hurt them. But the kind of hurt that comes from an emotional breakup was nothing like what I had seen in Ana’s eyes at the treatment center. She had real hurt in those eyes, hurt that I didn’t want to go near.
I closed the door to my room and was perfectly content to sit in there and not come out until the morning. Both my room and Ana’s were plenty big enough to stay in without needing to leave for anything else but food. I would just give her as much space as possible so she could relax and wouldn’t have to worry about me or anything else that was going on.
When Jordan and Chase said that Ana was coming to stay with me, I went and bought a recliner and television for her room. I also purchased all the fluffy, girl products I could find at the drug store, so hopefully she would have everything she needed to be comfortable.
I hadn’t taken care of a woman ever in my life. Even when I dated women, I didn’t usually let them live with me. Sure, they sometimes stayed over for a night or two, but my girlfriends always had their own places and knew I wasn’t about to invite them to stay with me. In fact, I didn’t often have a woman in my life that would even stay over with me. I liked my space, and most women didn’t like coming all the way out to the woods to just hang out with me.
Women and I only worked on a small scale. I loved women, don’t get me wrong. I really loved women, but they have a level of emotions that was hard for me to deal with. I couldn’t even deal with my own emotions, so I certainly didn’t want to have to deal with the extra emotions that women had.
With each deployment my ability to deal with shit got worse and worse. I had my way of doing things and it was the only way I liked to do things. I liked to get up in the morning and make my eggs, three egg whites and one full egg. I drank my coffee and read the digital version of the New York Times. Then I’d go work on my projects around the cabin for the afternoon and so on. When it came to weekends, I used to go into town and visit the clubs with Chase, but neither of us had done that in a while.
When I was away on assignment, I didn’t get to do my routine, but that was because we had a job to do and that was all that mattered. Job assignments could take anywhere from two days to two months, but most of them were somewhere in between. It was hard to have any sort of dating life or real relationship when I never knew just how long I would be gone.
There was always alcohol involved when I had to be around people though. It was too hard to deal with the shit that people had going on if I didn’t have a large amount of alcohol in my system. But man oh man did I enjoy the women. I would even say they were addictive to me.
The way a woman smelled was extremely primal to me. When I had stood behind Ana and just before I spoke to her, I smelled the soft, floral breeze that came off of her. If I closed my eyes, I could still smell it. And when her hand touched mine, I thought for sure I was going to step in close to her and kiss her. My body could hardly resist.
Ever since I had first laid eyes on her when Chase had sent me her picture and asked to help find her, I’d felt something toward Ana. The milky white of her skin was filled with much more color than when I had first picked her up and carried her out of Stephano’s house, though. That night, I thought I was carrying a corpse for a moment, until she wrapped her arms around my neck and looked up into my eyes. I couldn’t forget those eyes.
Her grayish-blue eyes were glazed over by the drugs she was on, but I saw her look at me with an intensity that I could only describe as extreme. I felt her body in my arms when I dreamed sometimes. Her lifeless body barely hanging onto me as we ran out of Stephano’s house in the middle of the night under gunfire. She was lucky to be alive.
“Shit,” I heard her quiet voice say as a loud crash happened in the kitchen.
I hurried out there to make sure she was all right and found an entire drawer from the refrigerator had fallen out and broken onto the ground. There were milk, eggs, and numerous other foods all over the floor, with Ana standing over them and looking very confused.
“I’m so sorry,” Ana said as she looked around the room for something to clean up her mess.
There was blood dripping from her hand and it was shaking. She hadn’t even noticed that her hand was cut badly and bleeding all over the place.
“Let me see that,” I said as I grabbed the kitchen towel and took a big step over the mess of food all over the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Ana said quietly as she looked down at the ground.
“It’s okay. Are you all right?”
I took a deep breath in and could smell her flowery scent as it came off of her. It took everything I had in me not to close my eyes and just inhale deeply so I could smell more of her. I had read about people being attracted to someone based on their smell, but I hadn’t thought it was true until I was around Ana. There was a visceral attraction to her that went beyond what she was wearing and how she looked.
“I’m sorry,” she said again as her hand shook in mine.
She wasn’t looking at me and I felt like she wasn’t even really there with me. She was off in her head. I had seen that look from my guys that I worked with, and I had probably even had that same look in my own eyes plenty of times before. Ana was lost in her own thoughts and that wasn’t anything I wanted to mess with.
From my experience, it was best to let someone who had severe PTSD deal with their thoughts without interrupting them unless they were doing something dangerous. Their mind had to learn how to work through things and how to build on the skills it already had so they could process things better the next time they came up. It was a long process, but no one else could do it except the person who was suffering from PTSD.
“Let me clean this,” I said quietly as I brought her around the kitchen and we walked to the bathroom in her room.
There were stacks of things I had purchased for her at the store, but I knew I had a first aid kit under the sink. I held her hand in mine and continued to apply pressure to the cut as I used my other hand to pull out the antiseptic spray and Band-Aids.
Ana’s eyes continued to look down at the ground and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through her head. She had been through so much, her body and mind just needed to rest. I was going to get her cleaned up and then get her to bed so she could sleep.
“What were you doing in the kitchen? Are you hungry? I can make you something,” I offered as I cleaned her hand and bandaged it.
She didn’t answer me. She didn’t look up from the ground and she didn’t seem to even realize I was standing there with her. Ana was in a full, dissociative state and it had lasted at least five minutes that I knew of. That was a long time for someone to stay in such a state.
People with post-traumatic stress syndrome tended to have peri
ods where they would disassociate from what was going on in front of them and flash back to something else. I had them all the time, but they seemed to happen to me less and less over the years. I was aware enough that I knew what situations I would have them more in. Anytime there were gunshots, I had to be vigilant to try and avoid having an episode. Luckily, my episodes only lasted a few seconds and I was able to quickly bring myself back to the present time. But Ana wasn’t having as much luck.
“Let’s get you to bed,” I said quietly as I walked in front of her and guided her to her bed.”
She lay down and I left her there while I went to the kitchen to make her something to eat. That must have been what she was out there for and I really didn’t know when the last time she had eaten was. I made up a ham and cheese sandwich and grabbed some juice and chips for her before I set them next to her bed.
By the time I returned to her room, Ana was curled up in a ball on top of her bed with her eyes closed. I didn’t dare wake her up; she probably needed her sleep. Her eyes were closed and I grabbed a blanket off the bottom of her bed to put it over her to make sure she would be warm for the night. The house got very cold sometimes at night, and even though I really liked it like that, I didn’t know if Ana would feel the same way about the cold.
“What are you doing in here?” she screamed at me as she sat straight up in her bed and pushed herself back into the corner.
Instantly I dropped the blanket and took three steps back to give her the space she needed. I didn’t answer her right away though. She needed to learn how to manage her disassociation, and that meant she was going to be confused as she tried to figure out what was happening.
“Answer me,” she continued. “Why are you in my room? Get the hell out of here!”
As she screamed at me, she pointed toward the door and then noticed the bandage on her hand. Slowly she looked at her hand and then at the sandwich I had placed next to her on the nightstand. The confusion on her face was horrible and I wanted to tell her exactly what had happened, but I knew it would be no use. She wouldn’t remember any of it.
“Goodnight, Ana.”
I simply took a few more steps out of her room and shut the door. There was no use arguing with her in the state she was in, but I wasn’t going to stay in the room and get yelled at, either. I felt physically ill that she had thought I was in her room for some horrible reason. The look in her eyes had chilled me. Even though I knew I hadn’t done anything but help her, I hoped she would see it the same when morning came.
My heart was pounding with what had just happened. Of course, I wanted to understand what she was going through, but the way she looked at me … The fear she had in her eyes and disgust in her voice; I couldn’t take it. I felt myself starting to get angry with her. I knew it was wrong to feel that way, but the anger just kept building.
Who was she to think I would be in her room for some rotten reason? She didn’t know me; she didn’t know that I would never hurt a woman like that. As I made my way outside into the dark of the night, I couldn’t help but let out a scream of my own.
The deep, frustrated scream came from pure emotions. I was a good guy. I had taken her into my home out of the goodness of my heart and she was looking at me as if I was some sort of criminal.
“Uggggh! She needs to go to Chase’s house. I can’t keep her here. Look at how she was toward me. She thinks I’m some sort of monster,” I said under my breath as I walked toward my shed in the back of the house.
It was pitch black outside, but I didn’t care. There wasn’t anything in the dark of the woods that could scare me, all my fears were stuck in my own mind. I opened up the shed door and made my way into my gym.
I had converted the shed into a small gym during my last long stay home. I was tired of driving into town to the gym, which took me almost an hour with traffic. My makeshift gym was all I really needed. I had a punching bag, heavy bag, free weights, and a few other pieces of equipment. It was the perfect place for me to escape to after what had just gone down with Ana.
My fists started punching into the heavy bag as I tried to get my aggression out. I was normally a controlled person. I could handle whatever emotions came my way. Even my small breaks and memories from the past were so quick that I never felt truly out of control anymore, but Ana was making me feel that way.
She was a broken doll that could shatter at any moment and I couldn’t stand the pressure of constantly worrying if it was going to be my fault. Or now, worrying that she would think it was my fault. All I had done was try to help her and she looked at me as if I was some sort of monster. That look had totally done me in and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
Fist after fist I flung at the heavy bag as I let my body have the pain that my mind was feeling. Harder and harder, I pushed as my body sweat out all the emotions I couldn’t deal with. Working out was my therapy. I didn’t have a person who I went to and sat on their couch, although I didn’t fault anyone who went that route. But for me, I had to be physical to work through my thoughts. I had to be punching or running or lifting so my body was too busy to fight off the emotions.
“Nate,” I heard a soft voice say and a knock at the door.
I froze solid in my spot as I stopped and looked at the door. What was she coming to say to me now? Was she going to continue to yell at me? Did she have something else she wanted to accuse me of? I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her and I certainly wasn’t going to take anymore of her accusations.
“Go away. I’m working out.”
“Nate, can I come in?” Ana continued as she ignored my warnings to her.
“I think you’ve said enough for the night. Go back to bed. I wouldn’t want you to think I was going to attack you again,” I said sternly.
Ana stood in the doorway with her big, grey eyes looking at me in confusion. She was wearing a t-shirt, and the cold of the night air had hardened her nipples so they were pressing firmly against the light fabric. I looked away, purely because the silhouette of her body lit my own body on fire and I couldn’t control myself. I throbbed instantly at the sight of her, but I turned back toward the heavy bag in an effort to ignore the reaction my body had just had to her.
“I don’t know what happened. But I think I was wrong to scream at you. Please, tell me what happened. I don’t remember.”
Her words were soft, I could hardly hear them over my fists pounding into the bag. But I heard them enough; I heard the sadness in her voice and the unknown fear she held onto. I wasn’t that much of an ass; I couldn’t keep ignoring her. I turned around and sat down on the bench, then motioned for her to join me.
Chapter 5
ANA
“What do you remember?” Nate asked me as he finally stopped punching his heavy bag and we sat down to talk.
He didn’t appear to be as angry at me as I thought he was going to be. His eyes looked caringly at me and I sat down next to him to have a conversation about what was going on. Something had obviously happened and I wasn’t fully understanding what it was, but the way he looked at me, the way he talked to me, I knew that he hadn’t been in my room for some malicious reason.
Nate had only been kind to me and I felt bad that I had yelled at him, but I also felt very confused because I didn’t know what had happened that led up to him being in my room. He probably thought I was totally crazy, and he was right in that aspect. I did feel crazy and like I didn’t have control over what my mind was thinking or doing at any one time. I hated that feeling, but I hated that I had been so disrespectful to Nate even more.
“I don’t remember much. I just remember waking up and screaming at you. But I see my hand is cut and I saw there was food next to my bed, so I guess I missed something. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who is a jerk. I was just scared. I don’t know what is going on.”
“You were checked out. I came out to the kitchen and a shelf had broken on the ground. You must have tried to pick up the glass or something and cut your hand.”
The unknown of the situation gave me more anxiety than I wanted to deal with. While at the treatment center, I had woken up while out walking in the halls a couple of times and the staff had always brought me back to my room. I thought it was the medications I was taking or some sort of sleepwalking. But this time it scared me. I had hurt myself and said horrible things to this man who was just trying to help me out. I was ashamed and horrified about what I might do next.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no reason to be sorry. I know what’s going on. I understand, Ana. Well, at least I understand a little bit. Don’t worry about it. Head back to bed.”
He seemed cold with me as he looked away and avoided my eyes; it didn’t seem natural for him at all I didn’t know what to say or what to do. How do you really tell someone thank you for taking care of you when no one else in the world wanted to help take care of you? Sure, Nate was someone I hardly knew, but deep down, I felt like we knew each other. It was hard to explain and I was in no position to try and figure it out. But something inside of me made me reach out and grab his hand and hold onto it. I didn’t mean it in any sort of sexual way; I purely wanted to connect with him and let him know that I appreciated what he was doing for me.
“Thank you.”
Nate stopped and looked down at our hands as I continued to hold onto his. It felt comfortable to have him near me. I wasn’t afraid of him, so I didn’t understand why I had thought those horrible things when I first realized he was in my room. But he must have been the one who bandaged me up and he kindly made me a sandwich too.
My time at Stephano’s haunted everything I did. Even when I was asleep, Stephano was taking over my thoughts. I hated that he still had such control over me. I was broken and in pieces and Nate didn’t deserve to have to deal with all those tiny pieces at all.
But as I sat there holding Nate’s hand, I felt like the entire world around me was disappearing. His touch was exactly what I needed and I didn’t want to let him go. Physical touch had been a good thing sometimes, and a bad thing at other times, and I still didn’t really know which was which in my mind. Sometimes a nice technician would touch my shoulder and I would jump out of my skin. Other times, like when I left, I hugged staff members and felt energized by the connection. I just didn’t know which feeling was going to come up next.