Cole

by Dale Mayer

  “And yet, she does that now.”

  Brock looked at him and nodded. “Of course she does. As you came close to dying, she’s not sure how your mental stability was back then, and as for the medications, well, you never talked about it with her. So, it’s her responsibility now to make sure it doesn’t happen again. She has changed her system, and because of that, she has taken on more responsibility to make sure patients are taking their medications.”

  Inside, Cole could feel his whole sense of complacency at being at Hathaway sinking. He leaned back and stared out the window. “Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t come at all.”

  “I have been there too,” said Brock. “When we are injured and hurting, and we have that support network around us, it’s easy to believe the world revolves around us,” he said. “We are unaware of what our actions lead to and what it is that we set in motion, as well as how we feel about it.” He shook his head. “That will work to a point. Then we switch from ‘me’ to ‘we,’ as the team helps us move through this process. But the medical staff are real people, just like us. They have weaknesses and strengths, just as we do.”

  “And is there another stage? Where it’s back to ‘me’ again without the ‘we’?”

  At that, Brock bounced to his feet. “Absolutely. That’s where I’m at. So just keep working through the process, and remember these people are here to help you, one way or another.”

  “What about my heart? What about when our heart is feeling a whole lot more than it should?”

  “I don’t know that there is such a thing as too much heart. Part of that ‘me to we and back’ transition is all about accepting help. About accepting friendships and taking the ones that matter the most and moving forward. It’s not wrong to care. It’s never wrong to care.” He walked to the doorway. “I’m going to sit outside. Want to come with me?”

  Cole stared at Brock for a long moment. “You know? I think I’ll go to the pool. I love being in it, and I have stuff inside to be worked out.”

  Brock smiled. “Talk to you later then, my friend.”

  Chapter 13

  Sandra sat at her desk to attack some paperwork finally. Kenneth had left—an added bonus for her. Plus she’d spent so much time with Cole lately she had more recordkeeping backed up than she liked. She hadn’t shirked her job, but she could have done more, and if she hadn’t had other interests, she’d have done this already. Now was a good time to get caught up.

  At least it gave her something to focus on, other than the hurt inside.

  Shane sat on the chair beside her. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She looked up in surprise and caught sight of the clock behind his head. She’d been here for two hours already. She turned her attention back to Shane. “Nothing’s going on. Why would you think that?” She tried hard to keep her voice calm and stable, but there was an ever-so-slight tremor. When understanding came into his eyes, she groaned and sat back, flinging down her pen. “Okay, so something is wrong but nothing major, and I’ll get over it.”

  “Something to do with your meeting later this afternoon or did something happen with Cole?”

  She frowned. “I’ve been trying to forget about this afternoon’s meeting.” And she had for the most part. It was a follow-up to the initial problem Sandra had had with Cole.

  “Well, that answers that. It’s Cole.”

  She shook her head. “Not so much about Cole as understanding that the men here are complicated.”

  Shane grinned. “I’m not all that simple myself.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I do. The patients all come here with an awful lot of issues. That also makes the price that much sweeter when you get there, reaching the goal.”

  She laughed wryly. “Well, that would be nice today as he said a few hurtful things this morning. I let him get to me.”

  “So maybe look at why he’s pushing you away. What it is he thinks he’s done, or in what way does he think he’s failed? It’s either that or he has decided you’re better off without him.”

  She sat back in surprise. “Surely not all relationships can be reduced to those options.”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. That doesn’t stop it from being true most of the time. In many cases, it is exactly something like that. Especially here. These men were prime specimens—big egos, big bodies, fit, capable and powerful—until an injury sidelined them. Some come with an attitude they can take on anything, and they do. It’s wonderful to see them storm right through their healing and recovery process.” He smiled. “Others charge ahead and fall back because they took too many big steps at once.”

  “Cole.” Hence her upcoming meeting this afternoon. She shook her head. “But he won’t do that again. He’s not the same guy anymore.”

  “Good, glad to hear that. Do you think Cole got wind of your reprimand about his actions?”

  “No. That’s strictly a doctor-nurse thing. It’s part of my job, and I screwed up.”

  “What if somebody mentioned it to him? What if somebody told him, either laughingly or jokingly, that because of him, you got into trouble?” He leaned forward. “Do you think that would make him feel good or bad?”

  “With Cole, that would make him feel terrible. He’s already thinking he’s not enough. That if he hadn’t driven over an IED, he wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s a running theme with a lot of the men here. They were either taken out during a mission and feel guilty or injured during some stupid thing stateside and feel equally guilty because it wasn’t on a mission.”

  “Of course that’s Brock.” She sighed. “I’m not even upset at Cole about his initial screw-up. It’s just that when you open yourself up to a person, it hurts to get slapped back down again.”

  “And yet, you’re coming from reasonably healthy relationships in your past. For you, opening up isn’t such a big deal. That’s your nature. Neither is that big slap in the long run as you evolve. Ignore your hurt for a moment. Look at the bigger picture and figure out why he’s doing this. Then get him to explain it to you. Because that shows you trust him. He must slowly rebuild who he is, what he is and what he wants. He’ll make mistakes along the way. As you build a relationship with him, you can make mistakes along the way too.”

  She gave Shane a warm smile. “How did you become so smart?”

  Cole felt a lot better after talking with Brock. He also knew he owed Sandra an apology. She had appeared so upbeat about the whole thing, but then again, he’d been so mired in his own thoughts and feelings he hadn’t taken any time to see where she was coming from. He lay on his bed and stared out the window. One of the good things about being here was his sleep had improved. He realized just how much so when he looked back on the long journey he’d taken since the accident. In the beginning, he had regularly woken up in a cold sweat after recurring nightmares, but now things had calmed down.

  He had turned that around and had made many positive steps forward. He was slowly moving away from the nightmares. People had warned him about PTSD and said the effects could hit him anytime down the road. It was awfully hard on relationships too. But so far, that hadn’t been a big issue for him. Just that horrible feeling of having to catch up to others. Otherwise the world would leave him behind.

  He shook his head. Maybe that was rooted in his childhood. He was the youngest of three brothers. Coming fifteen years after his next oldest brother, Cole had always felt left behind, which was true in a sense, and how they were years ahead of him, which was also true. He had little to no relationship with them, then or now. They already had girlfriends who later morphed into wives. But he’d spent so much of his childhood trying to catch up to them.

  He felt that way when he had become a Navy SEAL too.

  How odd. He hadn’t made that connection before.

  He’d made it through basic training, and they were some of the best days of his life. Afterward with Brock and Denton a
t his side, things had gotten even better—having buddies who accepted him was great. However, he always worried he was inferior and thought he couldn’t compare to them. Then Brock had his accident. Brock appeared to fall so far down that, for once, Cole didn’t fall short when compared to Brock. Cole didn’t have to “catch up” to close the gap between how he saw the two of them.

  He felt small admitting that about Brock. At least it wasn’t a conscious thought. It was more a case of being able to relax because he didn’t have to work so hard to catch up to Brock anymore. The same was true when Denton got injured.

  Until Cole had his own accident. That led him to the same lack of self-confidence and acceptance he had known over his whole life.

  So was he doomed to relive his childhood fears comparing himself to his brothers in all his later relationships in life?

  Yet, his brothers were never really in his life, already moving on to lives of their own by the time Cole was old enough to have memories of them. His parents had “moved on” too, both dying months apart, shortly after he turned twenty.

  He needed to book time with his therapist to work out some of this. Since he’d been here, and since he’d seen the shape Brock was now in, Cole was so far behind again, which was where his depression and angst came from. He didn’t know if Sandra would understand this, and he didn’t want to cry on her shoulder, to explain all this heavy stuff because he really liked her. He didn’t want her to see him like this, weak. He wanted her to see him as a strong physical male with a can-do attitude. All this heavy emotional crap would be a burden on anybody.

  The last thing he wanted was to dump it on her.

  He picked up his phone and sent a text to his therapist. He didn’t have an appointment scheduled for the next couple days, but it suddenly seemed important that he deal with this sooner rather than later. He grabbed the notebook Dani had given him and jotted down ideas. He could see how so much of this was rooted in his childhood, but that didn’t mean he wanted to continue repeating this. What he needed was to stop feeling so inferior. To stop feeling he wasn’t good enough. To stop feeling he had to constantly improve and be better to be accepted.

  He had thought for sure that making it through BUD/s training would help him gain that self-confidence. Making the final cut for BUD/s proved that. Plus the BUD/s training had been plenty hard. BUD/s took only the best of the best, and he had been one of those. For a long time, it seemed like he’d been okay with that. Having Denton and Brock around had been a huge help too. Together, they’d formed a friendship that would last for life.

  Yet, he didn’t remember his current insecurities ever being an issue before between the three of them because they’d all helped each other. It wasn’t him against the world anymore, nor was it about his older brothers being so far ahead of him, not waiting for their kid brother to catch up. With Brock and Denton, it was the three of them together against the world, and Cole had been happy there.

  He had been comfortable, content. No—it had been—and he wrote down the word as it came to him—secure. He’d lost that feeling after the accident. He had lost his place in the world. It was like he’d lost his place in his SEAL family too. The family dynamics had changed when Brock had been injured and while he was gone, but Cole still had Denton. Although they had kept in touch with Brock, he wasn’t there physically, and he wasn’t there mentally. Yet, that had been okay. Cole’s SEAL family unit had shifted and changed, but it was still complete.

  And then Cole had been injured and Denton too, and Cole had lost that sense of family security. When he’d arrived here, he had immediately jumped forward, trying to “catch up” again—to his SEAL family this time. Trying to regain his place beside Brock. Chasing his brothers again. Only Cole had lagged so damn far behind, he panicked that he wouldn’t make it. He had to give it his all. But of course, instead of talking to anybody about it, he was full of bravado and had dumped his medicine with the idea that he didn’t need it.

  He thought he could do this without any outsiders’ help. Because he knew he could, because he was so macho and so male. Sure, in the past, in the military, that was the way things were done. SEAL teams against whoever else. But this was a whole new world, and he didn’t know how to find his place in it. As he jotted down these notes, that was another key point. He had been left standing on quicksand. He had lost his footing, his foundation, and while that was one of his key points, he’d also lost so much more. Not only was he on shaky ground physically, but he was on shaky ground emotionally and mentally. He thought about it and added spiritually to that sentence too. He sat back, realizing tremors ran up and down his system.

  Talk about home truths.

  Talk about ugly home truths …

  He shook his head. He hadn’t expected some of this to come up. As he stared out the window, he wondered what it would take for that little boy inside to be comfortable with the man who he was now and with his position in the world. When would the little boy from his childhood stop trying so hard for all the wrong reasons?

  Try? Yes.

  Work hard? Yes.

  But do it because it was important to him in his own world, not because he was “catching up” to be like the others.

  There was a knock on his door. Inside he hoped whoever it was would walk away. He wanted to be alone right now. So much was going on inside him, like his support walls were crumbling. He was vulnerable. He opened his mouth to tell them to go away, but his therapist stepped inside and smiled at him.

  Her gaze sharpened. She turned, closed the door and grabbed the spare chair. She reached out for his hand, and he grabbed on. She sat beside him. “I see you’ve had a breakthrough.”

  He stared at her, his fingers clenching hers. He was in his early thirties, and this woman had to be in her mid-fifties. But her grip was solid. It was like a lifeline at this moment in time when he felt like he was drowning.

  “A breakthrough?” he said in a broken voice. “How is this possibly a breakthrough?”

  She smiled and gently squeezed his fingers with her own. “Tell me …”

  And the crumbling walls burst, and the words poured out.

  Chapter 14

  Sandra glanced at her watch. It was time. She’d avoided thinking about it for most of the day, her mind consumed with what was going on with Cole. She didn’t know what the hell she would do about him. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She got up, grabbed a notebook and poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot in the nurses’ station before walking to her meeting. The doctor was already there ahead of her, as was Dani. Sandra smiled at them both and sat.

  After the initial pleasantries, the conversation kicked to the subject of Cole.

  “Personally I’m delighted with his progress,” Dr. Herzog said. “After that rough start, he seems to be settling in quite nicely and is showing a lot of improvements on many levels.”

  He turned to look at Dani and Sandra.

  Dani nodded. “I agree. He’s approached me a couple times on things that were bothering him. I take his ability to ask for help and question some of those issues as a good step forward. He has taken responsibility for his own healing. He is looking at his recovery now with a more independent spirit. He’s gone from ‘me’ to dependency on the team, but I do see glimmers that he is looking outward at the bigger world and his role in it.”

  “You always see the best things,” Sandra said. “He is looking at the world like you described.”

  Dani smiled. “Well, it’s true. There are so many stages to the recovery process. Everybody doesn’t go through all of them, but they all get to the healing part, eventually—we hope.”

  The doctor faced Sandra. “How do you feel about his medications?”

  She nodded. “I’m making sure he’s taking all of them, Doctor. I’ve dealt with the fact that I was partially responsible for his decline.”

  “It’s good that you feel you have dealt with your part but not that you feel even partially responsible. He’s a g
rown man who made his own decisions, and now he has recovered and moved on,” he said. “Dani, I think we’re done here, unless you have any concerns?”

  Dani shook her head. “No, not at all. The issue was brought up. It was addressed. We moved on.” Dani turned toward Sandra. “Cole’s concerned about any ramifications his actions may have had on you.”

  Sandra’s eyebrows shot upward. “Really? Must have been a few days ago then,” she said drily. “I’m not even sure he is talking to me today.”

  “If he doesn’t,” Dani said, “maybe he’ll tell Brock whatever is bothering him.”

  “That brings up an interesting point,” the doctor said. “How do you feel about them being friends here? Has it been a benefit or a detriment? Does Brock’s presence help Cole, or does it make it worse for him?”

  “I think it makes things easier for him,” Sandra said. “But at the same time, I think he held Brock up as a bit of an idol, with his progress as the goalposts. Brock has achieved exactly what Cole desperately wants to do,” she said. “I think Brock’s improvement pushed Cole’s competitiveness so far and so fast that that is why he made that error in judgment with his meds and all. I think he’s moved past that.” She glanced around. “Maybe we should bring the rest of the team in for that discussion.”

  “I’ve heard their comments at the weekly team meetings, and you two are currently seeing progress as do I.” The doctor made several notations in the file and then handed it to Dani. “If that’s it, I’m heading out.” He gathered his things, said his farewells and walked out.

  Sandra felt stunned. She leaned toward Dani. “That’s it?”

  Dani looked at her, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. “What were you expecting? Another reprimand?”

  She frowned at her. “Frankly, yes.”