Rough Edge

by CD Reiss

  “No.” I stood up to leave.

  “IRR. Individual Ready Reserve,” he said as if I didn’t know what IRR stood for. “You stay home. No training. That’s the last carrot I have.”

  “I’m not a root vegetable guy, but thanks.”

  Having refused the carrot, I left without considering the stick.

  * * *

  I was losing her. I saw it happening and I’d stepped right into it.

  No one, least of all a psychiatrist, wanted to live with a crazy person. I didn’t want to come home to open heart surgery either.

  Yet the more I tried to get a handle on it, the worse it got. And the more I let loose and tried to stop worrying, the faster the Thing came back. It was always there now, and the days between breaking her got fewer and fewer. Sometimes we’d be at it on normal days and I’d get rough and demanding anyway. But unless I was on the edge, the Thing couldn’t see it.

  “Did you do the test with Ronin today?” Greyson asked when she came upstairs from her last session. She’d had to take evening hours to accommodate patients with day jobs.

  I held her close and kissed her. She tasted of the handful of almonds she’d wolfed down between patients.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What was it?”

  “Trigger test. I don’t think I pass muster.”

  “Maybe he’s working on something else.” She slid away from me.

  Her optimism only highlighted the fact that she was losing hope. I couldn’t shatter it, nor could I bear to hear her ask me if I wanted to enlist in the reserves. I decided right then that I wouldn’t tell her. All her hope would flow there.

  “He’s working on sending you every vet he comes across.”

  “I have a hard time telling these guys they can’t see me.” She got a jug of OJ from the fridge and gave it a hard shake. “You see the hard time we’re having getting someone for you.”

  The fridge clicked on, and I stiffened. I was so sick of hearing a voice in the hum of technology that I got annoyed at the appliances.

  “‘Getting someone for me.’” I walked the length of the kitchen for no reason. “I’m a patient now. A run-of-the-mill nutcase with scheduling issues.”

  “Caden.” She poured juice into a glass. “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what? I’m the guy with a paranoid delusion that something’s watching me.”

  Juice in hand, she came close to me, and I didn’t want her to. Not unless she wanted my dick in her ass.

  It had been five days.

  She didn’t take this seriously. She thought I was a case to be cured. I hadn’t told her everything because I didn’t want to scare her, but maybe that was the problem. She was coming at me, sliding her hand under my jacket, and with her big eyes and her perfume, it was risky. I was dangerous and she was pushing and pushing in ways she couldn’t understand.

  Her perfume wasn’t soothing anymore. It boiled every emotion together. I didn’t even know which one I was reacting to anymore.

  “Did I tell you this Thing wants to fuck you?”

  She stopped the glass halfway to her lips.

  I continued. “It’s obsessed with you. It thinks I don’t deserve you.”

  “Caden.” She was level and serious, as if she was going to lay down the law. Speak the truth. Get the true fucking facts. “This is your fear that you don’t deserve good things.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  “This is you punishing yourself.”

  What I’d been holding back herniated, popping past the membrane of resistance fully-formed, blood-red and screaming. My Thing bridged days of suppression, begging for release to be the man she needed.

  “Punishing myself for what?” I stepped toward her.

  She didn’t budge. She wouldn’t. I knew her that well.

  “You were overworked.”

  Fallujah again. The rows of bodies and the fast decisions.

  “I was doing my job. For the hundredth time—”

  “You’re driving me away because you think you don’t deserve to be happy.”

  “You think I’m making this up because I have guilt?”

  “I never said you were making it up. Your experience is real, but denying this is a defense mechanism isn’t helping you.”

  She was minimizing it, but she wasn’t. She saw clearly where I didn’t. She was honest and loyal. She was brave. Very brave. Because she knew there was a battle in my soul, yet she still stirred it.

  “Greyson.” I put my hand on her throat and slid it back to the base of her silken hair. Her lips loosened and she blinked quickly. Her nipples would be hard, and she’d be most of the way to wet. I could take her right there. I could fuck the courage and honesty right out of her. “You’re a warrior. I don’t deserve you, but not for the reasons you think.”

  I released her and walked to the front of the house. I needed air. I needed space. I needed to avoid turning my rawness against her.

  A force hit me from behind, slamming me against the couch. I bent over the arm and righted myself, turning toward her. She was red-faced, hair webbed over her eyes, teeth bared, hands up and ready to strike.

  “Let it out. Just let it go,” she growled, pushing me again.

  She could hit much harder. For all her bravado, she was holding back.

  That insight came from a cold place, and the cold place was colder than ever while the warm place where the Thing lived ran hotter.

  And there we were.

  Half a step toward her, and she didn’t move.

  “You think I’m crazy?” I said.

  “I never said that.”

  “I’m not the crazy one.” Another step. She took half a step away, then shoved my shoulder. “You’re the crazy one.”

  “Stop running away. Face it, Caden. Face me.”

  She vibrated with frustration, rippling like a flag in a hurricane. She raised her fist to hit my shoulder again, but I grabbed her wrist before it hit home.

  She wanted me to face her? She was getting faced.

  I twisted her arm behind her back and threw her over the couch, holding her wrist against the small of her back. She looked back at me with utter defiance, daring me to finish or not. I put my hand on her cheek and pushed her head into the cushions.

  Leaning over, I spoke firmly into her ear. “This is me facing you.”

  I let her face go and pulled down her pants. Her eggshell ass glowed in the lamplight. Eye to eye, she watched over her shoulder as I pulled my cock out of my pants.

  “Tell me if it hurts and let’s see if I give a shit.”

  Without preamble or a courtesy stretch, I shoved inside her as far as I could. I was balls deep in two thrusts and she bit back a scream, writhing. I yanked her arm back and grabbed her hair, fucking her through her cries. With every slap of my body against her ass, the whirlwind intensified. The thick, hot liquid of the unknown force watching me, and the brittle ice of who I was spun in a blinding cone of light and dark.

  When I came, all the air left my body. My heat entered her and I was awake again.

  “Please,” she wept. “Let go.”

  She was really crying, and I had her right wrist twisted behind her back.

  “Shit.” I let go and lifted her.

  Inside the sound of my wife’s sobs, where wet hitch met breathy exhale, where true guilt met broken sorrow, the Thing spoke. For the third time, the whisper between whispers made verbal sense.

  It had a name.

  Damon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  GREYSON - JANUARY, 2007

  Caden was a star, so the Mt. Sinai ER took me right through triage. They gave me painkillers, took a scan, and put my arm in a sling. It wasn’t broken, but the nerve damage I’d sustained in basic training had been aggravated. Twenty minutes ice. Twenty of heat. Ice. Heat. Ice. Heat.

  It was almost midnight when we drove back from the hospital in silence. He’d wanted to tell them in fine detail how my wrist got fucked up, but I jumped in and tol
d them I tripped on the edge of the rug and fell on it.

  He tried to carry me up the stairs.

  “I hurt my wrist, not my ankle.”

  “I hurt your wrist, Greyson. I don’t care what you told them.”

  “I can walk.”

  At the door, he stopped before opening it. “I don’t want to go in the house and act like this is normal.”

  “We won’t.”

  He opened the door. We took off our coats and shoes. Observing a reverent silence, he helped me with both. I went into the kitchen before he could signal where he wanted to go. He wasn’t doing this shit. Not on my time. No gently laying me on the couch or tucking me into bed. If we came at this as if he had something to make up for, we weren’t going to get anywhere.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “I want to set something straight,” I said.

  “Okay.” His pride was held together with spit and chewing gum.

  “You’re not yourself.”

  “That’s not an excuse.”

  “It’s not. But it’s also part of the equation. Whatever’s going on, it’s not going to be fixed today, tomorrow, next week… maybe ever. So we either go through this cycle over and over, or we get control of it.”

  “Or we break up.”

  “Not an option.”

  “You’re really going to take this as far as you can, aren’t you?” he said with a rueful smile, challenging me. I didn’t know how to walk away from a challenge.

  “They don’t call me Major One More for nothing.”

  I took the gel pack off my arm. It had gone lukewarm. I flung it into the microwave and powered it up.

  “Has it occurred to you that I can really hurt you? I wanted to choke you.”

  “Was it erotic asphyxiation, or did you really want to kill me?”

  “You’re pretty blithe about it.”

  “Did you want to engage in risky but pleasurable actions, or did you want to commit murder but stopped?”

  “The former, but that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point then? Even when you’re deep in it, you don’t want to hurt me any more than is enjoyable. You’re a doctor. You’ll know when to stop.”

  “That’s a shitty rationalization. You’re better than that.”

  He rubbed his eyes for longer than a person usually rubs away tiredness. I pulled his arms down. He looked beaten.

  “What do you have, Greyson? Because I have nothing.”

  “And Ronin’s treatment isn’t going to work?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “In so many words.”

  “When Ronin asked—”

  “Fuck Ronin.”

  I tucked my free hand into his. I couldn’t let disappointment grip me. It was too easy to lapse into depression over ungranted wishes. “He asked if it was a pain thing or a control thing.”

  “And?”

  “And you never answered him.”

  “I don’t know. Both maybe. It’s hard to get a handle on it right after. Give me… at this rate, twelve hours.”

  The microwave dinged. He got up and popped it open before I had a chance to assert myself. Flipping the gel pad from one hand to the other while saying hot-hot-hot, he reminded me of a carnival juggler, starting low and getting more daring. He flipped it, spun it, tossed it from one hand to the other before whirling it like pizza dough until I laughed.

  He lobbed it high, pulled the dish towel off the rack, and caught it with his hand protected by the fabric. I put my wrist on the counter, and he put the warm pad over it, keeping it steady with a firm hand.

  “Ah, that’s nice,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “About what Ronin asked, and don’t say—”

  “Fuck Ronin.”

  We smiled together, and he kissed me.

  “Would you be less afraid of hurting me if we tried to focus more on giving you control?”

  He looked at my arm, his mouth twisted with consideration, as if he was holding his thoughts back.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “We could try it. But I’m warning you.” He put an upraised finger between us. “You’d better be controllable, or we’re going back to pain.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  He put his free arm over my shoulder and held me. I buried my face in his chest. I could hear his heart beating, red, warm, alive, and vital, home in its cage.

  * * *

  With my arm in a sling, I had to completely cancel two days’ worth of sessions and truncate a full week to only the most needy patients. The painkillers made it hard to think quickly enough to engage properly, and the orthopedist had recommended a week of elevation and rigidity, which I couldn’t deliver. Two days would have to do.

  I spent the time finishing up my proposal for the Gibson Center. A state-of-the-art mental health facility for post-war trauma. Synergy with VA hospitals in three states. Transportation. Outreach and medication stability for homeless vets. A licensed day care center for children while their parents were in counseling or treatment.

  I put ten weeks’ of research into fifty pages of narrative and a general operating budget that took two weeks to write. I’d listened to the trials of the vets in my office and tried to find solutions. It was the best thing I’d ever done.

  Five days after Caden brought me home from the ER, the sling was an optional annoyance and the proposal was ready. I emailed Tina.

  * * *

  Dear Director Molino,

  * * *

  I’ve finished the proposal. Thank you so much for the extension.

  I am on reduced hours for the next two weeks, so I’ll be free to preview it for you ahead of the board of directors meeting.

  I look forward to showing you the project.

  * * *

  Dr. Greyson Frazier, M.D.

  * * *

  I tidied the waiting room one-handed. The pain in my wrist had gone from a dull throb to a sharp tremor that ran to my shoulder. The nerve had been damaged when I broke it in basic training. As much as my marriage to Caden was the result of the horrors of war, the best parts of my life were the result of falling on my wrist in my first week as a soldier.

  The army had always been my goal. My father and older brother, Jake, were in the army. Both had commissions and careers that contained adventure and excitement inside an orderly routine. Only Colin had no interest in serving, and Mom still gave him a hard time about it. Meanwhile, she had been surprised when I signed up. She juggled surprise, pride, and an inability to understand my motivations. That was understandable, since I didn’t really understand them either. Not fully.

  I was going to be a medic. There was no war at the time, but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing about scrambling through muddy trenches with my kit, telling wounded men they’d be all right, patching them up to be moved under enemy fire. I would be their rescuing angel.

  Then I smashed my wrist in basic training. I couldn’t put weight on it. Couldn’t hold anything too heavy for too long. There was no way I could manage the physical demands of a combat medic. Nor could I hold a rifle for a long time, nor squeeze a trigger repeatedly. War or no war, I couldn’t train for jobs I’d never be ready to do.

  “You can get an honorable discharge,” the army therapist had said.

  He was in his sixties, and I’d never forget his name. Dr. Matt Darling. I’d been sent to him to see if I wanted to be counseled out.

  “I’m not quitting.” At eighteen, I was stubborn with a side of petulance.

  “But you resist the assignments you’re qualified to do.”

  “I don’t want to push paper. I want to help people. This is what I’m here for.”

  He looked over my file. “You applied for combat medic training.”

  “Yes.”

  He closed the folder. “Have you considered nursing school? You can stay
in the service while you finish.” He shrugged. “The army pays. You’d be helping people.”

  Nursing school. Sure. I could do that. My mother had suggested it too, and at the time, I’d been irritated with her for thinking small.

  “Why not med school?” I retorted.

  My answer should have slapped back at Dr. Darling the same way it had her. But it didn’t.

  “Why not?”

  I was surprised he didn’t laugh at me. He folded his hands in front of him and asked me to decide what was possible and what wasn’t. No adult had ever given me that power.

  “Why did you become a psychiatrist?” I asked.

  “Because it’s easy to fix the body. The mind though? Once that’s broken, it’s hard to set right again, but if you do help someone set it back, they can overcome anything.”

  I’d thought about that for a long time. Studying for my MCATs, applying to schools and Armed Forces medical scholarships, I thought about helping soldiers like my dad and brother. Somehow, that first desire had landed me at this desk, with my own practice and a husband I loved more than life itself.

  After laying the magazines in a row, dusting the shelves, and watering the plants, I checked my email.

  * * *

  Dear Dr. Greyson,

  Congratulations on finishing. I’m excited to see the results.

  Let’s schedule a time to preview the proposal before the board meeting.

  ~Tina

  * * *

  I gave her a date range and let my hands rest on the desk. I thanked God for the opportunity to make a difference. Success or failure, the attempt was a blessing.

  My phone rang. I flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “Greyson.” It was Caden, and his voice was shiny, hard stone.

  So soon. Every time the days between his needs became manifest shortened, I was surprised.

  “Tonight,” he continued. “Now.”

  “The control thing?”

  The flatness became derisive. “The control thing.”

  Pain or control? Some combination of both? We’d gone over the possibilities in fine detail, set ground rules, and waited for the presence of the Thing he now called Damon to become unbearable.