A Risk Worth Taking

by Brynn Kelly

  He closed his eyes. Fuck.

  “Go on,” she said, gently.

  He blinked hard. At least dressing the wound gave him an excuse to avoid her gaze. “I started using more serious drugs, whatever I could get a supply of—amphetamines, opiates... So, aye, a classic vicious cycle—the stronger the drug, the more I needed it. Then my stash of uppers ran out and I couldn’t get more. I freaked, fucked up, and a woman nearly died.”

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

  “My supervisor stepped in just in time, and no harm came to her. But I would have killed her.” He exhaled, heavily. “And she had young kids...” His voice cracked.

  “Oh Jamie...”

  “The chief exec of the hospital got suspicious and had me drug tested. She wanted to hand me to the cops until she found out just how many of her staff were using drugs—and had stolen them, and bought and sold them. All illegally, of course—and she knew I wasn’t bullshitting because she’d had several reports of missing and stolen drugs. In a competitive environment like that, everybody’s trying to get an edge.”

  “I can imagine. God, that must have been awful.”

  “It was. I thought I was so smart. Kept promising myself that I’d take leave for a month and dry out but it’s really bloody hard to do that in such an intense job. I didn’t want to miss out on anything, get left behind, be seen as a slacker. In a weird way it was a relief to come clean.”

  “And the police got involved?”

  He shook his head, wincing. “I’d gotten to the point that I was prepared to live with the consequences, no matter what they were. But if they’d pursued criminal charges it wouldn’t have ended with just me. There’d have been dozens more arrested, or at least fired. So many promising lives would have been fucked up. They needed treatment, not just punishment. So I suggested to the boss that it wouldn’t play out so well in the courts or the media, or bode well for her career or the hospital’s funding—once I was under oath I’d have to reveal everything. She and the board quietly decided to keep it to internal discipline, and overhaul the hospital’s horrendous working conditions, especially for junior doctors. Which didn’t make up for anything, but...”

  “You blackmailed your bosses.”

  “Merely laid out the facts and let them make the conclusions. Okay, let’s do the suture strips. I’ll hold it closed.” He gave her instructions, moving aside as she washed her hands again.

  “And you were fired?” she said.

  “I left before they could. Left the hospital, left medicine, let my license to practice lapse. Figured it was the best way I could ‘first do no harm.’ After that woman nearly died I couldn’t...” He swallowed. It felt like a conker was lodged in his throat. “It came so close to being so much worse. I realized finally the job wasn’t all about me and my bloody ambitions. It was about people who trusted me—the patients, most of all. The bosses vowed to make sure I could never work as a doctor again, anywhere. Not that I intended to. And they announced an amnesty and mandatory drug testing, as well as confidential drug counseling for whoever wanted it—which was a lot of people—so it ended well enough.”

  “For everyone but you. You took the hit for your colleagues.” Her mouth puckered as she pressed the strips on. The yellow glow from the bathroom lights painted a sheen on her hair, a warmth on her skin.

  “You’re being way too generous. I dragged them into it. Like I told you, for whatever reason, people go along with my crazy schemes. But I was relieved that the person worst affected in the end was me. And in a funny way the hospital became a better place for my having been there—just not in the way I’d intended, not in a way I could be proud of.”

  She pulled another strip off the backing paper. “You couldn’t get a job in medicine elsewhere—another country?”

  “What’s the first thing any employer’s going to do? Ring my old bosses, right? Anyway, I didn’t trust myself to go back to that environment. I wanted a break from that kind of pressure, from those triggers. I wanted to do an honest day’s work. Physical work. Running off to the Legion was my treatment—cheaper than rehab and longer term. Cold turkey. Removed myself from the triggers, became a grunt. Low expectations, low stress. Nobody to impress, nobody to disappoint.”

  “But you’re a commando. A paratrooper. How’s that low stress?”

  “I worked my way up to it. And mostly I’m in the team for my medical skills. But the thing with the military—it’s not like working in a crazy city hospital where it’s mental most of the time, where every day you’re gambling with people’s lives. In the military, it’s mostly pretty laid-back. The moments of intense stress are relatively few and usually short-lived. I can cope with that. It was the constant strain of the hospital that got to me.”

  “Don’t you carry drugs as a medic? Morphine?”

  “Only small doses, and I have a quiet agreement with my CO to check my supplies every day.”

  “And that stops you from taking them?”

  “The temporary high wouldn’t be worth losing his respect or my livelihood. You see? Playing my many flaws off against one another.”

  She patted down a strip. “How does that look?”

  “Perfect,” he said, examining it.

  “Peeerrrrfect,” she murmured. “And last night, at the cottage—how often do lapses like that happen?”

  “They don’t.” He frowned. Except for that one time after the funeral...

  “That one did. What was the trigger—stress?”

  “More like regret, guilt, insomnia—the usual stuff.” And you.

  He looked her in the eyes. Wide, glazed, beautiful eyes. “Samira, this is why I need the Legion, why I can’t have a relationship, why I can’t live in the real world. I need those boundaries. I don’t want the stress of real life, of free choice, of expectation. I’ve hurt enough people around me.”

  “You’d rather have the stress of imminent death and injury?”

  “The chances of death are actually pretty low. Worst I’ve suffered in the military is a sprained ankle and sunburn. And it’s not like my previous behavior was without risk.”

  “So when you set off that trigger next time, what will happen?”

  “I’ll avoid that happening.”

  “How?”

  He started cleaning up the debris. “Go back to the Legion and stay there.”

  “Where someone is watching you?”

  “And where I can’t lose control and break anyone’s heart, literally or figuratively.”

  Silence. None too subtle, Armstrong.

  “And it gives me healthier ways of releasing stress,” he said, barreling on before she could challenge him—if she even wanted to. “I found when I threw myself into the physical side of it, when I trained longer and harder than anybody else, when I reached the point of exhaustion, there was no energy left for guilt or regret—and I no longer had a problem getting to sleep. I no longer needed drugs to keep me going or help me stop. You get the endorphins hitting, and even when I got dog tired—which was a lot in the early days—they gave me enough of a high to ride out the emotional stuff. I was getting through each day, and each day was pretty uncomplicated. And I got lucky enough to eventually get into a team where we’re all that physical and focused—and maybe a little obsessive—each for our own reasons.”

  “You mean Flynn and Angelito.”

  “Aye, until Angelito retired,” he said, clipping the lid on the first-aid kit as he wandered back to the living room. “And Texas. And the others. We’re all a little fucked up in our own special ways.”

  She sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island as he repacked the kit. “There’s a saying in Ethiopia. ‘He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured.’ I’m no psychologist, but aren’t you just hiding from the problem and hoping it’ll go away? Wouldn’t it make more sense to face up to those triggers and try t
o disconnect them, rather than avoiding them? Because you don’t always have a choice when they show up, yes? Like last night.”

  “Ha,” he said, perching on the arm of a sofa. This conversation was getting a little deep, a little personal. Eject, caporal. “Like your panic attacks.”

  “Awo, like my panic attacks. If I could live my entire life in a happy bubble, I wouldn’t get them. But that’s not possible. Problems will always come—not always as dramatically as this craziness—but you can’t control what they’ll be or when they’ll come.”

  She was dead right, of course. But she’d also given him an opening to wriggle out of the microscope. And he’d take it. He slid down onto the sofa cushions, crossed his legs and planted his feet on the far arm.

  “So what are your triggers?” he said.

  “No surprises there. Fear.”

  “And you feel as if you can’t breathe, obviously. What else?”

  “I get this cold wash of terror sweeping down my body.” She shuddered. “My heart’s racing. And I get dizzy and shaky and my vision blurs.” She held her hand flat in front of her, palm parallel with the floor. “Even half an hour afterward my hand can be still shaking.”

  “And what do you do to combat it?”

  “That’s the problem—when it starts I no longer have control. Sometimes it stops again, sometimes it gets really bad, like in the ambulance, but I don’t know which way it’ll go. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “And what’s going through your mind? What are you fearing will happen?”

  “That I’m going to flake out. Even die, from lack of oxygen.” She jabbed her pointer finger. “But you don’t need to tell me it’s all in my head. I know that. I tell myself that and it doesn’t help.”

  “Most people’s problems are all in their heads.”

  “Including yours?” she said, archly.

  “Definitely mine. But let me tell you this.” He swung his feet to the floor and planted his elbows on his knees. “It’s very, very, very rare for somebody to faint when they’re having a panic attack.”

  She tilted her head. “It is?”

  “And nobody dies. Your body flushes with adrenaline, your heart floods with oxygenated blood—that’s the very thing paramedics and doctors try to replicate when we...” He winced. “When they resuscitate people. Your panic attack is your body’s way of keeping you alive when it senses a threat. Okay, your body’s reaction is a little over the top and that’s the problem, but you’re not going to die. So you can let go of that fear.”

  She chewed her bottom lip.

  “And you’re not going to pass out, so you can let go of that fear, too.”

  “It certainly feels like I’m going to.”

  “And even if you did pass out, it’d probably only last a second and you’d be good again. Your body would be shocked into resetting.”

  “Really?”

  “Aye. So if those are your worst fears, you can let them go.”

  She stared at the bare wall over his shoulder so intently that he fought the urge to check behind him. “I can’t try that until I’m in a panic attack. It’s easy to solve a hypothetical attack.”

  “Aye, in the same way you can’t test your road crash avoidance skills until you’re seconds from death. But one thing you can practice? Breaking the hyperventilation cycle, where you feel like you can’t breathe, so you take faster breaths but your breath is too shallow, so you hyperventilate...” He stood, and crossed the space between them. She returned focus to him. “Let’s try something.” He picked up one of her hands and placed it flat on her chest, and the other across her belly, keeping his hands on top. “Breathe for me, nice and deep, filling your lungs, and then hiss it out until it’s completely gone. And I mean empty. Then breathe in again.”

  He breathed along with her and she followed, her mouth twitching with skepticism.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Tell you what. Let’s do it on the floor.”

  She double-blinked.

  “And by that I mean ‘totally relax.’ Crumbs, Samira. The places your mind goes to...”

  She laughed. He took her hand and led her to a rug in front of the sofa. Shite, now his mind was going to places it shouldn’t. Settle down, caporal. If he left her with one thing when he returned to the Legion, he wanted it to be this. Not regret.

  “Now,” he said when they were lying side by side, “do the same hissing thing, but when you’ve run out of hiss, make no effort at all to breathe in. Instead, totally relax. Don’t fight your body, don’t instruct it, don’t force it to do anything.”

  “Not even breathe?”

  “Not even breathe.”

  “I hope you have a defibrillator in that first-aid kit.”

  “I’m a walking defibrillator—and it won’t come to that, I promise.” He kept a couple of fingers linked with hers. “Follow my lead. After you hiss all your breath out, just become an outside observer, let go of any need to control. Don’t force anything but don’t stop anything, either.”

  He audibly breathed in, and she followed. He hissed his breath out and then let his torso expand. This time, after her hiss ran out, she didn’t take a panicked gasp.

  “So,” he said, propping up on his elbow, their fingers still linked. “How was it for you?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. It worked. My lungs filled on their own.”

  “Automatic, wasn’t it? Like a whoopee cushion.”

  “A what?”

  “One of those rubber fart cushions. They inflate automatically after you sit on them.”

  She shook her head slightly. “I don’t understand how this helps me.”

  “When you’re hyperventilating, sometimes the problem is that you’re not letting enough breath out, not making space for fresh oxygen. So rather than desperately trying to inhale, maybe focus on exhaling and trust your body to do the rest. Worth a try next time. Or your money back.”

  “But I can’t think clearly when I’m having an attack—that’s the problem.”

  “I know.” He threaded his fingers through hers. “When it comes to the human mind and its impulses, Samira, there are no on and off switches, no guarantees.”

  She smiled, sadly. She knew he wasn’t talking just about her panic attacks. Far easier to preach than practice.

  “I bet you were a wonderful doctor,” she said with a sad smile. Her sincerity stabbed at him.

  “Not to be.”

  Her eyebrows dived together. God, it’d be so easy to lean in and kiss her. As if she read his mind, her gaze dropped to his lips. He felt himself drawing in. Magnets. Before he had time to rationalize it, his lips were on hers, her hand was sliding up his back.

  She lurched to a sitting position, almost taking his nose out with her skull, and snatched her hands away. “I need a shower.” She pushed up to standing, strode to the rucksack and picked it up. When she reached the bathroom she turned. “Jamie, I can’t do this. I’m recovering from one broken heart. I can’t risk another. Not when you’re going to run away again.”

  He dropped his focus to the rug, its fibers still carrying her imprint.

  I won’t break your heart, he wanted to say. Give me a chance. We can work it out.

  “I understand,” he said.

  She stayed rigid for a minute. Waiting for something he couldn’t give? The bathroom door closed behind her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BY THE TIME Samira emerged from the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a sweater, Jamie had transformed back into the breezy joker. It was almost a relief when he took his turn in the shower. She didn’t have the energy to respond to his quips and she sensed by the dead look in his eyes that his heart wasn’t in them. Their mutual rejection had imposed a finality—when this crisis was over, they were over.

  She dragged an armchair to the window and opened the lapto
p, the midmorning sun filtered to a weak haze by the netting. Across the street, the hotel sat like a squat stone cruise ship. In the turning bay three charcoal Land Rovers waited, bookended by two police cars. Cones shut out other vehicles. A man and woman stood with their backs to the convoy, dressed in black trench coats over dark suit trousers, neatly pressed shirts and ties peeping out at the collar. Diplomatic security. Another two agents stood at the tail of the convoy, one wearing black sunglasses. Lanyards carrying ID passes hung from their necks. A police motorbike buzzed up, its rider in a white helmet and high-vis jacket.

  Samira brought up the senator’s schedule. He was due to meet the Dutch foreign minister at another hotel. Eleven Wi-Fi networks popped up—two for the hotel, others for the shops and offices below her and the surrounding apartments. Four networks still carried the brand name of the Wi-Fi box. If you didn’t bother changing your Wi-Fi name, there was a good chance you weren’t vigilant about the password, either. She chose one with the brand name of a company that had been defunct for at least nine years—back when “password” or “1234” or your street seemed like totally logical choices, before Wi-Fi boxes came preloaded with passwords like 2u85hjkgs767ds and you were locked out after three attempts. It took a full minute to get online.

  In the last hour, Laura had updated her social media with the view from her window. Her room had to be on the other side of the building. It overlooked a grim church with a sharp black steeple, and a castle on a hill, gloomy against a gray sky. Edinburgh Castle, presumably. Samira checked the hotel website’s gallery and found the matching view. The two-bedroom Conan Doyle Suite. Had to be on the uppermost of the seven floors, going by the angle of Laura’s photo. Laura had also posted the details of that evening’s signing, at a bookshop across the city.

  A car pulled up to the cones at the far end of the bay and a police officer in shirtsleeves and a chunky black vest strolled up to speak to the driver, while another officer dropped to her knees to check the underside. The driver handed a card and piece of paper through the window and the cop inspected it while his partner checked the trunk and lifted out two suitcases. The first cop waved the car along to a valet parking lectern, where the driver and a passenger climbed out. A porter in a light gray suit, with a kilt instead of trousers, wheeled the suitcases to the security tent, pausing to let the guests go in first. A kilted valet drove the car to the roller door, which slid open, revealing a basement car park.