Deep breathing, reciting the US capitals, visualizing knees that don’t hate me—go.
Montgomery
Juneau
Phoenix…
I do this for a while before I get to somewhere around Montpelier and give up. This is not working. My memory is shit right now, so I pull up my notes app from my last therapy visit, which was so long ago that I’m ashamed to call him back. Scrolling through the disjointed therapy notes, I land on Phone a Friend. My first thought is Odd, and the urge to talk to him is powerful. I want to tell him more about me, but I doubt that’s a conversation that would go in my favor.
Instead I make the smarter choice. Putting the phone on speaker so I can rest it on my chest, I hit Thane’s number.
“Hey, DB. How’s it going?” Thane asks sleepily.
“Who’s calling?” another voice queries in the background. That would be Ronan, another man I’m about to imperil with all of this data business.
“It’s DB, hon.”
“Okay, I’ll get ready.”
I refocus on the conversation. “No, wait. You don’t need to prepare for anything. I um, I need someone to talk to.”
Thane calls off Ronan’s preparations and the sounds on the line indicate he’s walking into a different room.
“Hey, man, I’m in my living room. We can talk.”
I exhale, trying to work out the tension running from my jaw to my shoulders. “I’m sorry for waking you up. It’s not my usual MO.”
“Sometimes a new MO is required,” he says softly. “Did you have an episode?”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“What happened?”
“I had a dream and started thrashing around. Right now I’m lying in my bed, waiting for the pain meds to kick in so I can go get some ice for my knee.”
“Pain and PTSD are one helluva double team,” he says, anger tinging his words.
I remind myself that the big guy isn’t angry at me; he’s angry that I have to go through this. Which makes him a damn good friend.
“No shit. I’m frustrated, and I can’t get my heart to calm down,” I say, proud of myself for keeping the emotion out of my voice.
“Would you like to take a couple of deep breaths with me?” Thane offers.
I’ve already done the goddamn breathing, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I agree. “I’ll give it a try.”
Thane goes through a series of breathing exercises, most of which I’m familiar with and are easy to follow along. Strangely enough, my therapist was right. Just being able to breathe with someone else makes it more effective.
I take a few additional breaths as Thane waits patiently on the line. “Okay, that’s helping more than I thought it would. Thank you.”
“No worries, man. I’m happy to help in whatever way possible.”
“I wanted to call Odd,” I admit then immediately regret it. “I wanted to hear his voice.”
Thane goes quiet for a few moments before asking, “Does that mean you might want something with him?”
I grunt sardonically, mostly to myself, then wait for a few beats before answering. “I think you know that there is nomightwhen it comes to how I feel about Odd Bash.”
“Yeah, I was trying to be delicate.” I can hear the smile in that sentence as if he’s okay with a scenario that involves Odd and me. “It’s not like you’ve ever been super open about this kind of thing.”
