Page 48 of Nightclub Surprise
My panties were soaked with his words alone. “August!”
“My doctors have been monitoring my sleep, too. They’re working on an idea to help me stop this nighttime shit I’ve been doing. They’re coming up with a plan that’ll let me keep you in my bed.” He groaned. “I want that so bad, baby. My arms hurt they want to hold you so damn bad.Fuck!”
“It’s okay, August. One more week, and you’ll be home. Just work on learning how to use the pills to help you and use the therapy, too. I know you can beat this. I read a story…” I stopped myself. “Never mind. Let’s talk about something else.” When I thought about what I’d been about to say, I recalled that though the success story was great, it had taken the woman about thirty years to be completely free ofPTSD.
“Never mind?” he asked. “Why isthat?”
With a sigh, I went ahead and told him anyway. “Well, there was this success story I read. This woman had suffered an abusive upbringing. I mean—very abusive. It was a real horror story, what her father did to her until she was eighteen, and then he kicked her out of the house. Anyway, she was one of the first people to go through the program you’re going through now. It was just in its beginning stages though, so maybe that’s why it took her so long to be completely free of any PTSD symptoms. But that’s what I wanted you to hear about—she did become free of all the symptoms and didn’t have to take MDMA anymore either. The therapy you’re going through can work, and it can work to completely relieve you of all the symptoms, babe. Isn’t that greatnews?”
“How long did it take her, Tawny?” he asked in a grimtone.
“Thirty years,” I said quickly. “But that had to be because she’d been involved at the start of the whole program. They hadn’t worked out all the kinks, youknow?”
“Hmm,” came his uncertain answer. “Well, I’m not about to let it give me false hopes. Things haven’t been going that great for me. And the sexual arousal isn’t comfortable. Thank God I only have to take one of those pills a day, right before my session eachday.”
A thought grew in my head, and I blurted it out. “What if you took that pill at night? Say, just before you go to sleep? Maybe that would stop your nighttime episodes from occurring, and I’d be here to help you with that sexual arousal.” My body heated with the thought of how hot our love life would be if his doctors agreed withthat.
“That’s not how it works. I can’t even take the pills home anyway.” He stopped and then laughed. “But I get to come home after the sessions, and then you could definitely help me with that ‘littleproblem’.”
“I don’t see it as a problem at all.” The idea had me excited already. “God, you have to go to therapy every day for…how long did theysay?”
He laughed. “You naughty little vixen. I have to go every day for two more weeks, then it goes down to every other day for a month, then every three days for the next month, and finally, it goes down to a day each month until I’m only going once aweek.”
“Sounds like fun to me. Why not make this into an exceptionally good thing, babe?” I asked him as I ran my hands all over my body, thinking of the evenings we were going tohave.
Things were lookingup!
Chapter Twenty-six
August
My body must’ve gotten used to the MDMA by the second week of therapy, because things started to change. My mind felt different; my thoughts became more evident. Besides the need to drink more water, there were no other side effects, other than a sense of peace—and that lingeringarousal.
The last day of therapy saw me sitting on the sofa in Dr. Baker’s quarters. We didn’t go into an office for the sessions—the spaces were more like living rooms in someone’s homeinstead.
“So, you say five men were coming through the small village, killing only the male children?” he askedme.
I’d been telling him about one of the missions that stood out in my memory. This was one I’d hidden from myself because it was just too hard to think about. But now, I was able to not only think about it, but talk about it without feeling that overwhelming hopelessness I usually felt when I thought about such terriblethings.
“Yeah, and me and the three other marines who’d been sent to deal with those men were pretty mad. You know—because they were killing innocent children. Taking sons away from fathers and mothers who loved them.” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees then putting my face in my hands as powerful emotion suddenly floodedme.
“It’s okay to let that sadness out. Let it escape your mind, August. Of course, you felt sorrow for the parents, the siblings of the boys, and the boys themselves. That’s completely natural,” Doctor Baker told me in a calmvoice.
Tears streamed from my eyes. I felt sorrow, no doubt, but there was another emotion at the forefront.Love.
No sobs came from me, only tears as emotion filled me. It was the oddest thing I’d ever felt. Gulping, I sat back, grabbed some tissues from the box that sat on the sofa beside me, and dabbed my eyes. “So, these men hardly resembled humans at all. In my eyes, they looked like demons. I suppose that was what my brain did to make it okay to kill them. Dehumanize them to make itokay.”
“Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it, August?” the doc asked me. “Turning a man into a monster would make it easier for you to do your job—which was, ultimately, to savelives.”
“It did.” I dried the rest of the tears as they stopped flowing. “I took two of them out as I hid behind a partial wall of someone’s home, blown up in another battle sometime before. This village was war-ravaged, and I couldn’t begin to fathom this happening inAmerica.”
“Why did it make you think of America?” he askedme.
I paused for a moment, working through that question as best I could before answering him. “In America, we’re much more protected—by our laws, our rights. We’re even able to have weapons of our own, while that country’s people are just sitting ducks for terrorists. Their government doesn’t seem to care about protecting them, and can’t seem to comprehend what these people need to help them survive or to overcome. It’s aggravating, annoying, and makes it real difficult to feel much empathy—how can we help a country that doesn’t seem willing to help itself? But when you see a family who’s been victimized, the empathy is there. But I have none for those who governthem.”
“So, there are feelings that conflict you,” Doctor Baker pointed out. “Confliction within one’s self is never easy to deal with. Perhaps you should talk about this conflict, and you might figure out how to endit.”
“On one hand, you have a government that makes its citizens easy targets, and that’s a crime in my book. On the other hand, you have people who haven’t lived freely in their entire existence.” I sat there, thinking about that for a long time. The doctor sat quietly, patiently, never rushing me or giving me any words of wisdom. And as the time went by, I swear I felt a click in my head. “But maybe this isn’t for me to understand. Things happen, and we aren’t supposed to understand all of what happens. And that’s just life. I can’t solve all the world’s problems—can’t fight all the world’sbattles.”
