Page 27 of Protecting Vidalia
Vidalia sat in the window seat and watched the tree squirrels outside. The wind had picked up and the sunlight had dimmed from bright and warm to clouds drifting in, their full dark bottoms heavy with the portent of thunderstorms. The day was slowly turning darker and she shivered. The weather report for the day had predicted light drizzling rain towards evening, but nothing heavy. She’d always hated thunderstorms, even more so now.
Jake’s voice on the phone faded away as her thoughts of that day crept in like a thief determined to steal her sanity.
It was Vidalia’s ability to empathize that made her so sensitive to other people and their emotions. From the first cry for help from Dani’s frantic voice she’d been drawn into the canyon with the little girl. Thunder was crashing in the background and the harsh downpour of rain filtered in like static behind her pleas for help.
“You have to climb, Dani. You have to get higher, honey. You can do it; I know you can. Look around you. Do you see anything to grab onto?”
“I-I see a big tree root, but it’s so high. I-I’m so cold, I can barely move.”
“You have to try, Dani,” she urged. “You have to get higher than the water.”
There was no answer. “Dani? Dani? DANI?”
All sounds from the phone ceased. The line was silent. No rain, no thunder...and no Dani.
Vidalia’s head ached; her heart hurt so much she thought it would burst. When Jake’s hand touched her shoulder, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Vidalia? Are you all right?” he asked softly, turning her to face him. He glanced out the window at the gathering clouds and the winds whipping the tree’s branches around, immediately understanding the words she couldn’t speak. “Come here,” he said gruffly and gathered her into the safe haven of his strong arms and began rocking her.
“They...they said there was nothing more I could have done than I did...but there had to be,” she said brokenly. “There just had to be. I can't believe I lost someone on my watch...it was so senseless.”
“It would have helped to take the stress debriefing,” he replied gently. “You need to talk about it. Observe it from another person's viewpoint.” He lifted her chin. “I'd like it very much if you'd talk to me about it.”
Vidalia shook her head. “I can’t talk about it.” How could she explain that if she talked about it, she would diminish Dani’s death? The little girl with blond hair and laughing eyes would fade into another statistic and be forgotten. She deserved to be haunted by it, she’d failed in her job.
“In our kind of jobs, we meet death head-on at times, and in all forms, old, young, rich or poor,” Jake tried again. “Death is no respecter of age or money, and it can happen when you least expect it, especially for us because we're on the front lines. Losing a child is the worst death of all, and we always second guess ourselves.”
Vidalia stiffened and stared at him. “I don't want to talk about it, Jake. I came up here to put it behind me and move on. Talking about it will just bring it back to life, and I don't want to relive it all over again.”
“Except that you can’t forget about it,” he argued. “It won't go away until you face it and stop blaming yourself.”
“I'll never stop blaming myself, but I do want to stop thinking about it all the time,” she replied tiredly. “That's why I agreed to a couple of weeks off. I just want to think about something else, and my job reminds me of it, every minute of every day.”
Jake sighed. “Are you thinking of quitting your job?” he asked.
“Yes,” she finally admitted, pulling away from him and getting up from the window seat. “I’m not sure I’ll be going back, but I don’t know what else I want to do either. Another reason I took some time off, to plan a possible new future.”
“What else have you thought of doing?”
“Nurses training maybe?”
Jake snorted. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?”
“Something like that,” she replied ruefully. She moved to the chair in front of the desk and sat down. “So, what did you find out? Anything interesting?”
Jake studied her through narrowed eyes, the storm brewing outside behind him plainly visible through the window. She held her breath wondering if the stubborn man would let it go. A part of her wanted to confide in him, but she was afraid to open the door to the maelstrom of emotions that would require. Keeping an iron grip on that door seemed to be all that was holding her together these days. She heaved a sigh of relief when he finally nodded his head and stood up.
“All right, Vidalia, we’ll play it your way for now, but this isn’t over.”
“It’s over as far as I’m concerned,” she replied, determined to have the last word. It was vital that he understood that or she wouldn’t hike with him again, or do anything with him again. She just wanted peace and quiet.
***
JAKE MOVED TO THE DESKand sat down in his office chair, keeping an eye on Vidalia as he did so. She may think it was over, but he knew it wasn’t.
When he’d looked over and found her zoned out, it hadn’t taken him two seconds to put her stillness and the encroaching weather outside together to figure out why she wasn’t listening to him or responding to his call. As long as she refused to let Dani go, she would never be free.
“There’s a ranger assigned to this area and he’s already gotten some reports about the mother bear and her cub,” he explained. “Although the sows with cubs are usually the late bloomers in coming out of hibernation, they usually either move up higher, or stay higher.”
