Tymber Dalton - Pinch Me

“I…” She looked down at the ring again. “This isn’t fair to you.”

Fear consumed him. “You let me worry about what’s fair to me, okay?” He gently cupped her chin and tipped her face so she had to look him in the eye. “I will be right here by your side unless you tell me otherwise. Got it?”

Her eyes dropped closed. She nodded, then leaned against his chest as he engulfed her in his arms.

With his face buried in her hair, he said, “I swear, Laura, I will take care of you. I love you, and I will do everything I can to help you get through this. Just don’t give up on me. Please.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

Rob had to work a half-shift from six o’clock Saturday morning until six that night to fill in for a guy who’d covered for him while Laura was in the hospital. Bill drove Laura over to Pt. Charlotte to Dr. Simpson’s office that morning.

Laura felt nervous, unsure, and even let Bill talk her into not just a pain pill, but one of the anti-anxiety pills as well.

She hated the fuzzy feeling in her brain with a passion, but she also knew she needed to be relaxed as much as possible when talking with the doctor.

Dr. Simpson’s office was in a small medical complex near the hospital. She was part of a practice with three other psychiatrists and two psychologists. When they walked in, they found the receptionist’s desk sat unmanned. The waiting room was a soothing blue and green combination, tastefully done, no doubt meant to put patients at ease while they waited.

Dr. Simpson heard them enter and stepped out of one of the offices. “Hi, Laura. Come on in.”

Bill was going to sit in the waiting room, but Laura asked him to come in with her. Once Laura was settled on the couch, Dr. Simpson got them started.

“How have you been doing since I saw you? Have any new memories returned?”

“Some. Scattered.”

“Nothing from the attack?”

Laura shook her head, and then detailed what she knew so far. Some of her childhood. Some of Bill, of Steve, and even little snatches of Rob, but the big things, the mile-marker events in her life, were still mostly missing.

“Are you having any more dreams?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. After explaining the dreams of the computer skull and the knocking on the door, she waited, hoping the woman would have some magical insight.

She didn’t.

“What do you feel they mean?” the doctor asked.

Laura stared at her. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

She looked at Bill in case she was missing something, then back to Dr. Simpson. “I don’t know what the hell they mean!”

“It’s all right, Laura. Calm—”

“Oh, soo don’t fucking tell me to calm down.” She burst into tears. “This psycho is still out there, and you’re telling me to calm down?”

Bill moved to sit next to her on the couch. “Laur, it’s all right.”

“No, it’s not all right!” She stared from him to the doctor and back again in disbelief. “I think I’ve been pretty calm the past week all things considered, but I’m fucking sick and tired of trying to pretend I’m okay when I’m not!”

The outburst caught even her by surprise. Bill pulled her into his arms and Dr. Simpson handed her tissues as she cried herself out against him.

The doctor quietly spoke to Bill. “Has she been taking the anti-anxiety medication?”

“Not really. I made her take one this morning.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Laura snarked.

Bill patted her on the shoulder and continued. “She’s really jumpy, the nightmares—she’s not acting at all like herself.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Laura,” he said, big brother written all over his voice. “Please let me talk.”

She shut up and blew her nose.

“I guess her friend Shayla was there when you talked to her the last time. She told Rob, who told me, about PTSD. I looked it up. She’s showing a lot of the symptoms.”

“I was strangled and beaten half to death,” Laura said. “Wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.”

He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Rob’s trying to find her old journals to see if they’ll help with her memory, but so far we haven’t located them.”

Laura shut up. She hated feeling like they were treating her like a kid, but the fact that Rob was looking for the journals helped somewhat.

Dr. Simpson focused on her again. “We talked about this. That the trauma of the attack might trigger post-traumatic stress disorder. It certainly sounds like you’re going through that.”

“Look, can’t you just give me that drug and see if it jogs my memory loose? Everything’s obviously stuck in there somewhere. I remembered fucking laundry soap and a refrigerator magnet, for chrissake.”

“I told you I’m hesitant to prescribe that. I’d rather you try other means first. I don’t like using drugs for that purpose unless absolutely necessary.”

“Getting my memory back is absolutely necessary.”

“There is no guarantee it would work. It’s not uncommon for there to be false memory retrieval. Dr. Collins is a psychologist, and a licensed hypnotherapist. Try working with her for a while, see if you make any progress. Give her a chance. I talked with her before you arrived today. She can fit you in at eight o’clock Monday morning.”

Laura sighed. “Fine.”

* * *

Laura didn’t speak on the ride home despite Bill trying to engage her. She wanted to go to the shop, but after Bill made her lunch she fell asleep on the sofa.

Unfortunately, she dreamed about the flashing skull and the pounding on the front door. Only this time she actually made it to the front door, where an ominous shadow raced toward her when she opened it.

When she awoke that afternoon, her pain had returned enough that she didn’t want to go to the shop.

She damn sure didn’t want another pain pill.

And the bad dreams had freaked her out and stolen her reserve.

What am I going to do when Bill leaves?

The thought terrified her, even as she chided herself. I have to stand on my own two feet. I can’t spend my life terrified.

She was dozing again when the thought struck her between the eyes, so hard and sharp she woke up laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“Help me up.”

He did, following her to the den where she powered up her desktop computer there and started going through it. Frustrated at first, eventually she found what she was looking for. Buried in a subdirectory in the Documents folder, she found a file called journal.doc.

The first entry was dated January first, six years earlier. Thinking she’d found the answer, she skimmed through to the end, when her hopes crashed again.

The final entry was dated December thirty-first, months before she’d met Rob.

She stared at the screen, another wave of depression setting in as she processed the defeat.

“What is it?”

She closed the file and started looking through the folders, hoping she’d missed something. “It’s got to be here.”

“What?”

“My journals. It doesn’t make sense that I’d just stop.”

“When you came out to visit me, you brought your laptop. You said you only kept the desktop as a backup. That you used the laptop for everything.”

“Then where are my journals?”

“If I knew, believe me, I’d tell you.”

He helped her copy the files. “You know, you should put this on your iPad. That way you don’t have to juggle a computer while you read.”

Confused, she stared at him. “What?”

“Your iPad. Email yourself the document file and read it on the iPad.”

He made the same connection she did and beat her out to the living room, where the device sat on an end table, plugged into the charger. She watched as he went through it, looking at document files.

Nothing.

Defeated, she sat on the sofa. “It was worth a shot.”

“You need to email yourself the file from the other computer.”

“Can you please do it?” she quietly asked. “I left Gmail open.”

He nodded and went to do it. A minute later, when she pulled up her email on the iPad, the file was waiting for her.

Bill returned to the living room and showed her how to download the file into her documents and open it.

She settled in to read from the beginning but feeling like she was stepping into the middle of a television series without any clue about the plot and cast.

Most of the entries were short and focused on mundane topics.

Others gave her brief insights about her parents.

We all got a good laugh today when Dad got a new cell phone…

She read until Bill’s cell phone rang a little before six. He looked at it, frowning as he answered.

“Yeah. She’s right here.” He handed it over to her. “Rob.”

“Hey.”

“Hi, honey.” He sounded exhausted. “Where’s your cell phone?”

She winced. “Sorry. It’s in my purse.”

“Okay. Delete the five messages from me.”

“Sorry.” Apparently, before, she’d been pretty adept at dealing with technology. “Are you on your way home?”

“No, that’s why I’m calling. We just finished working a wreck, but there’s another one. We have to cover until the other crew comes back. I’m going to be late.”

Laura fought back her disappointment. “Okay.”

“Shayla and Tony are still coming tonight, though.”

Part of her desperately wanted to see them.