“Ask yourself if you were the only person in that moment who had the power to save them. Did you truly have the power to stop what happened?”
When I looked out the window, he went on. “I’m going to guess that you’ve gone over each incident again and again, to see how you could have done things differently. I’ll even go so far as to say that each time, you came to the realization that you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, have done anything differently. That what you did saved the lives of others in some form or fashion. Am I right or wrong?”
I swallowed hard and forced myself to look at him. “You’re right.”
He nodded. “Take out your phone, Aiden.”
With shaking hands, I did.
“Pull up the list and take one last look at it—and then I want you to delete it.”
I snapped my head up and looked at him. “You want me to do what?”
“Delete it.”
With a shake of my head, I stammered, “I…I…I…no. I can’t delete it, then I’ll…”
“Forget?” he asked, one brow raised. “You’re not going to forget them, Aiden. I promise you. And you have to realize it was their time, not yours.”
“I’m not sure I can. I need…”
“You don’t need a list of names on your phone to remember those you cared for who are gone. To remember your friends. What you need is to pull out the bad memories and replace them with the good. You need to remember when John first joined your team. Or when he first found out he was having a son. You need to remember the happy days, not the sad.”
When I glanced down at my phone, I saw how hard my hand was shaking.
And at that very moment, a text from Willa came through. My phone was on silent, but I swiped it open to read her message.
Willa: You won’t get this until after your session, but Ben pointed to a bird and said BIRD again!
“Tell me why you’re smiling, Aiden. What caused you to smile just now?” Dr. Sharpe asked.
I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “Willa and Ben.” Glancing up, I said, “She sent me a text about Ben to read when I got out of the session.”
A wide smile flashed across his face. “For the first time since you sat down on that sofa, you truly seem at peace. Willa and Ben bring you that peace.”
“Yes, they do. I adore Ben. No, that’s not true. I love him as if he were my own son. The other day, Mary, Willa’s mother, dropped a pan in the kitchen. I’d been holding Ben at the time and the noise didn’t bother me at all. I’m almost positive that if I hadn’t been holding him, I would have flinched at the very least. But I didn’t even think twice about it.”
Dr. Sharpe leaned back and looked at me with a thoughtful expression. “Why do you think the loud noise didn’t faze you?”
“I was holding Ben. I would never hurt him.”
Another nod from him. “I believe you when you say that. But, do you think it could also be that while you were there, with Ben and in the kitchen with Willa and her mother, that you felt at peace? You felt safe?”
His words hit like someone had punched me square in the chest.
Safe.
It had nothing to do with the fact that I was holding Ben, or that I would never do anything to put him in harm’s way; I had felt safe. When I’d woken up from the nightmare that night to find Willa touching me so softly and whispering to me, I’d instantly felt…safe. I’d wrapped her up in my arms and fallen asleep like that, almost afraid to let her go.
“It makes sense to me, yes. But what happens when I’m not there with Willa and Ben? What happens when the memories come out of the blue without me conjuring them up?”
He stood, walked over to his desk, and leaned against it. “Aiden, you joined the Navy at what, eighteen?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“You immediately went into the SEAL program, am I correct?”
Another nod.
“That is thirteen years of living like a Navy SEAL. You were broken down and rebuilt in a certain way in order to be the best of the best. Let me ask you something. When you were on a mission or deployed, were you more in your element than when you were back on base?”
I let out a disbelieving laugh. Could this man look into my damn mind? “Yes. As a matter of fact, when we weren’t on a mission or deployed, I was pretty antsy. I worked out a lot and tried to keep busy as much as I could.”
Dr. Sharpe raised one brow slowly as he asked, “Why do you think that was?”