There are voices in my head, voices that I’m usually better at shutting out, that whisper I shouldn’t be surprised this happened.
You’ve always been too much trouble. Too damaged. Too much. Why did you think you would be different here?
I drag my hands through my hair, clenching tight in the strands to try to force myself to stop thinking like this.
Maybe I need a shower and to go the fuck to bed.
Maybe in the morning, this will feel less like a massive setback.
Before I can get up to go grab clothes, there’s a soft knock on the door. Thinking it might be Cora, I go to answer it.
Instead, Lincoln is standing in the hall. He’s dressed down in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and holding a tray with a steaming cup of tea and some cut up fruit and cheese on it.
“Hi,” he says. “It’s all right if you’d rather be alone, but I brought you this. Can I sit with you for a while?”
It’s my first instinct to say no, to keep hiding from him and the others, but after all they did, that feels too ungrateful to even consider. So I nod and let him in.
He settles on the bed and I sit down next to him. He passes me the tea, and I wrap my fingers around it, letting the heat from the cup seep into my hand. It’s just this side of too hot, and it smells comfortingly of chamomile, honey, and lemon.
“I know how you’re probably feeling right now,” he says after a bit.
I glance at him sidelong, doubtful. “You do?”
“Embarrassed. Worn out. Those little voices in the back of your mind telling you that you’re supposed to be better than this. Stronger than this.”
Okay, so maybe he does know. “The thing about panic is that it’s a learned response,” he continues. “It doesn’t come from nowhere. Something conditioned you into those patterns of fear, and the brain and the body remember. Like muscle memory, you know? Something reminds you of that fear, of the things that make you panic, and the muscle memory takes over before you can think past it.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “That—that sounds right.”
“It’s happened to me more than a few times,” he admits.
“Because of the fire?”
He looks at me. “Lainey told you?”
I nod.
Lincoln drags in a breath, and I wonder if he’s going to be upset that his sister told me that. He doesn’t seem like he is, though. Instead he just nods and keeps going. “Yeah, because of the fire. Because of what happened to my coworker. My friend. I struggled pretty hard with anxiety after that.”
“Can I ask… what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course.”
“No, it’s okay. It was just supposed to be another routine call. The thing about being a firefighter is you know you’re walking into danger every time. Sometimes it’s something small, like someone burning leaves in their backyard and letting it get too high, and sometimes it’s a school on fire and trying to get kids out. You have to be ready for anything.” He takes another breath. “We got called to a house fire on the edge of town. Not a big house, but the whole thing was burning when we got there. I remembered that there was an older woman who lived there, and none of her neighbors had seen her come out of the house. Taylor—my friend—went in to look for her while I tried to get the fire under control and keep it from spreading. He radioed that he found her, passed out upstairs, and then there was this crash, and I knew.”
“Knew what?” I whisper, gripped by the story.
“Knew the house was going to come down. Or at least part of it. I watched part of the upper story come down from outside, and Taylor didn’t respond on the radio. So I went in to get him. Or I tried to. The fire was too hot and too big, and I didn’t make it. I never even found his body.”
He looks down at his hands as he speaks, and I wonder if he’s reliving that night in his mind. I wonder how he can still walk into fires all the time with that weighing on him. Almost unconsciously, he reaches up and touches his left arm where the burn scarring is the worst, and that answers my question about if he got them in that fire.
“That was three years ago,” he continues. “And not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what I could have done differently. I always think ‘what if I had gone after that woman’? I blamed myself for not getting to him, for not telling him the woman was probably a lost cause. There was… so much guilt. Still is, really. I don’t think it ever goes away entirely. The first call I tried to go on after that was a mess. I got halfway to the door of the building and completely lost it. Ended up having to get dragged away and they called 911 because no one could get through to me. I was hyperventilating, screaming, calling Taylor’s name over and over again. Or at least that’s what they tell me happened. I don’t remember it. I had to take time off work after that and admit to myself that I was fucked up from what happened.”
“Jesus.” I exhale slowly, taking all of that in. It’s probably the most Lincoln has talked to me since I met him, and it’s not lost on me that he’s opening up about this terrible thing that happened because he wants me to feel less alone with my own panic. “Thanks,” I tell him.
Lincoln shrugs a shoulder and eats a piece of cheese. “Everyone’s got their own shit, you know? It always feels likeyou’re alone, carrying the weight of whatever happened to you, but there are people who get it.”
I open my mouth, considering telling him my own story, if only so I’m not alone with it anymore. But then there’s another knock on the door.
“Harper?”