Out of the Blue Read Free Page A

his gaze. I could tell it confused him, and although he hadn’t commented yet, I knew it was only a matter of time.
     
     
    A couple of nights later as I walked to the fire station in the early evening, my heart beat quicker with each step I took. By the time I got to the station, my throat had closed and I was sweating bullets.
    I stood at the entrance, my feet rooted to the spot, and I couldn’t make myself take that final step over the threshold.
    What the fuck was wrong with me?
    It didn’t make any sense, I came to the station all the time and this was no different from any other day. What had me so freaked that I had goose bumps at the thought of going to work?
    Fear slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs.
    What if I was called to a vehicle accident? What if it was Jake? What if it was my parents? What if I couldn’t save someone I loved? And why was I having these thoughts now? Thoughts tumbled around in my head like they were clothes on a spin cycle.
    Jake was at home, I’d just left him as he was finishing his dinner.
    I knew he was concerned about me and that I had been acting a little weird these past couple of days, but I shrugged his worries off, telling him I was getting old and my body couldn’t keep up with the demands of night shift anymore. He didn’t seem to buy it, but he didn’t question me further. He just kept looking at me like he expected something to happen.
    Nothing happened, though. I kept it together and hid the worst of my thoughts and fears. I wasn’t going to show Jake any weakness. He needed to see me the way he always had: brave, strong and together.
    I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Mom making sure she and Dad were fine. Sure enough, my fast-fingered mom texted back within seconds, reminding me of my sister Beth’s visit next month.
    My pulse calmed and my breathing returned to normal after I convinced myself that everyone I loved was fine, just in time to feel Kris’s slap on my back. “Hey, man. What’re you doing out here? There’s hot coffee inside.” Kris chuckled and walked past me, mumbling about the day shift and their inability to make a decent cup.
    I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and followed my co-worker inside the station. As I walked down the corridor to the break room, a flyer pinned to the bulletin board grabbed my attention: Do you suffer from PTSD? Read below to find out more.
    PTSD? Isn’t that what military guys got when they’d been to war? My interest caught, I read on.
    Approximately 37% of American firefighters suffer from PTSD. We did? I was sure some firefighters suffered but not that many. I didn’t put a lot of stock in the statistics.
    Difficulty sleeping? Sure, didn’t everyone at some point?
    Difficulty concentrating? Uh. No.
    Do you have upsetting dreams about a traumatic event? Well, yeah, I was a firefighter. It came with the territory.
    I stopped reading and wrote it off as the government wasting time and taxpayers’ money on printing. I was sure there were some colleagues who had trouble with what they’d seen, and we had a department psychiatrist here at the station who serviced all inner city firehouses. But I didn’t know of anyone who’d been to the psychiatrist for anything other than a usual debrief or yearly testing. If they did, they didn’t advertise.
    I hadn’t been acting normally and I was tired and irritable. But wasn’t everyone at some stage? Dreams and tiredness didn’t equate to PTSD in my books. Maybe I was just getting old, like I’d told Jake.

Chapter Two
     
     
    Jake
     
    I walked the few blocks home from work and felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.
    I thumbed the screen. “Hey, my sweet.”
    “Ugh, Jake. Stop calling me that,” Caroline whined.
    “Aw, c’mon, sing it with me. ‘Sweeeeet Caro—’”
    She cut me off. “You’re an ass, knock it off. I’m calling to see if Cameron’s working next weekend because I need a shopping partner and I thought we could