Indiscretion: Callie Douglas - Book Four

Chapter Five

"Hi, I'm Dr. Callie Douglas."

"I'm Todd Phelps. It is nice to meet you", he said, shaking my hand.

"What can I help you with today?" I asked, sitting down in my interviewer's chair.

"I think I'm in trouble."

"What's going on?"

"I'm sad all the time. No", he paused, "saying I'm sad isn't exactly right. I feel like I'm swimming upstream through molasses. Things are just so hard. I feel overwhelmed by life. I'm having flashbacks all the time, and I can't escape bad memories."

"What are you having flashbacks to?"

"I was a soldier in the army. My platoon was caught in enemy warfare. Five of the men in my platoon were killed and another seven were permanently injured. But for the grace of God, I was spared. I don't know why.

"I retired from the army shortly after this incident. God, I can't believe I am calling such an earth-shattering event an incident! I applied to the force to become a police officer shortly after retiring from the army. I was doing well with it all, until a few days ago."

"What happened?"

"I was in the grocery store buying rolls for dinner for my wife – dinner rolls!", he shook his head, "when someone in the bakery dropped a metal pan on the ground. I immediately hit the ground. In my head, I was no longer in the bakery. In my head, I was back in Iraq in a military zone. My heart was pumping, my breath was coming fast and I felt like I was having a heart attack. I was terrified."

"Did your flashback last a long time?"

"Not really. I came out of it when a little girl came up to me and asked me if I was all right. She told me that she had fallen two days before and she showed me the scab on her knee from where she had fallen. I started crying. What she was saying was so normal, and where I had gone in my head was so not normal. She helped me sit up, then climbed into my lap. 'I'm sorry you hurt yourself', she said. She gave me a hug, then kissed my cheek before her mother came up to us. Her mother had been watching everything that had been going on, and asked me whether I was okay. The compassion that family showed me was wonderful. Healing, you know what I mean?"

"What did you say to the mother?"

"I explained briefly to the mother that I had been in Iraq and the sound of the tray falling had reminded me of enemy warfare. I told her that I would be all right now. But I'm not."

"Have you had more flashbacks?"

"Yes. A day later I heard a car backfire outside our house, and I flattened my pregnant wife against the door so hard I bruised her on the doorknob. The incident in the bakery section of the grocery store was the first, but there have been several incidences of loud noises since that have reminded me of what happened when I was overseas. I'm getting worried about doing my job. You can't have a twitchy police officer."

"I understand your worry. How long has it been since the first incident at the grocery store?"

"About a week."

"What you are experiencing sounds like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, as it is so frequently called, a condition that can happen as a result of seeing or experiencing something traumatic. However, for it to be classed as PTSD, the symptoms need to exist for a month or more. In the meantime, we can talk about your memories and I can help you process them. We can also treat the other parts of PTSD, like the resulting depression and anxiety that can occur. PTSD is entirely treatable, and the sooner you treat it the better the prognosis. Now, how do you feel emotion-wise?"