Page 13 of Fight or Flight
Did she really believe she could walk outside?
She stood in front of the open doors, a cool mountain breeze enticing her, tempting her. It was nearing the end of September, and the trees were starting to show off their vibrant colors. She so desperately wanted to go outside, walk along her property line, jump in piles of leaves, roast marshmallows, and do what normal people did. Without further thought, she took a small step out onto the deck, farther than she’d ever been.
Waiting for the onslaught of physical sensations to hit her, Katherine only felt a mild tightening in her throat. She was conscious of her heartbeat, but didn’t feel the usual rapid pounding in her chest. She daringly took another step farther out, when all the familiar symptoms of an anxiety attack suddenly forced her back inside. Closing the doors, she slid to the floor, frightened. She began to sweat, her hands trembling. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to still them. The room spun like one of those old metal merry-go-rounds she and Tracie used to play on at the park when they were little girls. Shutting her eyes, she focused on the feel of the hardwood floor beneath her, the chill in the air. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes, and the room stopped spinning.
Taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling seemed to calm her, so she repeated the process. After a few minutes, she was steady enough, forcing herself to stand, then peered out the doors, looking for her dogs. They were nowhere in sight, but she could hear them barking. They weren’t far away, just out of her sight. She opened the doors farther for them.
She spied Doc Baker’s dishes on the drainboard, but instead of rewashing them, she walked away. She had no urge to rewash them. At least for now. “Good,” Katherine said, needing to hear a human voice and not caring if it was her own. As she was preparing to make a cup of tea, both dogs bolted through the open doors, the click of their nails on the hardwood sounding louder than normal. “Hey, you two.” She turned, then stopped when she saw Sam’s jaw clenched around a ball of fur.
Chapter Four
“Sam, drop it!” Katherine demanded. The shepherd unclenched his jaw, releasing his powerful grip on the furry item in his mouth. “Good boy.”
Katherine stooped down and saw that Sam’s trophy was just an old, ragged stuffed animal. Probably someone lost it at some point. She had no clue how it wound up on her property. Relieved, she picked it off the floor to toss into the garbage, then stopped. Something about the threadbare animal struck a memory. Examining it, she realized it was a tattered stuffed lamb. It looked old; the glass eyes were yellow, and the eyebrows were done in X-style stitching, giving the lamb an odd look. Its feet were a faded red cloth material, the left ear torn. As fast as she’d picked the animal off the floor, she tossed it into the kitchen sink, the blank yellow eyes staring back at her, the dirty brown fur beckoning her to look closer.
She felt her heart start to race, her throat closing. “It can’t be,” she whispered. She repeated the process, inhaling then exhaling, as she’d done a few minutes earlier.
Duckie.
She must have been around four or five when her father and his assistant, Helen, returned from Australia with a stuffed lamb. They’d given it to her as a souvenir, a rare gift. Katherine treasured this present from her dad, naming the lamb “Duckie,” her new best friend. When she’d been sent to Spain, her mother snatched the lamb from her luggage, reminding her that she was twelve, practically an adult, and adding that she didn’t need anything from “that woman.”
Distraught, Katherine had surreptitiously searched the house until she found the stuffed animal and put it back in her bag. With Duckie at her side in Spain, she wrote even more stories of brave girls who didn’t need a stuffed lamb to cuddle at night. Duckie had been her only friend.
Back in the present, Katherine found herself glued to the floor. She had to force herself to walk over to the sink, intent on picking up the raggedy stuffed animal. Taking Doc Baker’s fork from the drainboard, she lifted the stuffed animal out of the sink using the tines. Both dogs growled. Katherine carried the plush animal to the kitchen island, placing it on a dish towel. “This can’t be what I think it is,” she said to herself as she began to inspect the toy. The empty, yellow eyes were the same, but that didn’t amount to much. Probably thousands of these had been made. The tear on the ear bothered her. Hadn’t Duckie’s ear been torn? She experienced a flash of memory—when Katherine had been quite young, her mother slammed the car door before Katherine could get Duckie inside. Katherine had yanked on the lamb, and a piece of the fabric ear tore off.
How could this be hers? But the longer she inspected the toy animal, the more convinced she was that it had once belonged to her. She had no memory of bringing her childhood toy with her when she left Boston. Though, in all fairness, in the days following Adam’s death, the bombings and all the mass hysteria, private and public, it was possible she’d tossed Duckie into her car with the rest of her belongings. She was relieved in knowing that in all likelihood, that’s what had happened, and then possibly Sam or Sophie had dragged Duckie out of a closet or wherever she’d stored it all those years ago. And now the dogs were returning it to her after finding the ball of fluff during their jaunt outside.
Katherine had always thought of Duckie as a female. Deciding she’d keep Duckie on her bed as she’d done as a child, Katherine felt it needed a good scrubbing first. It was much too old for the delicate cycle in her washing machine. She filled one side of the sink with hot water and a splash of dish detergent with just enough bleach to whiten and hopefully disinfect the material. Who knew what kind of germs old Duckie had picked up?
Both dogs sat on their haunches, watching as she used an old dishcloth on the lamb. She dipped the cloth in and out of the water, scrubbed the matted fur, then wiped the fur with a clean cloth. Half an hour later, Duckie looked decent enough. She sprayed a bit of disinfectant on the fur as a precaution, just in case. Protection from what, she didn’t know, but at least this action wasn’t prompted by her latest phobia. Placing her childhood toy on a chair she kept by the open French doors, Katherine decided to leave the lamb there until Duckie was completely dry. She wouldn’t let the dogs out just yet.
“Let’s get to work,” she said to them, knowing they would follow her to her desk, where each had a comfortable napping spot. She wanted to check the Friendlink fan page to see if Karrie was logged on. As soon as she connected to the Internet, her cell phone rang. She didn’t get many calls. She took the cell from her jeans pocket and said, “Hello?”
“It’s just me,” Doc Baker said. “Hope I didn’t interfere with your writing?”
“Not at all,” she replied, curious as to why he was calling, since he had just been there a couple of hours ago. Maybe he’d left something behind.
“Remember that friend I told you about?”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “Yes.”
“He’s in the hospital.”
She didn’t want to appear unsympathetic, but how was this connected to her? “I’m sorry to hear that. Is it serious?”
“The old coot, I swear, he’s worse than a newborn calf. Fell off his motorcycle and broke three ribs and his ankle.”
Seated at her desk, still eyeing the computer screen in case Karrie logged on, Katherine wished Doc would get to the point. “Poor guy,” was all she could come up with.
“Yep,” he said. “Seamus Lee Newlon, a helluva guy.”
“Doc, what does this have to do with me?” Admittedly, she was slightly curious, since this was completely out of character for Doc. When they normally spoke on the phone, it was always about the dogs.
“Seamus has a son, Tyler. He’s a psychiatrist, too.”
Katherine felt the blood drain from her face. How dare he once again bring up her illness without her permission? “The way I live is of my choosing,” she said, her voice sounding more terse than she intended. But it was her choice. If she decided she could no longer cope with her lifestyle, she would change. Maybe. Could she? She just didn’t see the point of trying now. Sure, if she were being honest, she’d love to leave her house without fear and walk around her property, but Katherine had no desire to travel any farther than her own land. Yet it wasn’t anyone’s business.
“This ain’t about your . . . agoraphobia, K. Tyler, Seamus’s son, has a friend who needs a place to keep a couple of horses. I thought of you.”
