“That’s an incredible story. So, you’re a twin, then?”
“Yes. My sister is Bonnie.”
“That doesn’t sound very Cajun. Right?”
“My dad has a weird obsession with everything having to be symbolic, especially when it comes to names. Since sugarcane is sweet, he wanted something that represented sweetness. Bonbon is the French word for candy. So he came up with Bonnie, and we called her Bonbon when she was a child. And Cain is for sugarcane, though my very Catholic mother chose the biblical spelling. And of course they named our younger brother Seth.”
“Like the biblical story?”
“Yes. But there’s no rivalry between us.”
“Are you close to your brother?”
“My sister and I are the closest, of course. It comes from being twins. If she stubs her toe, I can feel it. If she is in some type of danger, I can sense it.” I can’t believe how open I’ve been with this shrink. “I’m normally a much more private person, and here I’ve been just flapping my jaws.”
“No, not at all. You’re a great storyteller,” she noted.
He looked around the room for a second before asking, “So, am I cleared to report back to duty?”
She laughed softly. “Not so fast. We’re getting closer, but we still have some work to do.”
“What else do you wanna know, doc?”
Dr. Spencer put down her pen and looked directly at him. “Tell me about your nightmares.”
Chapter 16
Cain’s heart thumped in his chest. He could feel the rush of blood expanding his veins and arteries. Even if the psychologist was dangerously good at her job, there was no way she could know about the nightmares that plagued him. Cain had never shared them with anyone except Bonnie.
Stall for time! Stall her! His session was scheduled for only an hour, and he figured he could run down the clock. “Doctor, could you please repeat the question?”
“Nightmares, Cain. Tell me about yours.”
“Um.” He fumbled for an answer.
“Everyone has them,” she said with a clinical demeanor.
He let out a huge sigh of relief. She doesn’t know. She’s just fishing. “I don’t have any.”
“Ah, come on, Cain. Even tough guys have nightmares,” she replied. “It’s just the unconscious talking to us. We can learn from it.”
Don’t trust her! his mind shouted. Talk about something safe—an old nightmare. “When I was a pilot in the navy, I’d sometimes dream that I was flying over the ocean. It would start getting pitch-black and I wouldn’t be able to see the horizon. The stars would be reflecting off the water and my instruments would become too blurry for me to read. I’d lose all reference to up and down. Alarms would start sounding in the cockpit and then my propellers would stop spinning. Everything would go quiet. The silence was eerie. All I would hear was my team pleading, ‘Hurricane, save us.’ But I couldn’t see anything—I was flying in the blind.”
“What would happen?” Dr. Spencer asked.
“I’d crash. The plunge into the ocean was always violent enough to jar me awake.”
“That’s scary, indeed,” she said. “I can’t imagine being in such a terrifying situation. But nightmares teach us something about ourselves.”
Cain remained silent for a beat. “This nightmare pushed me to become better. I read more books, trained harder, and flew more missions. I trained for emergencies until they ceased to be emergencies. Making sure my crew felt safe with me was my obsession.”
“I find it interesting that your nightmare is not a monster per se, but rather a scenario.”
“Why is that interesting, doc?”
“Well, we choose our careers. And your history shows a pattern.”
Cain found himself being drawn into her line of questioning. Mike was right. I better be careful. She’s good, and I don’t know where she is leading me.
“You are attracted to dangerous jobs.”
“I guess you could say to dangerous hobbies, too. Like flying and riding a motorcycle. Or maybe I just took too many punches to the head when I boxed in high school.”
Cain saw that his official personnel file sat open on her lap. She riffled through the pages. “Or perhaps your boxing experience has helped your on-the-job ratings. I see you have excellent marks in physical fitness.”
“I don’t hit the bag as much as I’d like to anymore, but I still remember the techniques—jab, cross, hook, uppercut. I was a freshman in high school when an old Cajun hired me to help him build a boxing gym. As part of my labor, he gave me a key to the gym and I practiced every day after school. When he saw that I was committed to the sport, he started training me.”
She continued thumbing through his paperwork. “You also have excellent ratings in shooting.”
“Been shooting a gun since I was three. Comes with the territory of being born in South Louisiana, the Sportsman’s Paradise.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “That doesn’t sound safe.”
“I think it’s safer when you have a respect for it, rather than a fear.”
“One of your supervisors described you as ‘fiercely loyal and married to the job.’”
Cain liked the compliment but was embarrassed by all the praise. “This ain’t just a job. It’s a vocation. This profession called me. I know this probably sounds cliché, but I wanted to serve my country at the highest level. Protecting the president allows me to do that.”
“Your Secret Service file is thicker than most I see,” she observed.
“That’s probably because it contains my military records as well,” Cain said.
“It shows assignments all over the world—many that would give a normal person a case of adrenal fatigue or PTSD. Do you feel like you’ve experienced any symptoms of the illness?”
“Is that what the experts call PTSD nowadays? An illness? Like catching the flu?”
“PTSD affects everyone differently. Some become more aggressive, while others become more withdrawn. Many of my clients are veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.”
“I appreciate your trying to help them,” Cain said. “We are quick to send people to war, yet slow to treat them when they come back. It’s a real shame.”
She nodded in agreement.
An awkward silence followed. “You asked earlier about my brother,” Cain finally said. “He’s not the younger brother I remember growing up. Operation Iraqi Freedom changed him. He’s a different person now. He can barely hold down a steady job. He lives with our parents. Farmwork seems to be helping him with his anxiety.”
As he spoke, Cain had been studying Dr. Spencer’s Stanford University degree, hanging on the wall behind her desk. Why would such an educated woman choose the bureaucracy of government employment instead of private practice? Fear of failing at private practice?
“Mind if I ask a question, doc?”
“That’s not normally how my sessions go, but sure. I’m flexible.”
“Why did you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to graduate from the number one college in psychology, only to end up becoming a government functionary like myself?”