When both partners wanted to be close to the other,
but at differing times.
Or when one had had some minor lingering reservations which held things back
and because that delay, a certain amount of beneath-the-surface resentment began to build and get in the way, again at a time when the other person was feeling quite differently, in fact, finally ready.
It had happened a few times.
Everything had now quite suddenly become completely clear. It's hadn't always been. One case had really stood out, but the others had taken more time to recognize the dynamic. There had been little hints of awareness, but really it had taken until now for him to actually put it all together and see that it was a pattern. He might be able to go back in time and fix things, if he ever made it back, but at least he could learn something from his gigantic blunders.
Being hopelessly lost in a kayak might actually be a pretty good form of therapy. He smiled and wondered what Lydia would think of that. She was his neighbor who was a grad student in psychology working on her Masters and MFT License.
Being out here was bringing up a lot of stuff. What he didn't realize, because he was completely delerious was that he and the kayak had actually been washed ashore. He had landed in Baja California. It was an isolated stretch of a very barren Mexican coastline more often frequented by sea turtles than humans. Fortunately for him though, someone had noticed the kakak more than an hour before and got to the still living, but unwakable person just as he was dumped out of the kayak as the waves rolled it over and over.
Not eating for as long as he had made him considerably easier to carry, but Mike Barr was still in pretty good shape and could have managed someone quite a bit heavier. You never stop being a Marine, even when you finish three tours and then retire from the fire department, and then move to another country and eat steak and beans most of the time. Mike watched the stranger dream as he loaded him into the back of his 4x4 Ford 25o. Over the years, he had done what he could for others, in his own way trying to balance things out. Mike had become a paramedic after leaving the Corps as a highly decorated sniper. The word was that he had never missed. That had been enough for him. He had been able to take a certain amount of pride in his "work"until he one day when he shot someone who turned out to be an innocent- not even a soldier. What got him most was that stupid intel officer afterwards, acting as if it was nothing at all
Being hopelessly lost in a kayak might actually be a pretty good form of therapy. He smiled and wondered what Lydia would think of that. She was his neighbor who was a grad student in psychology working on her Masters and MFT License.
Being out here was bringing up a lot of stuff. What he didn't realize, because he was completely delerious was that he and the kayak had actually been washed ashore. He had landed in Baja California. It was an isolated stretch of a very barren Mexican coastline more often frequented by sea turtles than humans. Fortunately for him though, someone had noticed the kakak more than an hour before and got to the still living, but unwakable person just as he was dumped out of the kayak as the waves rolled it over and over.
Not eating for as long as he had made him considerably easier to carry, but Mike Barr was still in pretty good shape and could have managed someone quite a bit heavier. You never stop being a Marine, even when you finish three tours and then retire from the fire department, and then move to another country and eat steak and beans most of the time. Mike watched the stranger dream as he loaded him into the back of his 4x4 Ford 25o. Over the years, he had done what he could for others, in his own way trying to balance things out. Mike had become a paramedic after leaving the Corps as a highly decorated sniper. The word was that he had never missed. That had been enough for him. He had been able to take a certain amount of pride in his "work"until he one day when he shot someone who turned out to be an innocent- not even a soldier. What got him most was that stupid intel officer afterwards, acting as if it was nothing at all
Mike knew immediately that there was not much that he could do for this guy. His truck would make it to the clinic twenty some miles to the North even though the roads were still muddy from a very rare five days of rain. Mike had a feeling that the stranger was dreaming about a woman, and he was right.
The sea seemed very rough now. Harder than any other time he remembered. That last wave had been a big one. Mike felt bad that that last bump had caused his passenger to become completely airborne. He felt the truck dip as the dead weight landed hard in the truck bed. The mattress which was there in the back in case of "emergencies" did little to comfort the blows the stranger was taking. Ordinarily, Mike would have automatically slowed down considerably, but he sensed that his foundling was slipping away more and more with every minute. He stepped on the gas and drove even faster. Fifteen more miles of tough love.
Copyright 2010 Craig Parks
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