Free Handle with Care by Emily Porterfield

every day. Chloe jumped up from the table, grabbed
a sheet of her favorite pink paper, then set out to fetch Paul.
     
    By
the time Craig came back inside, the house was empty but he could hear Chloe
chatting with Paul on the porch. He sighed as he looked around the house . It sure could use a woman’s touch . He missed
having the company of his wife, but for the very first time since her death, he
missed the company of another woman. He missed Abby.
    * * *
    Abby
slept a fitful sleep. Unwisely, she’d refused the shrink’s medications, and
night after night, the dreams came. Others would call them nightmares. The
intervals with her eyes closed couldn’t exactly be called sleep; it was more
like she succumbed to wave after wave of explosive emotion. Exhausted, she was
powerless to resist a parade of bad memories. Her mind drifted into a vague
semi-conscious sleep state, a world between reality and another dimension. This
setting replayed often. Abby was back in her Philadelphia office. She was
sitting across from an empty chair, speaking to it, as if someone were
occupying the seat.
     
    “Don’t
do it, Bill. It’s wrong,” she said sternly. “You’re not a murderer; you’re a
soldier. What you were obligated to do should not change the essence of who you
are, deep inside. Remember your desire to protect and serve. It is honorable...
”
    “Honorable?” Bill said, his voice echoing from the walls behind her. “What’s so
honorable about killing? People think I’m a hero. Not true. I’m a butcher. ” As
Abby spun around to face the specter, she struggled to redirect his words, to
reframe his experience through what her other patients had shared. The only
words she could utter came out unintelligible; she was babbling. Then Bill
stated, “I’ll show them what I really am, what they made me into.”

Suddenly her words were drowned outby the
sound of sirens. The perspective and setting changed, morphing into a new
scene. Abby was no longer sitting in her office. She was now standing in front
of a skyscraper in the middle of Philadelphia, a bank building. Mayhem.
     
    At
day’s end, fifty-four people would be dead, including Bill. But he’d never know
the death toll. He would never know about the child who had just left the
dentist's office after having his braces taken off. He would never know about
the pregnant executive, who had been crushed in the collapse, or the nation praying
her baby would survive, prayers that were left unanswered. He would never know
all of the lives affected by that single act. He would never know their pain.
His pain ended the moment he pushed that button. But it was only the beginning
of Abby’s. She would come to know every single face, every single story.
    “Why?”
they asked. “If this man was in the care of a competent psychologist, why did
this happen?” Abby asked herself those same questions. She hid herself away in
her apartment and tried to ignore her phone’s incessant ringing. In the
firestorm of a media circus that ensued, everyone wanted an interview with her
- the woman who had reportedly told Bill it was “normal” for him to have
fantasies of killing and mass destruction, post deployment. She had no clue as
to how secured files and her treatment records were being leaked to the press.
     
    Abby
knew most of her colleagues would have treated Bill the same way she had, but
they didn’t come forward to support her. Instead, they crucified her publicly,
anywhere they could find an outlet. She became the sacrificial lamb for
America’s pain, guilt and embarrassment, and she accepted the role as
scapegoat. Abby believed she had failed that poor young soldier - a man who had
been angry, confused and traumatized by the actions he, and others, had been
forced to take. She believed she had given him permission to commit a
horrendous act, an act which destroyed many lives. In his suicide note, Bill
had said, “Perhaps society might be spared the impact of war if