Katherine heard Megan sniffing.
“Sweetie,” she said, “we don’t know quite what happened either, but I am going to promise you this, okay?”
Katherine said, “Megan, don’t—”
“Atlanta, you better not—”
“We are going to figure out what’s going on,” Megan said.
Katherine groaned internally. Toni groaned externally. It was a silent symphony of groaning.
Megan continued, “If I have go back to school and get a doctorate in psychology, we are going to figure out what happened. You tell your mama that, okay?”
Justin just nodded. “I’m going to plead guilty to whatever, you know? I’m trying to do the stuff my lawyer says, and I’m talking with my doctor, like, every day. But I’m not trying to get out of punishment for whatever happened. I mean, it’s stupid, right? You guys were there. You saw what I was about to do.”
“Can you tell me what happened? Anything about the why that you can remember?” Katherine asked. “From your perspective.”
Justin frowned, but he nodded. “Okay, so I’m not sure if you know about this, but after my brother died, I had a really bad time with panic attacks. Like, I wasn’t even in the same school as him, you know? I was already in middle school. But I had a really hard time going into the school building. Any building really. And you know my parents were all freaked out too, which didn’t help. Not that it’s their fault or anything.”
“I know what you mean,” Katherine said. “Their trauma exacerbated your trauma. None of that was illogical, by the way. You survived a violent event even though the shooting didn’t happen at your school. I suspect you had post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“I was officially diagnosed when I was fifteen.” He nodded and smiled a little. “Are you a psychologist too?”
“No, I’m a biophysicist. But that means I have an extraordinary respect for our biological systems and the intricate and interwoven measures our minds and nervous systems can take to protect us. What your body and mind were doing with the PTSD was trying to protect you, Justin. It took a wrong turn, so to speak, but your mind and body were trying to do the right thing.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “I never thought about it that way. Thanks. That’s actually helpful. I started trying different medications right after I was diagnosed. My parents were reluctant at first, but then my psychologist warned them that a lot of kids who didn’t get the right treatment for PTSD self-medicated with alcohol or drugs, and I think that kind of scared them. They were supportive after that. They just didn’t get it.”
Katherine nodded. “I understand.”
“But the longer you’re on a medication, the more you have to take, right? And I’m a pretty big guy. I was worried about the medication losing its effectiveness or having bad long-term health consequences, so…”
Katherine could see him searching for words, but she didn’t want to ask about the study. If he offered it, that was one thing. Asking crossed a line.
Megan said, “Justin, we know about—”
Katherine kicked her leg. Hard.
“Ow!”
Toni leaned forward. “Shut it, Megan. Let him talk.”
Justin frowned, but he didn’t look conflicted. “I had the chance to be part of a biofeedback study that was supposed to supplement my medication. The goal wasn’t to not medicate at all, I think it was just to see if, by using biofeedback therapy, we could keep from increasing the dosage on my medications. Kind of that idea. It seemed super weird at first—they hooked me up with all these electrodes and plugged them into a computer. There were flashing lights when certain triggers happened.” He smiled a little. “I can’t lie, it was strange. I felt like I was in a science fiction movie.”
Katherine smiled. “You’re not the first person I’ve heard that from.”
“Right? It’s totally weird. But… eventually it worked. I could definitely tell when I was having triggers, and a lot of the time it was stuff I’d completely brushed off before. I realized that none of my panic attacks came out of nowhere. I could always tell when they were coming. It was kind of amazing, and it made me feel so much better. Like I had a lot more control over my body.”
“That’s great,” Katherine said. “That sounds really helpful.”
As Justin spoke about the study, Katherine could see the young man he was before the attack. His face was brighter. He looked confident.
Megan squeezed Katherine’s hand, and she knew her friend was seeing the same things.
“So after a few weeks being hooked up to the computer,” Justin continued, “you practice these visualizations to kind of gain control over your body’s responses, right?”
“I’ve heard that’s one method of biofeedback therapy.”
“So there were a variety of visualizations you could pick from, but I picked the one that felt like the most direct, you know?”
“What was it?” Megan asked.
“Imagine the worst thing that could happen.” Justin looked straight at Megan. “Sounds horrible, right? But see… that’s where my mind wanted to go anyway. That’s where it was always building. Being in that place and being trapped. So like… we were supposed to just go there. Throw water on it, kinda. Jump ahead and then step by step, walk backward.”
It was the exact same technique that Sarah had communicated to her.
“Take one step. Then another. You already know how you got there, right? So you know the way back.”
It made a horrible kind of sense, but it still seemed like a very risky visualization to Katherine. She didn’t express that to Justin, but she wondered who had written that part of the study.
“I’d snapped out of two panic attacks in the past six months using that technique,” Justin said. “I’d convinced myself eventually I’d be in complete control over them. That maybe I wouldn’t even have
