I'm a Good Person (Book 4)

Chapter 1

Robert Nash's life had changed so drastically in the past six months it was nearly unrecognizable. Nearly dying twice will do that to you. And though the injuries had, at this point, all but healed, the emotional toll proved much harder to shake.

He was quickly approaching the three month mark since the second attempt on his life and he found himself just as haunted by it now as he had been in the days immediately following the incident, often awakening with nightmares. They were now silent, but no less traumatic, usually resulted in a cold sweat and feeling twinges of phantom pain from his former injuries. They resulted in his switching his Victrola on low to cut the unbearable silence once his usual radio noise had ended programing and gone silent for the evening and attempting to fall back asleep, something he seldom accomplished.

The fact that Robert hadn't had a single night of uninterrupted sleep in nearly three months was beginning to weigh on him and show itself on his face and in his disposition, which was growing grimmer by the day as he began to feel normalcy was unachievable.

By far the biggest change had been the anxiety he now felt in public. Robert had never for a moment imagined he would someday fear people, fear their stares or flush when he saw them whispering and looking in his direction. He would never have believed the overwhelming, crushing weight pressing down on his chest each and every time he attempted to push himself that little bit further, back into the world of people he had once been so comfortable in.

Just six short months ago social situations were as natural to Robert as breathing, small talk an art at which he was more than capable and with charm to spare. That was no longer the case. And friends? Before he would easily have said he had a dozen, perhaps a few more give or take. Now? That number outside of the family could perhaps be placed at three and that was being somewhat generous.

Robert didn't know what was worse, feeling the way he did or knowing how far from his norm it was. He had fallen a long way and the climb back to where he wanted to be seemed impossible.

While he was home, for the most part, Robert did feel himself beginning to recover, however. His time with Agnes, Kent, his father, his dog Hawk was mostly positive and beginning to phase out of constant checking in and into a more natural rapport, which he had to admit helped tremendously. He felt himself able to relax, to feel safe, which in of itself was a feat. But even at home the triggers plagued him more often than he would ever admit.

Each time he looked at himself in a mirror he saw the shadows of Larson Heath's attacks. While Robert had managed to regain twenty five of those elusive forty lost pounds, his face remained drawn with hollowed out looking cheeks. His nose, which had broken and had since healed, now had a crook in the bridge. Not tremendously noticeable to anyone but Robert, of course, but always there and much on his mind.

But the scars were visible in more than just the mirror. The scars around his wrist were plain and it seemed were never going to fade much more than they already were. His right wrist remained the primary source as the scar went practically the whole way around his wrist. He could finally wear a watch over it, but in moments without it, the phantom pain often returned and the feeling of working those ropes to try to free himself returned, which in turn reminded him of those two awful weeks during the first attack... and so on and so forth in a circle that simply seemed unending.

In the process of leaving the house, covering up these physical scars consumed more of his thoughts than he cared to think about, especially preparing for a day of school, which had become an absolutely miserable experience, but not in the way he had been anticipating before returning. His scars didn't seem to elicit feelings of sympathy or pity. That would have been bad enough, but he instead received looks of disdain, fear, even occasionally a rolling of eyes if his wrist injuries were visible, as if they felt he was trying to use them to garner sympathy that didn't seem to exist.