Ball & Chain(45)
Nick looked at his hand, then gave an exhausted, almost relieved laugh as he dropped it to his side. He glanced away for a moment, then met Zane’s eyes again. “Propranolol.”
Zane’s brow creased. “What?”
“That’s what I was taking in the car. I take it every morning.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s not a narcotic,” Nick said wryly. “It’s prescribed. One a day.”
Zane took a moment to let that settle in, but it didn’t alleviate his concern. In fact, it only served to double it. His stomach tumbled. “Are you sick, O’Flaherty?”
Nick lowered his head, sighing and turning away. He ran a hand through his hair.
Zane glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone, then took a step after Nick. “What’s it for?”
Nick flopped his hands against his thighs. “I have a tremor. That’s what it’s for.”
Zane’s gaze drifted down to Nick’s right hand, which was clutched at his side. “From what?”
Nick shrugged. “Doctors did tests. No one knows. But the medicine keeps my hand from trembling, so I take it. If I forget, I shake like fucking San Francisco in an earthquake.”
Zane laughed before he could stop himself. He put his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry.”
Nick smiled. He ran his fingers over his forehead. “It gets worse if I’m tired. Like the muscles can’t work hard enough to keep me steady.”
“What do they think is causing it?” Zane asked.
“The original diagnosis was something called essential tremor. Basically, just bad luck genetics. Then the prevailing theory with the military docs was PTSD. That’s pretty much what they call everything they can’t pinpoint, though. All I know for sure is it’s not MS or Parkinson’s Disease. They checked for those. Twice.”
Zane’s body flushed with ice for the briefest of moments. “Jesus.”
“If it’s PTSD, who knows what’ll happen. It might get better, I don’t know. But if it’s the essential tremor thing, it won’t go away. And even though the medicine controls it, it’ll probably get worse as I get older.”
“That’s why you didn’t go back to Boston PD, isn’t it?” Zane asked softly.
Nick winced and shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? If I miss those pills a few days in a row, I can barely hit a target. When it started the first time, my hand completely locked up, my captain thought I was having a seizure and they called an ambulance.”
“When was that?”
Nick licked his lips, stalling. Then he sighed and looked away. “Right before New Orleans. That’s why I had the time to go. They would have taken me back when I got home, they wanted to. And with the meds, I would have been okay. Maybe. But hell, if it is a side effect of PTSD, I’m just a huge fucking trembling liability. I couldn’t ask a partner to depend on me knowing that.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“I’m a sniper with a tremor, Garrett. It’s like a bad joke.”
He laughed, and it made Zane chuckle along with him even though there wasn’t a damn thing funny about it. Nick held up his hand, frowning at it like it had betrayed him.
“O’Flaherty,” Zane whispered, but he was unable to follow up with any words of comfort. He cleared his throat, feeling stupid for thinking what he had. “I’m sorry I thought you—”
“Don’t worry about it. I probably would have thought the same thing.”
“Okay, so if it’s PTSD, what do you think started it?”
Nick shrugged, not meeting Zane’s eyes.
“It was the thing with Cross and the CIA, wasn’t it?” Zane asked. “We led them right to you. They came at you on your boat.”
“Sure they did, Garrett, but people have been trying to kill me every day since I was eighteen. Hell, even before that if you want to count being tossed down the stairs, so who the fuck knows. Got real bad a few months ago, though; they almost sent me home. I had to convince them to keep me deployed until the others were let go, too.”
Zane waited a few beats. “You haven’t told anyone?”
“Kelly knows. He has for a while.”
“But not Ty?”
Nick laughed bitterly. “Yeah, there’s a couple things Ty doesn’t know. I’ve been waiting for a good time to talk to him. You know how Ty is.”
Zane nodded sadly. Ty would freak the fuck out at the first hint of Nick being sick. “Yeah.”
“I mean . . . how do you tell your best friend that you’re sick and no one knows why?”