Roundabout

Gale Hansen

After linking on an app, David, a former US Marine, and Laurie, a former retail worker, meet at an adorable cafe for their first date dinner.

As they begin getting to know each other with the usual chit chat, David is overcome by wartime flashbacks.

Laurie notices the symptoms as sights and sounds from David’s past overtake his presence in the present moment.

The event is so alarming that David is triggered into flight mode.
Trusting her instinct, Laurie follows David out of the cafe and slowly approaches him on a back street.

Slowly but surely, she talks him out of fight or flight back into here and now.

Their meet-cute evening having come to an abrupt end, they come together by sharing the violent events that left them with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

As the terror-inducing panic recedes, it’s clear to both of them that they’ve got a lot in common and maybe the next move should be making good on having a successful first date.