You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.
I put up a huge wall of denial. It was years before I was able to break through it... accepting that your child has a disability, especially one like LD that cannot be seen or easily diagnosed, is one of the hardest things to come to terms with.
The way they had the room that I was in set up, there was some sort of sound deadening platform that I had to stand on in order to get close enough to the microphone.