I didn't feel any better as I left Dr. Reed's office. No great revelation about my mental health. No great healing that came from nowhere. The only good thing about the session was that I was still free. That she still hasn't tried to commit me. At least, not that I know of. Not yet, anyway.
The corridor outside of her office were familiar. Not just because I had been there three days a week for the past several weeks. They were an echo of all the other corridors that fed through that hospital. The ones that I had seen often enough as a child, walking around them as I was growing up. To those less familiar with that hospital, the corridors might seem like a maze. But it had been years since I got lost in that place. And as I left Dr. Reed's office, thrilled that I could leave the floor without needing to be let out, I rushed along, heading for the elevator.
It seemed to take forever for the elevator to get to me. A small eternity while stuck on that floor. I tried not to look to the door on my left, to the locked ward that I felt destined to be stuck in. The door seemed to call to me, trying to draw me in to the trap that was beyond there. As I stared at the elevator in front of me, I thought I could see a face lingering in the window over there. A phantom of my future, or perhaps my past. It was too hard to tell without getting a good look. And that was the one thing that I would never get. Not while keeping free of the trap there. Not while maintaining my sanity. Or what was left of it.
The elevator let out its ding, and I moved forward before the doors could open. As I came inside the elevator, I had to push my way past the three people trying to get off. I didn't care about being rude. All I wanted was to be off that floor. But as the people pushed past me, I was suddenly in the pile of bodies in the training field. I could barely breath, and what little air I managed to get was full of the smell of death and decay. I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around my chest, and just leaned against the far wall of the elevator, desperately wanting to get out of there. Away from the psych ward before someone came for me. It was the worst place in the world to have another episode. Another breakdown.
The elevator dinged again, and I turned around to the sound. I expected to still be on the fifth floor. To stare out of those doors to the three people that had just left it. Instead, it was my mother's face greeting me there. Smiling at me like she always did. Before I could think, before I could do anything, I was rushing forward, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tightly.
"Oh, what's this?" Mom asked, as she returned the hug. "I like this. Don't get this much these days. You alright? Therapy was good?"
"Therapy was therapy," I said, my usual response. There wasn't much else to say about it beyond that. What was there to say about staring at a stranger that expected you to talk to them about how crazy you were?
It took me a moment to realize that I was still holding Mom. Still hugging her tightly. The flashback was over, the normal hospital falling back into place around me. As I gradually got ahold of myself again, I slipped back from the hug. But Mom wasn't done with it, wasn't done with me. She held me there for another few minutes, my arms slack by my sides.
But then someone cleared their throat.
"Sorry to interrupt," Mr. Azalea said. "We do have a reservation."
"Oh, right," Mom said, as she pulled away from me. Her hand lingered on my shoulder as we both looked over at the boys heading our way.
Mr. Azalea and David were over by the help desk. Mr. Azalea had a small bouquet of flowers in his hand, smiling over at Mom. David, however, was leaning against the desk, his arms crossed over his muscled chest. He rolled his eyes at his father standing next to him. When he noticed me looking his way, he gave me his usual half-smile. The smile he always gave to me whenever we both had noticed something stupid. Like our parents being all love sick for each other.
Of course, he had several other smiles for Heather.
I tried not to think of the fact that my high school crush was dating my newfound sister, as Mom and I came over to the boys. Or about how weird it would have been if we had been dating, considering how close Mom and Mr. Azalea were getting. I wasn't sure how the rules worked about dating your stepbrother.
"So, where to?" Mom asked, as the four of us turned towards the door.
Mom nodded over at the security guard as we passed the desk. The guard was too busy glaring over at me to notice the movement. I wasn't quite sure where that was coming from, the continued animosity towards me from the man. It must have had something to do with everything that had gone down the month before. None of that ever fell on me. And yet, somehow, that one guard thought it should have.
"It's a surprise," Mr. Azalea said, with a sly smile not too off the one his son had just given me.
As we approached the doors to the lobby, I realized that Mom wasn't wearing her scrubs. She had changed into one of those dresses that she was always trying to get me to wear. The ones that would show off a lot more assets than I usually liked to show. The assets that I didn't think I inherited from Mom. The same kinds of dresses that were cluttering up my closet back home, even though the twins had taken half of them with them when they left.
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I pulled my usual flannel tighter against my body as the outer door opened up, exposing me once again to the outside weather. The torrential rain from earlier had moved out of the area, but the dampness lingered in the air. Summer was slow to arrive that year, and it was feeling more like late April than the mid-June that it was. Fortunately, I could already see Mr. Azalea's car in the distance, halfway through the first block of cars.
"Oh, please," David scoffed. "We're just heading to Rita's again."
"Surprise," Mr. Azalea said. It was the same joke he made every time the four of us went out for dinner. If you could call it a joke.
I followed along behind the others as they headed towards the car. Under other, more innocent circumstances, I would have taken that time to daydream away from the group, heading off to Desparia in my head as my body automatically followed along behind the others. I would have woken up some time after dinner, having already eaten without thinking about it. But for so many reasons, that wasn't an option. None the least of which was that my imagination didn't work anymore. Or whatever it was that gave me the power to travel to that other world.
Instead, I was solidly awake and aware as I climbed into the back of Mr. Azalea's car. I was just thankful that he hadn't brought his police cruiser again, like he had three weeks ago. Admittedly, that was his first day back on the job, since the troupers shot him with arrows during the incident. He was happy to be back in uniform and had wanted to share that with Mom and me. But it just reminded me about everything that had happened, and I had a panic attack halfway to the restaurant. It was after that that Mom had put her foot down, insisting that I go to therapy.
Mr. Azalea and Mom started talking in the front of the car as we drove over to the restaurant. It was one of those topics that I desperately didn't want to listen to. So, instead, I stared out the window next to me, watching Main Street buzzing past us. The schools, the park, all the places that were now tainted by those memories. Those nightmares that plagued my every waking and sleeping moment. But it was the only real street in town, the only way to get from the hospital to anywhere else worth going.
"Hey, you alright?" David asked in a low voice. His hand touched my arm, drawing my attention back to him. Back to the boy that, just a month earlier, I would have wanted the attention of. At that moment, all I wanted was to escape them all.
"Sure," I said, shrugging.
"No, really," David said, clearly knowing that my response was automatic. The same thing I said to anyone that asked me. "You don't have to pretend with me. You know that, right? I know what you've been through."
Then again, no he didn't. No one did. Not really. Even Jason only knew so much, and he had been there for the worst of it.
"I..." I said, hesitantly.
I wanted to answer the question honestly. To give it the consideration that it deserved. But how did I put all of what I was going through into words? How did I tell him just how bad I was without Mom hearing? Without her telling Mr. Azalea to turn the car around and head back to psych?
"Yea," David said, nodding. He seemed to know the answer, even when I didn't. "It... I want to say that it'll get better, but..."
"I know," I said, nodding. I wanted to say that it would get better, too. No, I wanted it to already be better. For the low hum of the car not to make me think of the drill. The smell of the leather seat beneath me not to remind me of that leather jacket. For even Mom's hug not to remind me of everything that I had seen there.
For the demons to leave me alone.
What was worse was that I didn't know that it wasn't going to get worse. That the heat of summer wouldn't make me think of the lava fields. Of the entry area to Hell. Or that when I went to get my driver's license next week, the waiting room in the DMV won't make me think of the waiting room in Hell, where I was worried something would happen when they realized I didn't have a sin. And all the other triggers that were bound to come up in those next few years. Or anytime in the rest of my life.
And as we pulled into Rita's, the italian restaurant a block away from our usual chinese restaurant, I knew there were plenty of triggers just waiting for me in there.
"Is the therapy really not helping any?" Mom asked.
I hadn't realized it when the parents had stopped talking. When Mom started looking at me in the rearview mirror next to her. Her eyes were locked on mine, filled with the concern that I always saw in them, ever since I returned from Desparia that last time. Ever since the event was over, and all I was left with was the memories.
"You know, Paige, not all of us heal from talking about it," Mr. Azalea said.
"Ha," David laughed. "It's a good thing Mom isn't around to hear you say that."
David flinched away from his own words. At the reminder of his mother. His eyes fogged over for a moment, as he thought about the last time he saw her. I couldn't tell if he was thinking about the ghost of his mother that he had seen weeks ago, or the woman dying of cancer back when we were eleven. He didn't stay there, and neither of the parents seem to notice it. While he wore his own scars of our time on Desparia, they were nothing compared to mine.