Paige grabbed his hand, and squeezed again. Tommy accepted her bright and hopeful smile. It was better than his mother’s worried expression. He still felt mostly numb.
“It won’t be all roses,” Dr. Brigham added. “Depression like this is dangerous. You’ll be monitored constantly. And if you feel yourself sinking, thinking there’s no hope, needing a way out, we need to know.”
Tommy nodded; his chest tight with rising anxiety. He knew how dark his mind could get. Sitting in a bright room with a doctor and people who supported him kept it at bay, but late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, it all unraveled.
“You are in a safe place, Tommy. I need you to understand that. We will not let you hurt yourself. We will work toward fixing this. The world will tell you love is the most powerful emotion. But it’s not. Hope is. I need you to have that while the process is a little slow and clunky in the beginning. Some things are going to sound stupid. Contrary to what you hear every day on the outside. Everyone wants a quick fix. We can’t solve this that way. Everything has to be broken down to basic function, and then rebuilt. Which means looking at things like setting a routine, having a balanced diet, and even breathing. They are all pieces of a larger puzzle that will put Tommy Foster back together. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” Tommy sat in the chair, clinging to Paige’s hand. “You’re saying I will recover.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I want you to understand it could take years for a full recovery.” She held up her hand before his panic could set in again. “I don’t mean you’ll be here for years. Only that you might still have little things down the road that take a long time to vanish. Like the twitching you describe. Or occasional bouts of nausea. The idea is to fill your tool box with coping skills and make you well enough to take care of yourself in normal life.”
“What about relapses?” Tommy’s mother asked. “My brother has relapsed a few times.”
“That will be on Tommy. By the time he leaves here he’ll have contacts and tools to keep him on the right path. But the choices are always our own.” Dr. Brigham’s gaze was intense. “Right now, he wants to heal and change, which is good, but we have a way of forgetting pain once it’s gone. It’s why relapses happen.”
“I want to get better.” He didn’t want to be here. But he knew at home he’d go seeking something again. Not enough tools in his coping kit. Okay. He’d work on that. “Let’s do this then.” He sucked in a deep breath, dragging in air and letting it out slow as his headache intensified. He didn’t want to go back to his room and suffer in dark silence, but soon the headache would make him. “I have to start somewhere.”
