“And again we go back to the fact that you’re a deeply empathetic person who cares deeply for those around you,” he said gently.
“Apparently not, I scared the fuck out of Cade and Isaac, and I hurt Isaac.”
“As far as I’m aware, the piece of the mug that hit him was because it shattered near him, and you weren’t intending to hurt him.”
“Hurting someone by accident doesn’t make it suddenly okay.”
“True, amends must be made. But you must also be willing to forgive yourself,” he said gently, leaning back in his seat. “We are all fallible, we humans. If we can’t accept mistakes, both our own and those of others, then there is no room for growth and understanding.”
“I...” I choked out. Turning my eyes up to the ceiling, I tried not to let the tears come again, but it felt like I had an unlimited supply nowadays. “I’m not well.”
“Okay,” he said with a nod.
“Just okay?”
“It was an invitation to continue.”
I frowned. “Are you like, not allowed to say that I’m not well?”
“We’re...discouraged from it,” he said with a shrug. “But I think the last month or so of your time here shows you are not doing well. I think the only difference between now and say...last year is that you’re aware of it.”
“I’ve always been aware of it,” I snorted, gesturing around. “Except now I can’t get it under control like I did before.”
“Milk back in the udders, genie back in the lamp,” he said with a sigh. “Once you let some things out, they can never go back. If I’m honest, and I try to avoid being this honest with my patients, but I think now might be the right time. Between coming to our sessions and your obvious feelings for Isaac, something like this was bound to happen.”
“It’s everyone’s fault but mine?” I asked bitterly, because fuck if that didn’t sound like something I would never say.
“Fault?” he asked with such genuine confusion that it almost made me laugh. “There’s no fault here, Clay. Your feelings for Isaac are because you’ve grown to care for him, first as a friend, and then as something more. This was going to conflict with your feelings for your late wife and the fact that you have been unable to move on from losing her and your son. You wouldn’t be the first person who felt like they were replacing those they lost with someone else and felt a great deal of guilt. And right now? Nothing I or anyone else says is going to help you; it’s something you have to figure out on your own...with help.”
“Help you can’t give,” I croaked, resisting the urge to rub my throat.
“I might... Truthfully? No,” he said with a sigh and a sad smile.
“I had a dream...before I woke up in here,” I said, feeling my face warm. “It’s kind of stupid. You know, being worked up over a dream. Well, no, dreams feel real in the moment, so of course they fuck with you. But it feels stupid to make them seem important afterward.”
“Hmm, I’m not a believer in interpreting dreams,” he admitted slowly. “But I believe the things we take from those dreams, what stands out the most, can tell us a lot more about a person’s mental state than any dream dictionary. A dream of falling isn’t because of a loss of control; you’re just falling because the unconscious brain is sorting through everything it has and spitting out what it can. But if someonefeelsthat it resonates with their lack of control over their own life? Now that’s important.”
“I was...back in the house,” I said, liking his view on things enough to speak. “I was trapped in the house while it was burning. It’s happened before, but this was different. I knewthey were burning, and I had to find them, but the house kept changing, like everything I knew was suddenly being changed on me. And then when I found them, I realized it wasn’t just Gina and Mikael burning...but Isaac too.”
Ramirez nodded as he listened, tilting his head. “Well, referring back to what I thought about dreams, what did that tell you?”
“That...he’s important to me, but that my life is going to hurt him, thatI’mgoing to hurt him. Not on purpose, and even though I try not to...I will,” I said, closing my eyes. “I already did, and that was nothing compared to whatcouldhappen. I can’t do that to him.”
“Then what would you prefer to do?”
“Does dying count?”
“It’s certainly a choice,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “But if that was the case, why would you be sharing it with me?”
“Because I want to live,” I said, keeping my eyes closed as I remembered saying, well,shoutingthose words at Isaac once. “But I don’t know how, and this… It’s not working, is it?”
“I don’t think it is,” he said, and the relief that he was agreeing with me was so huge it nearly took my breath away.
I opened my eyes. “Okay, so what do I do?”
“I have a few options, but while I explain them, I need you to give your voice a rest. I suspect you’re going to need it after we’re done,” he said, moving closer and resting his arms on the bed next to me. “Can you do that?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but at a pointed look from him, closed my lips and lay there while he told me the options he thought would work best. It only took him ten minutes to lay it all out, but I had already made up my mind by the time he was finished. There was no need to mull it over or agonize over my fear and wounded pride. My life had been a shambles for overthree years, and now it was finally at the point where my self-destruction was starting to hurt everyone around me.
