“I’m pretty sure he has that because I used duct tape to bandage a cut once,” I say, and Alania cackles. “Is it supposed to look like that?”
“Eh… It looks like it might be getting infected. I’ll have antibiotics called in for you,” he says as he opens a drape of some sort across our lap so he can place my hand palm up on his knee.
“I feel like something is not being said right now,” I say. Adrian glances up at me, and I see a hint of sorrow in his eyes. He looks back at my hand, and everyone is dead silent as he gently cleans around the stitches with saline. The swelling caused it to bleed a bit, so he is careful as he cleans the blood off my hand.
“Greg is dead,” Adrian says simply. It feels like someone has dumped a bucket of cold water on my head. Everything around me starts to spin, and I can’t hear anything. My eyes are glued to my hand as I watch Adrian clean it. When I look up, there she is, only different. She is a mirror image of me. As I stare at her, it’s not Molly I am looking at, it’s me. I am seeing myself.
“Grayson,” I hear Dad say, but it’s distant.
“Just give her some time,” Grayson says. “She needs to find her way out on her own.”
“Me,” I whisper.
“What is it, Milly?” Grayson asks, rubbing my back.
“I see me,” I whisper again through tears. “It’s not Molly. It’s me.”
“Don’t force it away. Keep yourself grounded in reality, but don’t try to force it,” Grayson says.
“Isn’t that just enabling the hallucinations?” Raul asks.
“No,” Adam says. “She has blocked so much out, and her brain is trying to self-preserve.”
“Milly has Dissociative Identity Disorder. While some have internalized alters that they involuntarily switch between, her experience of her alters is them appearing as separate, external entities, much like imaginary friends. She remains conscious, whereas internalized alters she would experience amnesia and have moments where these alters surface, and she is almost put in the background of her own mind. While her alters are not literally separate people, the mind can externalize these different personality states. She is not necessarily having a psychotic hallucination, like someone with schizophrenia, but is experiencing a dissociative symptom where her internal world is projected outwards in a very vivid and compelling way. Because of the severity of her trauma, this externalized alter appears to her as her twin sister. These alters are called introjects for her. Right now, it is simply manifesting differently, and she is seeing it as herself.”
“That is fascinating,” Alania says. “What happens if it talks to her and she speaks back?”
“She’d be responding to auditory hallucinations. You might hear both ends of that exchange, but with Milly, you would likely just hear her side of it.”
“So this is stress-induced?” Dad asks.
“Yeah, she just needs time,” Grayson says. I force myself to look away and back down at my hand. Grayson gently turns my face to look at him and cups my cheek. “You’re okay, Milly.”
“I feel insane,” I admit tearfully.
“You are not insane, Milly. I promise,” he says. “What are you thinking in regard to Greg?”
“How did he die?” I ask. Grayson releases my face so I can look at Adrian.
“I sent a few people out to his and your mother’s home, and he was found hanging in the back bedroom,” he says.
“Furthest from the master?”
“Yeah,” he answers.
“That was my room,” I say. “It’s where Molly and Walter died, and me and Dad were shot.”
“Your mom is nowhere to be found, though, so that is concerning,” Adrian says.
“Did you tell them everything else?” I ask Grayson.
“Yeah,” he says. “Ace is going to come stay at the house with us. He opened up to Adrian about what your mom did to him, so she is on the hook for a lot.”
“So… what happens if Mom gets to me? Is that possible?”
“Honestly… I don’t know,” Adrian says.
“She would try and kill her,” Dad says. “I know Charlotte. If she is panicking, she is going to try and start covering things up. The only way to do that is to take out the one person that can connect her to everything. Now that she doesn’t have Greg to place blame on, she is spiraling.”
