Page 139 of When the Smoke Clears

There’s hot coffee in the pot, so I pluck a mug from the holder and pour a cup. The back screen door opens. Everleigh steps inside and removes her running shoes. She’s in a sports bra and tiny running shorts.

“Hey,” she says, a little out of breath, when she looks up and spies me.

“Hey. You went for a run,” I say, stating the obvious because I’m surprised after last night’s revelations that she felt up to running.

“Yeah.” She wipes her arm across her sweaty forehead. “It’s good for my mental health. And I need all the help I can get.”

I step aside to let her into the kitchen for a glass of water. As she fills it from the faucet, she pulls her hair out of a hair tie and shakes her head.

“Speaking of help. Do you think you need some? You know, beyond running.”

She drinks the water, her breath still labored as she sets the empty glass onto the counter. “Because I’m here, working at a café? Or because I make up stories about my life that aren’t real? A father who sends me kites. Growing up on two different continents. Attending medical school because my father wanted me to when in reality, I’m a psychiatrist because he took his own life. Or do I need help because I turned down the job at Johns Hopkins and lied to my mom about them giving me an extension? Oh, maybe I need help because I watched your father die, and I pretended it was my father, whom I’ve never met. And I thought by doing so, it would help me deal with reality. But how ridiculous is that? I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to see how fucked up that is.”

I sip my coffee, buying time to formulate a response because I’m in over my head. “Sounds like a multiple choice, but is there an all-of-the-above option?”

Her shoulders sag. “What you said last night about having me? I’ll let you take that back. I wouldn’t blame you. Things were intense in the moment. I was an emotional mess. So you can go. No hard feelings.”

“Everleigh”—I shake my head and squint—“I don’t want to take back anything. I said I’ve got you, and I meant it. But I don’t think I can do this alone. I think it’s my job to make sure you get the help you need.”

“No one wants to be my psychiatrist or therapist. I will micromanage everything. It will piss me off when they try to act like they know more than I do, and I’ll quickly discover they don’t because they are normal people with real lives, not prodigies like me who consume case studies and the latest research for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They have kids and significant others who require their time. I have gaming. I used to have Marie Curie, but I killed her because I didn’t unplug my curling iron.”

She gives me a toothy grin. “See how I’ve taken responsibility for that and no longer blame you? And I did it all by myself. This ‘help’ you speak of? I will be diagnosed with delusional disorder, but it won’t fit nicely into one category, which makes treatment more complicated. So I’ll be prescribed antipsychotic medications and maybe mood stabilizers and antidepressants. Then I’ll go through therapy, probably CBT and maybe DBT. If I don’t respond to that, there’s always hospitalization and ECT, which involves an electric current through my brain to intentionally cause a seizure. And that’s the goal, not a side effect. The side effects include confusion, headaches, nausea, and memory loss. Now do you want out? Because I don’t want you to play the hero without full disclosure.”

I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t fit the words past my heart that’s lodged in my throat.

“Will”—she rubs her temples—“I’m a liar. A good liar. A convincing liar. That’s my crime. That’s my disorder. And my lies are about one thing. One person. Was it triggered or exacerbated by skipping pivotal moments in my psychological and emotional development because I was bestowed this gift? Absolutely. But I don’t want to dissect it. I don’t want to spend the foreseeable future rehashing the past. And I know how mind-blowing that might sound coming from a psychiatrist, but it’s because I’ve spent my entire adult life digging, dissecting, analyzing, separating correlation from causation, lumping every single fucking human action into the proper category so I can diagnose and treat what might just be one of a million variants of normal human behavior. So the help I need is called time.”

Where is Jamie? I can’t do this. Everleigh is infinitely smarter. She can debate anyone and win. What am I supposed to say?

“Time for what?” I ask for lack of a better response.

Her shoulders slump, and I don’t mean to sound stupid, like I’m missing the whole point, but maybe I am.

“Why do you think I’m here?” she asks.

“I think you’re running away.”

“Running from what?”

Pulling a long breath through my nose, I set my coffee on the counter and cross my arms over my chest. “Your past? The lies? I don’t know.”

“Physician, heal thyself. What am I to learn from this? Humility? Hypocrisy? Self-care?”

I wait, in case it’s a rhetorical question. But she doesn’t continue, so I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Until I’m better, I can’t help anyone else. And maybe that means I need help. But I don’t work that way. If I can’t solve this problem, then how am I supposed to feel qualified to help others? So I’m taking a step back. I’m working for minimum wage at a place where I’m overqualified, and where my boss laughs out loud at the idea of my being a prodigy.”

I shouldn’t have said that to her boss.

“I’m not here to impress anyone or even fit in. I’m just a woman living in a small house with an average job. No one cares about my accolades and credentials. No one cares if I have a father. I don’t have to make sense to anyone. Here, I’m average. Normal. And every day since I’ve been here, I’ve thought about my dead father. I’ve considered the possibility that there was nothing extraordinary about him. I’ve spent time thinking about dollar store kites and the fact that I’ve never been to India. All the expectations that have been put on me were mine and mine alone. I don’t want to numb the pain of healing. I want to go through it. And I will come to accept everything that has happened in my life. It just won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen if I feel the pressure to perform as the brilliant psychiatrist, the perfect daughter, the sexy girlfriend.”

I roll my lips between my teeth, trying not to laugh at her slipping in “sexy girlfriend” like it’s been a draining task.

We stare at each other, but I don’t know what to say, and maybe she doesn’t either.

“My dad died.” I don’t know why I feel the need to state the obvious to the person who was with him when he died. Maybe it’s the truest thing in my life. An undeniable fact in a sea of ever-changing emotions.

When her only reaction is the tiny line forming between her eyebrows, I shrug. “Your dad died too.” Watch out, world. Dr. William Landry has invented a new form of therapy. It’s called The Blunt Truth. Instead of “fake it till you make it,” this is “say it till you accept it.”