I was helping Trisha clean up all the mess Emily had made in the short time after she and John had come back home. Emily had been playing with clay, but made way more of a mess than she should have. I had placed a plastic sheet on the table to make sure the table wouldn’t be covered, and I had forced her to put everything back as soon as she was done. But the floor was covered too. As soon as John surprised Emily with a new toy, she left all the clay and went to go play with whatever she had gotten. So, that was a very nice surprise for Trisha to come home to. She was back into mom-mode immediately. I felt bad, but there was no way to get her to stop and let me do it all.

“While John and I did have a lot of fun, I actually missed doing all this shit,” Trisha argued, not watching her language since she knew Emily wasn’t close.

“But I started it,” I contended in return, “so let me finish it. I don’t want you to overwork yourself.”

She shook her head and stared at me. “You know how moms always think you don't do it right when you cook or clean? Well, I feel exactly the same even though I have nothing against you. I don’t want to get mad at you.”

“Ok, then I’ll slowly step away,” I raised my hands up to show I wasn’t touching anything and started walking backward at a calm pace, “until you tell me you want my help with something.”

“Seems like a deal.”

I decided to watch her instead. She first tried her best to pick up the pieces of clay and put them back in a box that held the same color, but eventually she gave up and just sucked it all up with a vacuum cleaner. Apparently, Emily should have been more careful if she didn’t want her clay to be finished in no time. I couldn’t help the quiet giggles that left me whenever Trisha swore underneath her breath. Being a parent had its fun aspects, but there were so many shitty things as well. I just thought the cons outweighed the pros.

“I need to start packing my bag!” I jumped up as I saw that it was almost three thirty already and I hadn’t even started organizing my belongings. “Jack’s gonna be here in half an hour.”

“What?!” Trisha shrieked, her voice echoing throughout the entire house and my ears wanting to shrivel away with how loud it was.

John came running into the room, nearly slipping on the wooden floors, as he was in full protection/panic mode. He looked around the place, trying to find out what was going on. However, when he didn’t see any immediate threat or danger, he raised his eyebrow at Trisha. “What was that for?”

She pointed at me accusingly with her mouth agape. “She just said Jack’s coming here in half an hour to pick her up!”

That even caused John to choke on the air he was breathing. His gaze panned to me, his wide eyes telling me he wanted an explanation as soon as possible. The last time they saw me, I was still claiming I was ‘completely over’ Jack and didn’t feel the need to have a coping mechanism. A sudden shift to him coming to pick me up must have been so strange to them.

“Yeah,” I shrugged and was more focused the hangnail I had on my thumb than the people around me, “I’m moving back in with him.”

“Ok, but that doesn’t explain anything.” John shook his head at me and wouldn’t stop his stare. “You don’t have to go back to him if you don’t want to. If you need help with something, you can ask us.”

“No,” I laughed, hoping to make the situation a lot less serious. “Jack came over yesterday to ask you about my whereabouts but found me instead. I told him to leave because I was more focused on Emily, but told him to come back today. We kinda sorta made up.”

“Kinda sorta?” Trisha questioned.

“We talked while Emily was preoccupied with watching a movie. We realized we both made mistakes but that being apart wasn’t any better. So, we’re going to start again. Jack believes me and I stopped hiding behind work.”

“How is that kinda sorta? It sounds like you fully made up.”

I blushed, not daring to look them in the eyes as I said the following, “cause I don’t want you to think we had make-up sex in your house.”

“Yeah… that was going through my mind…” John confessed with a subtle nod. “Didn’t want to say it, but since you brought it up…”

“I promise we didn’t, I sent him away after talking, you can ask Emily, we were at the dining table the entire time.”

“Asking a four-year-old does not seem very credible,” he laughed in response, “she’s so easy to blackmail.”

“Believe what you want, but I can promise you nothing happened. I don’t even know whether or not I want to go that far with him again already,” I answered truthfully. Honestly, I didn’t know what my sexual attraction towards Jack was like. Either everything was going to go to normal, or we were back at square one.

“Good to know you’re not rushing back into it all again like nothing happened,” Trisha breathed out, whether it were in relief or overwhelment, “but you might want to go pack that bag of yours if you haven’t done anything and he’s going to be here in twenty minutes.”

----

Jack had somebody drop him off so we didn’t have the problem of having to drive back in separate cars. He had stuffed all my belongings into the back seat, including the guitars and the box of letters. I had just said my last goodbyes to Trisha, John, and Emily, promising the latter that this wasn’t forever and that I was bound the be back in a couple of days because I needed to keep contact with John for the band.

After Jack had pulled out of the driveway and started down the road, he briefly interlocked our fingers and brought them to his lips. “Back home we go.”

I hesitated a little as he let go of my hand to switch gears. “Actually… could we first go past the psychiatrist? I made an appointment…”

“Do you want to put them in their place? Show them that they were wrong?” He laughed but nodded as he took a right instead of the left we usually took to go home.

“No,” I mumbled and stared out of the window, afraid of what was going to happen if I opened up about it, “you might have been wrong about the depression, but you weren’t wrong about me being fucked up.”

Jack gave me worried glances as his main focused stayed on the road for obvious reasons. “Is everything alright?”

I frowned and gave him a dumbfounded look. Was he being serious right now? Didn’t I just say that things weren’t alright? I just called myself fucked up, that was the opposite of being ok. I sure hoped it was an automated thing he said and not something he actually meant.

After he looked at me another time, his expression changed completely. “Wait… that made no sense… I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it now?”

He reached over to grab my hand again and I let him. With him trying so hard to make things right again, I didn’t want to get mad over every small thing I believed he did wrong. I was going to have to get over those things and remind myself that he really was trying, but that nobody was perfect.

I shook my head, “let me first talk to the psychologist and then I’ll tell you, ok?”

“Ok.” He nodded without protest.

This time, I made Jack come with me rather than stay behind in the car. Well, I didn’t make him, but when he stayed seated as I got out, I stared right at him through the dashboard window. When he finally noticed my gaze, I beckoned him over, and together we walked into the office. The receptionist cheerfully told me she had corrected my name, which was quite awkward with Jack standing next to me. Luckily she hadn’t mentioned anything about our previous conversation, or I would have been in deep shit.

We sat together in the waiting room, but as soon as I was called up, I went by myself. I didn’t need to pressure of another human being around me. It was difficult enough to simply open up to a trained professional, I didn’t need the feeling of Jack judging me even if he would never do such a thing. It was just a preference, but I promised Jack and myself that I would tell him everything as soon as we got home.

I shook the hand of the same psychiatrist as last time and sat down in the chair across from him. He quickly looked through the single piece of paper in my file and smiled back up at me. I hadn’t come here enough for him to remember me properly, let alone remember exactly what had happened last time.

“So, Ireland, how are things going?” He asked me as he clicked his pen to start taking occasional notes.

I shrugged, looking around the room a little to become more familiar with my surroundings. “I guess way better than last time… I haven’t been taking the medication prescribed, though.”

“And why may that be?” He frowned, looking up at me. It probably wasn’t common at all to hear somebody completely refused to take the medication without even trying.

“Well… that’s exactly why I’m here. I don’t want to tell you that you aren’t doing your job right, because I full heartedly do believe you do,” I started off before I seemed like a client that would only complain and think they were better at everything, “but I honestly don’t feel depressed. Sure, I was in a depressed mood at the time because I was still grieving, but it’s changed now. While I do sort of disagree with the diagnosis of me having depression, I do agree that something is wrong with me. Otherwise, I would have stayed out of your way and not cared much, but I do realize I probably need help.”

“Ok…” He closed the file and picked up a clean notepad instead. “Well, we can start all over again with a clean slate. However, if depression does come out of it again, you’re going to have to accept it as hard as it is.”

I nodded, fully understanding what he was saying. It might have seemed like I was denying what was wrong with me, but that wasn’t it at all. I fully noticed that there was something up. I just didn’t believe it was depression. Maybe something with similar symptoms, but not exactly that.

After he asked me to tell him what was wrong, I started with my new story, leaving out the background of Cam’s death. I didn’t want to repeat that. “Um, well, I guess I can start with the nightmares. Every night it takes me quite a while to fall asleep. I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m over thinking or because I’m afraid of getting a nightmare. But no matter how much I fear it, I will always get a nightmare. I’ve only had two or three night without, but I still didn’t sleep all too well. After the nightmare, I’m not able to sleep anymore, so often I’m awake at around four am. So, usually, I’ll leave my bed and fall asleep somewhere else before trying to go back to bed.”

“And can you tell me what these nightmares are about?”

I nodded and took a deep breath, my heart starting to beat faster. I had hoped to not have to go through all those nightmares again; I hadn’t even told him about them the first time I came. “It’s often a flashback to the firemen dragging Cameron’s limp body ou-- out,” I cleared my voice after it cracked as I felt tears wanting to leave my eyes and my heart rate increasing even further, “sorry… they’re pulling him out of the wrecked car. Sometimes it’s a lot like the actual events, but often my brain created more images around it. For example, sometimes… sometimes… s-- sometimes…”

“It’s ok.” the psychiatrist stopped me as he realized it was getting a bit too much for me. “Just take a minute to try and calm down. You don’t have to do this right now, we can always get to it on a later date.”

I shook my head, not wanting to have to talk more about it later. I wanted it over and done with. So, to calm myself down I closed my eyes as a single tear trailed down my cheek. “Sometimes I see an imaginary image. There will be close ups of him and all his bruises and cuts. I’ve also heard him try to whisper words to me before, but I can never seem to reach him or he gets too close. Also when I zone out, I occasionally get similar flashbacks. They aren’t as graphic, but they cause me to jump and anybody around me will most likely scare me. I guess last time I was trying to avoid people wanting to bring it up and tried to keep myself awake by overworking myself. It was a good distraction, but didn’t work all the time either. And people trying to help me would often get me mad rather than happy.”

We continued a little further with our conversation, going more into my specific behavior and how one minute I could be completely fine and the next feel afraid, angry, and disoriented. I told him everything I could with as much detail as I could, hoping that I would finally get an answer to what was driving me insane. I was given tissues multiple times and did have to stop occasionally as soon as I had to describe the event again, but that reaction only seemed to help him find that diagnosis I was looking for.

“Would you like me to tell you what I think is the right step to take next or would you like to bring your boyfriend in here so he can hear it as well and get all the answers he needs?” The psychiatrist asked as one of his last questions. I nodded, wanting Jack here to hear it all. That way I didn’t have to explain it to him and risk another breakdown.

While the psychiatrist went get him, I was left to wait in the room all by myself. Luckily it didn’t take long for them to come. The room with nobody else in it was so silent, and with so much area to look at, I fear I was going to zone out and have another flashback.

Jack came to sit in the chair next to me and I immediately held onto his hand. It wasn’t because he needed support, but because I needed some. With how much longer this appointment had taken compared to the last, I could sense that he could feel that this time had gone much better than last time, but that it most likely didn’t mean the results were any better. This time I hadn’t held myself back and said whatever they wanted to hear. I literally poured my heart out.

“So, what I’m going to do it get you to stop taking the previous antidepressants I prescribed,” the psychiatrist told us as he looked through my file again, this time with the new piece of paper in it as well, “they might still work, but I’d rather prescribe a slightly different one. It isn’t necessarily stronger or less strong, but it might target what we want a little better. Hopefully, they’ll get rid of the nightmares and other flashbacks over time.”

I felt Jack squeeze my hand during the last sentence. He knew nothing about all the haunting visions I had been having. I was still going to have to discuss it with him later since he wasn’t going to get all the information and backstory here other than all the technical and medical things. He was going to want to know what my nightmares were about.

“I’m going to diagnose you with PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder. While it isn’t as severe as many of the cases I’ve seen, I do believe that medication will help and that therapy won’t suffice solely. The medication, just like the last, might make you feel worse in the first few weeks, however over time it should start getting better. If you don’t feel like it’s helping, you should of course contact me and I’ll help you from there. Oh, and…” He stared a little at Jack, waiting for him to say his name so he could address him personally.

“Jack,” Jack quickly introduced, still taken aback by all the information he had just been given. But he was only going to be hit by more.

“Yeah, Jack. I also have a job for you. Other than reminding Ireland to take her medication, especially when she hasn’t gotten into the rhythm yet, I’d like you to keep an eye out for her during the night. Try to make sure she won’t get out of bed and stay up at unrealistic hours. It will be better for her to fall asleep than stay awake and afraid of getting another nightmare. Sneaking out and falling asleep in another room isn’t helping much either.”

“Wait, what?” Jack blurted out despite having tried so hard not to ask questions other than ones about the medication and process. “You’ve haven’t been sleeping in bed? I didn’t know this.”

“Exactly,” the psychiatrist continued and turned to me, “and Ireland, rather than staying quiet and trying to face it all alone, confront Jack instead. You might feel guilty for waking him up, but you need the support.”

I nodded. As much as I really didn’t want to wake Jack up and risk him also having sleep deprivation, I knew that he would hate me more for not saying anything rather than waking him up from a deep slumber. And so, I was told where to could pick up my medication the next day already, and Jack and I were off back to the car.

Our fingers had stayed intertwined the entire time except when we shook the psychiatrist’s hand before leaving. We were both way too quiet, still processing exactly what was going on. My new diagnosis was something I could accept. It fit so much better with the way I was feeling and I so hoped that the help I was going to get really was going to work.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know when we’re home,” I promised Jack again as he started reversing the car.

Notes

Last chapter was a happy chapter, this chapter was building up to seem like one two. BAM! Sad chapter. I told you it wasn't just going to be all butterflies and smiles now. It won't be that easy.