Driving Me Mad (38 page)

I poke at what’s left on my
plate. “I do, eventually.” Damn, I hate that word. “Once I get my
shit together, I plan to try.”

“You’re insane.”

“You don’t think it’ll work?”
Something else I’m already worrying about. I don’t want to let her
go forever. Just long enough for me to get my head on straight.

“I think it sounds like it’ll
be hard to do. Going to therapy might help you out once that time
comes.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Will gets a phone call. “Dr.
Gunner,” he answers and then listens. “Really? That’s great.” He
pauses again. “Yeah. I’m on my way. Give them all the time they
want. I’ll have a better chance if you leave them be. Thanks for
letting me know.” He hangs up and waves the waiter over. “I need to
go. That emergency business needs some attending. Keep in touch and
go to therapy, all right?”

“Yeah, okay. Go ahead. I’ve
got the bill.”

“Thanks, Trace.”

And then he’s gone. I think
about what he said once I’m home again. How am I going to fix
myself? Maybe I do need more help. Like therapy. A memory of
Brittany saying how it’d be odd and how I’d be a bad patient blasts
into my mind. God, I miss her so much already. I pick up my phone
to call her, but toss it onto the couch at the last minute. Lily
jumps into my lap and I rub her head.

“I gotta fix myself, don’t
you think?” She ignores me, of course. “I mean, how can I be any
good for her when I’m like this?” Lily tries to roll over for me to
rub her belly and I laugh. She’s way too big to roll over in the
recliner, but she manages to do it.

Finally, I start to truly
feel good about my decision. Maybe things didn’t end well, but that
doesn’t mean they can’t be saved and put back together at a later
date, especially if we’re both in better states of mind. I’ll go to
therapy, work my way towards a better mental health, and then work
toward winning her back. I can’t hurt her and make her worse in the
meantime.

It feels good to have a
plan.

Monday morning comes without
much sleep the night before. Work is still giving me anxiety even
though the low conversations have stopped about me. Irritated with
myself, I type up a resignation letter and go to work to turn it
in. I don’t know what I’ll do now, but I can’t work in an
environment that gives me panic attacks. It’s not worth it. I’ll
find another job.

I even follow Will’s advice
and book an appointment with a therapist. Just the thought of it
gives me a panic attack, but I do it. My first appointment is in
two weeks. It makes me seriously nervous because the role will be
reversed and I don’t like it. I like to listen, not talk. But I’m
going to force myself to make the adjustment. I was able to talk to
Brittany, so let’s hope I can talk to this woman as well.

Lastly, I make the first of
many steps of making a better relationship with my father. I call
him. The phone rings and rings, and I almost think he’s going to
ignore it, but at the last second, he answers.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Trace,” is all he says.

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

Great. He’s not going to make
this easy on me at all. I withhold my sigh. “I’m sorry for blowing
up at you. It was a bad day for me and I took it out on you.”

Dad is quiet for a moment. I
really hope he’s not going to make me work harder at this because I
don’t know what else to say.

“It’s okay, son. You had some
good points, and I’ll work on that. How are you doing? How’s
Brittany?”

Damn. He
is
working on
it if he’s acknowledging Brittany. And of course, I only have bad
news. “I’ve been doing fine. Brittany and I broke up.”

“Sorry to hear that, Trace.”
He sounds sincere, too.

We continue talking, catching
up, and then we hang up. Exhausted with my day, I head to bed. Lily
jumps onto the bed, sniffs Brittany’s side, and lies down, letting
out a small whine. She misses my girl as much as I do.

“One day, Lily,” I reassure
her.

I hope, anyway. I also hope
Brittany is doing better without me.

***

“
H
ow are you
doing?” The concerned face of my best friend is a good sight to see
on Day Five of my imprisonment. This is the first time she’s been
able to visit since I decided to leave my room.

I shrug. “How pathetic would
it be if I said I miss Trace?”

Rebecca narrows her eyes.
“Spill. I still don’t know what the hell happened.”

Once again, I explain what
happened. Rebecca gets pissed.

“He dumps you without letting
you talk at all? Who does that? What the hell was he thinking?” I
open my mouth to defend him—for what, I don’t know—but she stops
me. “Don’t even think about it, Brittany. He said he loved you,
right?” I squeeze my eyes closed to stop the tears from falling and
I nod. “You fight for what you love. You don’t let it go,
especially when you’re both so bad off and obviously need each
other. He’s a stupid ass.”

Maybe she’s right. I was
feeling especially weak yesterday and asked Mom if Trace had tried
to contact me at all since she has my cell phone. I burst into
tears when she shook her head. My parents are definitely not fans
of him now. Dad grumbles under his breath when I bring him up, and
I try not to.

“What’s it like in here?” Bec
asks quietly as an old lady slowly makes her way into the room with
her walker.

“Like hell. My day is
breakfast, group meeting, vitals check, lunch, group meeting, visit
with the in-house doctor, dinner, and another meeting. Dr. Gunner
left yesterday, so I don’t see him anymore.” I can’t decide if
that’s good or bad. I don’t know if I can trust him after being in
here. However, I do know that I’d much rather talk to him than the
idiot in here. “There are some legit, scary crazies in here,” I
whisper. “But there are some kinda cool crazies too.”

“She means us,” says a
middle-aged man, Ken, from a nearby table, turning to face Rebecca.
He’s sitting with John and Marissa. “You can’t whisper for shit,”
he tells me.

“Ahem,” a nurse says.
Apparently you can’t cuss in the psych ward.

Ken ignores her. “We like to
visit the nice nurses every so often and get a break from life.
Baby doll just likes us because we’re funny.” Ken calls
everyone
baby doll. Even the other men.

“Can I have my friend back
now?”

He laughs. “Sure thing.” He
turns back toward the table and starts up whatever game they were
playing.

“When do you get out of
here?” Rebecca asks, causing me to laugh a little.

“I don’t know. I’m in here
for at least two more days. Ken’s told me how to get out.”

“You sound like you’re
breaking out of prison or something.”

I ignore that because I am.
We aren’t even allowed off this floor. I’m literally locked up
here. “All I have to do is fake being normal, answer positive to
all the questions I’m asked, and I’ll be back in the world where I
can fall apart on my own terms.”

Bec pulls me into a hug. “You
are not going to fall apart. We’re going to take our week vacations
at home with our parents, come back, move in together, and forget
all about Trace and the psych ward. We’ll rock being adults.”

I’m not so sure. The
only
reason I’m even sitting in this room is because there’s
no way they’ll ever let me out of here if I don’t at least act like
I’m getting better. I still want to be in bed. I still want to cry
24/7, which is annoying the hell out of me. I’m not better. I’m
faking it. I feel like I need to get really good at it because
honestly, I can’t picture my life changing any time soon.

School is over, but work will
soon, hopefully, be taking its place.

My boyfriend is gone as well
as the person I was able to tell anything to. There’s just me now.
It’s not the same to talk to someone else. None of them are Trace.
All I want to do is crumble up into a ball. Bec is eyeing me with
pity as if she knows what I’m thinking. I just wanna go home. I
wonder if I would even be here if Trace had let me talk first.
Would he have broken up with me anyway? Or waited a little while
longer until I wasn’t thinking of harming myself?

Some of that anger Rebecca
showed about my breakup finally starts to break through my sadness.
How could Trace do this to me? How could he break up with me when I
needed him the most? Even without what landed me here, I still
needed him. I’ve needed him since I was in high school and he’s
abandoned me. Up and left. He didn’t even seem that torn. Maybe he
didn’t care. Maybe he never did.

A picture of us lying in his
recliner and him rubbing my back to soothe us both after a long day
comes front and center in my mind. It’s followed by him holding me,
calming me down from a panic attack, and making me laugh when I
didn’t want to. He had to have cared.

But then, why break up with
me?

The longer I sit in this
hellhole and bide my time until they release me, the angrier I get.
My parents take me straight home with them, all the way across the
state. Trace’s and my relationship isn’t mentioned. I hang out with
them, spend too much time in bed when they let me, and scroll
through past text messages from Trace when I feel like torturing
myself.

I want to call him, but he
hasn’t reached out to me, so I’m not going to reach out to him. I
try to replace my sorrow with anger. It’s easier to deal with.
Besides, depression and anxiety are bad enough without having to
add a broken heart to the mix.

“Brittany?” Dad tentatively
takes a step into my bedroom. I haven’t gotten out of bed yet and
it’s three in the afternoon. I glance his way to acknowledge him.
He comes to sit on the bed, pulling on my arms, so I’ll sit up. He
pulls me into a hug and it breaks me.

“I was never supposed to lose
him, Dad. He was always supposed to be there,” I cry. Maybe we
shouldn’t have ever started a relationship. Then, maybe, I’d still
have him. “Now, he’s left me, and I don’t know how to handle
it.”

“I didn’t realize you loved
him,” he says quietly.

“So much, Dad.”

He takes a deep breath. “My
advice is if he’s stupid enough to let you go, then you should take
time to heal and move on from it. You deserve better.” He holds me
for a few more minutes. “Think you’ll venture out of here?”

I frown at the thought.
“Don’t you want to stay in here?” Sometimes, a girl just needs her
dad. I need him and my room.

Dad doesn’t debate it like I
expect him to. He motions for me to move over and then sits next to
me, grabbing the remote and turning on my TV. “How are you doing up
here?” He gently taps my temple and I shrug.

“Better, I guess. Could be
worse.”

“Thanks for reassuring me.”
Dad rolls his eyes.