Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-one
Keir
Numb. I feel like an empty shell.
Jolie thinks talking to Dr. Vargas isn’t needed anymore. She wants me to have sessions with her.
I don’t fight her on it, partly because I just don’t care. About anything. I want it all to be over. Nightmares torture me, and I dread closing my eyes at night.
“Keir? Pay attention, please.” It’s hard to focus on what she’s saying. “Now… you said that you’ve been reliving your attack?” She taps her pen against her lips. “Tell me what you can remember?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
My head drops onto my arms on the table as I try to shut her out. When I’m not reliving the grief of finding out my mom is gone, I see her death in my mind: scared, alone… broken.
Yesterday, Tempest and Amora took a walk with me. They talked the whole time, communicating on Tempest’s notepad. I don’t even remember what they were saying, they warned me about Jolie. I’m sensing more and more that she’s like every other person I’ve met and only wants to use me. For the study.
“Oh, sweetie,” she croons, running her hand through the hair on the back of my head. “You must be so upset.”
I don’t like her touching me, there’s something about it that feels wrong.
I’ve had too many hands touch me without permission and it feels shameful. When she tries to hold onto my arm, I slide away.
A flash of anger crosses her face before she smiles at me. “Look what she’s done to you.”
I space out while she talks more about traumatic memories and how they can affect people. She uses a lot of academic terminology, explaining it like she’s talking down to me.
Does she think I'm dumb?
The more I hear her say, the less I want to be sitting here.
“I’m going to take your advice and call someone about the attack.
” I don’t wait around to hear her response.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure if I’ll follow through with it anyway.
When I returned to the Center, I realized that there was no phone in my room.
I sit in the patient lounge past the meeting rooms. There’s a phone to use here. Pulling out the agent’s card from my pocket, I debate whether I should call him. The tipping point comes with the realization that I’ve spent my entire life not standing up for myself.
I dial and get his voicemail.
“Agent Scholl, this is Keir Marcus... uhhh…” I chew at my bottom lip trying to get my thoughts together. “You gave me your card when I was in the hospital and said to call if I remember anything about the attack. I’ve been having nightmares. A lot of them. Today in therapy…”
It’s a stretch to refer to my talk with Jolie as therapy.
“I found out there’s video of the attack. It was a graduate student. I don’t have a phone; do you think you could meet me at the Wellness Center? Thanks.”
The message was too long. My voice cracked, uncertain.
I don’t even know who has the video.
Shame circles back, chewing at me until it consumes me. I replay it endlessly, busy beating myself down for making the call when a nurse leans in, reminding me the world hasn’t stopped.
“Dr. Vargas has been looking for you.” She gives me a smile, shrugging a shoulder as if to say it’s nothing. “She’s a better alternative than your new friend.”
Almost everyone that’s talked to me has commented on Jolie and the fact that she’s a bad person. I’m starting to distrust her.
Louis had a way of talking when he was manipulating a person and Jolie’s persuasive nature is too reminiscent of that.
I’m conflicted.
Do I only feel this way now after the attack, because of what happened? Jolie says we were friends. I can’t remember any of it.
Most of the residents at the Wellness Center seem to keep to themselves.
Occasionally, I’ll see a couple gathered in the atrium having coffee or playing cards.
I feel drawn to Tempest and Amora; both have been kind and concerned about me.
Tempest reminds me of my mom at times. A soft concerned look, checking in on me with notes on her notepad.
Once I leave the resident lounge, I purposely avoid the area that the graduate students occupy in the meeting rooms. I drift into the gym. The doctor at the hospital told me to ease back into doing strenuous workouts.
I put some weights on a barbell but stop as I spot one of the nurses on the grounds near the pond on a cellphone. She’s pacing back and forth. I almost drop the twenty-pound weight on my foot when my eye catches the sight of a gun tucked into her scrub pants.
Why would she have a weapon on her?
For years, the same thought kept coming back —I’d get free and never be a victim again.
No one would use me, hurt me, or hold me captive.
If I made it out… never again.
I take a few deep breaths to calm my thundering heart. Something feels off here at the Horizon Wellness Center.
Maybe I knew that before I was attacked and it’s why I was. I’m paying Dr. Vargas a visit. Besides the agent, I have a good feeling about her.
Right now, they might be the only ones I trust.
My knuckles tap the half-open door, and Dr. Vargas’s eyes rise from her tidy desk to meet mine.
“It’s good to see you, Keir. Please come in and have a seat.”
I ease the door shut before making my way toward a leather chair positioned beside a shelf crowded with plants.
“You look exhausted. Was it another rough night?”
“I’ve been worse.” I sit before she can ask anything else.
I don’t want to talk about the lack of sleep, the headaches, or the way my anxiety is making me sick to my stomach.
She frowns, fingers lacing together as she rests her hands on the desk.
“Keir, I want you to understand what’s happening to you.
You’re dealing with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Do you remember what Dr. Hardin told you about that?
” Her tone is careful, each word weighed, as if she’s afraid the label might land too hard.
I nod.
“The thing where your brain…checks out?” My hands tighten. “Is that why whole years are just gone?” My disbelief isn’t an act-it’s just that I’d sooner accept brain damage than carry this.
Dr. Vargas sucks her lips in, nodding slowly, the smile that rises touched with sadness. “Your brain learned how to survive,” she says softly. “PTSD isn’t a mental illness. It’s a psychological injury. What I mean by that is it changes your brain. Now it reacts like the danger never ended.”
It’s never ended. Still there. Still happening.
“Your hippocampus shrinks blurring lines between the past and present memories, you have increased activity in the amygdala where your emotions are processed and it's linked to fear responses, and your ventromedial prefrontal cortex shrinks and that regulates your negative emotions when confronted with specific stimuli.”
I appreciate the fact she doesn’t speak down to me, but even hearing the explanation doesn’t fix just how broken it makes me feel.
She makes some notes with these terms and hands them to me. The words I know I won’t hold onto.
“With complex PTSD you could be triggered easily…like a sound or phrase that pulls you back into the moment you didn’t choose.
Get intrusive thoughts leaving you feeling drained.
When you’re that tired, it’s harder to keep your balance with people…
you might snap quicker or read something in their tone that wasn’t there.
My jaw tightens. Nails bite into the leather.
“Your brain thinks it’s still guarding you,” she says quietly. “And none of that is your fault.”
That’s not true.
I didn’t fight hard enough.
I didn’t stop it.
I didn’t protect my mom.
“How do I get better?”
I’m not sure why I bother asking her this since it seems a preposterous idea. How do you get over losing the one person you had in this whole world?
“You punish yourself every time you breathe wrong,” she says softly.
“You need to stop doing that. When you get down on yourself, think about what your brain’s been through.
Since you’ve been here, you’ve learned how to steady yourself-how to remind your body it’s safe now.
You’ve found ways to hold onto that stability, even if only for a moment.
That’s progress, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.
” Progress. I hear the word, but it slides off me.
“You’ve already proven how resilient you are-getting your GED and even earning that scholarship to Belmont.
That took strength. And lately, you’ve been working on something harder-letting yourself remember what was lost, while still holding onto the stability you’ve built.
You were doing so well with that.” I shift in the chair, the word “well” catching in my throat. Remembering doesn’t feel like progress.
She pulls a drawer open, taking a disc from it. “Some of our sessions were recorded for the study and if you’re up to it, watching them may help you recover some memories.” She then slides it toward me like it might bite.
“Is that possible?” I scratch the back of my neck trying to stay present. My mind has been wandering more and more with the lack of sleep.
“Grappling with repressed memories can feel defeating,” she says quietly, “but those memories aren’t gone. They’re in your mind and will resurface eventually. Maybe not completely or in ways you’ll understand, but they will.”
I take the disc, but I don’t intend to watch it. Fear of what it may reveal is all consuming.
“What comes next?” It seems futile to find out, since I feel like I’m back at the beginning.
“After this, you’ll start building a life outside the Center,” she says. “A place to live. Work. People who aren’t part of therapy.”
My grip tightens on the chair.
“You’ll continue working with someone. Just not as often.”
It doesn’t feel possible. To form connections or carry on. A numbness falls over me.
Dr. Vargas continues to talk about methodology and continued therapy. I shut down. I blink, nod, and float away.
I see her face. Not my mom’s, but the blonde woman that has dominated my nightmares. I wish she’d finished what she’d started and killed me. If I was dead, none of this remembering would matter.