Chapter 20 #2
I look at my father. At Kaiden. Both of them are fighting the same thing—the particular horror of hearing clinical language applied to the question of whether someone violated your daughter, your girlfriend, while she was unconscious.
“When I was conscious,” I say, “they didn’t do that to me. The violence was…different. The bleach. The beating. The drugs. But not that.”
I don’t finish the sentence that hovers in the room: “but I was unconscious for hours, and I don’t know what happened during those hours, and neither does anyone else until the test results come back.” I don’t need to. Everyone in the room can feel the shape of the unsaid thing.
“This is standard protocol,” I say. Looking at Kaiden. At my father. “Especially given my history with this family. It’s the process. It needs to be done.”
Dad nods. Sits down. Puts his face in his hands.
Kaiden’s grip on my hand has gone white-knuckled.
His jaw is locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping.
He’s not looking at me—he’s staring at the wall, and I know where he is.
He’s in his own head, in his own history, running his own calculations about what the Penningtons are capable of, because he knows. He has three days of evidence.
“Kaid,” I say. Quiet. Just for him. “Stay with me.”
He blinks. Comes back. Looks at me. Nods.
Dr. Patel stands. “I’ll check in this afternoon. For now—rest, fluids, and let the antibiotics work. We’re looking at a few more days minimum before we discuss discharge.”
He leaves. The room settles into the particular quiet of a hospital after bad news—the machines beeping, the IV dripping, three people sitting with information they didn’t want and can’t give back.
Two hours later. A knock on the door. A man in a white coat with a clipboard and the particular smile of someone who has been trained to appear nonthreatening and is working very hard at it.
“Catherine? I’m Dr. Brennan, from the psychiatric team. I’ve been asked to do an evaluation.” He sits. Crosses his legs. Opens the clipboard. The smile widens. “How are we feeling today?”
We.
I look at him. At the clipboard. At the careful posture and the manufactured warmth and the “we” that is designed to create the illusion of shared experience between a man with a degree and a girl with a broken rib.
“I’m feeling like I woke up in a hospital after being kidnapped, beaten, drugged, and scrubbed with bleach,” I say. “How are we feeling about that, Dr. Brennan?”
The smile falters. Recalibrates.
“Of course. That was insensitive of me. Let’s start over. Can you tell me about your emotional state right now? Are you feeling safe?”
The voice he’s using. Slow. Gentle. Syllables spaced like he’s talking to a child who might startle. The particular register that therapists use when they’ve categorized you as “fragile” before you’ve said a word.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Yes, Catherine?”
“You’re speaking to me like I’m seven.”
The clipboard lowers. “I’m sorry?”
“The pace. The tone. The way you’re holding eye contact for exactly three seconds before looking away—that’s a de-escalation technique.
I know because I’ve been in therapy since I was fourteen and I’ve seen every version of the concerned-professional routine.
I’m not de-escalating. I’m not in crisis.
I’m a trauma survivor in a hospital bed and I need someone who talks to me like an adult, not a child who might break. ”
Dr. Brennan stares at me. His professional composure doing its own de-escalation. “I appreciate the feedback, Catherine. Perhaps we can—”
“No. I’m declining this evaluation. I have the right to refuse treatment, and I’m refusing. Please send someone else.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks at Thomas, who gives him nothing. Looks at Kaiden, who gives him less.
“Very well. I’ll note your preference for a different provider.”
He leaves. The door closes. Kaiden looks at me. “You just fired a psychiatrist from your hospital bed.”
“He called me ‘we.’ He deserved it.”
Forty minutes later. Another knock. The door opens and Darla walks in.
Not in a white coat. Not with a clipboard.
Dr. Darla Walsh—Iz’s mother—walks into my hospital room in a navy sweater and dark jeans, her bag over her shoulder, looking exactly like she looked on my bathroom floor three days ago: calm, present, unhurried.
The kind of person who makes a room feel smaller in a good way.
“Hi, Cat.”
“You’re the replacement?”
“I’m the option. Dr. Patel called me after you declined Dr. Brennan. I told him I’d come by if you wanted to talk. If you don’t, I’ll leave. No clipboard. No evaluation.”
She sits in the chair. Not the stool—the chair, the one visitors use. The distinction matters. She’s not positioning herself as the professional. She’s positioning herself as a person in a room with another person.
“How are you actually feeling?” she asks. No “we.” No manufactured warmth. Just the question.
“Like my body is a crime scene.”
“That’s honest.” She doesn’t write it down. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“In all the therapy you’ve done—the program, the traditional sessions, everything—what actually helped? Not what was supposed to help. What did.”
Nobody has ever asked me that. Not a single therapist in four years of treatment has asked what worked instead of prescribing what should.
I think about it. Really think.
“The joint on Kaiden’s balcony,” I say.
My dad turns. “The what?”
Darla doesn’t react. “Tell me about that.”
“It was the night I showed up at his house. The bad night. After the—” I glance at my wrists under the hospital bandages.
“Kaiden cleaned me up and then we sat on his balcony and he shared a joint with me and we talked. For hours. About everything. Our pasts. What happened to both of us. Things I’d never said to a therapist because therapists always feel like they’re measuring you. That night just felt like…talking.”
“And the weed helped.”
“It turned the volume down. The intrusive thoughts. The spinning. It didn’t make them go away but it made them…manageable. Quieter. Enough that I could think instead of just react.”
Darla nods. “What else?”
“The edible. The night after we found out about Garrett. I was—” Another glance at my wrists. “Kaiden gave me a low-dose edible and it did the same thing. Volume down. I slept through the whole night without a nightmare for maybe the second time in my life.”
Dad is looking between me and Darla with the expression of a man who is processing the information that his daughter has been using marijuana and it was prescribed by a doctor and his neighbor’s son has been the delivery system.
“Catherine,” he says carefully. “You’ve been—”
“I have a medical marijuana card,” Kaiden says. From the bed beside me. Matter-of-fact. “Dr. Reeves prescribed it for PTSD, insomnia, and anxiety. My parents know. It’s regulated. What Cat used came from my prescription.”
Dad looks at Kaiden. Then at Darla.
Darla reaches into her bag. Pulls out a small leather wallet. Flips it open. Inside: her own Massachusetts medical marijuana card.
“I also have one,” she says. With the faintest smile.
“For chronic pain and anxiety. I find it significantly more effective than SSRIs for certain patients, and the side-effect profile is considerably better. It’s legal, it’s regulated, and it’s something I work with in my practice for patients who haven’t responded to traditional pharmacology. ”
He sits back in his chair. Runs his hand down his face. “This is…not what I expected this conversation to be about.”
“What I’d like to propose,” Darla continues, “is an integrated approach. Not just for Cat—for all of you. Individual sessions for Catherine and Kaiden, focused on trauma processing. Family sessions with you, Thomas, and eventually with Fiona, when and if that becomes appropriate. And a medical marijuana component for Cat under my supervision, managed through a licensed dispensary.”
“And the traditional stuff?” He asks. Still processing. “The talking?”
“There will be talking. But the talking happens best when the nervous system isn’t in overdrive.
The marijuana helps create that window. So does the relationship work—the grounding exercises we’ve been doing, the somatic techniques.
My approach is nontraditional because trauma is nontraditional.
It doesn’t respond to a textbook because it doesn’t live in the brain.
It lives in the body. We have to treat the body too. ”
The room is quiet. Dad staring at the floor. Kaiden looking at me. Darla waiting.
“Darla,” I say. “You were on the bathroom floor with us. You’ve seen us at our worst. You already know more about what’s inside me than any therapist I’ve had in four years.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s a yes.”
She looks at my dad. He exhales—long, slow, the breath of a man surrendering control to a process he doesn’t fully understand but trusts the person running it.
“If she’s in, I’m in,” he says. “I’ll try anything at this point.”
Darla stands. “I’ll get the paperwork started. Cat can apply for her own medical card once she’s discharged. I’ll supervise the dosing.” She touches my arm. “Rest. We’ll start when your body is ready.”
She and my dad walk out together, already talking—his voice low and questioning, hers calm and measured, the particular cadence of a father being walked through unfamiliar territory by a guide who knows the path.
The door closes. Kaiden and I are alone. I look at him. Sitting in the chair beside me. His bandaged hand on the bed rail. His eyes on me.
“Come here,” I say.
“I’m right here.”
“No. Here.” I shift—carefully, the ribs protesting—and make space on the bed. “I need you here. Not in the chair. Here.”