Chapter 2
DR. DAWSON COLE
My steps falter as I take in the woman in the corner of the room as she turns her head in my direction.
I don’t need to know her to understand that she’s a broken, deteriorated mess of the person she used to be.
At least, that’s what I suspect as I make a mental note of the tiredness in her eyes and dark hues tracing the skin under them.
She’s worn, weathered in a way that doesn’t come with age but agony.
A pain I plan to get to know a little in this hospital room. Even more once she's receiving outpatient care under my supervision.
“Good morning,” I say, my voice a rumbly deepness.
I’ve been told in the past that it startles people, that it doesn’t always necessarily match my appearance.
I cross the short room and lower into the chair across from where Emory Prescott sits in a pair of worn sweatpants and a loose-fitting top that has brushstrokes of paint splashed over the fabric.
“I apologize for my poor punctuality,” I tell her, sinking back and getting comfortable. I push my glasses up my nose, the black rims the same ones I’ve worn since my days in college.
A barely-there smile graces her pink lips, and I look at them as they tip upward at the corners.
She fiddles with her fingers on her lap, her gaze cast on her hands.
Even in all of her doom and gloom, she’s beautiful.
I’m too much of a man to not see that, though it’ll never be something I’ll comment on outright.
“It’s fine. It’s not like I have anything else to do.
” Her voice has this soft quietness to it that I’m used to.
I see people on a daily basis who suffer from depression and anxiety, some with more extensive mental health issues than that.
My hope is that after more time together, she’ll sound a little more like herself.
“How does that make you feel?” It’s such a cliché question—and a stigma that health professionals such as myself carry around as a tattoo on our skin—but that doesn’t make the question any less valid.
She lifts her chin and takes me in for the first time. I keep my face neutral, knowing that if she sees any sort of emotion flickering, she’ll take that as judgement. Anyone in her position would.
“You, along with others, think I need this. To be here receiving mental care because it’s suspected that I tried to take my own life.
That I tried to…” her voice cracks, trailing off for a moment of pause before she finishes, “drown myself. If I wanted to do that, do you really think I would have done it in the Atlantic Ocean?”
I bring my ankle up to my knee and rest it there. Her gaze ticks down to the movement before landing back on my eyes. I think about her question and offer the same thing I give all my patients—pure and utter honesty.
“Would you like me to answer that?”
A flare of something flashes in her eyes, and her chin juts out, like she’s rolling her tongue in her mouth in irritation. My spine tingles from that flare, from the knowledge that as low as life is right now, there’s emotion that she’s feeling.
A good sign, if anything.
It’s the people who feel nothing at all that I worry about.
“I don’t know,” she mutters. “Either way, I don’t deserve this.” She shakes her head back and forth, her gaze snapping away from me again. I don’t necessarily like it, but I can’t force her to keep her attention on me. “I don’t deserve to be on suicide watch after enduring what I’ve been through.”
The beating organ in my chest tugs the same way it always does when someone is sitting across from me, broken to pieces. “You’re not on suicide watch.”
She gives me a look. “I might as well be.”
Her hair hangs limply against her shoulders and down her chest, long strands that glimmer an auburn-orange under the fluorescent lighting. It reminds me of the changing leaves in autumn.
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“That’s what I keep being told, but somehow… I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know, Emory?”
Her tongue peeks out and swishes across her bottom lip, giving it a sheen as she picks at her fingernail.
“I’m not sure if this, what I’m currently living, would be better than what could’ve been.
” Her throat ripples with a swallow, and she sighs.
“I’m not saying that because I want to be dead either—that’s not something that’s ever come up for me before—but I can’t help but recognize how that was almost a possibility for me. ”
“I think it’s pretty normal for a person in your shoes to be considering, or at least, think about, all the ways that day could have played out.”
She offers a small nod, and her shoulders relax a little bit. Almost like she’s glad I don’t confirm her worries. The thing is, I’m good at my job, at talking to people who feel like they’ve been beaten down by life’s cruel events.
“You’re not crazy,” I tell her next, watching as her focus snaps up to my gaze again.
A thrill washes over my skin. This is clearly our first encounter, but there’s something about the way she looks at me that reminds me how hard it is to find a real connection with someone that isn’t shallow or materialistic.
I don’t know where the thought comes from, or why it pushes in, but I swat it away just as quickly, knowing damn well that what happens between Emory and me must stay professional. I’ve never steered into boundaryless territory with any of my patients, and I’m not going to start now.
While I can admit she has this ethereal beauty and realness to her, our counseling sessions are as far as our interactions will go.
“You’re the first person to say that to me,” she murmurs. “But I’m not sure that matters much. I can tell when someone looks at me whether they believe that to be true or not.”
“Traumatic moments hold the possibility of altering the way we operate and think, but we also have the choice to work through that so it doesn’t impact us on a large enough scale that it hinders our ability to live and heal. Do you want that, Emory? Do you want to move past this?”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to stay stuck in whatever this is.”
“Did you feel this before your accident?”
Despite me telling her that she hasn’t lost her mind, I need to figure out if she actually did go out there to hurt herself. I need to break down the corners of her mind gently enough that she lets me in and can reaffirm that it was a total accident.
She doesn’t say anything for a minute, and in the silence, my stomach drops multiple levels.
Mostly because I don’t want this for her.
I never want it for anyone who I help. But life is greedy in the way that it seeks out victims. There’s not a damn soul in the world who possesses a golden ticket that lets them out scot-free.
“Emory, if you did—”
“I did and I didn’t,” she says, stopping my stomach's freefall.
“Do you want to tell me what that means?”
She blows out a huff of air. “Not really.”
“We have to be able to talk to each other, to trust that the other will listen, for this to work,” I tell her, hoping she understands that this is a two-way street.
Again, she doesn’t answer.
“Your doctor talked to you about the extent of your injuries, yes?”
She nods and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Pneumonia, a brain injury—which is probably responsible for my memory being patchy—a concussion, the explanation for the ache in my head currently, and this glorious trophy.” She points to the white bandage on the outside of her arm that spans from her shoulder down to her elbow, medical tape keeping it fastened in place.
My eyes skim down the material. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little curious about what it looks like underneath. Not because I’m morbid and into that kind of thing, but because there’s this underlying curiosity that plagues me.
Does her scar look as mangled as mine?
“Tell me more about what you do remember,” I say seconds later, pulling myself back from that dreadful cliff of thoughts. I’ve done the work to move past what happened to me, but the mind is a powerful thing—if you don’t keep it in line, it’ll go off on its own and lead a person to ruins.
Even if that person is trained in how the brain processes emotions and trauma.
When her bottom lip quivers, I get this nagging feeling that tries to push me out of my chair. It tells me to stand and move closer to her, to offer an embrace as a means of helping her through this moment.
I keep my ass glued to the chair, ignoring the strange pull she seems to have on me. This shouldn’t be happening after meeting someone for the first time.
Get it the fuck together, Dawson. She’s your patient. And it doesn’t matter what her scar looks like.
I can’t make sense of why the hell this is happening. Why I’m drawn to these minute details of her. Maybe because I see the same shadows that lurked in my eyes in hers.
“The water,” she says quietly. “I remember the water and how it surrounded me, covered me… I didn’t see it coming,” she admits, swiping a tear off her cheek that slowly slides down the apple of it. I know right then and there that she never tried to take her own life.
There’s no fucking possibility. Not with the way her face shatters into a million broken pieces as a quiet sob rushes out of her. A sob that wracks my ribs even though it doesn’t live inside of me.
I grab a box of tissues from the table beside me and stretch them across to her. She’s quick to take them, blowing her nose into one after she rids her skin of wetness.
“Whether the other moments of that day come back to me or not, I know I’ll never forget the helplessness that filled my entire body when I sank underneath the current. It was like the ocean was holding me down. Like I wasn’t allowed to move unless it told me to.”
An odd lump forms at the back of my throat.
I remember that feeling all too well. Even though what happened to me was a freakish thing, it still follows me from one day into the next.
Some nights, I can still feel the press of a stranger’s fingertips in my arm as their warm, nicotine-ridden breath fans across the side of my neck.
Sadness and empathy fills me over this woman having to endure a near-death experience that will, unfortunately, shape her for years to come.
That’s the thing about trauma—no matter how close or far away you are from the moments it claimed you, it shapes a person and affects them in ways no one can ever see coming.
It’s crafty, careful, and cold-hearted.
In one minute, it can freeze you in place, and in the next, flames swarm and turn you to ash, everything you knew curling into orange lines as you try to find a shred of normalcy.
For some people, it’s Mother Nature that tries to steal their soul, lapping at it with the promise of something beautiful even though what lies beneath is anything but.
For others, it’s a human being dashing through the night, donned in nothing but black as they attack the wrong person, pull a knife from their back pocket, and sink it into healthy, innocent flesh.