Chapter Forty-Five Will
Chapter Forty-Five
Will
A little before eleven at night, the bathroom door creaks open. A sliver of light pierces the darkness as I lift my head from the back of the beanbag chair. I thought opening and closing the front door would draw her out sooner. It didn’t. Everleigh has spent six hours in the bathroom.
She takes several steps toward the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, and then she freezes, gaze on me. “I thought you left,” she whispers.
I hold up my phone. “You’ve published over seventy-five papers. A little fact I came across during one of the airport layovers.”
Everleigh narrows her eyes. She’s stunning. Even in the dim light, with her hair matted on one side of her head.
“I’ve been researching ways to help you. And I keep coming across articles from Dr. Reichart. She’s clearly a brilliant psychiatrist.”
“She’s a fraud,” Everleigh mumbles, continuing toward the kitchen, where she fills a glass with water and drinks it.
“Fake it till you make it,” I say, standing and stretching my back from side to side. Those beanbag chairs are not even a little comfortable.
“I don’t think medical doctors should fake anything.” She sets the glass next to the white farmhouse sink. “The same is probably true for firefighters.”
I slide my hands into my pockets and walk toward her. “Well, I’m not a firefighter right now. And I don’t think you’re a psychiatrist. So let’s pretend that everything is okay.”
She frowns. “I think pretending is what got me here. You’d make a terrible psychiatrist.”
I grin. “You’re probably right.” Using both hands, I curl her hair behind her ears before cupping her face.
“Let’s go back to Missoula. We can finish your barndominium together.
You can keep me warm at night in your Airstream.
I can kick your ass at Roblox. If there’s enough snow, we can build a snowman.
Tai chi every morning and nappuccinos in the afternoons until all of my savings run out.
We’ll let everyone think we’re falling in love, but we know that happened a long time ago. ”
Tears glisten in her eyes as her bottom lip quivers. “You love me?” she whispers in a wobbly voice.
I wipe her tears with my thumbs. “I love you.” My lips brush along her forehead. “And I’m not sorry about it.”
“I’m so unwell.” Her face contorts into a full-on ugly cry.
“I’ve got you.” I kiss her head. “Whatever it takes, I’ve got you.”
The next morning, I wake up to an empty bed.
“Everleigh?” I call, stepping into the living room while buttoning my jeans. Everything is still and quiet except for the bamboo wind chime outside of the open window overlooking the tiny backyard filled with birdbaths, feeders, and metal yard flamingos.
There’s hot coffee in the pot, so I pluck a mug from the holder and pour a cup. The back screen door opens. Everleigh steps inside and removes her running shoes. She’s in a sports bra and tiny running shorts.
“Hey,” she says, a little out of breath, when she looks up and spies me.
“Hey. You went for a run,” I say, stating the obvious because I’m surprised after last night’s revelations that she felt up to running.
“Yeah.” She wipes her arm across her sweaty forehead. “It’s good for my mental health. And I need all the help I can get.”
I step aside to let her into the kitchen for a glass of water. As she fills it from the faucet, she pulls her hair out of a hair tie and shakes her head.
“Speaking of help. Do you think you need some? You know, beyond running.”
She drinks the water, her breath still labored as she sets the empty glass onto the counter.
“Because I’m here, working at a café? Or because I make up stories about my life that aren’t real?
A father who sends me kites. Growing up on two different continents.
Attending medical school because my father wanted me to when in reality, I’m a psychiatrist because he took his own life.
Or do I need help because I turned down the job at Johns Hopkins and lied to my mom about them giving me an extension?
Oh, maybe I need help because I watched your father die, and I pretended it was my father, whom I’ve never met.
And I thought by doing so, it would help me deal with reality.
But how ridiculous is that? I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to see how fucked up that is. ”
I sip my coffee, buying time to formulate a response because I’m in over my head. “Sounds like a multiple choice, but is there an all-of-the-above option?”
Her shoulders sag. “What you said last night about having me? I’ll let you take that back. I wouldn’t blame you. Things were intense in the moment. I was an emotional mess. So you can go. No hard feelings.”
“Everleigh”—I shake my head and squint—“I don’t want to take back anything. I said I’ve got you, and I meant it. But I don’t think I can do this alone. I think it’s my job to make sure you get the help you need.”
“No one wants to be my psychiatrist or therapist. I will micromanage everything. It will piss me off when they try to act like they know more than I do, and I’ll quickly discover they don’t because they are normal people with real lives, not prodigies like me who consume case studies and the latest research for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
They have kids and significant others who require their time.
I have gaming. I used to have Marie Curie, but I killed her because I didn’t unplug my curling iron. ”
She gives me a toothy grin. “See how I’ve taken responsibility for that and no longer blame you?
And I did it all by myself. This ‘help’ you speak of?
I will be diagnosed with delusional disorder, but it won’t fit nicely into one category, which makes treatment more complicated.
So I’ll be prescribed antipsychotic medications and maybe mood stabilizers and antidepressants.
Then I’ll go through therapy, probably CBT and maybe DBT.
If I don’t respond to that, there’s always hospitalization and ECT, which involves an electric current through my brain to intentionally cause a seizure.
And that’s the goal, not a side effect. The side effects include confusion, headaches, nausea, and memory loss.
Now do you want out? Because I don’t want you to play the hero without full disclosure. ”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t fit the words past my heart that’s lodged in my throat.
“Will”—she rubs her temples—“I’m a liar.
A good liar. A convincing liar. That’s my crime.
That’s my disorder. And my lies are about one thing.
One person. Was it triggered or exacerbated by skipping pivotal moments in my psychological and emotional development because I was bestowed this gift?
Absolutely. But I don’t want to dissect it.
I don’t want to spend the foreseeable future rehashing the past. And I know how mind-blowing that might sound coming from a psychiatrist, but it’s because I’ve spent my entire adult life digging, dissecting, analyzing, separating correlation from causation, lumping every single fucking human action into the proper category so I can diagnose and treat what might just be one of a million variants of normal human behavior. So the help I need is called time.”
Where is Jamie? I can’t do this. Everleigh is infinitely smarter. She can debate anyone and win. What am I supposed to say?
“Time for what?” I ask for lack of a better response.
Her shoulders slump, and I don’t mean to sound stupid, like I’m missing the whole point, but maybe I am.
“Why do you think I’m here?” she asks.
“I think you’re running away.”
“Running from what?”
Pulling a long breath through my nose, I set my coffee on the counter and cross my arms over my chest. “Your past? The lies? I don’t know.”
“Physician, heal thyself. What am I to learn from this? Humility? Hypocrisy? Self-care?”
I wait, in case it’s a rhetorical question. But she doesn’t continue, so I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Until I’m better, I can’t help anyone else.
And maybe that means I need help. But I don’t work that way.
If I can’t solve this problem, then how am I supposed to feel qualified to help others?
So I’m taking a step back. I’m working for minimum wage at a place where I’m overqualified, and where my boss laughs out loud at the idea of my being a prodigy. ”
I shouldn’t have said that to her boss.
“I’m not here to impress anyone or even fit in.
I’m just a woman living in a small house with an average job.
No one cares about my accolades and credentials.
No one cares if I have a father. I don’t have to make sense to anyone.
Here, I’m average. Normal. And every day since I’ve been here, I’ve thought about my dead father.
I’ve considered the possibility that there was nothing extraordinary about him.
I’ve spent time thinking about dollar store kites and the fact that I’ve never been to India.
All the expectations that have been put on me were mine and mine alone.
I don’t want to numb the pain of healing.
I want to go through it. And I will come to accept everything that has happened in my life.
It just won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen if I feel the pressure to perform as the brilliant psychiatrist, the perfect daughter, the sexy girlfriend. ”
I roll my lips between my teeth, trying not to laugh at her slipping in “sexy girlfriend” like it’s been a draining task.
We stare at each other, but I don’t know what to say, and maybe she doesn’t either.
“My dad died.” I don’t know why I feel the need to state the obvious to the person who was with him when he died. Maybe it’s the truest thing in my life. An undeniable fact in a sea of ever-changing emotions.
When her only reaction is the tiny line forming between her eyebrows, I shrug. “Your dad died too.” Watch out, world. Dr. William Landry has invented a new form of therapy. It’s called The Blunt Truth. Instead of “fake it till you make it,” this is “say it till you accept it.”
“I need space,” she says.
I take a step back, standing outside the kitchen.
“Stop.” She fights to keep a straight face.
“More space?” I take another step backward. “This is as far as I can go. I gave you space for eleven years. I don’t think you need space. I think you need the one thing you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember.”
She parks a hand on her hip. “What’s that?”
“Me.”
When she doesn’t give me a response, not even a blink, I shrug. “Don’t pass this up. I’m like Halley’s Comet: If you miss me this time around, I might not show up for another seventy-five years.”
“When you’re a hundred and fifteen?”
“A silver fox,” I say, pulling my shoulders back.
“A fossil.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Will.” She sighs, lifting her gaze to the ceiling for a breath before closing her eyes. “Go home.” Her voice breaks, and all the lighthearted joking disappears. “I’m a mess.” She opens her eyes and quickly swipes at her tears. “And you can’t change it or fix it.”
This is it? I came here for her, but I’m leaving alone? What can I say to change her mind when I’ve said it all?
“I love you,” I say in another last-ditch effort. Isn’t that what she’s wanted to hear? I’m saying it. I’m here. I’m all in. My jaw clenches as I swallow my own emotions.
“Go home, Will.” She brushes past me.
As I reach for her hand, she pulls it away.