Right as I hung up, Bailey suddenly went silent. A vacant look entered her eyes. She was immobile as if she hadn’t just been losing her mind mere seconds ago.
“Bailey?” Trent softly asked, pulling her face around to look at him.
I didn’t know how fast a mind could deteriorate during a mental breakdown, but I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed a fast as fuck one.
When Bailey opened her mouth to speak, it was just babbling.
I squeezed my eyes shut. For the first time inyears, tears burned in my throat. When I opened them again, Trent was already crying, holding his sister to his chest, rocking her. Heshhed her, whispering soothing words to her.
A knock sounded on the door, and I let the paramedics in. Trent moved aside, letting them near Bailey. She didn’t even flinch when they touched her and crowded her. She just sat still, letting them check her vitals.
A female paramedic moved over to me, a frown pulling at her lips. “I hate to tell you this, but I suggest she goes to the hospital.” I swallowed thickly. “They’ll probably transport her to a mental health facility in hopes of allowing her time to heal. If you’d like, you can head to the hospital. Only one of you may ride with her, though.”
Trent took Kira from me. “Go,” he quietly told me. “I’ll wait here for Seth.”
I nodded and walked over to Bailey. She was strapped to the stretcher, her arms pinned down at her side. She smiled when she saw me, but she didn’t bother speaking.
“She thinks she’s speaking normally,” one of the paramedics informed me as he helped load her into the back of the Ambulance. “We informed her she is not. She can hear and understand what we are saying, but to her, it sounds as if she is also speaking normally to us.”
My fucking heart was shattered. I didn’t know how to deal with this.
Seth and I hadn’t been enough to help her.
And this? This was going to fucking destroy my little brother because, in his eyes, he was going to see every bit of this as his own fault.
16
Seth
Ihad failed her.
I had destroyed Bailey, and I got her to this point. She had already been suffering before me, just letting the world see a happy, smiling face instead of what was happening inside of her.
Then, I had come along, broke her armor, and then destroyed the last bit of her strength.
How did the one who broke you put you back together?
If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be sitting in this room with her family, holding our baby, listening to the psychologist talk about Bailey’s treatment plan.
Trent and Stephen both looked like they were ill. Stephen had told me she justscreamed—screamed until her mind completely shattered.
She couldn’t speak.
The doctor said she couldn’t write—couldn’t even draw simple shapes.
My baby girl had no fucking way of communicating.
“We’re going to put her in a room that makes her feel safe and comfortable,” the doctor informed us. “We will work on therapy sessions to try to bring her voice back. Then, we will work on everything else.”
“Medications?” Ian asked.
The psychologist looked over at him. “I’m going to start her on some antidepressants and go from there. Judging by what you all have told me, I’m taking an educated guess that she is suffering from postpartum psychosis.” She drew in a deep breath. I swallowed thickly. “Unfortunately, it is not curable. It won’t go away. Any day taking care of the baby once she is released could set her over the edge. I suggest hiring a nanny before she is released, and when she begins making progress here in the center, we’ll do visitation between her and your little girl.”
I looked down at Kira. She was the spitting image of her mother, and I had to blink back tears as she stared back up at me with all the openness and shining love that her mother used to have.
Stephen clamped a hand on my shoulder. Trent cleared his throat, and I looked up at him. “This isn’t your fault,” Trent quietly told me. “It would be easy to blame you, but this isn’t on you.”
“I agree,” the doctor added. I looked back over at her. “Even if you and Bailey had always been in a very healthy relationship, this could still have happened. It’s a chemical imbalance in her brain. That’s what this boils down to.”