“Ah… I guess,” she admitted, able to see the parts of her that didn’t, objectively, paint her in the best light. “But we can’t complain too much about my watch when it was the only way I could get a message out to Cam.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, wincing a bit at how she went from light and comfortable to tense and dark at just the mention of that place and her time there. “You ready to talk about that yet?” I asked, moving forward, ignoring the alarm bells going off in my mind as I put down my mug and sat on the bed beside her.
I was almost painfully aware of the way the bed depressed at my weight, making hers shift until she was brushing up against me.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, shaking her head as her fingers danced over each other in her lap.
“I’m assuming you didn’t talk to Cam about it.”
“Why would you assume that? The man knows when to buy me tampons and chocolate,” she said, smirking.
“Yeah, but that’s job-related, in a way, isn’t it? I’m going to assume that Cam doesn’t know about Buy One, Get One deals atPaylesseither, does he?”
“He… doesn’t,” she admitted, her brows drawing down a bit.
“Does anyone?”
“Aside from you? No.”
“Hey,” I said, reaching over to put my hand on top of hers that wouldn’t stop fidgeting, making her back go ramrod straight at the contact. I went ahead and pretended to know how I swear to fuck I felt some sort of electrical shock at the touch. It wasn’t the fucking time for that. “I can’t spill your secrets,” I reminded her. “It’s in the contract and shit,” I added, ducking my head to catch her gaze, then giving her a smirk.
“That doesn’t mean you have to be my shrink,” she said.
“I want to listen if you want to talk. I don’t think it’s good to bottle up that shit. In fact, I know that,” I told her, folding forward to reach into my toiletry bag to find the little medicine bottle with my free hand, then showing the label to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, frowning at the label.
“My meds. For my anxiety and depression,” I told her, watching as her head whipped over to me. “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Some of my healing was putting this house together, and getting a job that gave my life purpose again, but another part was the meds and therapy. So I know a thing or two about what bottling shit up does to you,” I told her, tossing the meds back into the bag.
“From the service, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed, but didn’t elaborate. This wasn’t my time. I didn’t need the shoulder.
She did.
“There was one woman at the hospital who had PTSD from the service. She didn’t handle the thunderstorm we had one night very well.”
“Yeah, those can be rough for a lot of people who saw that sort of active duty. Was she your roommate?”
“No. But I had a great roommate. I don’t think I would have made it out of that place with my sanity intact if it weren’t for her. Am I allowed to talk about her?” she asked, frowning at me.
“That’s up to you. You didn’t sign some non-disclosure. But you don’t have to give details if you don’t want to.”
“She was so sweet. A lifer. That’s what she called herself sometimes. She’d been in and out of psych wards all her life. On the downslide… that was when she started getting some… bad thoughts,” she said, and I liked that she was trying not to give too many details. But it sounded like she had a bipolar roommate to me. “She thought that I’d really…” she said, waving down at her arm.
“You didn’t tell her otherwise?”
“You think she would have believed me? The scar was pretty damning.”
“Did you tell the doctors?”
“No,” she admitted. “I figured that saying I didn’t do it, when they were sure I did, was only going to make me look crazy, and that they would extend my stay.”
“That is, unfortunately, probably the case.”
“I just played it off as best I could. Put on my best not suicidal face. Because, well, I wasn’t. And I’ve never been. Not that I’m judging,” she rushed to add, looking over guilty.
“I know you’re not,” I agreed, my hand giving hers a reassuring squeeze. “You must have felt really fucking powerless in that place.”