Pinocchio Syndrome

Author - sunnycouger - FRT

Disclaimer - The characters of ER do not belong to me. I make no money off this so please, don't sue. I own nothing. The song lyrics belong to Abra Moore's song 'Happiness' - I don't own that either and only used it because it fit. No infringement is intended.

Summary - Spoiler heavy piece from Neela's perspective after Ray's accident.

Author's Notes - I had to write this after what happened. I was writing a slightly more fun piece but after seeing what happened, I had to do something slightly more angsty. This has some stuff on the spoilers so don't read if you don't want spoiled and if you have been spoilt, please keep your fingers crossed that the damn writers come to their senses before the episodes air and somehow fix things.

There are lyrics in the narrative here - I hope it's not too confusing for people. The lyrics are in italics. I know some people don't like songfics, but I'm a big fan of the format so apologies to all.

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I didn't know it could feel like this,
I didn't know the hurt.

Denial.

I had always been good at lying to myself. The whole 'denial' thing was my speciality. I had practised it since I was any age. You know the stuff, 'I don't really want to go to the party because I would much rather be studying.' Or, 'I don't really care that the guy is laughing at me because he's just an idiot.'

It's easy to pretend that the studying is fun or the party would be lousy, and that the boy is only laughing because he's an idiot and not because of anything you've done to deserve ridicule.

You can convince yourself of anything if you try hard enough. If you tell yourself something often enough, then it becomes reality. There's no Pinocchio syndrome where your nose grows if you lie to yourself. A sign doesn't appear above your head screaming 'delusional' if you convince yourself something is true. You can believe anything if you try hard enough.

You know - 'I'm really not hungry' when your stomach is rumbling, but you don't want to show yourself up because of the perfect model munching on a celery stick beside you. Or - 'I really can afford to buy that dress and I'll definitely wear it' even though you know that you're bank card disagrees and that you don't have the guts to travel outside your room with it on. Or, my own personal favourite - you can say 'I'm really not in love with him' over and over again, and POOF! You're magically not in love with him. It's amazing.

Except it's not...

See, you can say you're not hungry, but your stomach will still make embarrassing noises throughout dinner. You can act as though you can afford the dress, but the bank statement will still come in eventually and prove you wrong. And you can pretend, really, really hard, that you don't love the guy you share an apartment with, but for some reason your stupid heart will still flutter when you look at him, and you will still hurt when you imagine your life without him in it.

The denial thing isn't easy, it takes a lot of work. You have to do it just right or else there's not much point in lying to yourself. The most important rule? Your brain has to override every other emotion. When he touches you, or looks at you, or talks to you that way that makes you just want to melt, you have to ignore it. Or, better yet, you run. You run and pretend it's not happening. Sure, it's maybe juvenile but it works.

I realised the basic denial techniques weren't really working after I was married. I would go to bed one night and instead of imagining my husband, I would see my roommate.

And I try to explain to myself,
But I can't find no words.

That would have been bad enough, but to be honest - I liked it. I pretended it was just a comfort thing - Ray was there, Michael wasn't so it was natural to want to feel safe, and protected and the guy who was there was obviously better at making you feel safe than the guy half way round the world, right? Nothing wrong with that at all.

I would lay my head on his shoulder, pretending it was just as a friend. I would rush home from work to spend time with him and pretend it was just because I was tired. I would stay up all night, laying against him as we watched stupid horror movies, and when I felt happy to feel his body beside mine, I would convince myself that it was just because I wanted to spend time with my best-friend. I would start imagining my life a few years down the line and instead of seeing my husband - my dear, loyal, brave, perfect husband, I would start imagining him.

Then, when I thought about my husband I would start wondering why my stomach never did somersaults when I thought about how he looked at me, and why, instead of sleeping in one of his shirts every night, I was sleeping in one of Ray's.

So I lie about it,
And I tell them I'm feeling fine.

That was when it became difficult to pretend and that's why I knew I had to leave. It's easy to deny things are happening when you don't want to acknowledge them, but when part of you wants it to? Not so easy. You can pretend your skin doesn't tingle under his touch, you can pretend you don't see the way he looks at you or know the way you look at him, you can pretend that you don't want to kiss him and you can pretend that you aren't getting closer, and closer to cheating on your perfect, brave husband. At one point though you can say it all you want, but your skin will keep tingling, you will keep looking at each other the same way, you will find it harder to pull away from those nearly kisses and you start thinking to yourself that it wouldn't even be really cheating since your husband had left you long before you left him.

So what do you do? You run. You continue to pretend that nothing is happening and you run. You run to protect the marriage that you want to work and to protect the lovely, clueless man you made the mistake of marrying on a whim.

You run to protect the guy you know you shouldn't have those sort of feelings for and you run to protect yourself because you know it's wrong and you're terrified what would happen if you stayed.

If you run fast enough, if you put enough distance between you then you then you can believe that nothing is happening. That you are still happily married, that you are still faithful, that you meant those vows when you said them. So you move out. You give back the shirt of his that you sleep in even though you know you have another one hidden in your bag that he won't notice missing. You leave him standing on the street and you pretend you don't look back towards him. You ignore him when he says he wishes he never felt the way he did about you and you pretend your heart wasn't breaking and you weren't sobbing uncontrollably in the cab all the way to an apartment that you know you'll never call home.

And I'll cry about it,
Hoping tomorrow will change my mind.

Easy.

But it's never easy. The perfect husband, the marriage, the 'future' that you convince yourself needs protecting doesn't work out. It dies. Michael died while I slept in another man's shirt, imagining another man in my bed and suddenly denial gets a new friend called guilt.

I'm not so good with guilt.

I loved Michael, I did. When I married him I meant what I said. I intended to spend the rest of my life with him, and who knows - if he had stayed maybe things would have been different. But he didn't stay, and he died and all I could think about was that he was dead and I was questioning our relationship before he died, even subconsciously. The whole love thing came up in my head. If I had loved him enough then he would still be alive. If I had laid the guilt trip on him the way my parents had laid it on me when I was a child, if I had made him stay then he would be alive. But I didn't. I didn't work hard enough to make him stay, and I convinced myself that I didn't love him enough while he was away and, to make matters worse, I was actively imagining my future without him in it by falling for another man.

I just couldn't get those thoughts out my head. No matter how much I said it wasn't rational, or it wasn't true - it felt true. I was so guilty.

Happiness has come to this,
And God, it's such a heavy burden to bear.

And Ray...he was the one I punished for it. I could deny things as much as I wanted but I knew that it was my fault and by extension it was his fault as well. If he hadn't been who he was, if he had kept hooking up with random tramps, if he stopped looking at me like that, and saying the right thing and if he stopped making me feel the things I felt then it wouldn't have happened. So I pushed him away and I ran some more. I pushed him until he wouldn't want to look at me again never mind wanting to be near me and every time I did it I told myself that I felt better for it. I told myself that it was what was supposed to happen. I ignored the pain that I caused because if I said it often and loud enough then it would prove to Michael and everyone else that I was sorry. That I accepted the blame. That I deserved this.

Deny everything.

I didn't know it could be like this.
I didn't know it could go so far.

So how do you lie to yourself this time? Well you start by putting the shirt you stole from him but pretend you bought in a sale to the back of your wardrobe. You then avoid him as much as possible and you move on. You tell yourself that you and he are only friends and you eventually get back to some semblance of a friendship and ignore that he still looks at you a certain way, or that you still get goose bumps when he touches you accidentally and you run away every time he offers you a chance to talk. You run until you find a warm body to cling to that isn't his because then you prove to yourself that you were faithful. That when there was nothing stopping you, you didn't fall into his arms so it meant that all the stuff beforehand, when you were married, didn't count. It showed you were respectful to your poor husband who deserved so much better than you gave him.

Tony...

It was never meant to be as complicated as it was. It was all about not feeling. It was all about running from things - from the guilt of losing Michael, from the pain of losing Ray, from myself. I did stupid things and people got hurt.

And I try to reveal the part of me,
But you can't find no scar.

I never wanted to hurt Ray but I didn't know how to stop because everything had got so complicated. I thought I had lost him forever at one point - he couldn't barely look at me sometimes and I hated him for it. I hated him for not understanding that it didn't mean anything and I hated myself for doing this to him.

I look back on it now and I want to scream at myself for being so stupid. I'm sitting here and I can still see the way he's hurting and I do nothing because I let myself get pulled into a complicated relationship that I never wanted. It's so vivid. I can see the expression on his face when he shouts about me 'screwing' Tony in the middle of the ER and even worse, the look right afterwards when he asks me if it's true. I can see it as though it has just happened seconds ago.

I don't know how we got back from there, or why I allowed myself to be pulled back but it happened. He kissed me. And I kissed him. And it was everything I imagined. I had imagined him kissing me a thousand times, in a thousand different locations but I never expected it to feel the way it did. It was...perfect.

It was scary.

Suddenly everything, all the feelings I had convinced myself I didn't feel wanted to be acknowledged and my first instinct was to run again so I asked for some time that I knew I didn't need.

And I lie about it,
And I tell them I'm feeling fine.

And then I stopped. I stopped pretending again and I stopped running. I made a decision. I stopped lying to myself and I told him. I told him how guilty I felt. I told him that it didn't matter anymore and we were so close...so close to fixing this.

I think that if it had been any other day, other than Abby's wedding then it would have been fixed, but that day wasn't about us. We could've talked and I could have made him understand, but it was someone else's wedding and it wasn't the right time or place to get into other dramas. I thought I was doing the right thing.

I wonder if good intentions backfire as spectacularly for other people as they do for me?

He got into a stupid fight with Tony and I could only watch. I didn't know what to say, or do so I call both of them. Pratt took Ray out and I didn't know what to say, or what to do. I knew why they were fighting - over me. Ray thought that Tony was a threat, he didn't know that he was never a threat. It's so stupid and it's my fault...

I told Tony it was over after the fight. I told him in no uncertain terms it was his fault and I went looking for Ray but he had gone. He had left thinking God only knows what.

And that's how we got here. I picked up the phone and called him and he didn't answer. I thought letting him know was the right thing so I left a message on his voicemail asking to meet him. I was going to tell him everything...

Good intentions. Doing the right thing. Making things right. You have no idea how ridiculous that all seems right about now.

It was going to be fixed but it never works out like that for us. The pair of us - I think we're jinxed or something. I never used to believe in that to be honest, but sometimes it's hard to find any other reason. See, for most people - things work out. The couple would reunite, the misunderstanding would be sorted out and everything would be perfect.

Perfect. It's almost funny. The kiss was perfect, his gift was perfect...the reunion? Not so perfect.

The next time I saw him he was lying in a hospital bed, lucky to be alive, missing his legs because of me. He didn't know what I said to Tony. He didn't know why I called him. He didn't know why I was like I was with him and I don't know if he would even care anymore. It all seems so insignificant.

I was always good at denial. I can sit here and pretend it's okay, that things are going to be fine, that good things happen to good people.

I can sit here and pretend that what Katey said about it being my fault is untrue. I can blame Tony for winding him up, I can blame Pratt for sending him home, I can blame the barman for funnelling alcohol down his neck when he was clearly already drunk and I can blame the damn truck-driver for not watching what the hell he was doing.

I can sit here and pretend that I blame Ray for doing this to himself, for doing this to us but that wouldn't be right either. I have a whole list of people who I will blame for this eventually, but for the moment, I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not to blame. That I didn't do this to him.

I can sit here and pretend that I don't feel like I'm dying when I find out that he's leaving...

And I cry about it,
Hoping tomorrow will change my mind.

The truth is though - I can say it's not my fault but he fought with Gates because of me, he left the wedding because of me, he walked in front of the damn truck because I called him. He lost his legs because of what I did.

And now he's leaving and I will never be able to put it right.

I clench my fists so tight to stop from crying that I can feel the blood seeping through the dents my nails are making in my palms. I bite the inside of my lip to stop it from trembling and I say the right things when all I want to do is wrap my arms around him and beg him to stay, to let me make it up to him. I'm not an idiot though, I know there are some things that you can't redo. You can lie to yourself, but it's harder to lie to other people.

He looks at me and I recognise the look in his eyes. I recognise the look because it's the same look I gave him when we were stood on the roof after Michael died. He blames me the way I blamed him. He's running away from me the way I ran away from him.

I used to be real good at denial. I practised it forever. I watched him go without a backwards glance towards me and with Katey and his mother following by his side and I tell myself that it's not over and that things will be okay. I tell myself that he'll come back, that I'm not too late and that it's not my fault.

I force a smile on my face and wipe the tears too forcefully from my face as they keep falling for some reason, probably because of some allergy or something. I pretend the pain in my chest is simply the strain of the last few days getting to me. When my raking sobs cause my knees to buckle and I slide down the wall by his window I tell myself it's simple down to exhaustion.

You can convince yourself of anything if you try hard enough.

I tell myself that I never really loved him like that - that it was simply friendship. That it was just a crush. That it was never something that would last anyway and that it was for the best that he was leaving. That it's better to move on now as opposed to waiting for the relationship to fall apart like it surely would have done.

I tell myself so many things, but hard as I try, I don't believe any of them any more.

I used to be so good at lying to myself.

Happiness has come to this,
And God, it's such a heavy burden to bear.

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-End-