Author's Note: Thank you to everyone for reading and sharing all of your thoughts with me :) This chapter is a flashback, giving a little bit of backstory to Delphine's current situation. Enjoy!
When she opens her eyes, she finds herself boxed in by four very large, very unfamiliar, very bland white walls. She shoots up in the bed that she's apparently been sleeping in, her eyes dancing around the room as she tries to take in her surroundings. There's a silent television set playing a basketball game on the wall across from her, as well as a woman who is sitting off to the side, reading a book. As soon as the woman notices that she's awake, she puts the book down and approaches.
"Good. You're awake," she drawls.
She tries to kick off the bedsheets which are strangling her lower extremities and with every kick, the horribly stiff bed rattles and rocks. When she looks down at her hands and arms, she immediately recognizes an IV line and she traces it back to the stand. The tightness in her chest begins to constrict even harder, the buzzing in her ears escalating to an unbearable screech.
"Je suis ou?" she cries out.
"Calm down, sweetheart. You're okay."
The strange woman's words do nothing to put her mind at ease. The last thing she remembers is returning home from school and now she suddenly finds herself in a hospital room with a nurse who can't tell her how she got there. Well, maybe she could, if she would stop shouting and rambling in French. The woman darts over to the door, poking her head out and calling for someone. A moment later, her mother and father come racing into the room.
"Oh, mon pauvre ange!"
Her mother is crying, flying over to her and grabbing her face in her hands. She showers her cheeks and forehead in kisses that are meant to be soothing but instead only alarm her even more. She squirms in her mother's grasp.
"Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé?"
"You had an accident, Delphine!" he mother proclaims. "Ma belle fille!"
She looks passed her mother to see her father in the doorway, a frown upon his usually stoic face. He hasn't said so much as a word, he simply watches his wife and daughter as the older woman sobs and the younger one tries to make sense of what's happening.
"How are you feeling, Delphine?"
The voice belongs to someone else. It's a man, a doctor. Her father steps aside to allow him to enter. His voice is smooth and his smile is easy, but even still, she finds herself uncomfortable. He stops at the foot of her bed and she finds herself unable to meet his eyes.
"Do you remember what happened?"
She shakes her head.
Her father enters the room more fully now, walking over to her mother. He gathers her in his arms and slowly backs her away from their daughter in an attempt to give the young blonde some space and the doctor more room to work. Her mother buries her face into his chest, but even muffled, her sobs still ring out in the girl's ears.
"You're father called an ambulance and you were brought here, to the hospital," he begins to explain. "He found you in your room."
She remembers returning home from school to an empty house, both of her parents at work, like they usually were. She remembers slipping her coat and boots off, grabbing her book bag and trudging up the stairs to her room, like she usually does.
Wait.
Her memory freezes, then backtracks. She had entered into her parent's room first before going into her own. She pulls her knees up to her chest and holds them there, resting her chin atop them as her already pale face loses what little colour it had been able to maintain.
"Do you want to tell me about that?" the doctor asks gently.
She shakes her head, then buries her face into her knees. The doctor's words fade out and all that remains is the sound of her mother crying, machines beeping, her own heart pounding. There's another sound, humming and buzzing somewhere in the background, but she's unable to identify it. It's the most infuriating, the most overwhelming sound of all.
"Delphine?"
She looks up at him with large, doe-eyes. He recognizes that she hasn't been listening to a word he's been saying. He isn't annoyed, though. He just offers her another smile.
"We want to keep you here for observation, just to make sure that everything's okay. Another doctor will come to see you in the morning. Her name is Doctor Renton and she's a very nice woman," he speaks. "In fact, your parents have already spoken to her, but she wants to ask you a few questions herself. If everything is fine, you'll be able to go home with your parents in a day or so. Do you understand?"
"I... I don't want to be here!" she bursts.
"I understand that, but we're trying to help you, Delphine. We need to make sure that you're safe before we let you go home."
"I am safe!" she protests.
"Your mother says you want to be a doctor yourself someday. You understand how these things must work, then. It's a doctor's job to make sure that their patient receives the best possible care."
"I don't care! I want to go home!"
She's oblivious to her own tears, to her trembling body, or the biting pain as she folds her arms over her chest and digs her nails into her biceps. She feels a wave of anger and frustration and fear begin to roll through her, over her, until she's certain that her head is no longer above water and she's drowning in these emotions.
"You need to settle down now," the nurse from earlier tells her.
The doctor tries to speak quietly into the woman's ear, whispering that she'll need to administer some sort of drug, but for all the noise inside of her head, she's still able to hear his words. She turns to her mother and father, eyes wide with fear. Her mother seems just as frightened as she is as her father holds her back, brow furrowed.
"Maman! Papa! I want to go home!" she calls out to them. "I want to go home now!"
It's not even home that she really wants. That house is probably just as stifling as this hospital room, but she's just so desperate to escape that she thinks anywhere would be an improvement from where she is now.
"Please! Please take me home!"
Her mother pulls the drapes back and light comes flooding into the room, striking her eyes. She groans and rolls over, pulling the covers over her head to create her own darkness and retreat into it. She's always been an early riser but she just can't force herself to crawl out of bed. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she has nowhere to be; Doctor Renton had recommended that she not return to school immediately, that the stress of engaging with so many people in such a large and loud and unpredictable environment might push her over again. She couldn't exactly disagree, either. Even as she was leaving the hospital, she found herself clutching to her mother as they walked down the hallway to the elevator and she was bombarded with patients and nurses and doctors and noises.
Everything seems to be too much for her.
"Come now, Delphine. It's already the afternoon. You should get out of bed and eat something."
She ignores her mother, clutching the blankets a little tighter. She's met by a momentary silence, but she knows that her mother has not abandoned her crusade yet. She stalks over to the side of the bed and tugs at the blankets, attempting to pry them from her daughter.
"Spending all day in bed isn't going to help you feel any better," her mother says. "Come downstairs with me, Delphine. We could bake just like we used to, or we could play a game or watch-"
"I don't want to," she mutters, grip on the blankets still firm.
"Even so, you should still try."
"I'm tired of trying!"
Her mother freezes in fear and she can see her horrified expression even through the veil of sheets. She's never yelled at her mother before, they're both entirely too aware of this. It isn't her mother that she's angry with, per se, but the constant barrage of words and concern and noise.
Again with the noise.
"D'accord. You can just... just rest a little longer, then," her mother says with a quiet, trembling voice. "You must be so tired. What was I thinking? You go back to bed now."
Her mother makes a quick escape, closing the door gently behind her and she listens as she hears the woman tiptoe down the stairs. She turns onto her side, pulling the covers down just enough so that her eyes are unveiled, staring at the sun as it cuts through the window.
Her own mother is afraid of her, afraid to talk to her, to touch her. Her father speaks to her even less so, now. She never wanted this. She never wanted people to see her as a victim, to treat her differently. She was never comfortable with having so many eyes on her in the first place and now there are even more people watching, judging, whispering.
No.
This is the exact opposite of what she wanted.
She isn't able to pull herself from bed for another couple of days or so. She isn't quite sure, they all seem to mesh together at this point. When she finally does make the perilous journey out of her room and down the stairs one evening, her mother is bursting with excitement.
"Oh, you did it, Delphine! I knew you could do it!"
"I left my room," she deadpans.
Such a feat hardly deserves the metaphorical parade her mother is currently throwing for her.
She sits at the dinner table with her parents that night, picking at her food with her fork but barely eating any of it. That's when her mother first brings up the prospect of seeing a therapist, something that Doctor Renton had mentioned back at the hospital but failed to truly expand on.
"This Doctor Leekie could be good for you," her mother says, setting down her fork. "Doctor Renton spoke very highly of him."
"I don't want to see a therapist."
"Well, you have to do something, Delphine. You can't just spend the rest of your life hiding in your room."
Her eyes drop to her lap and she slumps in her chair. There's no sense in arguing with the woman and in all honesty, she's too exhausted to, so she slinks away from the table with her plate, dumping her untouched dinner in the garbage before placing it in the sink and heading back upstairs. She hears her parents talking quietly amongst themselves as her heavy feet carry her up each step towards refuge.
Two days later, her mother brings up the prospect of therapy once again.
"Won't you at least give it a chance, Delphine?"
"I don't want to talk to a stranger," she confesses, face buried in a book.
Her mother releases a frustrated sigh and she knows that the woman is trying her very best to be patient, but the younger girl is unintentionally making it very difficult for her. She pretends to ignore her mother's frustration as she flips another page in her book.
"You don't want to talk to someone you know, you don't want to talk to someone you don't know. You don't want to take any of the pills Doctor Renton says might help you. Tell me, Delphine, just what do you want to do?" her mother counters.
"Please, Maman," she says quietly. "Let's not do this."
She isn't interested in what anyone else has to say. How could anyone else possibly know what's going on inside of her head when she doesn't even know herself? It seems meaningless to try, to have some middle-aged man try to dissect her.
That night, unable to sleep, she quietly scampers down to the kitchen, careful not to make too much noise and wake her sleeping parents. She places two pieces of bread into the toaster and as she waits for them to toast, she retrieves a jar of strawberry jam from the fridge. She then goes to the drawer with the cutlery to reach for a knife and releases a frustrated sigh when her hand fumbles with nothing but air. All of the sharp knives have been stored away somewhere beyond her knowledge, but she doesn't understand why her mother took the liberty of hiding the butter knives, as well. She never heard of someone trying to off themselves with a butter knife. She grabs a spoon instead and jumps when she hears the familiar dinging of the toaster, indicating her toast is done. She jumps even higher when she father comes shuffling through the doorway.
"B-Bonsoir, Papa," she stutters, surprised by his presence.
He nods his head in greeting, narrowing his eyes at his daughter. She waits for him to move, to do something, but he remains still as a hostage and she closes the drawer with a little more force than necessary.
"Are you going to ask me about therapy, too?" she finally asks.
She's heard the conversations her parents have been having, how her mother has begged him to talk to her. Her father was never the sentimental type so she didn't think for a second that he would actually cede to her mother's nagging and approach her.
"Non."
His answer startles her, in all of its simplicity.
"You'll do what you need to do, when you're ready to do it," he elaborates.
She clutches the spoon tighter in her hand, surprised by her father's rare demonstration of insight. He turns his back on her, opening the fridge and rummaging through it for something. She watches him intently, unable to move from her position and return her attention to the forgotten toast on the counter.
"Your mother doesn't understand," he says. "She's a mother. She doesn't understand anything other then protecting you."
"I don't need her to protect me," she mutters, shuffling from foot-to-foot.
"Perhaps," he retorts.
He pulls himself from the fridge triumphantly, holding a carton of milk in his hand. He closes the door and treads over to the cabinet with the glasses, grabbing one and pouring himself a glass of milk.
"But she will, all the same."
She knows this much is true and in that moment, she feels guilty. She never wanted to put her poor mother in this position, she never wanted her father to find her like that. She'd been so concerned with trying to make sense of the confusion swirling inside of her that she never really paid any attention to what she was doing to the other people in her life. She was standing in the eye of the storm, unable to fully grasp the outward damage from her silent torment.
"Do you think therapy will help?" she asks, her voice a whisper.
Her father takes a long gulp of milk, wipes the white moustache with the sleeve of his robe and shrugs.