Santana left the hospital the next day. Her parents, Brittany, nor Kurt came to pick her up so she called a cab service before she left to take her home. She sat in the backseat of the cab, her mind still reeling with Kurt's words. He was right. He was always right and that's what killed Santana. She didn't want to be figured out or picked out and prodded like an experiment. That's why she hated going to that therapist her father set up for her. She only went once because the first session was free and her father didn't want to waste money on something Santana didn't take seriously.
Her first session was on a Saturday, she skipped Cheerios practice –much to Sue's dismay and took the bus over to the doctor's office because it was near the only mall in Lima and she didn't want anyone to spot her white Range Rover. She donned oversized sunglasses, baggy jeans and a sweatshirt she found in her dad's closet. Santana even wore her hair in a braid down her back for extra security.
Santana sat down nervously in the brown office and stared at the woman across from her, who wore a fake smile. "Hi, Santana, I'm Dr. Emerson. Your dad and I went to college together. We were very close."
The idea of her father and another woman besides her mother seemed likely but repulsed her. "Did he fuck you?" Santana asked bluntly. "He fucked a lot of women in college. At times I think my mother isn't my actual mother because he's had so many relations."
The therapist stiffened up and feigned a cough. "That's something that shouldn't be discussed."
"He did. I can tell by the look in your eyes." Santana noticed. She picked up on things like that. She noted when she made people uncomfortable. "Look, as you can tell I'm probably going to be a pain in the ass and you won't be the first person not to like me. And if things work out as they're planned, I won't like you either. So why don't you do some doctor stuff on another patient and I'll sit here and do nothing."
Dr. Emerson jotted something down. "People don't like you? Why is that? You're a beautiful, intelligent, witty girl."
"Whoa, Emerson, you have to take me out to dinner first." Santana nodded her head at the uncomfortable therapist.
"Who doesn't like you? There has to be reason for your teen angst. Sometimes it's the usual, cliché shit but with you, I think this is something beyond that." Dr. Emerson said.
Santana put her feet up on the long sofa and popped her gum, not willing to disclose any information with this woman. "How about this, I ask you a question and you'll answer and then you can ask me something." Dr. Emerson offered.
Santana shrugged. "What's your first name?"
"Penelope," She replied. "Why don't people like you?"
"I don't know because I'm a manipulative bitch and a slut that sleeps with her friends' boyfriends. But in my defense, I never slept with my friends' current boyfriends; they were taking a break from each other." Santana answered. "Did you and my dad used to date? You look like his type."
Penelope laughed and nodded. "It was only for a month." She added. "You said you've slept with your friends' boyfriends? If you're their friend, why would you sleep with their boyfriend?"
"Because I like sex and I get what I want, it's that simple." Santana snapped, pulling out her phone.
Penelope scratched her head and wrote down another detail in her notebook. "Can I ask you about your friends?" Penelope asked. Santana nodded. "Tell me about them. Their names, what you like to do with them, your relationship with them, that kind of stuff,"
Santana nodded and tried to think of the members of glee club because they were her only real friends but in the process she realized none of them really liked her except for Brittany and maybe Quinn and Mercedes. "Well there's Mercedes. She normally talks to me when she needs something from me. I hated her throughout sophomore year because she tried stealing my man along with Quinn. Quinn's my friend too, kind of. We were on the Cheerios together. I slept with the father of her bastard child. I've known her for ages. And then there's Brittany," Santana smiled brightly. Penelope jotted down the name, 'Brittany'. "She's wonderful. She's my best friend."
"What do you like to do with her? If you say get drunk or high, I won't hold it against you." Penelope said.
"We go parties a lot. We're on Cheerios together. We have a lot of the same classes. She's perfect."
"It seems like she makes you very happy." Penelope added with a smile.
"Yeah, she does." Santana opened up a picture of her, Brittany, and Lord Tubbington on her phone and thrust it at Penelope. "That's Brittany." She swiped her finger, knowing every picture in her photo album by heart. "This is a picture of me and Brittany getting ready for prom." Swipe. "This is Brittany at the prom. Doesn't she look beautiful there?" Santana asked in awe, her eyes glazing over at the thought of the blonde, blue-eyed supernova that captured her heart.
"Can I ask you something else? And please, answer me seriously. I know with a topic like this, it's hard for girls to open up about it because with girls it's seen as a joke." Penelope started. Santana furrowed her brow, not knowing what to anticipate. "Are you in love with Brittany?"
"Of course I love her, she's my best friend." Santana replied quickly. She withdrew her phone and looked around the room suspiciously.
"No, but are you in love with her?" Penelope asked again.
"I can't be in love with Brittany. She's Brittany…" Santana whispered. She looked down at her hands and sighed.
"I know I shouldn't just make a false assumption about you even though I get paid for it but the way you talk about Brittany is how I felt talking about my first love to one of my friends. The way you couldn't help but smile when you said her name or how your voice got sweeter."
"I can't love Brittany because I'm a girl and she's a girl." Santana snapped. "Even if it became socially accepted in Ohio, I don't deserve anyone like her. Have you not been listening? She's the beauty and I'm the beast!" Santana pushed her bangs behind her ear and sighed in frustration. "How many minutes do we have left?"
Penelope checked her phone, "Thirty," She jotted done a few more notes on what Santana said and her heart ached for the troubled teenage girl. It was hard enough being a girl and now Santana had to worry about her sexuality. Santana coughed lightly. "Do you need something to drink?" Penelope got up and walked over to her mini fridge. Inside there was nothing special just a couple of Chobani yogurts, a half empty Red Bull, and three Coronas.
"I'll take a Corona." Santana replied. Penelope shook her head, "No," Santana scoffed.
"Why the hell not? You and I both know that I've drank before. It'll be a secret. Isn't this whole thing supposed to be private?" Santana prodded.
Penelope closed the fridge and sat back down. "Penelope, it's beer. If anything it'll help me loosen up and give you more things to work with." Santana added, pursing her lips.
"No, Santana, I can't." She replied firmly.
Santana pouted. "Fine," She crossed her arms and blew another bubble. "Do you have any more questions?"
"Can I ask you about the nature of your relationships with your peers not your parents?" Penelope asked.
"Okay, uh, well, I dated this guy, Puck, in sophomore year. I broke up with him, though, but I still slept with him for the rest of the year and half of junior year too until he met that rhino, Zizes. I slept with Finn which then resulted to Finn and Rachel breaking up. I caused Quinn and Sam to break up then I dated him. I fooled around with Brittany for about three or four years. I started dating this guy named Kurofsky. We didn't do anything though. He's gay."
"You knew he was gay but still dated him? Why?" Penelope asked, looking at Santana intently and jotting down in her notebook furiously.
Santana sighed. She knew it was going to come back to this eventually. She didn't see the harm in telling Penelope the real reason why she dated Kurofsky. Anything said in here was supposed to be private. No one will know. "Because I'm too afraid to say that one word," Santana mumbled. Penelope's eyes widened as she thought she was going to break through to Santana. "I'm too afraid to accept that I'm this one word." Santana continued. She closed her eyes and held her breath. "Lesbian," Santana whispered. "I can't be."
Her voice choked up and she started to laugh. "You know, this boy at my school got picked on by Kurofsky a lot to the point where the kid transferred. Kurofsky said he was going to kill him because he was gay. Now, Kurt never did anything to anyone and someone threatened to kill him. I've been a bitch since freshman year; imagine what they'd do to me! Here's the funny part, I deserve it! All of it. It's like karma is finally catching up with me, you know?"
Penelope sat quietly in her chair and looked at Santana with concern. She didn't know how to interpret Santana's statement into a way where it didn't sound like she hated herself. Penelope wrote down a few details and read them over. She looked back at Santana, who was staring at Penelope's PhD on the wall behind her. Penelope looked down at her phone and saw that their time was up. "Time's up, Santana," Penelope put her pen down.
"What's my diagnostic, Doc?" Santana asked, putting her feet on the floor and slipping her phone into her back pocket. She didn't really want to know about her problems but she knew that Penelope was bound to tell her anyway.
"You are a very complex girl, Santana," Penelope started.
"I could have told you that." Santana replied with a laugh. "Continue,"
"You don't think you deserve to be happy and you think if happiness is coming your way, it's not real so you push it away. But when you push, Santana, you eventually lose that happiness. And when you want it back, you can't have it back, which leads to your constant need to take your friends' boyfriends. You're trying to compensate for your loss." Penelope answered. Santana nodded, even though she wanted to disagree with what she was saying. "Keeping your sexuality a secret will only hurt you more, Santana. You need to come to grips with yourself and learn to accept yourself for who you are: a beautiful, smart, talented girl! You're not just that one word and don't let it define you because you're much more than that!"
Santana stood up and smiled at Penelope. The therapist reached over to her desk and handed Santana a card. "It's got my phone number, email address, and my home address for my at home patients. Whenever you need someone to talk to, I'm here." Penelope encouraged. Santana nodded, weakly.
Santana took a step forward until she met Penelope eye to eye. She pulled Penelope into a hug and let her tears, stream silently down her face. "Damn you and your PhD." Santana mumbled.
Penelope snickered and rubbed Santana's back. They released from the embrace but Penelope held on to Santana's shoulders. "Santana, I mean it, whenever you need help, I'm here. I don't care if you're drunk and in Indiana. You can call me."
"Thanks. It means a lot." Santana whispered. "Congrats, you're one of the first adults I like and you didn't have to use alcohol to get me to talk to you." Santana wiped a tear from under her eye and laughed.
"You're not too bad yourself." Penelope replied. Santana nodded again and turned on her heel. She paused by the door and looked over her shoulder, "My dad's got good taste," and left.
Santana shook her head and coughed. "You okay?" The cabbie asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Could you do me a favor? I changed my mind. Take me to 17th and Grove." Santana replied, looking at the card Penelope gave her three months ago.
Brittany had to ride her sister's bike to the hospital because her mother drove the car to the supermarket. Brittany raced to the hospital as fast as she could. She had to see Santana even if it was the last thing she could do. She couldn't stand that Santana could hate her after what she said to her. She had to make things right.
Brittany hopped off her pink, flowery bike and dropped it on the concrete. She pushed open the door and ran to the front desk. A doctor with a blue file in his hand looked at Brittany and smiled. "Santana Lopez, is she here?" Brittany panted.
"Who?" The doctor asked. He walked over to the computer, preparing to type in the patient's name.
"Santana," Brittany yelled. "She was brought in here a couple days ago. She was unconscious. Santana! She's got black hair, dark brown eyes! God, her name is Santana!" Brittany exclaimed.
The doctor furrowed his brow and typed the name in. "Ah, we've got a Santana Lopez in the database." He replied. "Oh, I'm sorry, she checked out about an hour ago."
Brittany's jaw dropped. She put her hands on her hips and paced back and forth. "No, she was here yesterday! She couldn't have left! Not without me," Brittany stated but then she remembered that they weren't anything anymore. Brittany placed her hands on the desk, forcefully. "Was anyone with her? Like a boy with too tight jeans and maybe a fur parka or something? Like something a unicorn would wear?"
The doctor looked at Brittany and shook his head. He walked around the desk and gripped Brittany's shoulders and saw that her pupils were a bit dilated and her eyes were red. "To be blunt, are you on something, dear?" He asked concerned.
"No," Brittany shouted and pushed past him, running in the direction of Santana's hospital room. "Santana! Santana, I'm sorry!" Brittany screamed, coming to an abrupt halt at Santana's room door. She wasn't there. Nothing was there. It was like she never was in the hospital in the first place. The sheets Kurt got her were gone, the placard by the door with her name on it was gone, and she was gone.
The nurse Brittany saw the day Santana was admitted walked past her. "Hey," Brittany called out, her voice shaking. The pixie like nurse spun around and smiled at Brittany. "Have you seen Santana?" She asked.
"Who's Santana?" The nurse asked.
The blood in Brittany's veins started to boil. Why does no one seem to remember the girl whose case seemed to look like a suicide? The realization started to kick in. She understood what Santana meant. There were no photos, Santana's mom storming out, now at the hospital. "Never mind," Brittany spat. She grimaced at the nurse and ran back outside.
"I have to find her," Brittany whispered to herself. "I've got to."
Hey guys, I've been working on some other pieces so that's why my updates are slowing down. Feel free to give me any type of constructive criticisms, suggestions or things you might want to see in the upcoming chapters. xx