Chapter 10: "Fear"

RPOV

"So, she's really okay? No internal bleeding, no anything? Are you sure? She's been in an accident like this before, you know. I'm her emergency contact, you guys called me. I'm basically family. You can—you should—tell me if something's wrong with her." I blinked my eyes open to the sound of Mitch's voice. I could feel the panic, the concern running through it, even as he babbled to the doctor at a hundred miles an hour.

"Mitch?" I groaned out,blinking,my fuzzy vision growing clearer each time I batted my eyelashes. "You're being so loud." I whined, as his figure came into view. He was perched on the chair beside me, his hand in mine, although I could barely feel it, probably because I was pumped full of painkillers at the moment. I didn't recognize the doctor standing a few feet away from him, but I could tell he was one from the white lab coat he wore over his scrubs. "Who are you? Where's my doctor?" I managed to ask, although my tongue felt like it was made of lead.

"We promised Dr. Whitlock we'd call him just as soon as you were awake. I'll go give him a ring." He moved to step away, but I opened my mouth to say more, stopping him in his tracks. "Yes, Ms. Summers?"

"Um... No, it's just... I meant Dr. Shepard. He... He treated me before, last time I was in an accident." I frowned to myself as I thought about Dr. Whitlock, about Jasper. Had he been here with me, after I arrived? My head felt like a jumbled mess. It was so hard to keep track of what had happened when. I was coming home from an extremely late study session, driving along my usual route. That much was clear. Then, my car had stalled, something it did now and then during cold snaps like these. I tried to get it running again, but it wouldn't move. Then, there was the sound of metal crunching against metal. I knew someone had hit me. When I opened my eyes, there was blood everywhere. My blood. The windshield was shattered, the front of my car crunched. I must have been pushed into the car in front of me. Everything hurt. I was so afraid, more afraid than I had ever been before. There was so much blood. I could have sworn that I was dying.

"...Ms. Summers?" I snapped my head back in the doctor's direction, smiling apologetically when I realized I had missed something.

"Sorry. I, uh... I'm still not quite feeling awake. What were you saying?"

He shifted a little uncomfortably as he flipped through my chart. "Well, Dr. Whitlock asked us to call him when you awoke... I told him I would, but, I was under the impression that you were..." He shook his head a little as he flipped the pages back down. "It's just that I've worked with him before and he's never done anything like this."

I frowned a little, trying to put his words together in my still foggy mind. "What are you talking about? I don't think I understand."

He paused another moment before he continued. "I'm sure it's just a simple mistake. Legally, because you've been declared mentally competent, and he's a therapist you see voluntarily, I can't call him without your permission."

"Oh. So, wait, he was really here? I thought I dreamt that, for a second..." I hesitated, shaking my head a little. "It's... It's okay. You can call him. You should call him. And Dr. Shepard, too. Even if I'm fine, it's best to keep everyone in the loop."

He nodded once, slipping my chart back into the slot at the end of my bed before he turned and left the room I was in.

"So... You really feel okay, Robyn?" Mitch chimed in, once the door had closed. "The doctor was just saying that you only have that scratch on your forehead... Your nurse wouldn't stop talking about how lucky you were to come out as well as you did when you were crushed between two cars like that." His voice trembled a little as he finished, and I knew he wasn't nearly as unfazed as he was pretending to be.

"I..." I forced a smile and squeezed his hand, hoping to assuage his fears. "I'll be okay. Don't worry. I've had a lot worse, we both know that. I... I hope I didn't scare you too much. I know this probably wasn't a phone call you wanted to get, especially not so soon after... Just… Please don't worry about me. I'm okay." Despite my best attempts to keep smiling, I could feel my throat tightening and my eyes prickling with the threat of tears.

I knew Mitch was afraid for me, like any good friend, like any good brother would be. More than anything, I wanted to comfort him, to keep him from worrying, to be less of a burden to him than I had been since my mother died. But, I was afraid, too. So afraid that I would meet the same fate as my parents.

I fought back a shudder as horrific images flashed through my mind, their bodies crunched and broken beyond repair. And who was to blame? Logic told me it was simple chance. People died in car accidents every day. Both of my parents just happened to be among those numbers. My dad just happened to hydroplane into a ditch, and my mother just happened to get sideswiped by the driver of a semi who hadn't been paying attention as he changed lanes. But, it felt like more. It felt personal. Like the pieces of my life were being purposefully stripped away, destroyed between pieces of metal, leaving me alone and cold, with a hole in my heart. I wanted to scream, to cry about how unfair it was. About how helpless I felt, like I was simply being carried through a rough, unforgiving river by a current whose direction I could neither predict nor understand. Why? Why all of this? Why me? Why my parents? I'd barely had eight years with my father, most of which I didn't remember, and only ten more with my mother. It wasn't right, I knew that much. I was supposed to be grown, with children of my own when they died. They were supposed to be here, with me. They were supposed to be here to watch me get married, to be there to see their grandchildren. And now, it almost seemed like I was destined to join them before any of that happened, that it was my fate to leave behind everyone I loved far too soon.

"Robyn...? You're... You're crying." Mitch mumbled, passing me a tissue with a conflicted expression. "You're not really okay... Are you?"

I sucked in a trembling breath, barely withholding a sob as I dabbed at my eyes with the tissue Mitch had handed me. "I'm fine. I'm fine. It's the pain meds, I swear. They're making me... Weird. I'm sorry. Could you...?" I moved to sit up, prompting him to release my hand and use a remote I hadn't noticed to sit the bed up with me. I smiled slightly when it stopped at an almost upright position, despite the fact that it made me a little dizzy. "Thanks."

"Are you hungry?" He asked, looking me up and down. "You've been asleep for a while. Almost a day, the nurse said. You should eat something."

"Yeah... Yeah, I am hungry, actually." I realized, a little surprised I had an appetite. "Can I eat? I mean, is it okay? Did you talk to the nurse, or the doctor? It's not going to... Mess with anything, is it?"

"Well... You did just get a bump on the head. What could it mess with?"

"Right. Um..." I paused for a minute, trying to remember from my last stay here which food from the hospital cafeteria had been least objectionable. I had less of an appetite then than I did now, but that was mostly because I'd been more heavily sedated, not to mention that I'd had to make the transition from IV fluid to solids after being in a coma for just under a week. "Could you get me an egg salad sandwich, some chips, and one of those Lipton ice teas?" I asked, hoping that the menu and the quality of the food hadn't changed much in the last four years.

"Coming right up." He announced as he hopped up out of his seat, eager to move, eager for something to distract himself from his own fears, of what might have happened, of what could happen. "I'll be back in a few."

"Don't forget to get yourself something, too!" I called out, moments after he had walked out the door, but I wasn't sure he'd heard me. Sighing, I closed my eyes and laid my head back, enjoying the silence that followed just as much as I hated it. On the one hand, it was quiet, peaceful. But, on the other, I was alone with my thoughts, something that rarely led to anything good.

I didn't realize I'd fallen asleep until I heard several sharp knocks on the door to the small room, although I didn't know if it had been for a second, five minutes, or an hour, I assumed it was less, rather than more, given the fact that I was still alone. "Mitch?" I called out, as I blinked myself back into reality. "The door didn't lock behind you or something, did it?"

The doorknob turned and I straightened up a little when I saw that it wasn't the man I expected. Instead, Jasper stood before me. He definitely looked worse for wear, something I never thought I'd say about the usually cool, calm, composed doctor. His wrinkled dress shirt looked as though it had been slept in and his golden curls were splayed every which way like he'd been running his hands through them. But, there was something else to him, a determination, a desperation that he exuded as he made his way toward my bedside in slow, even strides.

"Jasper... Hey." I began, slowly, not sure what to say to him as he stopped just inches short of me. "So, now I guess you know I'm still alive." I let out a dry, half-laugh, before I stopped myself. I lowered my head, somberly, unable to meet his eyes as I began to apologize. It was the least he deserved from me, after all. After all the time, all the energy he had wasted on me, he really deserved more, but I didn't have much to give him. "Look... I... I'm sorry, if I worried you... That I worried you. I should have called. There's no excuse for that. No excuse at all. I just... I didn't know what to say to you. I still don't, really. I guess... A part of me was afraid that you would convince me to come back. I thought... I thought I was ready, I thought therapy would help me, that I could do it, but I just... I don't know. It just made everything so much harder. I needed some space, some time to think."

He let out a long breath and sat down in Mitch's seat beside the bed. "Robyn..." He looked a little lost, like he didn't quite know how to respond, how to begin. "I want to help you, whatever that means. Not just as your therapist, but as someone who cares about what happens to you. Please, let me help you. Help me help you. If the way we've been doing things hasn't been helping, if you don't feel comfortable, we can change things. Just talk to me. Don't shut me out. I can help you."

I chewed on my lip for a long moment before I finally found the courage to face him, to tell him what I had thought every day, walking out of his office. "And... What if you can't? What if you can't help me? What if you can't fix me? What if I'm just... Broken? What then?"

"That's just your fear talking, Robyn... And, it's okay to be afraid. I understand why you would be. It's perfectly rational to be upset, to be afraid, to be angry, even. You've been through so much, especially in the last month... But, you have to know that you're not broken. When I look at you, I don't see a broken woman. I see someone who is strong, much stronger than she gives herself credit for. Someone that I can help, if she lets me."

I closed my eyes for a long minute before looking down at my hands in my lap. "You should go." I declared, after a long minute. "I... I just can't do this. I'm sorry."

After the words passed my lips, I realized it wasn't therapy that I didn't believe in, not really... I was less convinced that he could help me. He was good. He was everything that a therapist should be. He was kind, patient, insightful, understanding and more. He was in it for the right reasons. He cared. He even cared about me, as messed up as I was. But, that was the problem. I didn't want him to care about me. Him caring about me made this more than it was supposed to be. This—putting me back together, fixing me—was supposed to be his job, just business. I didn't want to be a burden to him, and I knew that the way I was right now, I most certainly was. I couldn't guarantee I would do anything more than make him feel like a failure in a profession in which he was clearly closer to being an expert. It was wrong of me to do this to him, to let him care so much and not succeed. Or, at least, that's what I told myself.

Maybe it was something else entirely that made me so opposed to it. Maybe I was afraid because I had started to care about him, as well. It wasn't the kind of care I felt for my fellow man, generally, or just anyone I met on the street, or in line at the coffee shop. It was different. I cared what he thought about me. I was wracked with guilt for the way I'd avoided him, for leaving him hanging, especially seeing firsthand how much it had affected him. He made me feel... Safe... And, at the same time, incredibly vulnerable. Maybe... Maybe what I was really afraid of was letting him, letting anyone get too close. Especially when it was starting to feel like the people closest to me were dropping like flies.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by a cool hand wrapping itself around mine. "Robyn, look at me." He demanded, waiting until I cautiously raised my eyes to meet his before he continued. "I'm not trying to make you do anything. As much as I think it would help you... As much as I wish you would... I'm not here to try to force you to come back to therapy. If that's not what you want, if you're not ready, it's okay." There was something in those dark golden eyes of his, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but it was almost as if he was staring right through me and into my soul. I felt… Naked. Not in a dirty way, but in a way that meant I was with someone who clearly knew me better than I knew myself. It was an odd and disconcerting feeling, but it only lasted for a second before it was gone again. Funny, I thought his eyes had been brighter yellow before, not this dark, deep amber.

"Then..." I furrowed my brow as I looked down at our joined hands, his cooler one in mine, his eyes seemed to trail down to them in the same moment, studying them as he waited for me to finish speaking. "Why did you come?"

He took a long, trembling breath in and out before he spoke again, his eyes still fixed on our intertwined fingers. "I came because—"

I looked up at the door as it opened, Mitch walked through, juggling a bag and a couple of drinks as he handled the door. "Hey..." He began, his eyes drifting between me and the man sitting in the seat he had previously occupied. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

"No. No, you're not. I was just leaving." Jasper answered smoothly, before I had a chance to speak. He stood and I immediately felt a sense of loss as his hand quietly slipped from mine. "Please, call me if you need anything, anything at all." The door closed softly behind him.

Mitch was slow to return back to his seat, confusion etched across his face as he set both our meals on a tray across my lap. "So... What was that about? I thought you stopped going to see him?"

"I have no idea." I muttered, reaching for the sandwich he had brought me, although I suddenly felt as if my appetite had left me. How had he known about my accident in the first place? Why had he come to see me, even after I'd stopped seeing him, after ignoring his calls for nearly a month? Why wouldn't he leave me alone? And why was I so afraid that he would?

Hours later, I was discharged from the hospital, with the promise that I would change the bandage on my forehead regularly and come back if the stitches didn't dissolve within the next two weeks. Mitch drove me back to my dorm room and made sure I was settled in before he left, with the promise of driving me back and forth to class the next day, if I was feeling up to it.

After locking up the door behind him, I rifled through my purse until the item I was looking for was safely between my fingers. Once I found the business card I had tucked away in one of its pockets, I began dialing the number into my cell with a trembling hand as I had many, many times in the last month. The only difference being I actually pressed the call button this time. I let it ring once, twice, three times, before I thought better of it and hung up. I swore silently to myself, shaking my head as I set the device aside and began getting ready for bed.