A/N: info/warnings in prologue. Reviews are love and love makes the world go round! :-)

Part 11

Mindy makes it through Monday and Tuesday; she goes about her normal routines, save for the ones that involved Josh. She doesn't speak to him and she avoids making eye contact with him. She ignores the idle gossip and chatter about their break-up and it fades away by the end of the school day on Tuesday. She remains composed, concentrating on taking notes and doing any busy work that she can find. Anything to keep her from thinking about that weekend.

Tuesday afternoon is the soonest that her therapist can see her. Her appointments are every other Thursday and maybe it could wait a couple more days but it'll be nice to talk to someone about it.

Mindy and her therapist exchange the usual pleasantries before the therapist prompts her with the question of "So how have you been since your last appointment? It's been a while since I've seen you early in the week."

She lowers her walls completely and lets the flood gates open for the next forty-one minutes. She crumbles and let the pain flow through her. She lost a part of herself that she barely knew existed and now she feels lost. She hasn't felt this lost since her breakdown. She doesn't want to experience that again. She is terrified that another breakdown of some sort may be in her near future because of this. She wants to be better; she needs to be better.

She admits that she feels anything but relieved about losing the baby. She hurts and feels this desperation. She wants it back. If she could have a do over, if there was something that she could so that she wouldn't lose the baby, she would do it.

Her therapist reiterates that the miscarriage wasn't her fault and that there was nothing Mindy could have done to prevent it.

"I would rather feel numb."

"Numbness is not healthy, Mindy. You need to embrace the pain and all the other emotions that you are feeling so that the healing process can begin. You need to find the proper channels through which to express yourself."

The therapist then asks about Mindy's parents and Josh, their reactions and how they are dealing.

Her parents. She can't talk to her parents about it. They could deal with her going crazy but this is a bit much for them to handle. Her father can't fathom that she is sexually active and her mother seems to wish that she hadn't known. From what she can discern, they are happy or at least relieved that her pregnancy ended before anyone knew.

Josh. She doesn't—she wants—she can't…she can't be with him right now. She can't look at him because she's afraid that the sight of him and the sound of his voice are only going to remind her of what she's lost. (What they've lost.) She'll wonder if the baby would have had his eyes and her nose.

She'll talk to him once it's easier to bear, when she aches less, when her world isn't topsy-turvy.

"You don't think that maybe his world is a little 'topsy-turvy' as well?"

Mindy allows that it probably is.

She starts pulling herself together and drying her tears. Her therapist suggests that Mindy return on Thursday for her regular appointment and offers to squeeze her in next week as well, if that's okay with Mindy. Mindy agrees because she recognizes that she does need someone to talk to until she gets her balance back.

Her session ends a few minutes early and she goes to the waiting room to wait for her mother. She freezes when she sees Drake sitting in a chair, flipping through a magazine. She'd known that he went to therapy but she had no idea that his therapist shared a practice with hers. He glances up and sees her and sort of waves. He's seated near the door so she's going to have to walk past him on her way out.

She takes a deep calming breath before walking in his direction. It's a nice day, she can wait outside.

"Mindy."

She stops, wary. "Yes?"

"How are you?" he asks lamely.

"I'm okay." It's as close to the truth as she's willing to tell anyone who is not her therapist.

"Josh is a wreck. He really wants to talk to you. He's having a bad time with this."

"And I'm not?" she snaps. She glances at the receptionist then whispers, harshly, "I'm pretty sure that I'm having a worse time than he is."

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't know, would you because you won't talk to him." He tries very hard not to sound nasty.

"Drake, this really isn't any of your business—"

"It kind of is since I witnessed you—" the words catch in his throat and he quickly replaces them with, "what happened."

How is she supposed to to deal with it when no one wants to say it? "What happened." All of these tidy words and vague phrases that gloss over the grotesqueness and gravity. How can she wrap her brain around it? How is she supposed to feel? It makes everything that she and Josh had seem like it should be deemed wrong and shameful.

"My relationship with Josh or lack thereof, is none of your business."

The receptionist tells Drake that he can go in before he has a chance to argue with Mindy.

Mindy walks outside. She checks her phone and there's a message from her mother letting her know that she's running about five minutes late; she got caught in traffic behind a fender-bender. Mindy deletes the message then finds herself scrolling through her contacts. She stops on Josh's name, her thumb hovering over the call button as he mother pulls into the parking lot.

She presses the end button, navigating away from the call screen.