AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, apparently I got a second wind and couldn't wait to start directing this story down it's new path. I hope everyone enjoys the route it's going, and maybe there are some breaks in the thick, high glass ceiling. How long will it take? That's still to be determined. The bone takes a long time to heal once it's broken, but it will heal. As time helps things to do.

EIGHTEEN

2 years later. . .

The pill passed from her lips to mine. Almost instantly I was hit with a large, slow uphill climb I knew would let me drown in the bodies sweating and grinding around me. I smiled at her, putting my arms up in the air, and with a wink, dismissed my dealer for the opportunity to get lost amongst the crowd. The beat was heavy, the strobe lights distorted my vision. The pill took me higher. I could feel everything and nothing at the same time. Sweat was dripping down my brow, my fingertips hummed as they brushed with hair and clothing that were not mine. I was soaring and spiraling. And the music was pulsing. . .pulsing. . .pulsing. . .

Groaning I immediately bemoaned the fact that my pillow was covered in my own drool. The light creeping into my window was blinding, so with eyes shut, I turned my hand from where I was laying on my stomach and felt the bed beside me. Didn't hook up last night. Good. Thank fuck. I barely have any time to celebrate my restraint when I hear the downstairs door open and shut.

"Emily Jane Fitch! Get up!" Her goddamn voice carried like a banshee into my ears, and I mumbled, a 'don't, don't, don't,' as I heard her stomping heels clapping against the wood in the hallway. I'd left my door open but she somehow still managed to slam the knob into the wall anyway. Throwing the light on she demanded, "Get up you lazy cow!"

Covers were ripped from the half of my body that still managed to somehow lay on the bed and I would have screeched out in pain if my throat weren't so dry. Katie's pressure bent down the duvet and I felt large amounts of water being tossed into my face. "The fuck!" I cried as I sat up, and immediately regretted the quick action. My hands were on my head as I tried to focus in on the clock while wiping water from my eyes. "The fuck you do that for?"

"Because, you're going to miss your session," Katie said, tossing me a clean shirt and pointing to the dresser. "There's your meds. Take them. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes or I will go and get the bucket." I wanted to slouch back onto the bed and tell her to fuck off. But I'd been subject to Katie's idea of a hardcore wake up call twice already this week. Wasn't looking for a third. Begrudgingly I slowly changed clothes, popped the tiny white pill into my mouth, this one not having the sweet after taste of cherry lip gloss, and made my way downstairs. Katie was already buttering the toast.

Dr. Altman's office wasn't particularly lush. Which was rather odd considering Katie had enough money to be the pope. Her reasoning had been that I would be more likely to talk to someone if it didn't look like they could also buy and sell me. Her reasoning had been correct. But it was an unfortunate side effect that my therapist was a gorgeous, bright blue-eyed blonde. My heart always fluttered just the tiniest bit when I saw her. In one of our sessions I had revealed my little crush to which she immediately tried to psychoanlize the crap out of it. Turns out she was right.

She did just happen to look a lot like Naomi.

She sat in her plush green chair, no notebook in hand, just a cup of tea by her side. Irish breakfast. Always the same. I always took mine white, with honey. Again, always the same. That is when I chose to partake, and with this wicked hang over, that didn't look to be likely. "It's unusual you decide to lay down on the couch," Dr. Altman observed with a smile.

"What can I say, Teddy, you just so happen to have a very comfortable lounger." Dr. Altman's hands were folded, and her left hand slowly tapped the top of her right hand. She always did this when it looked like she was changing course or looking to redirect our conversation. She isn't the only one who is observant.

"Emily, I thought we'd talked about-"

"I know, I know, Dr. Altman," I corrected. "Maybe I'm just the tiniest bit bitter when I'm hung over. You never did accept my invitation for drinks, after all."

Standing, she crossed over to her nearby desk and removed a bottle from within the top drawer. Two little while pills appeared in her hand seconds later as did a bottle of water. Crossing back to me she handed me both. "Here. Take these."

Cracking open the bottle I popped the pills in my mouth, swallowed, and took half the bottle of water down my throat with me. It was only after I consumed the drugs that I even thought to ask what they were. "Are you allowed to just hand out drugs to your patients?"

Dr. Altman smiled at me from where she now sat, back to the legs crossed, hands folded position she so often liked to don. "It's just some paracematol."

Lying slowly back against the couch I gave her a kind smile and closed my eyes. "Thanks." I lay there for several minutes, not talking, eyes still closed. Altman didn't make one more this way or that to try and get me to talk. At least not until I was just sure enough that maybe the pain meds would actually help, and the last thing I wanted to do was-

"Are you up for talking today or are we just going to sit here the whole hour?" her soft, yet sultry voice asked. I slowly opened one eye, gave her a glanced then closed them again, taking the palms of my hands and rubbing them steadily against my lids.

"Katie would deserve it."

"Your sister is paying for your therapy and you choose to spite her because she wants to help you?" I sighed, my hands slouching down to my side as I simultaneously strained to get myself into a sitting position as well as answer the accusation.

"I'd choose to spite her because she's butting in where she doesn't belong." I didn't really mean that. I knew all Katie had done in the last two years was try and help me through all of my ridiculous bullshit. I knew what I was doing was juvenile and irresponsible. I knew that all I needed was one more solid fuck up at my job for me to lose everything that I'd worked for because...she wanted it. Wanted it for me. Still, Katie could piss right the fuck off today. It had been a rough week.

"Are we going to be talking about Katie again today?" When I didn't answer her immediately, just continued to stare at her from where I sat, she added, "It's your hour, Emily. But I think it'd do you some good. Just start by saying whatever is on your mind."

I wasn't planning on saying anything outright, though I was momentarily contemplating opening my mouth to form some sort of witty retort when my phone went off. I looked up at the clock at the time and knew exactly who it would be. Because it had been the same fucking word the last two fucking years from the exact same fucking person. I ignored it for a few minutes, staring down Dr. Altman, who knew damn well it would be if I checked it. But she had the audacity to say anyway, "Aren't you going to get that?" I stared hard at her for several moments before I pulled my phone from my pocket and found exactly what I knew I would.

Gina: Fragile.

One word. One fucking word. It's all I was allowed to get, which had been Gina's idea, not mine. No phone calls, no emails, no messages, no texts, no visits. Emily Fitch was nothing more than a ghost of a memory on a timeline now. It always made me sick seeing the word.

"Your daily text," Dr. Altman finally said, a sense of happiness to her tone. "Anything more?" Stuffing the phone back in my pocket, I offered up a sarcastic smile in order to try and brush off the beginnings of ringing in my head. Just the fucking hang over.

"Never," I replied.

"You don't seem terribly phased."

"Two years. One word. Would you be?"

"It's not about whether I would be or not, Emily. It's about how seeing that word makes you feel."

A short pause became an even longer pause as I swallowed hard at least three times to keep the lump in my stomach from coming up through my throat.

"Empty."

"The text makes you feel empty, or you feel empty in general?"

"In general."

Dr. Altman looked at me with a studious shift of her body as if for the very first time she was almost afraid to ask the question teetering between us. Thankfully I knew what she would ask next, and had already begun preparing my response when she leaned her elbows onto her knees in a psycho-shrink move to appear more intimate with me, hoping I'd open up. Maybe I would.

"Have you tried filling that emptiness with anything apart from dancing and drugs?"

"Sex."

I was rather impressed but not altogether surprised she didn't even so much of blink back the shock of my reply.

"So you're seeing someone?"

Apparently it was to be me who shifted in discomfort. Tugging down the hems of my jeans, I looked away momentarily feeling that lump threatened to break the back of my throat. It did it's job for a brief second, my sigh having a heft of husk from my voice on the tail end. Blinking a few times I looked back up at Dr. Altman and smiled.

"I didn't say that."

"No. You didn't," Dr. Altman leaned back into her chair, thought definitely with more of a sense of casualness than she had exhibited, and it certainly came off as less artificial than her previous attempt. "And you feel like this ritual of promiscuity is helping or hindering the progress we're trying to do here."

"It's helping me. . .survive."

"Surviving isn't the same thing as living, Emily. What is it that makes you feel alive? Your work, your family-"

"Naomi." My reply wasn't a shocking one to her, though it always seemed to be to me, every time I brought her up, said her name aloud. I was the one which was the ghost on her timeline, but she'd turned into the singing phantom of the night, everything about her encompassing me to the point where I didn't have a rafter to hide in.

"Naomi is no longer in your life. You made that choice. Is it something you're now regretting?"

I couldn't look at her while I confessed my guilt. But I couldn't look away either. So instead, I just closed my eyes, the hollowness of my own voice bringing that lump into it's victorious release as my broken words flooded the quiet room. "I was supposed. . .to feel. . .free. I. . .I was supposed to spend. . .this time trying to get to know myself again. Trying to figure out who. . .I was without Naomi fucking Campbell." I waited for her to hand me a box of tissues because I felt the tear stains down my cheeks. When she didn't move after several seconds, I contemplated opening my eyes and facing my extractor. But I didn't have to.

"And who are you?" she asked.

We don't think about those things. Not really. At the very least I hadn't, in spite of what I had just said. My attempts at finding myself had been using the card which had been given to me by someone who was barely more than acquaintance at the time to obtain a job I probably could have gotten on my own merit anyway. And I'd spend every hour of the day at photo shoots, working and learning, hoping that one day they'd let me actually stand behind a camera for anything which was more than a landscape or background shot needed for the final product. And at night? I'd take anything I could swallow and put my hands down anyone's pants that would let me. Never the other way around though. I was practically aching for someone to touch me. Without that I was hollow. I was-

"No one," I found myself answering as I opened my eyes, feeling the oncoming tears recede.

"And do you honestly believe that?"

"Right now I do."

Dr. Altman sighed and nodded, taking her own time to pause as I sat and watched her limited movements. Finally, with a smile, she said, "That's ok for right now. But it won't help you in the grand scheme of things, Emily. Naomi is fighting her illness. You have adopted one of your own."

I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the sound of her fact. "So what's the diagnosis?"

"Crippling loneliness."

Too right.

"And the cure for that?"

"Finding out what makes you want to get up in the morning. Even if that's Naomi fucking Campbell. Getting up because it's what she would want. Moving on because it's what she would want."

I shook my head. "She never wanted that."

"From what you tell me, she wanted to die." I shook my head again, but slower this time. A soft whisper of a laugh tickling out from the back of my throat as I felt a light begin to brighten just behind my eyes.

"No. She didn't want to die. She wanted me to live."

I'd never seen Dr. Altman look so pleased before.

"I think that's what we call a breakthrough, Miss Fitch."