All Along The Watchtower – Part 26.1
Paint it, Black
Author's Notes: This chapter is divided into four parts, each named after a Rolling Stones song. The first sub-chapter is angsty, but I promise I'll pay you back for it in spades by part 4, if you know what I mean :) I've been waiting to write this chapter... forever. It was a challenge for me both to set it up properly, and to get here. Lots of character analysis, lots of tying things together both for Derek and for you all. Thanks for sticking with me long enough to show it to you, and thank you so much to my beta readers, and thank you so much to those who take the time to leave feedback. I cherish all of it :)
Derek was tired. He was tired, and he didn't want to be there today. In therapy. Didn't want to recount the last twenty-four hours for this woman as though his life were a novel for her to read a new chapter wrought with drama every day. Didn't want to give her the normal update.
He usually liked it. Talking. Letting it all out. His frustrations. His thoughts. His successes and failures. He liked it because it was a guiltless release, like yelling at the top of his lungs while he was driving alone, or throwing ice cubes at the big tree in the back yard, or folding a pillow in half and pummeling it – all venting methods Dr. Wyatt had suggested that had helped him keep himself on a more even keel over time. He paid her to listen and to help, and he didn't ever have to worry about heaping too much on her like he did with Meredith. He usually liked it to the point that he wondered why he'd ever put it off so long.
Today, though, his exhaustion far outweighed the feeling of any benefits. He sat on Dr. Wyatt's orange couch, and all he wanted to do was collapse onto his side and take a long nap. Dr. Wyatt scribbled on her notepad in the chair across from him, and he was grateful for the break in talking, however momentary. Dr. Wyatt liked to collect her thoughts quickly. He knew she'd ask another question soon. He'd learned her ticks. Her nuances.
That was a given when you saw somebody for an hour a day every weekday for weeks on end.
Eight weeks.
Had it really been eight weeks since he'd first seen her?
Around that, at least. Maybe, a little more or less.
He rubbed his eyes, which were burning he was so tired. He'd made it two weeks again. Two weeks of relative normality before his body went kaput, the stress overwhelmed him, and he'd snapped, figuratively, in two. He couldn't seem to handle his life in bigger chunks yet. He'd gotten next to zero sleep the night before as awful nightmares had filled him to the brim like a beer mug, and it sucked. Sucked doubly, because Meredith didn't get any sleep when he was yelling and tossing and turning, either.
He closed his eyes. Swallowed. His throat hurt. He'd yelled himself nearly hoarse.
His head tipped forward.
His chin dipped toward his chest.
The room began to fuzz out from his awareness.
"I think we may have been approaching this the wrong way," Dr. Wyatt said, and he snapped awake.
Derek frowned as he rubbed his eyes again. Rubbed the bridge of his nose. Dr. Wyatt sat across from him, her pen still against her notepad. She'd crossed her ankles, and she sat poised in that familiar way that told him she was ready to continue. His bleariness would have to wait. "What do you mean?" he said.
"I think we're confusing two separate issues as one issue."
"How?" Derek said.
"Well, when you actually see Gary Clark, you can't tell he's not real until he's gone," Dr. Wyatt said. "He's usually threatening you, usually with a gun, and it makes you scared. He mimics the actions of the real Gary Clark, sometimes with slight exaggeration."
Derek blinked. "Exaggeration?"
"You told me he held a gun literally to your head this morning, for instance, but we know the real Gary Clark never actually got that close to you," Dr. Wyatt explained.
Derek jammed his elbows into his thighs and pressed his face into his hands. This was why he didn't want to do this today. He was too tired to deal with remembering and analyzing, not when the morning had been so bad. But he had to. He had to keep going. He had to get better.
"So, what about this morning?" he said, the words tired.
"You said you woke up, and he was standing beside the bed with a gun pointed at you, and you didn't want to get up," Dr. Wyatt said. "You absolutely feared for your life, and even though you realize now he wasn't actually there, you didn't know it then."
The last hour of darkness, he'd managed to fall asleep and stay that way, but then his alarm had rung. He'd been lying on his stomach, cheek mashed into pillow, a wet collection of drool on the pillowcase underneath his lip. His eyes had slid open, and he'd found himself staring at a shiny belt buckle. Meredith had already left for work for pre-rounds. The person standing next to the bed hadn't been Meredith.
Then the gun had pressed against Derek's temple.
And Derek hadn't been able to move.
I'll kill you, Gary Clark had said. I'll pull the trigger. You'll splatter like a ripe tomato.
Derek stiffened at the memory.
"I didn't want him to shoot me," Derek said. And then his eyes watered. He stopped to take a short breath. He hadn't been able to move. He'd almost peed on himself all over again. It'd felt so fucking real at the time. He'd been so terrified he hadn't been able to speak, and so humiliated when he'd regained his senses after the phantom Gary Clark had faded. Derek ran a shaky palm through his hair. "I... I... I'm..."
"Stuttering, pathetic fool," Mr. Clark said, and Derek's shoulders slumped.
"Do you need a break?" Dr. Wyatt said.
"No," he said vehemently, forcing himself through the memory. "No." It wasn't real. It hadn't been real. He hadn't wet himself. The vision had dissipated, and he was safe. He was safe, he didn't see that shit very often anymore, and he just... needed to get better. Wanted to get better. "I want to know what you mean."
"What you experienced this morning was a hallucination."
"I know that," Derek snapped tiredly. He rocked in his seat, and a deep, black, burbling well of emotion that he couldn't tamp squeezed his heart. "I know I'm hallucinating. Do you have any idea what it's like to know you're hallucinating? I just want it to stop!"
"But, see, I don't think you're hallucinating all the time," Dr. Wyatt said, her tone calm. "Sometimes, yes, like this morning. But not all the time."
Preposterous.
He was a volcano. Ready to explode. He launched to his feet. "But-"
"Bear with me," Dr. Wyatt said, holding up her hand. "Let's think about how Gary Clark talks to you when you can't see him."
Derek nodded, frustrated. He ground his teeth. "Okay," he said through his clenched jaw, the word long and drawn out and ending on an exhale that made his chest hurt he was trying so hard to keep a lid on his temper. He would not yell at Dr. Wyatt. Dr. Wyatt was trying to help. Just like Meredith tried to help. He vented frustration into pacing the length of the sofa instead of yelling.
"When you can't see Gary Clark, when he's only talking, you can identify that he's not real in the moment," Dr. Wyatt said. "You don't fear for your safety. He derides you, and he says things not even remotely related to when you were shot. Your primary focus is in getting him to be quiet. Does that summarize it well enough?"
"I guess," Derek said. The office was a pinwheel of color as he walked back and forth. He wouldn't yell just because he didn't like her conclusion, he told himself. He was tired, and things always seemed worse when he was exhausted and on bad days.
He would not yell.
"Okay, let's try something," Dr. Wyatt said. "Name me something that you hate about yourself."
"Really," Gary Clark said. "Do you have to choose just one thing?"
That brought Derek up short. He stopped, mid-pace, right in front of the fish tank. The fish tank burbled. An orange fish with gleaming scales drifted past his view. He turned to look at Dr. Wyatt. Blinked. His eyelids felt heavy, even when his blood was running hot, and that stupid, awful voice in his ear... Crippling. It was crippling.
"Maybe you were right all along," said Mr. Clark. "Maybe all the blood transfusions made you heal wrong. Maybe there is no cure, and you're just broken."
"Is he talking to you, now?" Dr. Wyatt said, the words soft.
Derek nodded mutely. He moved back a few paces and let himself fall onto the couch. The cushions squeaked under his weight. How could she not think this was a hallucination? Hallucinations could be auditory. He gathered up tents of his loose scrubs in his fists. Clenched his jaw.
"Tell me something you hate about yourself," Dr. Wyatt prodded.
A lump formed in his throat. A huge lump that made him want to choke. He looked at her carpet. At the magazines on the coffee table. At the basket full of stress balls in a rainbow of colors from violet to red.
"Just tell her, you piece of shit," Gary Clark said, almost a growl. "Pick any one thing from your bouquet of inadequacy."
"I'm af..." The word died in his hurting throat, and Gary Clark laughed at him. Derek cringed. Swallowed. "I'm afraid."
"Afraid to name something?" said Dr. Wyatt gently.
"No, I hate..." His fingers clenched. He cleared his throat. "I hate that I'm afraid."
Dr. Wyatt leaned forward in her seat. He'd interested her with his confession. Derek felt the fire of blush creeping across his skin as embarrassment supplanted the remnants of his fury.
"I want to talk about that in a minute, but for now, close your eyes," she said, and he did as she commanded. It was easier not to look at her anyway. The room swam with his exhaustion. "Think in your head what you just told me, and keep repeating it to yourself."
"I..." He cleared his throat again. The lump wouldn't obliterate. "Word for word?"
"Whatever comes naturally," Dr. Wyatt said.
This felt wrong. Wrong for her to be asking him to think awful things about himself. Wrong after weeks and weeks of her encouraging him and helping him sort through his demons. Still, though it felt wrong, he had no trouble, for once, following her directive. I'm a coward, he thought without reservation, though the damning label was something he hadn't been able to say out loud. Coward. I'm a coward. I'm a coward.
"You're such a fucking coward," Mr. Clark said in his ear.
Derek flinched. His heart throbbed in his chest, and the world felt like it was pouring out through his shoes.
"I don't want to do this anymore," he said faintly.
He heard her chair scoot forward. "Does the voice you just used in your head to repeat that thought sound a little like Gary Clark?" Dr. Wyatt said.
"Yes..." he managed.
"I thought it might," she said. "Derek, I think you've managed inadvertently to link your experience of being shot with anything negative you feel about yourself," she said. "Whenever you have a self-criticism, you frame it with Gary Clark's voice, but it's your criticism, not his."
Silence stretched.
For a moment, Derek saw the math equation sitting there, but the numbers didn't connect.
"Well, look at that," Mr. Clark said after a pause. "I'm the darker, shittier you."
Derek's lower lip quivered. He opened his eyes to a blur. He wiped his face, but tears renewed. "You're saying this is all my fault," he said thickly. "That all this shit he says is really just me. That I'm torturing myself."
"I'm certainly not saying it's your fault," Dr. Wyatt said. "Your experiences shape how you perceive the world. I'm saying your perception is very skewed right now, and it's affecting your quality of life."
"Of course it's fucking skewed," Derek snapped in a last ditch attempt at denial. His eyes leaked, and he wiped at them frantically. He wasn't doing this shit with Gary Clark on purpose. He wasn't. "I'm fucking hallucinating."
"You absolutely are hallucinating, and I know it's very frightening," Dr. Wyatt agreed. "But you're not hallucinating all the time. Not even most of the time. I think we should back off the hallucinations for a while. What I'm seeing now is what we need to work on the most."
What are you seeing, now?
The question loitered in his skull, unspoken, and he had no desire to speak it.
"You already know it's masochism," Mr. Clark said. "You've brought this misery to yourself."
He pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at his lap. He wanted to stop. He wanted to get up and leave. Not because he was mad anymore. Because he was bone-tired, and he didn't think he could deal with more terrible self-discovery today. The overwhelming urge to crawl into bed and curl up into a ball latched onto his sinews like a bird of prey and wouldn't go.
Except...
Get your freaking tumor fixed, Meredith had told him.
He took a deep breath. Counted to three. Let it out over three. He didn't feel panicky. Just tired. Upset. But the breathing helped anyway.
If Dr. Wyatt thought she saw something he needed to work on, that meant she thought it wasn't hopeless, he told himself. And if it wasn't hopeless, he owed it to Meredith to at least try. Owed it to himself. No matter how tired he was.
He glanced blearily at his watch.
Still time left.
He needed to get better, and they still had time left in this session.
He could go home and curl up afterward.
"If..." He swallowed when his whisper-soft voice died on him. "If I did this, how do I undo it?"
"Derek, this is not your fault," Dr. Wyatt said. "You didn't do this. It's not like a gun you fired. I'm saying your experiences have misshaped how you perceive the world. You've had a lot of heartache in your life that you haven't quite bounced back from. It's like..." She shook her head as she tried to think of a way to describe what she meant. "It's like somebody put sunglasses on your face somewhere along the way and didn't tell you. Of course things look dark as a result, and every time something bad happens to you, a thicker shade gets added, and things look darker."
He clenched his fingers. "I don't understand," he said.
"Let's see if I can paint this a better way," Dr. Wyatt responded. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. Then her gaze shifted back to him, and she sat poised with her pen. "Tell me something good about you."
He blinked.
"I don't know what you mean," Derek said, despite the sinking feeling in his stomach.
"Oh, come on," said Gary Clark. "It's an easy enough question."
"If you could brag about one thing, what would it be?" Dr. Wyatt prodded. "What do you like about yourself?"
I just need it to stop, Derek had said.
Meredith had stroked his face as the rain had pattered on the roof of the car. Need what to stop?
This feeling.
What feeling, Derek?
That I'm nothing.
He rubbed his cheek. He could still feel her touching him. Could still hear her words in his head, her voice tired and sad. She'd gotten quiet after that for a long moment, only to return with appalled certainty. Told him all the things he'd wanted to hear. That he'd wanted to believe so badly but could never quite convince himself were true in the long term.
That he was, indeed, something.
"Are you smart?" Dr. Wyatt said, pulling him back into the room. "A good surgeon? Why do you think Meredith should love you?"
He swallowed. The blur of tired tears renewed. He wiped his face with his hands. Once, again. His skin was starting to hurt. "I don't know."
"Well, you're a doctor," Dr. Wyatt said. "You got through medical school. You must be smart."
He looked at the floor.
"Why do you think you're not smart?" Dr. Wyatt said.
"I'm still here, aren't I?" he said, the words quiet. Eight weeks of constant coaching, and he was still there. In Dr. Wyatt's cheerful, floral-vomit office. Needing his hand held. Training himself, with her assistance, to cope.
Dr. Wyatt stared at him for a long moment. "Would you call somebody with ataxia stupid for having trouble walking, even with practice?"
"No," said Derek.
"So, why should you, somebody with PTSD, feel stupid for having trouble finding emotional stability, even with practice?" Dr. Wyatt countered.
"I..." His voice trailed away, and all he could do was shake his head.
"What about your surgical skills?" Dr. Wyatt said. "You're world-renowned. You must be a good surgeon."
He stared at his hands. They'd healed. After years and years of dry, irritated skin from all the hand washing, they'd healed. A vague thrum of disquiet ran through him when he realized he hadn't done anything of import for nearly a year, first because of his stifling job as Chief, and then because of his stifling disease.
"Not anymore," he said darkly.
"Why not?"
"I can't cut like this..." Derek said, anger leaking back into his tone. "I'd kill someone."
"But people still come to you for advice," she said. "You do consults, don't you?"
Dr. Langly, Dr. Fisk, and I were discussing how to proceed, and we were wondering if you could take a look, Dr. Weller had said while Derek had stood frozen at the threshold of OR 2.
Derek had done several consults since then, and they'd been fine.
Felt fine.
Outside the OR, anyway. Whenever he tried to go inside the ORs themselves, all he could think about was lying on the table. The overhead lights had looked like the headlights of an oncoming train. He'd been cold and shivery and naked and hurting and suffocating with every breath. The anesthesiologist had been jabbing his arm over and over with needles. Meredith had held his hand, and that was the only part he remembered with any firm clarity. She'd said she loved him, and he hadn't been able to say it back.
It'll be over soon, Meredith had told him.
He stared at Dr. Wyatt for a long moment, his tongue thick in his mouth. "I still do consults," he admitted.
"So your skill set is still there," Dr. Wyatt said.
"I..." He swallowed. "I guess."
Dr. Wyatt nodded. She scribbled something on her pad. "Do you think you're good-looking?"
You really don't have any idea how sexy you are, do you?
He shrugged. "Meredith says I am."
"But you don't believe her?" Dr. Wyatt said.
I see the man I married. Scars or not. And he's a very, very sexy man.
"It's so ugly," Derek said softly.
More scribbling. She didn't look up from her pad, as if she somehow sensed he didn't want her looking at him right now. Didn't want her judging the embarrassed red mottle creeping along his skin. "What's ugly?" she said, writing god knew what.
He touched his shirt. Felt the marble-sized lump at the top of his chest. It'd gone down a little, but he could still see it through a thin t-shirt when he checked himself in the mirror. When he pressed, he could feel the raised, jagged line down his center. When he wandered below his left nipple, there was a discolored pock that looked a little like somebody had taken a teaspoon and scooped out the muscle and bone underneath the skin. That's essentially what a bullet did. Obliterated things. Meredith insisted none of it mattered, but it mattered.
It mattered to him.
"The scars?" Dr. Wyatt said.
He nodded, unable to speak.
"Do you think Meredith is a liar?" Dr. Wyatt said.
He looked at Dr. Wyatt, appalled. "No, of course not."
"So, is she lying about you being good-looking?"
"Maybe, she's saying it to make me feel better," Derek said.
"So, you think she is lying."
"I didn't say that," Derek said, irritated.
"But it is what you're saying. A white lie is still a lie," Dr. Wyatt said, shooting down any potential uproar before it could burble further to the surface. "Has Meredith told you why she loves you?"
He picked up a stress ball – a violet-colored one – out of the basket and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
"She says I make her laugh," he said.
"So, you're funny."
"Wastes of space can't be funny," Mr. Clark said.
He rocked in his seat. "I don't know. I don't know."
"All right," Dr. Wyatt said. "All right. It's okay." And she backed off. As if she sensed he'd nearly hit critical mass. But then she took a conversational turn into something even worse. "Let's focus on when you were shot, instead."
He took a shivery breath. He didn't think he could think about this right now. Didn't want to remember being shot again in Technicolor horror. He could usually step through it at will, now. Usually. But he was tired, and starting to feel nauseous. Gary Clark flashed in front of him with a loaded gun. His teeth gleamed as he spoke. Derek clamped down on the image. Filled his head with other things.
Ultrasound pictures, for instance. He and Meredith flipped through them all the time. He had them memorized.
He held those in front of his mind's eye, and he wouldn't look away.
Get your freaking tumor fixed.
"Do you need a break, Derek?" Dr. Wyatt asked.
"No," he said flatly. "I'm okay."
Not.
Not okay.
"Let's pretend Meredith is the one on the catwalk instead of you, then," Dr. Wyatt said with a nod. She was intuitive and really good at her job, but not infallible, and he was grateful, in that moment, for that. "She's shaking. She can't speak straight. She keeps backing up. All the things you've told me you hated about how you responded in that situation. Gary Clark has a loaded gun pointed at Meredith. Do you blame Meredith for acting the way she's acting?"
Derek squeezed the violet stress ball. "No," he said, not willing to pretend anything of the sort. He wouldn't wish his hell on anybody he loved, least of all Meredith. He could never blame Meredith for being scared or upset over something like this. Never. And putting her in his place, even only in his head, seemed like the worst kind of treason to his marriage he could imagine. The mere idea that she had placed herself in front a bullet for him while he'd been unconscious in the OR had been enough horror for him to process, let alone imagining an additional, fake moment where she did it again.
He kept the ultrasound in his head, and he watched it, unblinking. The Meredith of his imagination remained unharmed and safe, just like the real one.
"Having a loaded gun pointed at you by someone with a clear intent to harm you is pretty scary," Dr. Wyatt said.
He squeezed the ball into a little pulp. Didn't give the memory foam a chance to bounce back. Reduced it from the size of an orange to the size of a grape. His knuckles lost all color as he squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed. "Yes," he said.
"So, why is it okay for Meredith to be scared, but your number one dislike about yourself is that you were scared in the same circumstance?" Dr. Wyatt said.
He had no answer.
Silence burgeoned in the room.
He had no answer.
None.
He listened to the fish tank. Let his gaze wander to it. The fish floated back and forth in lazy, sedate, colorful paths. They gave his eyes something to fixate on other than empty space. The fish split in two, doubling in number as he let his focus drift.
Get your freaking tumor fixed, Meredith had said.
"Why are you showing this to me?" Derek said, though he didn't want the answer almost as much as he wanted it.
"You push yourself hard," Dr. Wyatt said. "You judge yourself at a higher standard than you judge everybody else."
"I... don't," Derek said. He dropped the stress ball into the basket. His shoulders slumped. "I don't mean to." He pulled shaky hands through his hair. Hunched over his knees. Breathed thickly. "I don't mean to do this to myself."
"Derek, pushing yourself can be a really good thing. It can be a great thing. It helps you be a better surgeon. It helped you write poems and plan something romantic for Meredith. It helped you come see me for the first time. It's helping you right now to get through this session even though you're hearing things you don't really want to hear. It's helped you with any number of things."
He swallowed. She'd made him after all. He thought he'd been so stealthy with his disquiet, for once. "Then what..."
"Pushing yourself is a good thing, but pushing yourself too far is what we need to work on with you," Dr. Wyatt said. "Your self-image is extremely poor, and it's conflicting with the fact that you hold yourself to this..." She held her palms face out to him, gesturing for emphasis. "This impossible standard that you don't expect anybody else to meet."
"So, you are saying it's my fault," Derek said. "I'm screwing myself because-"
"Derek," Dr. Wyatt said, the word measured, even, patient. "This is not your fault. I can't emphasize that enough. If you don't even know you're wearing sunglasses, you're not going to know to take them off." Her chair creaked as she shifted in her seat and recrossed her legs. The shoulder of her pantsuit stuck up unevenly. Her blond hair caught on her blouse collar. "But now you do know those sunglasses are on. You know it. I just showed you the illogical effects of it in detail." He looked at his lap as she gave him the whole damning list. "You think you're not a good surgeon. You think you're stupid. You think you're unattractive. You think you're craven. You're not sure why Meredith loves you, even though she's told you at least one reason. What we need to do is give you some tools to start taking those sunglasses off so you can get a more accurate picture of yourself, one that isn't driven by unrealistic expectations."
He stared at her for a long time. She was patient. She let him think. Didn't slam him with another question while he picked at his scrubs and slowly processed things.
She... made sense. Derek was shocked when he realized it, that Dr. Wyatt made sense. He reviewed the conversation they'd had slowly in his head, and she... made sense.
You've had a lot of heartache in your life that you haven't quite bounced back from.
She made sense.
Grief threatened to overwhelm him, but he kept it down like Poseidon controlling a tide. He let the ultrasound picture sit in his mind's eye. Just for a little bit longer. He needed it.
She made sense.
All the things he wanted to believe so badly but couldn't seem to force himself to take to heart, particularly on bad days like today - they were true. All the nice, reassuring things Meredith told him were true. All the things his mother told had him were true. They were true, but he'd gotten himself so twisted up inside over the years with catastrophe after catastrophe, he couldn't see those truths anymore. Couldn't see the good things.
It was the opposite of rose-colored glasses.
And it... made sense.
"How can I make him stop?" Derek said quietly. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I just want him to stop."
"I think you can definitely reduce his appearances with some work," Dr. Wyatt said.
"How?"
"Anytime you hear his voice in your head, I want you to pause, and I want you to think. Would I blame Mark for the same thing? Would I blame Meredith for the same thing? Would I blame my mother for the same thing? Cascade through a list of your friends and family. If you're hearing a lot of nos, there's a very good chance you're wearing your sunglasses. Keep a journal again. Every time it happens, take some time and write down why Gary Clark's assertion can't be true. Write about all the people you wouldn't blame."
"What if what he says is true?" Derek said.
"Then you've found something you might want to improve about yourself, and I'm happy to help you with that," Dr Wyatt said. "Self-improvement is a great goal, and success at it can only help to improve your self-image. But my guess is you'll find a lot of untrue assertions."
"Okay," he said.
He sniffed. And then he couldn't hold anything in anymore. The ultrasound had worked as a stopgap to get him through the important moment, to help him hear the things he needed to hear, but now he was through with it, and he felt even more exhausted than he had before this awful session. His hands shook and wouldn't stop shaking, and he thought for a moment that he might throw up from stress.
Not his fault, she'd said. Multiple times. Not something he'd done to himself, at least not on purpose.
But he was the one who had the responsibility of fixing it, somehow. His father had been murdered in front of him. He'd crashed his motorcycle. Amelia had overdosed. Addison had cheated on him. Meredith had drowned. Jen had died, another fatality in a long line of fatalities wrought by his scalpel. Gary Clark had shot him. Bad thing after bad, catastrophic thing had reorganized Derek's psyche like fruit in a blender, telling him he'd failed, that he wasn't worth loving, that he was a waste of space. And Derek had to break his back picking up the mess left behind afterward.
Him.
Frustration over lack of progress became something worse.
It became fear as he stood before a mountain he wasn't sure he could climb.
That was a lot of bad things to overcome. Years' worth.
"You know you can't," said Mr. Clark.
Derek was so tired.
"Are you all right?" Dr. Wyatt said.
He blinked. "No," he said. He glanced at his watch, but he couldn't read the face of it. Couldn't tell how much time was left on this session, still. "I want... want to stop, now," he said. He couldn't take any more of this today.
"We can stop," Dr. Wyatt said. "We did a lot today. This is a lot to process."
"I need a minute," he said. Barely. The room felt like it was closing in. He reached for a replacement thought. Any replacement thought. The ultrasound picture he'd used before. He flailed for it.
"Take your time," she said.
He sat on Dr. Wyatt's couch, replaying that image of his baby behind his eyelids for a long time.
