"I... I don't know what I'm even supposed to say," Helena muttered to Hunnigan. They sat on a bench located on the edge of a park, near a slightly secluded facility Helena was supposed to go to. Hunnigan reached to put her arm around Helena, and she eased into the gentle hold, leaning to rest her head on Hunnigan's shoulder.
After witnessing her friend's suicide, Helena had spent the first hour uncontrollably sobbing until she'd once again found herself being medicated to help her calm down enough to sleep, her dreams haunted by memories of what she'd seen, gory images of gray and red tissue landing on the floor, on Helena, in the rum and coke Jane had mixed for her, white bone fragments floating in the dark drink.
The next couple of days she'd spent mostly sleeping, then spending what little time she was awake crying herself back to sleep. It wasn't until yesterday that Hunnigan had finally gotten through to her and Helena had agreed to this.
"Well..." Hunnigan began slowly, tucking her free hand into the pocket of her leather jacket to shield it from the chilly spring wind. The weather had been nice and sunny for the past couple of weeks but the wind was still eating away at the warmth.
"Maybe start by stating your name and that you've made an appointment and that you're scheduled to stay for three months," she said.
Helena took a deep breath and stood up.
"I should go."
"Do you want me to walk you in?" Hunnigan asked and stood as well.
"No, I... I think this is something I need to do myself. You've already done so much for me, I can't... ever repay you any of it, just... thank you."
"You're my friend, I wouldn't abandon you."
"I don't think I deserve to have a friend as good as you, but I guess I'm doing something right to have you still in my life. Either that or you're being punished for something," Helena smirked.
"Well, either way, I don't plan on going anywhere, so," Hunnigan shrugged with a smile.
"And, thanks for taking care of everything, I..."
"Don't worry about anything, just focus on recovering, I promise I'll sort out everything else in the meanwhile," Hunnigan interrupted gently, not letting Helena stall any further.
"All right. I'm off."
"All right," Hunnigan nodded. "I'll come visit you once you've settled in, if you like?"
"I would love that, yes, please do," Helena smiled. "I'll see you later," she then said, managing to sound surprisingly light-hearted despite not really feeling it as she turned to walk across the yard, heading over to the building and finally entered through the double doors underneath a large sign that identified the place as White Blossom psychiatric hospital.
Paying three months' rent in advance wasn't something a government agent who earned roughly fifty-five thousand annually before taxes and deductions could do, which meant Helena had no other choice but to move out. Or, more accurately, she'd signed the required paperwork before checking in to White Blossom, but the actual packing and moving her things to storage was something she didn't have the time for.
Hunnigan hadn't given her any more time, she'd known Helena had attempted to keep putting checking in off indefinitely because there was always one more thing that needed to be taken care of before she could, but Hunnigan had taken over and told her she'd handle it in Helena's absence. Fortunately, Helena didn't seem to be one who collected knicknacks which made packing her things relatively easy; there was no need to keep sorting things because all things were necessary.
Hunnigan finished packing up the living room and the kitchen and finally moved on to the bedroom. She gathered Helena's clothes and shoes into large plastic bags before turning her attention to the dresser by the bed, the piece of furniture doubling as a nightstand. There was a book on it, another one of the romance novels Helena seemed to enjoy. Hunnigan made a mental note to bring it to Helena when she'd get to visit her.
She dug out the underwear and socks haphazardly tossed into the first drawer (noticing most of Helena's underpants were men's boxer briefs) and bagged them before moving on to the next drawer. Within was a photo album, an old mp3-player and underneath those a shadowbox Hunnigan paused to look at for a moment. In the middle of it was a portrait of Helena in her dress uniform, the photo surrounded by various medals she'd accumulated during her service.
She was just a kid, Hunnigan mused looking at Helena's picture, thinking back to what she'd been doing at seventeen. Typical stupid things teenagers did, trying cigarettes and alcohol, her biggest concerns in life ranging from figuring out how to conceal a huge pimple to worrying about losing a basketball game; she certainly hadn't been preparing to get shipped off to a war zone.
Poor girl, she sighed internally before putting the item into a cardboard box with the other things.
"All right," Hunnigan said to herself, checked her watch and did a tour of the apartment to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. Once satisfied everything was packed, she called the guys she'd hired to actually do the carrying and transporting. Within a couple of hours, the apartment was empty, cleaned and the keys given back to the landlord.
April 7th. After a week, Helena had finally gotten used to where she was waking up, and she'd grown to rather like the routine despite finding her stay somewhat boring. On the plus side, she'd had a lot of time to catch up on reading and practice drawing, a skill she'd neglected to hone due to lack of time and genuine interest; she had the time now.
She'd also made a friend when a young woman named Sera (who had an easily recognizable and very uninhibited laugh, and who'd given herself a very unfortunate looking bangs with a vegetable knife because she'd gotten so annoyed at her hair getting in her eyes, and who always stared up at the sky grinning when they were outside because she liked to smile at the clouds) had checked in and struck up a conversation after noticing Helena also had a habit of doodling. She spoke fast and was sometimes downright incomprehensible but there was a certain joyfulness about her that Helena found herself drawn to, Sera was fun to hang out with, and Helena hadn't even realized how much she'd missed having someone like that in her life.
For a good while, Deborah had been the fun person who would think of something ridiculous and go do it (like running up to a band performing kids' songs to a group of children and yelling "Play 'Paranoid!'" which was something Helena would've found funny but would've never done herself) just because it would be funny. Her ability to go about life completely unembarrassed and free to do whatever she wanted had been fun to witness and be a part of... at least until it became Helena's responsibility to clean up the messes Deborah made or got herself into when carefreely partying her way through life. But it was that exact happiness, that energy, that life force that had made her such a joy to be around, and Helena hadn't met anyone else quite like that, not until meeting Sera who had that same energy.
"Hey, Happy! Whatcha doodlin'?" Sera inquired cheerfully as she hopped to sit on the table and peered over at Helena's notebook.
"So, it's 'Happy' today, huh?" Helena chuckled. So far she'd been Harley, Perrbear, Har-Har, Hap, and Harri Perri. Sera had given nicknames to everyone and considering the frequency with which the names changed it was quite taxing trying to keep up with who she was referring to at any given time, Helena had given up shortly after making her first attempt of keeping track. She still didn't know who someone Sera called Widdle was supposed to be.
"Ooo, is that the woman you never shut up about during group?" Sera asked, tilting her head as she stared at the simple silhouette of a woman's figure, her hair tied up as she looked to the side, leaning to her left arm.
"Who?" Helena asked innocently and closed the notebook.
"Inky!"
"You're not making any sense."
"Pbbth, what fun is there in making sense? You're smart, but you're sort of stupid," Sera rolled her eyes as she rocked back and forth on the table for a moment before standing up and walking away, ending the conversation as abruptly as she'd started it.
Helena glanced up when the mental health technician named Adam came by and informed her it was time to meet with doctor Wilkes. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, she asked how Helena's trauma timeline was coming along and Helena felt like a kid who'd just gotten called out for not doing their homework.
She'd almost finished it before getting distracted thinking about Hunnigan and wondering how she was doing which had ended in her idly drawing Hunnigan rather than finishing her assignment.
"I... almost didn't make it because it's unbelievable. Like, literally, I'd barely gotten started and then I looked at it... and I thought that if I showed it to anyone, they wouldn't believe me."
"Why wouldn't they believe you?"
"Because I don't think I come across as someone who's been through all this," Helena said and to emphasize her point, she held up her notebook, flipping several pages detailing the events of her experiences.
"I seem normal, you know. I'm good at my job, I don't do drugs, I don't drink excessively... often anyway, I go to work, come home, do normal things. Nobody would believe me if I told them that inside I'm just an insecure ball of emotional scar tissue. And it's my own fault, really... you know, that no one would believe, because I've done everything in my power to convince everyone that I'm fine."
"Is there a reason why you kept insisting you're fine despite knowing you weren't?" Doctor Wilkes asked and Helena sighed deeply. There wasn't a reason, not a good one, not one that didn't serve only to show just how pride and vanity had very nearly destroyed her.
"It's embarrassing."
"Asking for help is embarrassing?"
"No," Helena shook her head, "needing it is embarrassing. I was raised to believe that needing help is for wussies, you don't have a breakdown, you cope. If you can't, you're a useless drama queen."
"I can't imagine how exhausting it must be pretending you're all right on top of feeling anxious, scared and depressed," Doctor Wilkes commented and Helena swallowed hard as she felt the tears start stinging in her eyes.
"It is, and I just—" she sniffled and took a shuddering breath, "kept thinking that if I make it through this one more thing, then I could take a break, but things just kept happening and piling up, and everything just got worse and worse, and I didn't know what to do about it. I still don't. I dread to imagine what is going wrong as we speak, what 'fun' things I have to look forward to when I get home," she said, the tears fading as anger began to bubble.
"Oh, wait, sorry, I don't have a home anymore," she then corrected herself agitatedly.
"I understand it's not easy to just not think about all that, but I really want you to spend your time here focusing solely on your recovery. You said Hunnigan was taking care of things for you while you're here, right?"
"Yeah, she's... she's been helping me, she's the one who convinced me to check in here in the first place," Helena muttered, getting a little warm in her heart when she thought of Hunnigan.
"Okay, I know Hunnigan well enough to be able to say that I am absolutely certain everything is being handled, you have nothing to worry about," Doctor Wilkes smiled and Helena chuckled, nodding a little. That was Hunnigan all right, responsible, reliable, trustworthy, and loyal.
"It's not that I don't trust her to take care of everything. Hell, she's undoubtedly doing a better job of it than I was. I just feel like a burden, and I expect it won't be easy adjusting to everything when I get out, that's all."
"Do you feel up to getting started?" Doctor Wilkes nodded toward Helena's notebook.
"I guess I have to, huh," Helena sighed and opened it.
Doctor Wilkes had told Helena to think of her mind as a cluttered desk or a messy filing cabinet, and her traumas as random pieces of paperwork just thrown on top of teetering piles of previously haphazardly stored paperwork. Whenever she touched one askew file — in other words when something triggered a slew of bad memories— the whole system collapsed. Her job while staying here was to go through all the files and papers and organize them. It would be painful, difficult and exhausting going through all of it, but Helena believed Doctor Wilkes when she said it was necessary, and would help.
"I suppose we'll be a cliché and start by talking about my parents and my childhood, huh," Helena muttered and Doctor Wilkes smiled, nodding once again.
"My dad was a marine, he went to fight in the Gulf War shortly after I was born and came back a bit colder and more aloof than he'd been before, at least that's what I was told. I don't know much about my mom or her side of the family, only that she wasn't in touch with any of them," Helena began.
Deborah had collected stories, family history, photos, but most of them had been from their father's side. Made sense considering it was their father's mother who'd raised them, but it also left a lot to be desired as far as details and accuracy went. There weren't many stories Frances Harper had told that weren't colored with her own personal opinions on the matters she discussed.
"According to my grandmother she was a lazy slut. But, she was biased, didn't think anyone was good enough for her son, so... or at least I assume so, could be I'm wrong, could be she really was a lazy slut. Like I said, I don't know and I have no means of finding out. I do know... there's a pretty good chance that Deborah was only my half-sister. I'm not sure about that either, could be I'm remembering wrong, could be my mom told my father that just to get under his skin."
Fine! She's not yours! Is that what you want to hear? Are you happy now!
The last thing Helena had heard of her parents before they'd left in the car which one of them (presumably her mother) had intentionally driven into a concrete wall. Helena had looked into that at least, to make sure it had been intentional. The police reports she'd dug up had stated there'd been no skid marks to indicate the driver had tried braking. Could've been she just hadn't had a chance to, but in her gut, Helena knew that wasn't the case; she'd done it on purpose.
"So, there's that brand of fucked up that's been fucked into the person that I am," Helena smirked wryly. She took a moment to stare at her notebook, sighing at the long list of abuses she'd endured in the hands of her grandmother. It would take all day at this rate.
"She beat us. Well, mostly me. Sometimes it was deserved I guess. Like I'd do something stupid that ended badly, mess around and spill my drink at the dinner table or break a plate, or some shit like that."
"None of those things make it deserved," Doctor Wilkes interjected. Helena supposed she had a point. She didn't think she'd ever seen someone yell at a grown-up about breaking a plate or spilling a drink; they'd just sigh and get something to clean the mess up with.
If I ever have kids I'll never— you're never having kids, what a stupid thought, who would you have them with? Don't make me laugh, an intrusive thought donning the voice of her grandmother interrupted her musing.
"Anyway, she hated me, constantly told me how useless I am, called me sick for a reason I still haven't figured out, kept comparing me to my parents — mostly pointing out how much I in her opinion resembled my lazy slut of a mother. We'll be here all week if I go into all these in detail," Helena said, tapping her finger over the notes she'd made.
"We will have to go through all of them, but you're right, that is not a task for today," Doctor Wilkes agreed.
"Fast forward to when I turned seventeen and grandma told me to enlist or get the hell out of her house. So, that's how I wound up at the army and met Sergeant Good," Helena muttered. "That's... also a subject I'd rather not talk about in detail right now."
"I understand," Doctor Wilkes said softly.
"I received orders to go to Afghanistan where I served as a medic, and saw some... pretty gruesome things. And then I saw my mentor get blown up, and my friend lose a leg. I'm... sorry, I really don't want to talk about all that. Or any of this, it's just..."
"You don't have to right now, we're just going through what you have written down so we'll have an idea of what we'll work through in time when you're ready."
"...then Deborah died... or... more like I had to let her die. You know the kind of things the DSO investigates mostly, it was one of those kinds of situations."
"I understand," Doctor Wilkes let her know.
"I had to..."
You should put her down if you have any sympathy for her, Ada's words rang in her ears. Crude, callous, but also... accurate. It had been exactly that, she'd had to put down her own sister. She'd put down the young woman she'd spent her entire life protecting and loving. She'd put down the only person she'd still had left in the world and now she was alone.
"I had to kill her after she got infected," Helena said out loud, more because she needed to hear herself say it than because she needed Wilkes to understand.
"...my hatred toward Simmons who was behind the entire bullshit thing was what kept me going until I'd avenged Deborah's death. After Simmons was gone, I thought... that it was finally over, all this fucking living, you know. I thought I'd get the death penalty because I'd committed treason, it was my fault the president got infected and killed. And I wanted to die, I mean..." Helena paused, taking a second to consider her following words carefully.
The last thing she wanted was to end up under suicide watch. Openly admitting she'd wanted to die (let alone admit to that little incident at Christmas when she'd literally been half a second away from blowing her brains out) would undoubtedly lead to getting the staff's undivided attention, and she didn't have any interest in welcoming the lack of privacy that would bring.
"I accepted that I would die. I was relieved, I wouldn't have to worry about any of this shit anymore, I could just...die, you know."
"Have you felt suicidal?"
"No," Helena lied, "I've felt indifferent about dying. Like, I don't want to live but I don't really want to die either, but if I did die, I wouldn't mind."
"Hm."
"Anyway, as you can see, I didn't die. So more shit kept piling up, and then this whole sorry mess with the fucking trial and Good's murder and Jane's suicide... I don't know what to do."
"Well, that's why we're here, to figure it all out and help you get through this."
Doctor Wilkes went on to tell Helena she felt that the eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy would be just what Helena needed and explained the steps involved in EMDR therapy. Helena admitted it sounded a bit silly, how would making specific eye movements while discussing the worst things she'd ever experienced and forcing herself to relive them make her feel better? She didn't know, but she was hardly in a position to argue over the doctor's methods.
If it looks stupid but it works, it's not stupid, Helena thought.
Once the session was officially over, Adam returned to escort her back to the day room where she was greeted by the ever-cheerful Sera and her neverending questions.
"Happy, have you ever punched a bear?"
"...why would I have punched a bear?" Helena frowned.
"Well, with all that army and cop training you told me you have, I figured if you'd want to, you could, yeah? Unless your trainers told you not to use your powers for punching bears."
"No," Helena chuckled, "I was never specifically told I couldn't use my training to punch bears."
"Well, there you go then!" Sera said happily and then held out her hand, giving Helena a drawing which featured her punching a bear while Sera stole the honey comb the bear had taken from the oversized and happy-looking bees decorating the edges of the drawing.
