Chapter 17 – Moral Compass

After sending the email to my professor, I planned to just go right to bed and attempt to at least get a few hours of sleep, but I was surprised when I quickly received a reply.

At that hour, I certainly wasn't expecting anything until the morning at the soonest, or even more likely, later that week, but my professor's returned email was more than a little comforting. She basically expressed her interest to assist us in any way she could and asked if I was willing to meet with her in person. With it being an online course, the students were located all over the country, but coincidentally, my professor was based in Seattle. Her close proximity, and willingness to help, gave me a sense of relief I didn't even realize I needed. I thanked her for her prompt response and told her I'd get back to her about meeting.

Just having that comfort and glimmer of hope knowing a professional might be able to help us, was amazing, and I was able to finally go to bed and sleep soundly for the rest of the night.

When I woke up the next morning, I was surprised that it was already almost eleven. It was a good thing I had the day off of work, or I would have been seriously fucked.

But despite the new day and feeling refreshed and eager to set up plans with my professor, a few old concerns were still left over from the night before and took precedence.

"She seriously better have that chick gone by now," I mumbled to myself as I got dressed and hurried out of my room, only to find the apartment empty.

"Great. Just fucking great," I said irritated. I wanted Rosalie to get rid of the woman, not disappear with my girlfriend's body again.

And then, like the idiot I often was, I realized it was Saturday. I may have had the day off of work, but Bella always opened the store on Saturdays, and Rose was a dutiful alter in that sense.

I finished getting ready for the day, and then headed to the bookstore. Thankfully, her car was right where it belonged in the parking lot.

I really didn't feel like conversing with Rosalie at the moment, but on the off chance that she finally allowed someone else to have a turn being in control, I hesitantly went inside.

She looked up as I walked in the door, but she was with a customer, so I hung back and busied myself with browsing the novels closest to me. Occasionally, I would look up at her and catch her eye. She would smile at me, but quickly refocus on the person in front of her. Even at that distance, I could tell she was absolutely stunningly put-together. Perfect makeup, and not a hair out of place. Very un-Rosalie-like, so I couldn't have been happier in that moment. Hell, her coy smiles towards me were enough to know she wasn't currently the mega-bitch, so I was sure my day wasn't going to be anywhere close to how shitty my night had been.

When the customer finally left, I approached her with a smile of my own, and her entire demeanor immediately changed.

"Hi," she murmured bashfully as she twisted her hair between her fingers and swayed her body back and forth anxiously.

My smile widened once I realized who she was. Of course, as always, I would have preferred for Bella to be there, but if she couldn't be, it was about damn time they let Tanya have a turn in the light.

"Hey, it's good to see you again," I told her gently.

"It's good to see you anytime," she replied flirtatiously. "I mean, you're so nice to look at… I mean, you're a nice person. Wait…" she paused as she tried to unravel what she wanted to say in her own mind.

"How's your day going so far?" I asked her, trying to save her from straining her thoughts too much. The poor girl was so awkward, but very sweet, and I was excited to talk to her again after so long.

"Good. Rosalie said I could be out for a while since Saturdays are usually slow," she told me with restrained excitement. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Hey, am I really going to stay at your apartment tonight? Usually they make me go back to Charlie's house, but Rose didn't say I had to this time."

"Uh, yeah, you can come home. It's your home as much as any of the others," I assured her.

She momentarily seemed to become lost in my words as her eyes went blank and she just stared at me. I thought perhaps she was being pulled back into the theater, but then she mumbled, "God, you are so beautiful."

"Uh," I laughed uncomfortably.

"Holy shit, did I just say that out-loud?" she asked herself, slightly mortified.

"Yeah, so…uh, what do you want to do tonight after work?" I asked, hoping to ease her embarrassment.

"What do you mean? Like sex?"

Her unexpected question nearly made me choke on my own spit. "No, uh… like, for fun," I clarified. "I know you don't usually have much time out, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to go do something."

"Like what?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. Anything. We could go see a movie, go to the beach, eat at a restaurant. Whatever you like to do."

"I'm not exactly sure what I like to do. I've never had much of an opportunity to do much at all. All of those things sound fun to me, so I'm up for anything you want to do."

"Um, ok. I'll think about it for a bit and plan some stuff for us to do. Are you okay here alone for a while? I have some errands to run this afternoon, and then I'll meet you back at the apartment. Do you know how to get there?"

Her smile lit up her entire face, and she nodded. "I know where it is. I'm so excited," she said eagerly.

I smiled at her again. "Me too. Now, don't let any of the others push you out before then. You deserve a little fun too."

"I won't. I'll be there," she assured me.

"Okay, see you in a bit." I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, and she damn near exploded with giddiness.

"Can't wait!" she squealed.

I gave her another parting smile, and then headed out. I really wasn't sure what to plan to do with her, so I decided to pay Charlie a visit at the station.

"Wow, they have you doing desk work, huh?" I teased as I walked into his office. "What'd you do to deserve this kind of punishment."

"Just the perils of the job, I'm afraid," he replied with a grin. "How's everything going?" he asked, but then fell serious. "Wait. Are you here to tell me you've had enough?"

"No, no, nothing like that," I said quickly. "It's actually kind of the opposite. Things with Bella are going well… as well as can be expected given the situation. Even Rosalie has agreed to a truce. Then again, she agreed to a truce once before and it didn't last, so I'm not expecting much."

"Rosalie is just…a tough cookie. They all have to gang up on her to keep her under some type of control."

"Yeah, I'm gathering that," I agreed. "Listen, so I'm taking Tanya out tonight. Any ideas of what she may like to do?"

He considered it for a moment. "Well gosh, I don't know. What do teens like to do anymore? In my day we went bowling, or drank behind the old drive in."

"Yeah, I'm not sure either. I guess I'll just have to think about it for a bit."

I was going to say goodbye and leave, but then my mind flashed to my email to the professor and something suddenly occurred to me.

"Hey-uh, Charlie, I was wondering about Bella's therapy."

"Her therapy?" he asked, clearly taken aback by the topic.

"Yeah. I mean, she mentioned psychologists in the past, and I always assumed she was under the close watch of a team of doctors, except… I recently realized that I never see her going to any appointments."

"Did you ask her about it?" he questioned, but the tone of his voice suddenly became stiff and hesitant.

"Not exactly. We haven't been living together very long, and in that time she has been split a good portion of it. When Bella is in control and doing well, I just… I don't know, I guess I don't really think about it because I'm just grateful to have her there."

"I guess I can understand that. Look, you really should talk to Bella about this, but you're right, she has been splitting a lot lately and I think a stressful conversation would likely only make it worse."

"Why would it be a stressful conversation?" I asked slightly confused.

"Bella hasn't had the best of luck with psychologists in the past. Until she was eighteen, I had her under a strict, twice a week, psyche care regimen. There aren't great doctors around here, so she would connect with them by phone, and then twice a month I'd actually drive her to the city to meet with them in person."

"Okay," I said slowly, wondering where he was going with it. "So, what changed?"

"Every doctor she saw either wanted to just drown her out with drugs, or they wanted her to be the subject of their next book. They didn't look at her like a patient that needed help, they looked at her like an anomaly that they wanted to use to boost their careers. Doctor after doctor just wanted to exploit her. And the ones who wanted to drug her were worse. We tried every type of medication to see if they could make the splitting into alters happen less frequently. Nothing worked. In fact, when Bella was drugged, she would get too loopy to function normally, or she would lose herself in the depths of her mind and Rosalie would end up remaining in control all the time. She was the only one strong enough to fight through the haze of the drugs."

"It sounds like they just never found the right medication," I said, trying to think with my doctor hat on.

"That's because there is no medication for DID. There's no cure. They tried using the same stuff they give people with schizophrenia. That didn't work. They tried antidepressants. Nope. They tried to give her whatever they give people with bipolar. Made her worse. They even tried CBD thinking it could help with her stress which they realized is one of the main triggers for her splits. Didn't work. None of it worked, and she was spending the majority of her time suffering the side effects of the drugs, and then the rest of her time suffering the issues that go along with having to wean herself off of the drugs."

"So, she gave up," I said in understanding. "But why isn't she at least seeing a therapist?"

"What's a therapist going to do? Listen to her issues? The truth is, when Bella is in control, she is fairly happy. Since she doesn't remember what happens when the alters are out, she really doesn't have much to discuss with a therapist."

"She could discuss whatever causes her stress, which is what you just said is one of her biggest triggers."

"Oh, come on, everyone has stress. It's impossible to eliminate all stress in her life, and she wouldn't want to anyway. She told me once that it's the struggles in life that make her feel alive."

"How alive can she feel while being locked away in a dark room in the depths of her mind?" I countered. "What about integration?" I then asked. Even without studying DID yet in my psyche course, I knew integration was the only real cure for DID… or at least, I thought I knew.

"Integration is like a fairytale," he said with a huff of frustration. "In all the cases of DID ever reported, very few have achieved it, and even the ones that have, said they still hear voices in their head. Voices that aren't quite their own. DID is an extremely complex disorder, because the brain is the most complex organ in our bodies. Doctors and scientists just don't know enough about it. So, rather than fight it without much hope of ever seeing a difference, Bella has decided to just live with it the best she can. This will be a lifelong struggle for her, and she has more important things to do than to waste her time being constantly drugged and going to therapy that does jack-shit."

I sighed. "I see."

My mind drifted to the eagerness of my professor's email, and I couldn't help but think perhaps there was new treatments out there that Charlie and Bella didn't know about since it had been a while since she sought help.

"Charlie, how do you think Bella would feel about me seeing someone?" I asked hesitantly.

"Ugh, I don't know what kind of arrangement you two have, but I guess if Alice and Rose have other dates, then…"

"No, I'm not talking about dating. I mean, how do you think she would feel about me meeting with a psychologist? If only to help me get a better understanding on her disorder and how to best cope."

"Oh, well… I'm not sure. It may stress her out given all the crap she's been through."

"That's what I'm worried about," I agreed.

"But son, you have to do what's best for you. Whatever you need to help you make the best out of this situation is the right thing to do. If you feel the need to talk to someone about DID, then you should do it. Just maybe wait until Bella is in a really calm, relaxed state before you mention it to her, and you should be ok."

"Is it really going to upset her?" I asked concerned. "I don't want to go behind her back or do anything that will have a negative effect of her."

"Nah, she will understand….hopefully."

His lack of confidence definitely made me pause, so I decided to put off speaking to my professor in person until after I cleared it with Bella first.

Of course, that evening's date night with Tanya had me second guessing my decision to wait…

"I'm so glad you were able to stay long enough for us to go out tonight," I told her as I drove us towards our destination.

"Me too! It's going to be so amazing and a dream come true," she replied eagerly.

She was noticeably nervous, but she was also super excited. Even without taking my eyes off the road, I could see her staring at me like a lovesick puppy. Anytime I spoke, she giggled flirtatiously, and every time I actually turned to make eye contact, she smiled and batted her eyes in an almost cartoonish way. With the mentality of a seventeen-yea-old, her maturity level could range from childlike to young adult, but she was so ignorant and inexperienced with most things that she usually swayed to the childlike side of the spectrum.

"Have you ever done mini golf before?" I asked her, trying to push along the conversation so she wasn't just ogling me awkwardly the entire time.

"I don't know what mini golf is, but if you like it then I'm sure to love it!" she said without a doubt. "Do you want to hold my hand?"

"Um…sure," I agreed, before reaching over the center console to intertwine my fingers with hers. Her smile somehow grew even wider.

I had decided to take her mini golfing and then to a pizza joint for dinner. With Tanya being a teenager, I figured it was probably the best choice out of our very limited choices in that area. However, the fact that she had no idea what mini golf was, was quickly made painfully apparent.

"Oops!" she shouted as her ball went hurling into the sky despite the hole only being a few feet in front of her. "That was bad, right?"

"Uh…" I tried to watch where her ball went, but it got lost in the lights. At least we didn't hear anyone screaming. "No, it's fine."

"No, it's not. I'm so stupid!" she pouted. "I never do anything right. This is why they don't let me out very much."

"Tanya, it's fine," I tried calming her. "You just hit it too hard. Here, let me help you."

I dropped my ball in front of her, then got behind her and guided her hands into the right direction. Very gently, I swung her club for the both of us, and just like that, the ball went right into the hole.

"See?" I said while stepping back so I could see her face.

"I did it!" she exclaimed, before practically jumping into me and clinging to my chest.

I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight while kissing the top of her hair. God, I missed Bella. It had been far too long and holding her body without her there only made me miss her more.

After that, Tanya's giddiness returned tenfold. She was so excited about every little thing we did. The go-karts, the pizza; even the drive home at the end of the date had her bouncing in her seat.

When we got back to our apartment, however, the fun stopped abruptly.

"Are we going to have sex now?" she asked; her tone was somewhere between nervous and eager.

Before I had a chance to even fully comprehend the situation, she was all over me. Her lips attached to mine, and her hands automatically went to my pants.

"Wait," I tried saying against her lips as I pushed her hands away, but she refused to back down. Her mouth traveled to my neck and she moved her hands to her own shirt where she began unbuttoning.

"Please stop trying to take your clothes off," I almost begged.

She finally pulled away, but when she did, the look of pure hurt plagued her features.

"Honey, I'm sorry, I just…"

"No, it's okay. You don't want me. I get it," she mumbled before running off to the guest bedroom and locking herself inside.

"Fuck," I said under my breath.

She was seventeen for fuck's sake, what the hell was I supposed to do?

I went to bed that night feeling like shit, and of course, then I started obsessing…

Did I do the right thing?

She was mentally a seventeen-year-old virgin, but her body wasn't, and that body certainly wasn't a virgin.

Then again, many seventeen-year-olds had sex.

Would it be wrong of me to sleep with her?

Alice did say she tried getting her laid a few times; at least I wasn't a stranger that scared her…

My brain was going crazy with unanswerable questions and thoughts. I honestly didn't know what was right or wrong, and my moral compass was spinning in all different directions. I didn't know what to do, and I was terrified of doing the wrong thing. So, I decided to hop back onto my laptop and try to do a little research on the subject.

After scouring the internet for more than two hours and pretty much coming up with nothing, I made the decision to email my professor back. The last thing I wanted to do was upset Bella, but I didn't see this as me contacting a doctor on her behalf the way it sort of seemed. I needed the help for myself, and I only hoped she would understand.

I eventually managed to fall asleep, but it wasn't long before I was awoken to a very horny woman who wasn't about to let me tell her no.

I was half undressed before I was even alert enough to realize what was happening. I may have freaked just a tiny bit, but she was quick to put my concerns to rest.

"Relax Conch, it's just me," she said confidently. "You made poor little Tanya go running back to the theater crying," she added before clicking her tongue in a disapproving way. "I told her, sometimes men need a little more experience to get their needs met."

Her hand grabbed ahold of me and immediately got to work. She refused to let my current drowsy lack of desire stop her. Needless to say, it didn't take long for my body to catch up with hers. The moment I was ready, she climbed on top of me and fucked me like there was no fucking tomorrow, and I suppose for her, there wasn't.

Afterwards, she fell asleep in my arms, and when her eyes opened again, I was pleasantly surprised, relieved, and overjoyed to see Bella looking back at me.

Finally!