The reappearance of everyone's favorite therapist ;) More long-winded update at the end.

Maybe I'm healing. Maybe there's a reason I feel the way that I'm feeling. I know it may some time, before I can cross that line, but maybe I'm healing – "Healing" by Mathew V

Claire

"It's nice to meet you, Claire."

I'm in a hospital. In a psychiatrist's office. Jet lag pulls my eyelids down, despite having slept for eighteen hours straight. Quil and I landed in Seattle a day and a half ago, and I haven't been alone since, not even to sleep. If I wasn't with Quil I was with my sister, and if not with her, then with my dad. They sit behind me now, Quil and Dad, present but not participating.

I don't want to leave them out of this.

"You, too," I tell the graying-blonde woman on the other side of the desk. "I've, uh, heard great things about you, Dr. Hutchison."

Dr. Hutchison laughs. "Thank you. I know many of your friends on the reservation, and they all speak very highly of you as well. And please, call me Paula."

I force myself to nod.

"So," Paula says. "Do you want to tell me why you're here?"

This confuses me. "Don't you know?"

She gives me a smile, removing her glasses. They fall around her neck with the help of a teal jeweled strap. "I do, but sometimes it can be helpful to start putting words to feelings even when we don't have them all."

Tears burn hot behind my eyes, and my exhaustion only adds to it. I am just… tired. Just tired. "How—how can I ever fit her into words?"

Her gaze is heavy, and the silence is just uncomfortable enough to make me squirm. "Nobody fits into words, Claire," she finally says. "You just talk, and eventually, the words start to make sense."

I look down at the cup of water clutched between my hands. It's blurry now, on account of my tears. "I'm… I'm worried this won't be enough. That I'll still feel—hopeless," I breathe.

"You might," she admits gently. "Which is why I'd like to get you started on an antidepressant right away. It will take time for us to find the right one for you, and for your body to adjust. In the meantime, we'll continue with these sessions. As many times a week as you can manage."

"As many as it takes," Quil interjects. I picture my father nodding, but I don't turn around to confirm.

"And I don't want you to be alone," Paula continues. "Are there enough people in your life you can manage this with? If not, there are some inpatient—"

"We've got her," my father says firmly. "We just got her back. We're not sending her away again."

I stay studying the cup in my hands. Some tears drip into it, rippling the surface.

"I understand, Jon," Paula says, not unkindly.

I don't remember them being introduced, and I wonder how she knows his first name. I get the feeling I've missed a lot of details lately.

Paula glances down at her notes again. "What goals do you have for this treatment?"

That feels like a trick question. "Um, to not be depressed?"

She laughs. "That is a great place to start. Can you tell me what depression feels like for you? How your thoughts and body react when you feel that hopelessness."

"It feels…" I struggle for words that won't come. I let out a cross between a groan and a scream. "I don't know."

I hate that I can't overcome this. That despite my grit and determination, I myself am not enough. I have always been enough.

Paula doesn't answer, just lets me sit in my unknowing. There's no music to distract me, no bright colors or distinctive smells from other countries to draw my attention away. There is nothing here but her, and my family, and my feelings and me.

And the Black. It is always here.

"It's like this—this shadow," I start, pressing a hand to my chest where it lives. I tuck my legs under me, set the cup on the side table. "It used to be gray, like the sky. And sometimes when I had a bad day or a fight with my sister, or didn't study for a test enough or something, it would sort of—cover my thoughts. Like a blanket, but less cozy."

"A storm cloud," Paula offers.

"Yes," I say. My fingernails dig into the fabric of my sweatpants, beneath to the flesh of my calves. The pain is grounding. "And I watched her get sicker, watched her suffering, it kept getting darker and darker. The storm, I guess, kept getting stronger and closer.

"And I always sort of knew that if it turned completely black, there would be no coming back from it. That I would want to die, too."

The confession drops like an unexploded grenade, one with the pin already pulled. Someone expels a heavy breath behind me, and I want to turn, because I know it's Quil. I know that sound. Not disappointment. Something deeper, more tormented.

Maybe that's just it.

Torment.

Torture.

"And when do you think that happened? When did it turn completely black? Was it the day she died?"

Hearing those words are never easy, but they don't stab as sharply today. "No. I was reading her letter on the beach in Thailand," I say, and Paula scribbles a note I take to read Thailand? "And I just couldn't—I couldn't feel anything. Not sad or happy or upset or angry. I just felt… Nothing. I thought if I couldn't feel anything, then what was the point of it all, you know?"

Paula nods, though her gaze is trained on the men behind me. I force myself not to turn around. If I turn around and see him breaking, I will break, too. Again.

"So, catatonic," she says, and I nod.

"Does that matter?" I say, and then it is her turn to nod.

"It will help me pick the right medication for you. Are there any side effects that are more concerning to you than others?"

"Like what?"

"Weight gain or loss," she says, and when I don't react, she continues. "Headache. Nausea. Insomnia. Fatigue. Lack of sexual appetite."

My cheeks blaze, and I look down.

To her credit, she doesn't respond out loud, but she does scribble more notes.

"To be fair," I say, still staring at my lap. "I've, um. I've had most of those already."

Someone coughs, but it's too quick to tell who it was. Maybe I won't have Dad sit in on the next session. Or Quil, for that matter.

In my periphery, Paula nods. "We'll probably come back to that."

I'm convinced by the end of my first session that it was a train wreck. Paula assures me it always feels like that, and Quil and my dad both confirm.

I've missed so much of their lives. It's silly of me, but I forgot they would have to continue living while I pressed pause.

They ask me where I want to eat for lunch while we wait for the prescription to be ready at the pharmacy and am surprised when they tell me my favorite Italian restaurant has closed, that it's an American restaurant now.

There's a new coffee shop down the street from the high school, and as we drive by the firehouse, I notice it's recently gotten a fresh coat of paint.

Quil catches me staring and pivots from the passenger seat. "The award winner's station gets a grant from the state. You should see the plans for the inside."

I murmur a half-hearted maybe, then say, "When will you go back?"

He shares a look with my father, who's driving, and neither of them give me a straight answer.

After we get my prescription from the pharmacy, we drive home. I slept at Quil's last night, because it was going to be too much all at once: seeing my family and starting therapy and going to the house where my mother took her last breath.

The closer we get, the more familiar turns we take, the heavier the weight of it all feels against my lungs. By the time we pull onto my street, I am holding my breath.

And then the house is there, just like I remember, and my lungs deflate. The shutters are the same chipping robin's egg blue, the tree off to the left side an orangey-brown. The porch where Quil and I shared our first kiss. The porch light glows now as it did then.

The curtains even flutter the same way.

But it's not my mother, threatening Quil with looks I was never meant to see.

Callie steps onto the porch, burrowing into her sweatshirt.

Actually—

"You stole my sweatshirt?" are the first words I say as I make my way up the stairs.

She shrugs. "You left it."

There is an arsenal of weapons in those words, one I refuse to go near right now. Not when Paula said to pick my battles carefully these days.

It's funny, the things you let slide when you're busy surviving.

Whatever I was expecting as I stepped through the doors, it wasn't this.

It's just a house. With the same curtains that need washing and rug that needs steaming.

There are minor differences, though, and I take my time as I catalogue them all. Dad is putting my things in my room, I think, and Quil is talking softly with Callie near the front door. Giving me space.

Next to my parents' bedroom—my dad's bedroom, now, I guess—there is a framed portrait of my mother. She is smiling, laughing… alive. I touch my fingers to her cheek, my eyes stinging.

In the kitchen, the leaf from that kitchen table, nail polish spills and scour marks and all, has been removed, four chairs instead of six circling it.

Aside from that pinching change, something else is different. Amiss.

It takes me a minute to realize the knife block has been removed from its sentinel on the counter.

"Did Dad's cooking get that bad?" I call offhand.

Going off a hunch, I throw open the medicine cabinet and find no medicine.

I stand in the center of the room, turning and turning until the last piece of this new puzzle falls into place.

"The toaster?" I say, turning to my family. "Really?"

Callie shrugs, throws me an incredulous look. "Well, how was I supposed to know what you'd want to off yourself with?"

"Callie," Quil hisses, but stops when he sees I'm not upset.

I am laughing. It hurts quickly; I haven't used these muscles in a while.

Hopefully they'll get stronger.

My days become rote:

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Quil takes me to therapy, warm tea in hand. Dr. Hutchison—Paula, I correct—said to be wary of how much caffeine I consume while my body adjusts to the medication. The night after my first dose, I laid awake for hours, waiting for the chemicals to kick in and ease the shadows over my mind.

I was grouchy those first few days.

Things at home are strained, and I'm the common denominator. Callie sits with me in the evenings, tells me vaguely about her boyfriend but won't give me details when I ask. She is still pissed at me for leaving, despite loving me enough to stay by my side.

My father doesn't know how to talk to me. Now that the newness of being home has worn off, now that he's sure I'm not going to disappear again or slip the toaster in the bathtub (I may be dramatic, but even I wouldn't go that far), he sees me for what I am: the spitting image of the woman he lost. He hates himself for it; I can tell by the way his shoulders slump every time he turns away.

And Quil.

There's a lot we still have to deal with between ourselves. Relationships are always messy, but I imploded ours. Everything that happened while I was gone, how that pushed him hard enough to want to break our bond… it's a lot to process, on both ends.

Even still, after therapy he takes me to the diner where Katie Clearwater used to work, and I'm watched like a hawk as I consume exactly one and a half pancakes, half a slice of bacon, and a few bites of hash browns. I don't think he so much as blinks until I'm finished.

From there, we'll visit whoever's available that day for a social visit. It's not unlike the early days of us, where he was scared if we were alone, I'd push him too far, ask too much. Jump his bones.

Right now I want to use his bones as toothpicks. My skull pulses behind my eyes with every bump in the asphalt.

"Why don't you just throw a fucking party?" I ask as I slam his truck door outside the Call family's yellow cottage. "Get this shit over with."

Quil only grins at me over the roof of his truck, shutting his own door. "Glad to know the waitress still gave you decaf, even after you threated her life."

"Don't be dramatic." I step over Sadie's bike on my way to the front door. "I only threatened her livelihood."

"I knew I missed you," Bethany Call says from the open front doorway. "There just aren't enough people around here doing that these days."

She looks the same, mostly. Her hair is still bright red and flowing down her back; a gold hoop still hugs her nostril; the polish on her nails is still chipped and black. But she has a few more smile lines around her eyes than I remember, a few more shadows beneath them, like the tired has settled deeper into her bones.

"There's my little man," Quil says, rushing past both of us, toward an increasingly loud squeal and barks. My skull threatens to shatter.

Quil scoops the squealer up, up, all the way upside down, and all I see are flashes of dark hair and rosy cheeks and Quil blows a raspberry onto Parker's round belly. Blue, their border collie, spins in circles at his feet.

I slide off my coat, remove my shoes as they continue their greeting ritual.

"For being in Thailand for half a year," Bethany murmurs as she shuts the front door, "you look like you could use a vacation."

I don't have time to respond, or even to comprehend, before Quil clears his throat.

"Park," Quil says, holding Parker proudly on his hip. "This is Claire."

The way he says my name makes me wonder if he hasn't told him about me before. As if Parker understands him, he turns big brown eyes on me. He is Embry's twin, the way I am my mother's.

The way I was my mother's.

"Can I get some ibuprofen?" I say to Bethany. "I have a headache."

"You know where it is." Bethany sits on the couch as Quil does the same with Parker on the floor, paying me little mind for a change. Kids are good that way.

Padding over to the kitchen, I throw open the skinny top cabinet to the right of the stove. I forgot, my own medicine cabinet at home having been reduced to aloe vera and bandages, what a well-stocked one looks like. Allergy creams, cough syrup and decongestant and melatonin. Two types of pain medication.

I unscrew the cap of one and go to dump two into my hand, but several more spill out. My palm is covered.

It would be easy enough to slip them in my pocket, take them later tonight when Quil is gone for the day and Callie is snoring from her bedroom. Best case scenario, I'd finally get some decent sleep. Worst case scenario…

My head pounds, and I glance over my shoulder. Quil is smiling down at Parker. Bethany's head is leaned against the back of the couch, eyes closed. These are the people who love me.

I force myself to replace a few pills, then a few more. It doesn't even feel like me who's making these movements. I am robotic. Empty. My people, my people, my people.

"Claire," Quil calls from the living room. To his credit, his voice is only pinched a little. "Park just told me he wants to meet you."

"Did he?" I hear Bethany murmur. I eye the pill bottle in my hand, tighten a fist around the loose two in my other. Just walk away. "Last week he couldn't even manage 'dog.'"

"Claire," Quil says again, louder, more insistent.

"Coming," I say, and set the bottle back on the shelf.

A/N: Mostly this will be me word-vomiting/ranting/screaming thank you. I know updates are becoming less frequent, and that is, honestly, because I've spent so much time working on my original project(s), which is receiving some traction! (knock on wood lol)

Writing within this universe is one thing; building your own is another entirely, and it's taken big chunks of vulnerability I've never had to share before. Being told no repeatedly and often is hard, frankly. It's taxing and it sucks.

This little community we've built here is my safe space. I have screen shots of all your nice reviews, and I read them on bad days. Writing these characters is my reprieve from all of that. I will always come back. (And y'all, if I'm being completely honest, I already have ideas for #5 because I have no self-restraint.)

That being said, and in the spirit of true vulnerability, if you're interested in getting updates on my personal projects or finding out a little more about the person behind the screen, you can find my professional website at meganmurphywrites dot com(silly rules about posting URLs). It's bare bones right now because I'm still building my brand. If supporting me is something you'd like to do, signing up for my newsletter and/or following me on social (links found on website) is the best way to do that and get updates for what comes next.

TLDR: thx for the support I love you byeeeee