Carlotta has been treating Will for five months now, and she still hasn't figured out exactly what's causing his PTSD.
The interesting thing is that he hasn't repressed all of his traumatic memories. On the contrary, Will has been willing to describe in detail some of his triggers, chief among them his relationship with his former best friend, Mike. During Will's first session, right on the heels of his last encounter with Mike, he was more open than almost any of Carlotta's patients usually are during the first visit—shared with her quite explicitly every interaction he had with Mike during the road trip that caused Will to regress back into that state. In fact, it wasn't until their third session that Will even tried to tell Carlotta that the reason they took that road trip in the first place was to rescue his adopted sister from kidnappers bent on teaching her superpowers so that she could save the world.
She knows there are granules of truth in Will's stories. She remembers the shootout at the Byerses' residence being in the news just a couple of weeks before she met Will. Likewise, there's definitely something shady happening in the town of Hawkins, which was also all over the news last summer when cracks ran down the earth in the middle of the Midwest. She just doesn't know which of Will's fantastical claims are derived from reality and which ones are his mind protecting him from trauma.
Certain lines she knows how to draw. There's obviously no Upside Down or Mind Flayer or Vecna, and his sister, Jane, wasn't raised in a laboratory and can't move things with her mind. Still, Carlotta wonders whether bad men really did kidnap Will during that time when he was supposedly lost in the woods. She doesn't know who they are or why they keep targeting Will's family, but it would certainly fit with the Byerses being under attack again this past summer.
The trauma, though, Carlotta knows is real. Everything Will has ever said about singing The Clash while he was shivering and lost, developing an unhealthy attachment to Mike after all the times Will believed that Mike saved him, even feeling his hair stand up on the back of his neck when he's triggered—it all tracks with PTSD. She just wishes that his previous therapist in Hawkins hadn't so evidently failed Will. She aches for the boy who was told that his experiences were all in his head. Perhaps the fantasy narrative is Will's own creation, but something has been happening to this boy in the last few years, and it won't do Will any favors to dismiss the glimmers of truth in what he says.
As far as Carlotta is concerned, it's not her job to pull Will out of the metaphor he uses to face his trauma, so long as he is facing it—and she thinks he is, judging by everything he's said about wanting to overcome his depression, borderline personality disorder, and PTSD. So she plays along. It seemed to shock Will when she didn't accuse him of being crazy the first time he used the words "upside down," but the more she fed into his stories, the more of them he shared, including the important parts: the way the events in his narrative made him feel and react to others around him.
She's taking off the last half of December for the holiday, so it's Carlotta's last session of the year with Will today. He used to cast down his eyes and look sullenly, even bashfully into his lap all session long, but these days, he stares straight at Carlotta and speaks with animation. "Dustin invited me to stay with him for Christmas," he says just as soon as he's sat down in his usual armchair.
If Will were any other patient, she'd probably emphasize that this is great news, an opportunity to make himself vulnerable to somebody who cares about him—an opportunity to connect. But Will isn't any other patient, and Carlotta knows exactly what a visit to Dustin would mean. "And Mike would be there, too?"
"I'm sure he'll be around. He, Dustin, and Lucas are all still best friends."
"Let's unpack that for a second. You refer to them as best friends—as a unit—but Dustin still talks to you every week, and Lucas keeps in touch with you with some consistency, too."
"Yeah, but it's weird because of Mike. I can't be a part of the group if I'm on the outs with the core person."
Carlotta raises her eyebrows. "So you think of Mike as the 'core' of it. What makes you say that?"
She already has some idea, of course. Will has said more than once called Mike the king of hearts, and he doesn't seem able or willing to take Mike down a few notches in his mind—to treat him like any other person instead of a mythical figure to hold up on a pedestal. But she wants to hear it in Will's words.
"He's just… always been the glue. He holds everybody together."
"From everything you've said happened after your family left Hawkins, Mike didn't make much of an effort to keep you glued into his life. From what you've described, Dustin was the one who did that."
"Mike is just…" Will looks like he's struggling with himself for a moment. "You'd understand if you met him—if you ever saw him in a crisis. Whenever someone he loves is in danger, he's the one who rises up. He was the one who was there for me when the Mind Flayer was possessing me. That wasn't Dustin or Lucas or Max or El—it was Mike."
Carlotta pauses to make a note in her journal reminding her to nudge Will later about calling himself, however indirectly, someone that Mike loves. For the moment, though, she has a more pressing point to raise. "It's interesting that you characterize Mike's role in your social circle only based on how he reacts to crises. You have weathered some major crises—" she knows he must have, even if she doesn't know the exact truth of what they were "—but it wasn't like that all the time. Where was he—who was he—when things were stable? Who was he when you moved away and left his line of vision?"
Will pulls one knee up to his chest and wraps his arms around it. It's one of his tells. He only ever does this when Carlotta has said something to make him feel uncomfortable—more uncomfortable than usual, anyway. "That's fair. I guess it just… ever since the Mind Flayer, that's what stands out to me about him. He was always my friend—always made me feel special—and I always wanted his attention, but the Mind Flayer was the first time I felt like I was the only person he was concentrating all his attention on."
For the millionth time, Carlotta is full of questions about what, exactly, it was that Mike helped Will through during what he calls his demonic possession. She's sure it has something to do with his PTSD due to the previous year worsening, but it's more complicated than that, she's sure of it. However, that's not the point, she reminds herself. She can't break his trust now, not while they're on the edge of something. "Did you see him as the core before that, or was it not until the Mind Flayer that you started to see him as a central figure in your life?"
"He was always a central figure," says Will immediately. "I didn't have many people in my life, and all of them counted for a lot. I always kind of had a crush on him, you know? But yeah, I didn't recognize it for what it was until the Mind Flayer—or, at least, that was the first time I started to really feel what I started feeling, even if I didn't want to believe it was happening."
"That you were gay?"
"No," Will says heavily. "That I was addicted."
He stumbles over the word, and she knows how hard it is for him to get it out—to lay it bare like that. To be fair, he's laid it bare a hundred times, but she knows that doesn't ever make it any easier to get the words out again. "Have you ever considered whether what's special about Mike might not come from him?"
Will's eyebrows furrow. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not discounting all the ways he's supported you or been an important figure in your life," Carlotta says. "I'm just saying—maybe what's special isn't something inside of him. Maybe it's something inside of you—the way you see him—the significance you give him."
Shaking his head vehemently, Will insists, "No. No way. It was all the things he did that built up to this. I'm not saying the way I loved him was normal—"
"Remember what we said about the word 'normal,'" says Carlotta with an encouraging smile.
Will rolls his eyes. "Okay, then I'm not saying the way I loved him was healthy, how's that? But I didn't just form those feelings in a vacuum. They came from somewhere. They came from the way he was with me."
She knows it's too soon to push, so she'll leave it for today at planting the seed. She makes another note and then says, "Let's backtrack. Dustin invited you to stay with him for Christmas, and you're guessing he wanted you to spend time with Mike while you're there, too. Did he say so? Did you ask him?"
"Well, no," he admits. "He didn't bring it up, and I changed the topic as quick as I could—said I'd have to check first if Jonathan could take the time out to drive me out there. I guess I was terrified Dustin would ask me if I'd be okay hanging out with Mike. If we didn't talk about it, I could pretend for a few days that I was going to get to see Dustin over break without Mike being there."
"You still haven't told Dustin what really happened between you and Mike?"
"No. Nobody knows except Jonathan and Eleven."
Eleven—Carlotta forgets sometimes that that's what Will calls his sister when he's not using her nickname. She wonders again what exactly Jane makes of that, assuming, of course, that Will really believes his worldview and hasn't just consciously constructed it to hide behind in therapy. "Do you not think that Dustin—or, for that matter, Lucas or any of your other friends from Hawkins—would accept you if you opened up?"
"It's not the gay part. It's the addiction part. I don't know how to explain it without making them think I'm a freak."
"'Freak' is an incredibly judgmental term to use to describe someone with the diagnoses you have."
He rolls his eyes again. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I need to be nicer to myself. There's no such thing as normal, and more people than I think struggle with the same problems as me. It's just—they don't know this side of me. I would shock them. I would scare them. They don't know anybody else with a mental health diagnosis."
"That they know of," Carlotta points out. "They don't know anybody else who has a mental health diagnosis that they know of—or, rather, that you know of."
Will doesn't answer right away. "That's fair," he says finally. "It's just—well—yeah. No, yeah, that's fair."
"Do you want to see Dustin?" she prompts.
"Yeah," says Will quickly, "but if Mike is going to be around? I don't know if I can handle that. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to talk to him. But…"
She waits, but he doesn't finish his thought. She's surprised that there's a "but" in the story at all: from everything Will has ever said about how he feels about Mike, he thinks Mike is dangerous and wants to stay as far away from him as possible. And Carlotta understands that. She'd even go so far as to say that Will probably never will be able to get close to Mike and be emotionally safe doing it. Still…
"But what?" she asks gently.
"I just… Vecna's not dead yet. El will have to face off again with him eventually. When she does, I'm probably going to get sucked in, and when I do… I'm probably going to have to be around him."
Carlotta ignores the questions bubbling up in her mind. "And you want to be prepared for that if it happens?"
"I want to be prepared for that when it happens. I can't fall apart like I did last summer the next time I have to work with him, and I know there's going to be a next time."
She doubts that—but, then again, there's something going on with the Byerses that made armed gunmen shoot up their house in June, and there's something going on in Hawkins that caused that earthquake, and it's got to be connected somehow. It's just got to be. If she could just see inside Will's mind for ten minutes…
So she entertains the idea that Will is right, at least in part—that there's something going on in Hawkins that someone's going to ask him to team up with Mike to stop. She asks herself, what if Will does need to desensitize himself to Mike? Is it possible? Can he do it? Could it even help him in his recovery to learn to tolerate Mike? Or will trying to ease his way back into Mike's life just lead to another breakdown?
"Will, have you ever heard of something called exposure therapy?"
"No," he says uncertainly.
"It's a form of therapy where you deliberately and repeatedly exposure yourself to the thing that triggers you—in small amounts at first, ramping up over time—in order to desensitize you to it."
Will frowns. "So you're saying the best way to overcome my fear of Mike is to be around him."
"You should start small," says Carlotta. "Staying with him for a whole winter break starts in only a few days is probably too fast, but you could call him with some regularity over the next couple of months, maybe ask him to start driving down and visiting you for a few hours at a time, before you think about visiting for a longer period over spring or summer break. You should only go as fast as you can handle, and we can break down some coping mechanisms beforehand and debrief about your visits and conversations afterward. Does that sound doable to you?"
He laughs anxiously. "No, it really doesn't, but I don't think I have a choice."
"There's always a choice," Carlotta reminds him. "There's always a way out of making a choice you don't want to make, even if the alternative isn't what you want it to be."
She hopes he takes this to heart. Will hasn't given her any other indication yet that he's suicidal, but all-or-nothing logic about being out of options and needing to do something the patient finds intolerable tends to be one of the warning signs of suicidality.
"In your case," she continues, "the alternative would be—what? Staying out of it when it's time for your friends to save Hawkins again?"
"Something like that," Will mutters. "I just… I want to be—I won't say normal, but you know what I mean. I don't want this to be a barrier."
Carlotta smiles. "We can't always get what we want, but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to take care of yourself. You have just obstacles to overcome that some other people don't."
"That most other people don't," says Will darkly.
"Still. I'm going to give you some homework, all right? Before I see you again in January, I want you to call Mike and talk to him for ten minutes. Can you do that?"
He looks down. "Yeah, I can do that."
"One other thing: I also want you to tell Dustin about your feelings for Mike."
Will's eyes widen. "But—he'll see me differently. I don't have a lot of friends left, and I don't know if I can stand for Dustin to think I'm some kind of…"
"You don't have to share every detail yet," Carlotta encourages him, "but you can at least tell him that you have feelings for Mike that you don't know how to handle—that that's why you've been avoiding him all this time. You can decide whether to give Dustin more details as slowly as you need to. Does that sound manageable?"
He hesitates. "No, but… maybe I can psych myself up for it over the next few days. After all, if I say no to staying there over Christmas, he's going to want a reason. I think Dustin feels shitty that I've gone so far out of my way to hide whatever's wrong between me and Mike, and I do feel bad about that."
"You'll get there when you're ready. In the meantime, are you ready to brainstorm some strategies for how to talk to Mike when you call him?"