Kylie was sent home only 4 days later, as soon as she was physically stable – mentally, she was a wreck – with the indications to see a physician closer to her home for checkups and bandage dressing. She was also to come in for psychological evaluation, as was mandatory for military personnel after suffering a personal loss. One of the hospital's psychologists was supposed to have come by but never showed up. Kylie thought that they had other urgent cases to take care of, like one of the women she had shared a room with. She had tried to commit suicide right there in the admissions lounge after finding out that her husband and four children who had come in with her had not made it. Kylie could somewhat relate but there was not enough energy in her body and mind to even think about killing herself – not even close. She was lethargic and apathetic, her brain empty and numb. It wasn't like she didn't care; she simply couldn't care even if she wanted to.
The stitches right under the ribcage on the upper left side of her abdomen were healing nicely and the bruises were changing color accordingly. The medical personal decided that it was enough to begin moving and since there wasn't really any space to move around as there were patients packed everywhere, she was told that she should go home as soon as the doctor determined it was reasonable to discharge her from urgent medical care.
They needed the space, the nice nurse said, there were a lot of people in much worse condition waiting for a bed. Even though the Kaiju had been brought down four days ago, there was still a constant – both in numbers and in severity of injuries – influx of wounded people, mostly victims of radiation and rescued from collapsed buildings.
Kylie understood. Of course she understood. In times of catastrophe, there were never enough medical services available. Tens of thousands of people were injured, many of them critically, and she was not a priority anymore. She had seen it first hand during her stay at the hospital, where people had been labelled by their chances of survival. Most likely, many more would die within the next couple of days, weeks or months. Radiation was real bitch. She also understood why she didn't care. Her mind had gone into full-blown protection mode and had apparently detached itself from the world. The numbness that fogged her brain was comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time and she couldn't decide whether it was a good or a bad thing.
The nice nurse called her a cab to take her home and then sent her off with a large bag of pills, the corresponding instructions and what was left of her personal belongings, which wasn't any more than the clothes that had been cut off her body. And the moment she stepped foot outside the hospital, she was on her own.
The taxi dropped her off in front of four-story apartment building she once had called home. Kylie felt like she was going to be sick again but forced herself to push through it to get out of the car, and she just stood on the curb even after the car had taken off. There was no electricity in the usually colorfully illuminated block, the streets were dark and so were the windows, even though she could hear emergency generators drumming away in the distance.
She shivered and realized only then that the hospital gown and thin cardigan she had been given at the hospital wasn't anywhere near suitable to shield her from the cool September night winds. She swallowed hard, absentmindedly playing with the key in her hand, then took another couple of steps towards the door and let herself in.
Nothing much seemed to matter for the next couple of days. Kylie had simply sat down on the sofa – which was the only thing she could bring herself to do after letting herself in to her apartment – and stared out of the large beau-window into the garden. Her apartment was a small sized two-bedroom standard at floor level with access to a small green area, as she had wanted only the best for her little baby, but now all she saw were dark shadows chasing each other on the dried up grass.
She could hardly breathe, her apartment smelled of what now were mere memories – baby cream, baby soap, baby shampoo. It was almost as if she were breathing in the warmth from her baby's head as she had done so many times over and could discern each individual scent. Everything inside here reminded her of her little daughter and her parents. Even though it was dark, she could make out the framed pictures hanging on the walls, most of them being pictures of trips they had all taken together. There were some images of Kylie and her parents from when she was a baby herself, others form when she was pregnant – she had only recently put up some new images from the last family trip to Europe in early June.
She faintly remembered that she had cried the first couple of hours until her face burnt and her eyes could not muster up any more tears and she could tell that she was suffering from the first signs of dehydration – the headache and the dizziness was unmistakable. She had also not taken either the prescribed painkillers nor antibiotics and she was beginning to feel the consequences, even through this heavy haze she was in.
The dreams she had whenever she came close to what could be considered a fitful sleep were atrocious. They all began with a flash brighter than the sun. Everything in the immediate surroundings, trees, fences, and people instantly caught fire. And then Kylie's overly pained and overly stressed brain began to diverge into all sorts of scenarios. In some sequences, she could see her parents – faceless, yet Kylie knew – diving in the cast-iron tub just as the shock waves arrived, her mother clutching the also faceless baby to her chest, placing one last kiss onto her tiny forehead before they all turned to ashes. Another version showed them getting back out of the tub scared but unharmed, stumbling to the front door, looking out on the burning ruin of their neighborhood. The deadly radioactive fallout was on its way and they were contemplating to run across town to the public library to shelter in its basement right before the massive house came down on them.
In some dreams, Kylie would be immediately devastated seeing how her family perished, in others she could actually feel her hopes getting up when she saw that they had survived the initial blast and actually getting away – or so it seemed – only to have them crushed because in the end, they always ended up dead. Her brain fussed so much about the possible ways of how they had died that in the end, she wasn't able to tell truth from hallucination. Yet she couldn't really stop herself from getting deeper and deeper into the frenzy that was trying to understand what had happened. Her overly analytical brain had lost all its realistic and logical approach, going through all the possible scenarios, trying to figure out every last detail. If she had been a little more in control, she would most likely have tried to not hand herself over so easily – but she couldn't stop. It somehow felt good to hurt so much.
Kylie didn't want to be alive, yet she didn't know how to make it all end. Eventually, thirst and hunger were too overwhelming to ignore and from then on, she functioned entirely on autopilot when it came to routines. She ate – but not enough and not too healthy, and it began to show quickly on her already skinny frame but even more so on her face –, slept and ran the errands she was told to run, like attending the mandatory medical checkups, but it didn't feel that she was actually aware of what she did. She just did what she was supposed to do, mostly completely numbed due to the many and strong painkillers she was taking – and she was thankful for them. She was able to sleep and actually get some rest even through those constantly recurring dreams. It seemed much more convenient to not think at all rather than have her brain tie her mind down to thoughts only about how she had screwed up saving her family.
She would, however, attend the scheduled doctor's appointments and once those were over and done with and the doctors were happy with her healing process, she was sent to a RAAF psychiatrist to help her get over the trauma – as if it were that easy. The woman who was assigned to her seemed nice and gentle enough but Kylie felt absolutely no inspiration to share what was eating away inside of her.
The psychiatrist started every session by asking how she was doing.
"Fine." Was the usual, listless answer.
The initial conversation would be quite casual for a couple of minutes with meaningless questions and meaningless replies, but after a while, the psychiatrist would try to coax Kylie into telling how it all had gone down, starting from when she had left for work when the Kaiju began its vicious attack to how she was coping with everything now – it was the same procedure in every single meeting. Of course, it was her job, and then again, she obviously wanted Kylie to be fine. It was just that Kylie didn't feel like wanting to be fine. She just wanted to be left alone in her grieving state of self-pitying. Yet, the counsellor was relentlessly probing.
"So tell me how your day's been going?" What a stupid question to ask, Kylie thought every time the counselor asked. It must have been quite clearly written on her face how 'well' she was doing.
"Is it those dreams again?" The woman sitting opposite to her asked gently. In a weak moment a couple of sessions ago, Kylie had let slip that she was experiencing bad dreams – the understatement of the year – to see if she could do something about it but all that came out of it was the counsellor trying to analyze those dreams and obviously, Kylie had no interest in going any deeper into them than she already was.
"I don't really remember much. I guess the brain has a funny way of dealing with trauma..." she would usually say to make her stop asking and the psychiatrist would not insist, she would only begin to scribble in her little black book. But Kylie did remember. She remembered kissing her daughter and her parents goodbye when she left for work during the Kaiju attack even though it had been a day off for her. She remembered the disgust she felt when she saw her coworkers leaving little by little but now only too well understood the reason behind it. She remembered the despair she felt when the nuclear airstrike was declared on the third day and the absolute desolation and hopelessness when she woke up from the car crash after the bomb had detonated. She even remembered the bickering with Hansen.
The one thing however – ironically – that she remembered best was the car crash. She could still feel the impact, how her lungs had contracted with such force that she had been afraid they would fold into themselves. There had been a sickening backwards press into the seat, and then another that left her weightless for a second before she was slammed into the opposite side with what felt like more G's than a human body could handle. Her torso and head had smashed up against the airbag with such force that she could feel the steering wheel underneath, while her arms and legs were flailing, searching for somewhere to hold and stop the forward movement her body was going. The world must have kept flickering its figurative light switch because her vision had kept flashing from bitter darkness to blinding white light. The only sound that had filled her ears was the crushing of glass and the screeching of metal as the car folded back into itself.
In that moment, she had assumed she was dead. But then she had kept waking and waking. She would have liked to be unconscious rather than awake, because when she had been awake she could taste the coppery blood pooling in her mouth, she could feel it grazing her teeth and soaking her tongue. She had sucked in cramped air, feeling her lungs caving in on themselves and it had felt like she was there for hours, fading and waking and fading and waking.
And then, she remembered Hansen pulling her out of the car. She remembered that deeply worried look in his eyes, that frown that had seemed so deeply etched into his forehead and that had never left his face. She remembered the strain in his voice to sound calm, when he talked to her or his son to make them believe that everything was going to be ok on the long walk to the camp.
But she didn't feel like sharing any of this with the counsellor. So she just sat, looked at her intertwined hands in her lap and listened to the good advice the counsellor gave, nodding when she felt like the counsellor was expecting a reaction from her side. Kylie almost pitied the woman, but no more than she pitied herself.
And then, Kylie would go home – returning to her self-inflicted prison almost as if she were sleepwalking – and sit back down on the couch, staring out of the window.