28 Dougie's POV
I felt sick, horrendously sick. So sick I was dry heaving into the toilet. Hearing Tom say those words, hearing him honestly believe that he was lucky and that he had found a good and kind wife, because she didn't hit him... I couldn't. I could not hear that, not anymore. It hurt; it hurt everything, made my stomach twist so much I could hardly breathe. How was this possible? How had she done this to him? She made him feel like he deserved to be hit and punished for everything he did. I couldn't... I couldn't do this, couldn't hear anymore.
Tom's words echoed in my head repeatedly, until it was the only thing I could hear. It twisted my stomach so hard that the dry heaves turned into actually being sick. I'd been like this before, been filled with so much anxiety there was nothing I could do but throw up, but this was worse. This was far worse. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like nothing would be okay again, like Tom was never going to be the same again.
"Hey, hey, it's okay Doug, you're alright. I'm here now." Harry came in, gently starting to rub my back.
"I-It's not alright. I-It's never going to be alright again." it was never going to be okay, never, ever going to be okay. Tom was so messed up, believed some awful things. He thought we were going to take his son from him, that he deserved punishment for things he deemed wrong. It was wrong, it was so wrong. Everything was wrong now. How had everything gone so sideways so quickly?
It wasn't right, it really wasn't right. It wasn't supposed to be like this. A divorce was one thing, but this was completely different. This was... this was nothing any of us knew how to deal with. Bipolar, yeah we could deal with that, we had in the past. But this level of abuse? Of brain washing? Of screwed up thought patterns? We couldn't deal with this; we didn't have the first idea of what to do.
"It will be Doug, I promise, everything will be okay soon. I just phoned up Tom's old therapist, she's agreed to meet with him on Friday. We're going to get him help now, and they're going to fix this, they're going to fix all of this, I promise." Harry gave me some water to drink, before pulling me into his arms.
"I swear, we're going to make this okay, we're going to make things right again. Now that there's a therapist onboard, we can get to the bottom of what's been going on, and help rewrite it all." Harry was thinking wishfully here, I could tell. He didn't believe it was going to be that simple, because nothing was that simple. Especially not with something like this, it was hard work, an uphill struggle; there were setbacks, times when you took two steps forward and one step back. It was hard, and took months, if not years.
"It's not; it's not going to go well. We're not; Tom's... therapy isn't easy." I knew it wasn't, had been there myself, it was hard. But addiction and depression was one thing, this was... this was something else entirely.
"I know it isn't. But it's possible to get better, and Tom is going to get better, I promise Doug. The therapist is going help, she helped him before, she can help again. If not her, then someone else will. There is someone out there who can bring our Tom back, fix these thoughts in his head, I swear we will get him back, he won't think like this forever." Harry kissed my hair, rocking me back and forth until I didn't feel as nauseas.
"I'm not going to lie and say it's going to be easy, because it isn't. There's probably going to be a lot of tears, and pain, and Tom isn't going to believe a word we say at first. Currently he's agreed to go to see his therapist, because he thinks it means he gets to keep Buzz, and what I'm hoping is that she's going to help him see sense, or at least start to realise that what happened wasn't okay. For now though, we've just got to do our best with him, and help him however we can." Harry made me look at him, "But, if you need me, then you tell me, okay? When it gets too much, or you need to talk, or anything, you come to me. I don't want you suffering by yourself, or feeling afraid or alone. If you need me, you have me, I promise."