"I have good news," Dr. Mathews stated as he walked back into the room, smiling at the two women that were in front of him, "You are healing up as well as can be expected with this type of injury. So, I believe that the episode from yesterday was from the stress of the trial."
"Okay," Olivia said, sighing.
"Normally, I would like to observe my patients in a controlled hospital setting, but I don't believe that would be the best for you. I feel that placing you in a hospital would place extra stress on you which would trigger your anger even more."
"So, what do you propose?" Alex asked, taking Olivia's hands in her when she noticed they were shaking.
"I believe the safest route for her is to watch her at home."
"I will not have a total strange coming into Alex's apartment either, so you might as well admit me."
"I know my way around getting you into the hospital now," Dr. Mathews said, laughing, "But, no, I don't plan to have someone to come to Alex's house either. As protective as you are of her and what you two have gone through, I believe that having someone at her house would be the same as putting you in the hospital. It would cause undue stress on you and trigger your anger more readily, which will not help us any."
"What do you want to do then?" Olivia asked.
"I want Alex to watch you."
"No, I will go to my apartment and you can send someone to watch me there," Olivia said pulling her hands from Alex's, "I came to close to hurting her yesterday; I won't have that happen again."
"Let me put it to you in a way you understand, Olivia," Dr. Mathews said, taking a seat and closing the file he had in his hand, "You have a connection to Alex that is unlike anything I have ever seen before. Most people with this type of injury will take their anger out on anyone and everyone, but you don't. Your anger only erupts when you feel as if Alex is in danger and only then which is unique within itself."
"What about yesterday?"
"As angry as you were when you advanced upon her, I don't believe that you would have actually placed your hands on her."
"You don't realize how close I came yesterday," Olivia said, hanging her head with tears in her eyes, "I had my hand pulled back to strike her. I would have if Elliot hadn't arrived when he did and stopped me."
"Let me ask you something, have you had your hand pulled back before as if you were going to strike her?"
"Yes, why?"
"In the past, have you struck her?"
"No," Olivia said, clenching her teeth together as she felt the anger start to rise in her, "I have always put holes in her wall."
"My point, your anger has been bad before and you have never laid a hand on her and, honestly, I doubt that you would start now. Alex is as safe with you as she was the day you went home from the hospital."
"How can you be sure?"
"I can't."
"That right there tells me that I need to leave," Olivia said, looking Alex in the eyes, "He can't be sure that you will be safe and wants to put you in more danger by having you watch me. I won't allow it."
"You won't, but I will," Alex answered with a smile on her face, "Olivia, it will hurt me more if you walked out and left than if you stayed and actually put your hands on me. Do you not realize that? To watch you leave will be my downfall."
"I don't want to leave you, Alex," Olivia admitted as she held her hands out for Alex, smiling when she took them and stepped into her arms, "I couldn't live with myself if I hurt you. I wanted to kill myself yesterday when I realized how close I came to hurting you."
"I know you did, but I hope you realize that I wouldn't let that happen. We would have daily therapy sessions or have you admitted for observations, without arguments, if that happened, but I will not lose you. Somewhere down the line, I fell and fell hard for you and I cannot and will not attempt to live my life without you by my side. Are we clear?"
"Crystal, counselor," Olivia said, laughing as she pulled Alex in for a kiss.
"Now that we have that settled, can I continue?"
"Sorry," Alex said, blushing as she turned in Olivia's arms and leaned back against her.
"It's actually quite alright. You two needed to come to an understanding about what happened yesterday and how to proceed for the future."
"If she will only see it my way, it would go a lot smoother," Alex said, smiling back at Olivia.
Olivia laughed as she kissed Alex's cheek before turning her attention back to the doctor, "What does she need to do?"
"Nothing other than what she's been doing. Just keep an eye on you and keep you as calm as possible. If you have another episode like you did yesterday, I need you brought into the hospital immediately and you will be admitted for at the very least twenty-four hours."
"I can do that," Alex said, closing her eyes and leaning against Olivia.
"Good," Dr. Mathews said as he stood, "Take the weekend to rest and try to relax as much as possible. I would say stay away from the trial, but as I have learned that is useless because you are not about to let Alex go through it alone."
"The trial is over, we are just waiting on the jury to deliver the verdict and Alex will not be alone when that happens."
"I want you there for the verdict, so please don't miss that day."
"Why?" Alex asked, confused, "I was just told this morning that she wasn't supposed to be going to the trial every day."
"Because hearing the verdict will help in her healing process. Right now, whether she realizes it or not, she is staying on high alert, which isn't helping her anger any. If she is there and hears the guilty verdict, then she will know the threat to you is over and can one hundred percent focus on recovery. Until then, she is only focusing about fifty percent on her recovery."
"I never realized that," Alex said, looking from the doctor to Olivia and back.
"I did about a month into her rehab, but I knew it was useless to say anything. I told you, Alex, she has a connection to you like none I have ever seen before. You are not only helping her recovery, but you are hindering it as well. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. To remove her from you would cause catastrophic damage that she would quite possibly never recover from, so I had to choose the lesser of the two. I chose not to say anything and work with what I could. Believe me when I say that she has made a substantial recovery with what I had to work with. Hopefully, once the trial is over and she can relax, the recovery process will improve greatly, but, until then, we work with what we have. On that note, go home, spend some time together, reconnect, and find a way to move past yesterday, together. Until you do that, there's nothing, and I do mean nothing, that either I or any of her therapists can do to help her."
Alex nodded as she stepped out of Olivia's embrace, spending a weekend reconnecting with Olivia sounded like the best form of medicine she ever heard of and one that she couldn't wait to get started on.
A/N: I wanted to give you guys an update before my life got wild. I am not sure when I will be able to update this story along with any of my other ones. I am now having to train two people at two separate posts, races are this weekend which I've picked up a few shifts to and now the icing on the cake is my computer is messing up even worse and I'm not able to write like I want. As soon as I can I do promise to keep updating all my stories.