by Bethany-Kris
Karine even wondered if anyone would miss her.
The man beside her quickly reminded her that someone would when he murmured her name, drawing her attention once more.
“Karine,” Roman said firmly. She met his eyes, hoping he couldn’t see how mean her own mind could be staring back at him in the tears that formed when she blinked. His hand found her cheek, then, and stayed when he added, “I want you to know—no matter what happens, or when it happens, if where you want to be is with me, then I’ll make sure you stay there. You hear me?”
At first, she said nothing. That didn’t bother Roman. His thumb stroked her cheek when she curled her fingers around his wrist.
“Do you promise?” she whispered.
She was starting to believe those.
His.
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “I promise.”
Trapped under the weight of his stare and the softness of his touch keeping her happily present, Karine reveled in the sense of being free and possessed at the same time. It was such a foreign thing to her. At never wanting him to stop making promises—even if they might be all lies—or reaching for her, reminding her why she wanted to be alive.
What was he doing to her?
“I’m not really sure how to do this,” she told him, waving a hand between them. “Or even what this is, you know?”
A sheepish smile answered her back. Roman’s dark, husky chuckle replaced that smile with something far more tempting when he replied, “I don’t know how to be that guy that does this shit, either, but I’m trying. Half the time, I’m not even sure that I’m saying the right things, but I keep saying them anyway—hoping you understand, and trust me. That’s all I’ve got, Karine. This is it, here we are.”
She’d never seen him so unguarded. Oh, she’d had him wild, hard, and wicked in the dark. He’d given her shiver-worthy words buried into bedsheets, but nothing quite like what he just said. Nothing so freely.
Bliss heated up the back of her neck, coloring her cheeks a soft pink when she admitted, “You’re doing a good job of being that guy, though.”
That made him smile again in that humble way—it was kind of sad how seldom he smiled. Except she didn’t smile very often either, unless it was like this with him. She found herself smiling all too often, then.
Karine’s tongue swept nervously over her bottom lip as another question danced in the back of her mind, and since he was already being open and honest ... “But keeping me safe from Dima isn’t the only reason you’ve brought me here, is it?”
Roman lifted a single brow high. “How did you—”
“I wasn’t always sleeping when you were on the phone during the drive. Even if you thought I was.”
He only shook his head, but his grin didn’t falter a bit. “Good to know. And yeah, I found someone who can help. You, I mean. They might be able to help you, or give you advice and assistance for a bit. At least, while you’re here. If you’re open to it—I won’t make you do it, Karine.”
She doubted he knew it—or, maybe he absolutely did—but Roman was the first person to actually do something to help her. He recognized she needed it when everyone else had been fine to ply her with medication and hide her away where she couldn’t be seen.
It also wasn’t that simple.
Karine couldn’t blame everyone else without admitting some of her own faults, too. She hadn’t entirely accepted that something was wrong, even if she knew it, that didn’t mean she understood it, but at least she was willing to say she had to.
Wasn’t it time?
His hands slid lower, curving along the column of her neck and further down until he was cupping her shoulders at both sides. She was still on solid ground with him—she might not be the pillar holding up in the storm, but she didn’t have to be if he was there.
“It’s normal to feel afraid of the unknown, huh?”
She laughed, light and airy. “That might be the only normal thing about me, then.”
He hadn’t been expecting that, but his answering laughter was a beautiful sight to behold all the same.
“You know what, maybe that’s what people should like about you,” he replied, quieting Karine’s laughter just like that. “It’s exactly what I like about you.”
Well, then ...
• • •
The petite woman sitting at the other end of the sunlit day room in a royal blue pencil skirt was cream silk blouse, was a psychotherapist who had essentially been blackmailed to be there. Karine had figured that much out already—it was all the other details that she didn’t have bothering her. There was no other way to explain the doctor’s sudden presence when she had a feeling that doctors like the one staring at her had referral and wait lists as long as they were tall.
Karine didn’t hide the fact that she was openly assessing her as much as the woman was trying to study her, too. She’d barely let the doctor get a sentence or two out before demanding her own information.
What was she doing here? How had she made her way to the middle of Vermont?
Karine knew Roman had brought her here, but on what grounds? How much was she being paid?
Every question came out faster than the last, and by the time Karine was done asking all she had to ask, the two found themselves in an uncomfortably long staring contest.
That was fine.
Karine had time.
As it turned out—the doctor did, too.
“You don’t trust easily, do you?” she asked Karine after minutes ticked by in silence.
Karine frowned. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Michelle. Michelle Yang.”
Right.
Ph-fucking-D.
“I don’t know you to trust you.”
Michelle lifted one shoulder as if to silently say, and? “Would you like me to tell you things that are important to know about me?”
“You still haven’t answered my questions.”
The doctor nodded with a laugh, but her joy was short-lived when she replied, “My brother has a gambling problem, and he ended up owing money to the wrong people. Not that I don’t understand why he’s found himself where he has, I do, but he makes it hard to care sometimes. His children, though ... well, I do care a great deal about what happens to them. So, here I am, Karine.”
From the way Michelle avoided looking at the far end of the room—where Roman sat watching the exchange without inserting himself because Karine asked him to be there—it was highly likely that the wrong people her brother owed money to were the Avdonins. Or someone with close enough connections to Roman’s family that he had been able to pull weight.
The woman hadn’t wanted Roman to be in the room with them. In fact, she’d insisted on privacy to facilitate the most effective first meeting and session. But that wasn’t what Karine wanted; to be alone with a stranger, already twisting inside from anxiety eating her alive.
She didn’t think this would be easy, but goddammit ... it didn’t have to be hard, either. She wanted Roman with her every step of the way, if he would be there, and hadn’t been able to suppress the smile when he agreed to be in the room with her.
There was something settling about knowing he was willing to face all the darkness with her, to peel back the layers and uncover everything there was to find inside her. Even the things she didn’t know about herself. It felt a bit like Pandora’s box, really, but some things just had to be done.
So fine.
She’d do it with him.
As comfortable and safe as she felt with Roman, Karine couldn’t say the same about the woman who was there to help her. Part of it could certainly be blamed on the invisible itchiness under Karine’s skin making itself known—the undeniable urge to flee from the conversation they were about to have. The rest of it was just ... her nature.
Karine couldn’t help it.
Everyone hurt her. Not a single soul had ever given a shit about her, and she wasn’t going to start trusting that had change
d just because the woman introduced herself as a specialist at the top of her field.
She peeked Roman’s way, then.
Well, almost everyone.
Every time she came close to leaving the room, she turned to look at Roman, and he would nod at her. It encouraged her to stay. Just a little longer, to see if the feeling improved. Honestly, that was the only thing keeping here there at the moment.
“How about,” Michelle said, “I ask a few simple things ... just to be sure what you’re dealing with? I was told a little bit, and I suspect that’s really what’d you like from me, Karine. To know.”
She dragged in a stinging, shaky breath. “Yeah, I would.”
“So, can I ask?”
“Okay.”
Michelle nodded with a smile, and glanced down at the black notebook in her lap. “Why don’t you start by telling me if there are chunks of time in your day to day life—when you just black out? Do you have moments like that? A lot of time where you don’t remember what happens or how you end up where you do.”
Karine stared at the woman who was examining her, trying to focus on the shape of the spectacles resting on the bridge of her freckled nose instead of her voice.
Yes, there were times like that.
Much too often.
Michelle glanced up at Karine’s silence, but she managed to tip her chin down in a half-nod that at least did its job. It was enough for the doctor to make a note of it in her book.
“How often in a week? Less than ten, more—”
“It depends.”
“Why is that?”
The answer was not so easy.
Karine glanced over her shoulder at Roman who sat exactly where he had been a few minutes ago. His presence gave her strength, but it didn’t dull the sharp, blinding shame that spiraled through her when she told the doctor, “Some weeks were worse than others—the medications didn’t help when it came to having any real understanding of time, or days ... specific months, even.”
Michelle met her stare, asking only, ‘What medications?”
“I really don’t know ... well, you see—”
“That wasn’t something Karine had a choice in—it was just a method used by people around her to keep her compliant, and manageable,” Roman spoke up from his side of the room. The first time he did, and she was grateful that he saw her struggle and was willing to help.
The doctor didn’t even look his way, but did make a note of it in her notebook before coming back to Karine with a gentle smile. “Okay, back to the time thing. Other people know, don’t they? They are aware of exactly what you did in the time you find yourself losing?”
“I mean, Masha says stuff sometimes, and other people do, too, but I don’t know ... I never did what they say I did.”
Her words came out in a rush while her hands trembled where she had folded them in her lap. She didn’t like that idea at all. It nearly made her sick to think about how much time she couldn’t account for—empty spaces in her memory where there was just nothing. She was always brought back to consciousness with a gasp, and a throbbing ache at the back of her head, and she couldn’t quite say it felt like waking up.
Because it didn’t.
Unable to stand the crawling sensation under her skin, or sit still a moment longer, Karine stood up from her chair with a jerk. She needed to move to do this—to give those thoughts in her mind space to breathe.
The woman’s gaze stayed on her as she paced the length of the room, and so did Roman’s.
“But then I have times when I see things—like I’m remembering them,” Karine said as she toyed with the ends of her hair, still pacing. “But they don’t feel like mine.”
“Do you hear them?”
“Sometimes.”
“Have you seen any evidence from the other identities?” Michelle asked when Karine rounded the middle of the room and headed right back for the windows in mid-stride. “Something that interests them but has nothing to do with you?”
“Drawings. Sketches left by Katee.”
It pained her to say one of the names—to finally accept it for what it was—because a part of her had been avoiding doing that. Just ... saying it. Out loud.
“Are they any good?”
Karine shrugged at that question. The truth wasn’t hard to say, she just didn’t care to do it because it didn’t matter. No matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to recreate those sketches herself. They were made by a different person. And yeah, they were good.
What difference did it make?
“Do you hear voices that you don’t recognize, or that other people can’t hear—ones you can’t explain, that say things you’re frightened of, maybe? Or do you see things other people can’t or don’t see?”
“No.”
Silence filled the room. The only sound was the scratching of the pen while Michelle made more notes in her book. Maybe she was waiting for Karine to continue, but she didn’t know what to say. Eventually, she found her way to the tall windows where she could enjoy the view of the lake and towering trees with sprinkling leaves.
“Do you want me to explain Dissociative Identity Disorder to you? Perhaps you don’t fully understand it—the mechanics of it, we’ll say. Although, I’m not fond of that word. It’s very distinctive from other disorders in certain ways, but DID itself can look very different from person to person.”
Karine’s reflection showed the proof of her flinch, but no one else could see it except her. The woman had already mentioned the name of the disorder in the initial course of their conversation, but she had been quick to turn the questions around on the doctor at that point.
But there it was.
Karine looked over with her heavily hooded eyes. The woman continued.
“The most common question I’m asked from patients is what makes DID different from say, a disorder like schizophrenia, or even a state of psychosis where you’re hearing voices—and the answer is simple. Those are chemical, the voices they hear don’t exist. Yours do. Essentially.”
Still wary, Karine blinked, taking that in.
Michelle didn’t miss a beat, continuing on, “Something has happened in your past, maybe several incidents. A trauma, of sorts, a memory that you have fought very hard to suppress. Those with DID often say they’ve collected traumas, each shattering into fragments, and with it, a new identity who takes those memories and moments on as their own. There’s not always a new one with every trauma, but the bigger point there is—”
“Does it go away?”
Across the room, the woman in the perfectly pressed pencil skirt and expensive blouse took a moment to set her pen down on the notebook in her lap before she removed the black-rimmed glasses from her face. Karine was glad Michelle took her time to consider a reply before she just blurted one out, and that she regarded Karine with kindness and sympathy as she did it.
“I’m sure you remember when I said it can look different from person to person?”
“And?”
“It has disappeared in some individuals, with therapy and time.”
“What about meds, or something?” Karine asked.
“It’s not chemical, Karine. Medication doesn’t actually work for DID—you can’t medicate away identities that exist inside of you. Some people do well in therapy, and find that the fragments come back together again ... others live with their disorder and identities for the rest of their life.”
Karine picked at her nails as she tried to figure out what that could man. “Will there be ... more of them?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But maybe.”
“Not everyone is the same,” the woman reiterated.
She waited again for Karine to comment, but none was forthcoming. Karine just wanted to listen, and assimilate. Absorb it all—make it make sense. Or make it better. She wasn’t really sure which.
Or if that was possible.
She wanted it to be, though. Wasn’t that what Roman asked of her befo
re this session? To not fight it, to approach it with an open mind, and no matter what she heard in this room—he would still want to kiss her outside of it.
So, that’s what she was doing.
Trying.
“From what I understand about your case,” the woman continued, throwing Roman another cursory glance. “From what I’ve been told, I should say, one of your identities appeared at a very young age, right?”
“Katee,” Karine spoke up, braver now than she had been. “Although I don’t think she’s been around lately. Maybe she’s gone.”
The last time Katee appeared was that night in New York when she drew a sketch of Roman when he was asleep. No one had suggested to Karine that the little girl showed up since, and she couldn’t bring forth any of those foreign memories to say different, either. She desperately wanted this woman to tell her that was a good sign, but she had a feeling that wouldn’t actually be the case.
The psychotherapist made more notes in her book, and then looked up again with a purse of her lips. “It’s possible that she’s gone, but I’d be careful to say so with confidence. There have been many instances where an identity has altogether disappeared over time. Sometimes through therapy and circumstances improving, the mind shifts back together like I said, but other people have had identities just ... leave for no apparent reason. But if—again, as I understand your situation from what’s been explained to me—you’ve only had specific identities that haven’t left, then perhaps Katee isn’t gone. She’s just ... fine where she is.”
Karine released the breath she’d been holding, but she couldn’t tell if it was from relief, or not. In some ways, it felt like it. For others, not so much.
Either way, she found Michelle was saying exactly the things Karine needed to hear. In between the things that scared her, or left her worried, there was hope. Not perfection, but it didn’t need to be. She just wanted something ...
The woman talked like Karine could have it. Whatever it was.
Her throat felt dry with nervous excitement, and she gulped it down. Michelle continued staring, her gaze turning curious in a blink, and Karine sensed another question was on the horizon.