by Phoebe Lane
"I only had two things in my life that had held me in Texas up to that point—my job and Christopher. He was dead, and it became painfully clear to me that I couldn't work anymore after that. I lost all confidence in my abilities as a doctor. There was no way in hell I was taking responsibility for my patients' lives when I couldn't even keep my fiancé alive."
"You keep saying that, babydoc, but you were his fiancée, not his psychiatrist. It wasn't your job to save him. Even if you had found out he was sick, you wouldn't have been able to treat him anyway, right? Isn't there a rule against treating family members?"
"You don't understand—I didn't even have a clue that he was going through something like that. Nothing. Not a single ounce of suspicion. It came out of nowhere. I should've…" she said but trailed off.
"Do you know what happened? Why he did it?" he asked softly.
Aislynn shook her head in response, trying not to think about the words on that letter. "He didn't give me an explanation. Looking back, I guess he had seemed a bit distant and preoccupied the last few weeks before he died, but I assumed it had to do with work. He had been traveling a lot, trying to get some projects completed before the wedding. I had been working a lot, too, and I...I didn't see it." She hated every single one of the tears that escaped her eyes. "I couldn't bear telling his parents the truth, or even Ellie. I didn't want them to feel the pain that I…"
Jace gave her time, and she appreciated it. Aislynn took another sip of her drink, hoping it would relax her some and allow her to continue talking. There were other important things she needed to address.
"I'm sorry about walking out on you this morning. You were right. I was putting a lot of this on you, and that's not fair. I just couldn't wrap my brain around seeing Chloe here. What exactly happened with her?" she asked, and Jace stood up to grab something from the kitchen counter.
"She showed up at my door drunk out of her mind last night. She actually drove here like that," Jace explained, handing her phone to her.
"Oh…wow," Aislynn said.
"I couldn't let her get behind the wheel again, so I let her pass out on the couch. I texted you right away and explained what had happened, but Chloe found your phone and texted me back, making me think you had gotten my message."
"That b—" Aislynn said, scrolling through her texts, multiple things finally clicking in her head. "Is she the one calling you in the middle of the night from a blocked number?"
"Yeah. She's been doing that for a few weeks now. I was very clear this morning about how things stood between us, and then I kicked her ass out. I'm hoping she won't be a problem anymore."
"I'm sorry about all this, Jace."
"I'm sorry, too."
After calling the office and making arrangements to work from home the rest of the day, Jace insisted Aislynn eat something and then go to bed. Aislynn was finally able to find sleep but it was very restless. There was one last very important thing she needed to tell Jace about, and she was so very afraid he would be the one running away from her this time.
Jace finished going through his emails before realizing it was dark out already. He turned around in his chair and stared out the glass window, giving himself some time to think about Aislynn and all the chaos that had gone on that day.
His mind was still reeling from the revelation of Christopher's suicide and all the things that had slowly clicked in his head afterward. Learning about his cancer had probably affected Aislynn immensely but she had handled it with courage. He realized the day she had cut her hand and he had taken her to the hospital was probably the anniversary of the day Christopher had died. He learned to hate Pam a little bit more for the things she had said about Christopher at dinner a few nights before.
God, there's so much.
Jace rubbed his hands up and down his face, wondering what his next step needed to be. He wanted to be supportive, but he wasn't exactly sure how to do that. He had to admit he was scared about the intensity of it all, but he loved Aislynn and he was not going to walk away from her.
He walked out of the office to check on her, but found her sitting on top of the dining room table, just like they had done on her birthday. He couldn't see her face, but her body was still, her hands in her lap, her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head.
He walked around the table and froze when he took in the expression on her face. She was staring out the window, her eyes tormented. He climbed onto the table and quietly sat next to her.
"I think this is my favorite place in the house," she said softly.
"I agree. I was just in my office staring out the window, too. I was thinking about you," he said, and heard Aislynn take a deep breath in.
"I don't want you to worry about me, Jace."
"I worry because I love you, and I want to help you. I hope you realize letting people take care of you is not your forte."
"I know," Aislynn said with a scoff. "You're so diplomatic. You can say it—I suck at it. I really should know better. Carrying this baggage with me for so long is really killing me."
She looked so sad and so scared that Jace could scarcely resist the urge to take her in his arms to comfort her. He was getting better at reading her, and he could tell there was something major going on inside her head.
"You have something else you need to tell me," he said softly, and Aislynn nodded. It took her five minutes to start talking.
"When I was a second year psych resident, I was called in once to do a consult for a patient in the hospital. It was for a woman in her forties who had suddenly lost her ability to walk, and the doctors couldn't figure out why. They had run all sorts of tests on her, and they couldn't find anything. She had literally gone to sleep one night and when she woke up, she couldn't move her legs.
"So I went to talk to her and did a full interview and exam, but I also came out empty handed. She had no psych history, she wasn't depressed, or anxious, or psychotic. There was nothing there. It was so incredibly frustrating not being able to figure out what the hell was going on with her.
"I was still on rotation for a few more weeks, so I ended up visiting her on a regular basis, if anything to just let her talk. She told me about her life, her childhood, and her three kids. She had been married young to a man who had never been the ideal husband, but she still loved him. She revealed that they had been having a lot of marital problems, and that she had actually come home early from work one night to find him having sex with another woman in their bed. She considered leaving him right then and there, but the thought of walking away from him and the life she had known for twenty years was just too terrifying. She woke up the next day and she couldn't walk anymore.
"Her brain had actually convinced her subconscious that she couldn't walk. It's called Conversion Disorder, and it's very difficult to treat. It can take years of therapy, and medicines don't usually work. "
"That's incredible. And she really didn't see the connection?" he asked, and Aislynn shook her head in response, in turn becoming very quiet and somber.
Why is she telling me all this?
"The mind can do remarkable things," Aislynn said and turned her face to him, her eyes downcast. "I see him sometimes."
"Who?" Jace asked, confused.
"I see Christopher."
"What do you mean, you see him?" he asked, his voice surprisingly steady.
"I'm so afraid you're going to think I've completely lost it," she said, understanding the enormity of what she was putting out there for Jace to deal with.
"Don't be afraid. Just tell me, please," he said, rubbing his hand on her back in a sign of comfort.
"The first time I saw him, I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. I was leaving a restaurant in San Francisco, and I thought I saw him sitting alone at a back table sipping a cup of coffee. I didn't stay long enough to figure out if it was really him or not. I freaked out and left the city the very next day," she said and paused, trying to organize her thoughts. "The next time I saw him was the da
y I met you."
Jace was silent for a moment, letting out a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Aislynn. I…I really don't know…I don't know what to say," he said. "Are you sick? Is that it?"
"I'm not crazy, if that's what you're asking," she said, feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
"I wasn't trying to—"
"It's okay. It's a fair question," Aislynn interrupted him. Even though she understood where he was coming from, she had to admit it hurt like hell to see doubt in his eyes. "I'm not psychotic. At some level, I've known all along it wasn't really him, that he wasn't real. But it was something that I needed to go through, I guess. It's really hard to explain."
"Can you please try? I really want to understand," he said softly and moved his hand up to her neck. She was happy that he was still touching her, that he wasn't afraid to be close to her even after her revelation.
"I've been sitting here the last hour trying to figure out why this is happening to me. I've come to realize that every single…interaction I've had with Christopher has pretty much been a way for my mind to shove in my face the things I wasn't ready to deal with. I can take every single conversation, every word exchanged between Christopher and me, and see that they weren't things that he would've ever said to me if he was still alive. They were all things I would've told myself if I'd had the strength to deal with them head on. Just like my patient who couldn't walk after seeing her husband with another woman, Christopher was my subconscious' way of showing me how much anger, guilt, and sadness I still feel about what happened."
"You mean guilt about his death?"
"About that, and about moving on with you, about falling in love with somebody else…even about the way I ended things with Pam. It all came back to haunt me."
The irony.
"Now that you're seeing this for what it really is, do you think it'll go away?" he asked, and Aislynn could sense his anticipation. She knew what he wanted to hear, but she had to give him the truth instead.
"I'm hoping it will, but it may take some time. I need to finally start addressing these things. You said it best on the beach earlier today—"
"It's time," they both said at the same time.
Aislynn stared out the window again, the minutes passing and the waiting becoming more and more uncomfortable for her. She wondered what Jace was feeling, what he was planning to do now. She realized this was a huge burden to put on him, and she didn't want to set herself up for disappointment, thinking he would respond one way or the other.
"What are you thinking about?" he whispered after a few more minutes.
"Umm…nothing. Just trying to figure out what the hell I do now."
"I'll be honest with you, Aislynn. This is scary, what's going on with you," he said after a long pause.
This is going to hurt even more than I imagined.
"But I really wish you would start using the word 'we' more often. I want you to wonder what the hell we do now," he said and turned to her. "I'm all in, babydoc. This isn't going to make me walk away from you. If I beat the crap out of cancer, then we can deal with this."
Aislynn laughed and cried all at once, tears steadily rolling down her cheeks. He pulled her into his lap and held her, his hands roaming all over her back, almost like he wanted to make sure she was alive and real. She hugged him tightly, craving the contact and the feeling of his warm breath on her neck.
"Why the tears?" he said softly in her ear, and she pulled away to look at him in the face.
"I just…I really needed to hear that. I'm so sick of being alone, of sabotaging myself into these situations."
"I love you, and I'm not going anywhere."
"Thank you…I love you, too. More than you could possibly know."
They sat together for a long while and finally decided to go to bed. Aislynn hoped to wake up the next day somehow having figured out what step she—they needed to take next.
But old habits are hard to break.
The following week went by at a slow pace. Jace and Aislynn settled into a routine of work and writing, dinners together, long talks in the evenings, and lovemaking at night. Jace hadn't been afraid to ask Aislynn more questions about Christopher, their life together, and the hallucinations.
The very first time he had said the word out loud, Aislynn had to run to the bathroom to throw up.
Well, Reality, that was quite a bitch-slap.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror for a while and opened up her mind to the reality before her.
"Okay, enough of this. Time to call things for what they are," she told herself before forcing several deep breaths in and walking back out into the living room.
"I’m sorry. That kind of caught me off guard," she said, and welcomed the feeling of Jace’s hand in hers.
"We need to keep talking about this," he said, gently pushing her to address the elephant in the room.
"Yes, I know. I’m just…scared because, even though it’s not uncommon for people to have these exper—hallucinations—after the loss of a loved one, mine have lasted for a while now."
"We’ll deal with this, babydoc." The level of support Jace had given her up to now was immeasurable.
Ellie, oblivious to everything that had happened to her best friend back in San Diego, had spent the week in Chicago ironing out her new work deal.
"So, what did your boss say?" Aislynn asked her excitedly on the phone.
"The proposal went just like we rehearsed it. I totally made her think the idea of opening up a branch of the company in the West coast and make me the director had been all hers. She wants me to start the process right away, so I’m coming back with all my stuff next week."
Witnessing Ellie and Evan prepare for their new life together made Aislynn think more about her own future with Jace, which was a scary place for her to go. The mere thought of allowing her mind to consider the possibility of—
Okay, not going there, yet. Not ready.
Aislynn met with Lana, her editor, to discuss her most recent work. It was the most bizarre meeting she had ever been to in her life, primarily because she only managed to utter about eight words max throughout the entire time they were together.
"Okay, listen up, Aislynn. I want more of this," Lana had said, slamming her hand down on top of a printout of the excerpt Aislynn had emailed her. "This right here is everything you've been trying not to write about, but absolutely need to. This is what's going to turn you into a best-selling published author. Now, I realize this is very personal material, but you need to make it work. Give yourself some time. Keep writing it, sleep on it, drink yourself silly thinking about it, shop your worries away on shoes if you have to, but do it."
"Lana, I—"
"I know you have more written down, and I want it in my email by tonight. Don't review, don't outline, and don't you dare edit. I want it just the way it is. I already talked to an agent. We just need you to keep writing."
"I don't know if I can—"
"I don't want an answer right now. I'll be in touch with you in the next few days," she said, getting up from her chair. "And start thinking about pen names. I already have one picked out for you in my head, but I don't want to be too pushy."
Too late for that.
In addition to scaring her to no end, the meeting with Lana ended up being an important turning point for Aislynn. On a superficial level, she figured that she might as well get something positive out of all the crap she had had to live through in her lifetime and decided to continue writing about it. On a deeper level, Aislynn kept hearing Lana’s words on a continuous loop inside her head.
This right here is everything you've been trying not to write about, but need to.
It suddenly dawned on her that there was something else, something key to her situation that Aislynn did not want to do, but really needed to. And if going against her instinct was the answer, like Lana had suggested, then she needed to force herself to do this.
It was going to be heart breaking.
It
was going to be uncomfortable.
It was going to be life-altering to other people besides herself.
It was going to be all those things, but it was absolutely and undeniably necessary.
I need to go back to Texas.
"Jace?"
"I'm asleep," he murmured, not even moving his head up from her lap. He loved to lie in bed and watch movies while Aislynn lazily played with his hair.
"You are?" she asked, her eyebrow arching up.
"Yes, I am. I'm fully asleep, and I'm having an amazing dream. You're in it, and you're naked right now," he said, his eyes still closed, his hands slowly creeping up her leg.
"You're being extremely eloquent for an unconscious person," she said and watched him sit up. "Can we talk for a minute?"
"Sure, what's on your mind?" he asked as his smile faded and the mood in the room changed.
"I've…I think…" Aislynn said, stumbling with her words. She forced a deep breath in and out and closed her eyes for a few seconds. "I'm going back to Texas."
"Wha…Umm…What?"
"I've decided to go back. I want to…I need to talk to Christopher's parents."
"Oh…wow. Okay…" he said, his face troubled.
"I need to tell them the truth about what happened to him," she said, nervous butterflies in her stomach.
"You think this the right time to have that conversation with them? Do you really feel ready to do that?" he asked.
"I really don't," Aislynn said, shaking her head. "I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the fact that it scares the crap out of me tells me it's the right thing to do. I have to get this out if I really want to move on with my life."
Jace thought about it for a few seconds and readjusted his position so that he was sitting right across from her, his hands holding hers. "I need to ask you something, and I know we've talked about it before, but humor me, please." Aislynn nodded her head in affirmation, and he continued, "Is this about you, or is this about Christopher?"