by S C Jones
"So basically, I'm the reason I'm broken?" she said with a frown.
She smiled sadly. "You maybe broken, but you can be fixed. With a little time, therapy, and medication, you can be a normal person again. But you have to want it, or it won't work.”
Olivia remained silent, before blinking. “Okay, what I don't get is, if my name was originally Olivia, why did my dad and others call me Lane?”
“I figured it was because you stopped responding to Olivia. Your father was already sick, so he didn't know any better, and since your mother and brother died right around the same time Lane appeared, there was no one to question it.”
“Well that sucks.”
“Don't beat yourself up about it. The mind is a powerful thing.” She closed her notebook. “I think that's all for today."
***
Three days later ….
There were a lot of issues with this case. Things that took up a lot of time in Dr. Collins thoughts, because it was an unusual one. She had done her research, gotten her facts, and had come to a conclusion that had her and a few of her colleagues looking at her patient like a new medical mystery that they all wanted to study.
"Lane, how are you this morning?"
Lane shrugged looking at the floor. "Do we really have to go there?"
"If you don't want to, then I guess we don't." She opened her notebook. "I want to talk today about your blackouts. What can you tell me about those?"
Lane kept her gaze on the floor. "What's there to say. One minute I'm here and the next I'm somewhere else, wearing something else and interacting with people who know me, but I don't know them."
"Have you ever wondered why that happens?"
"It's been happening ever since I could remember, so I figured it was a chemical imbalance or something."
"Have you ever thought to see a doctor about it?"
She shrugged. "Why, it's not like I blacked out and went on a killing spree or something. Most of the time I just woke up drunk."
Then she nodded once. “Lane, have you ever heard of the term, dissociative identity disorder?”
“No,” Lane answered looking out the window while Dr. Collins continued.
“That term is used to describe people who carry more than one identity or personality as most would say. No one is born this way, but because of a traumatic incidents that may have occurred at a young age, the current personality or what I like to call the dominating identity goes into hiding and such emerges the alter. It's a quick switch. When the alter is dormant usually they don't see, hear or feel anything, until their switched back."
Her head turned, eyes lighting up with humor. “What, so you think that I have an alter? Like a legit screwed up other person living in my head?” she laughed for the first time since being there. “Like I'm not screwed up enough, now I have another person living inside me.”
“It’s way more than a person living in your head, Lane. This personality has its own thoughts, its own feelings. It can do regular things like you and me, live a regular life because it is a real person.”
“And you’re saying I have one of these?”
“It’s more than that actually. At first, I couldn’t figure out how this other personality knew more, understood more, remembered more from a life you supposedly lived long before she was ever created.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She was the one that told me about your brother and mother's death.”
Lane shook her head trying to grasp what she was saying, and the doctor could tell it was beginning to take root in her head, as it started making sense. “That…that can’t be true. How would she know that, how would she know something that’s supposed to be mine alone, my memory that I don’t even know,” she asked skittishly looking around.
“That’s what I couldn’t understand either, but then a colleague of mine mentioned he had a case four years ago of a fifteen-year-old boy with dissociative identity disorder. One personality understood what was happening, knew a lot about their surroundings, about the people in their life, of the memories that had brought them to that point. And the other knew only of certain things, certain periods in their life that it was present for, only of the memories it was present for. Do you understand where I’m going with this, Lane?”
“What, was his prognosis,” she asked dolefully gazing at her for the first time.
She sighed, placing her notebook on the side table next to her and leaned forward. “The personality that my friend thought was the first personality in the body originally, wasn’t.”
Lane shook her head. “No—he was wrong. He was wrong, right? That can’t be true,” she said furiously jumping from her seat.
“Lane—”
“No! I am not an alter,” she shouted pointing down at the doctor who remained seated. There was a knock, and then the door opened to reveal one of the male attendants who usually stood guard whenever she had a patient.
“Lane, please sit down. You don’t want to have to be sedated again, do you?”
Glowering Lane looked from her to the huge man at the door before falling onto the couch defeated. She sighed and closed her eyes while Dr. Collins signaled to the attendant with a nod. The door closed before she turned her attention back to Lane, speaking gently so she could fully understand what she was about to say. “Lane, what you have to understand—”
“You’ve met her, this other personality?” Lane asked in a small voice.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“These personalities, that you say are just like normal people, would have names, right? What’s hers?” she asked eagerly, already knowing the name she was about to hear.
“Olivia.”
Lane let out a small chuckle, shaking her head at the floor in disbelief. “So, she was real after all,” she mumbled to herself.
“What’s that?”
“You’re saying that—Olivia is the only one that’s supposed to be in this body? That she was the only one in this body before I came along, taking over completely?”
“Well, not completely, but the majority. I don’t know how it happened, but she somehow found a way to become the alter, even though she truly wasn’t. I don’t think she meant for it to happen that way, because she didn’t know herself, but somehow it did, and that’s how ninety percent of the time you became in charge. Building this life that wasn't yours to build.”
“How many times have you spoken with her?” she asked with a tight expression.
“A few, since you’ve been in here. She’s quite the opposite of you, more along the aggressive side,” she laughed to herself remembering the anger Olivia displayed the first time they met. “You were created as the softer, calmer personality, the feelings she rarely acknowledged or hides.”
“Is that how it works?”
“Usually. The personality that originally resided in the body is never the personality that’s created. You never have two angry or two sad or suicidal personalities share a body or at least I’ve never met one that has. There has to be balance, I guess. Even in something as screwed up as this, one needs to coincide with the other.”
“So, I’m screwed up then?”
“Generally, yes, but you can be fixed.”
“And what if I don’t want to be fixed?” Lane asked adamantly. Dr. Collins knew when Lane fully grasped the severity of the situation. She could see the fear in Lane's eyes; it was almost as if she was being sentenced to death. In a way it was like death. She would be gone from the world, nonexistent, forgotten. It was a sad reality, one Dr. Collins had no control over, because it wasn't her choice.
She sighed sadly. “I’m afraid it’s not up to you anymore.”
***
Two days had passed since Lane learnt the truth. Two days of sitting in the same room while she and Dr. Collins went over every single incident, action, and blackout she’d ever experienced. “You say I’m like her father. That I’m schizophrenic. What I don’t understand is, if I’m the alter and she
isn’t, how is it I’m the one with a mental disorder, her father has? ”
“It’s not uncommon for one personality to carry an illness, even a mental one. I once had a patient with the same disorder that carried nine different personalities at a time. One of them believed he had cancer in his lungs, and whenever he talked, he coughed, and would sometimes be out of breath because he truly believed this cancer had taken over his lungs and he couldn’t breathe.”
Lane laid down with her head facing the ceiling. “So, I really just imagined all those people, even Scott. But I remember him moving in next door, and us always being together, he couldn’t have been my imagination.”
“He wasn’t. Scott just like K.C and Adrian were actual people in you and Olivia’s life. When I spoke with Olivia before she told me some things that you don’t know.”
She glanced at the doctor with a frown in her brows. “Things like what exactly.”
“When you guys were seventeen and went missing for two days, Olivia had trusted the wrong person, and was taken by a man who was going to sell her into prostitution. While there she met two girls like herself who had been taken as well. Casey and Andy whose real name was Adrian were sold, while Olivia was released.”
Lane felt jumbled and confused, and as much as she didn’t want to hear anymore of anything, she couldn’t escape the fact that this was the beginning of the end of a life she simply had no control over, no matter how much she wanted to believe she did. This life was never hers. “What happened to them?” she asked in barely a whisper.
“Well I did some research and I found some articles from the Bureau.” She stood, walking to her desk, and sifted through a manila folder before returning to the chair in front of Lane. “The first was published in 2010, after Casey was rescued and returned home.”
Lane sat up leaning forward, and taking the paper from her hand, tentatively. She held the paper in her line of sight and began reading. “Woman found dead in Chaseberry Home. On March 18th, 2010, Officer Mitch Hall the head official assigned to the Casey Alexander case, stopped by the Alexander home three months after she was rescued from a house in New Mexico, only to find the dead body of Miss. Alexander at the bottom of the second floor tub.
Officers were called on the scene and the body was transferred to Town City Morgue, where an autopsy was done the following day. It was determined that Miss. Alexander’s cause of death was by drowning, after slitting her wrists, and ingesting a bottle of anti-depressants.
The family was called, her mother long deceased after suffering complications from a heart surgery four years prior, leaving only her sisters Aria and Ann behind. Aria said that Casey was suffering from PTSD and depression, and had locked herself away from everyone, including her. “She refused any help and insisted that she was okay and only wanted to be alone to build herself back up,” her sister said when interviewed. “I guess she just couldn’t cope anymore.””
Not capable of seeing through the tears anymore, Lane placed the paper on the seat next to her and grabbed a tissue from the box in Dr. Collins out stretched hand. She couldn’t think of a single person that she’d grown to love and cherish as much as K.C, only to find out she’d been dead all along.
“Lane?” Her head snapped over to the doctor's pensive eyes as she wiped the tears away. “I know this is a shock. I know she probably seemed real, but as you have read, she wasn’t, and like her, Adrian couldn’t cope either.”
“What about Scott?” she whispered feeling grief-stricken. “Is he dead too?”
“Here.” There was a file in her lap Lane hadn’t notice until she was handing it to her. Lane stared at it for a while, debating with herself on whether or not she wanted the truth about the boy she once and always loved. Deep down she knew he was dead, and all that time spent remembering who he was and why she always loved him was a joke her mind played to make her feel loved.
Opening the file her eyes fell on the small photograph of him, probably taken when he was first admitted here at the hospital. His tired eyes and brooding stare plagued her mind before she pulled her eyes away to look at the jumbled words, written in a terrible doctor’s handwriting.
Scott Knight was admitted to Clifton MI when he was caught trying to jump off a four story hospital building after being admitted there for treatment. After careful observation patient was exhibiting sighs of bipolar disorder, to which therapy and a daily dose of Lamictal was prescribed.
After two weeks patient was showing signs of improvement, and even started opening up in group therapy. After a month patient was doing so well, I signed the release papers for him to continue his therapy outside the walls of Clifton. A day later patient was found dead on the front steps of the building after jumping from the hospital roof.
“I was his therapist, and also the one that found him that afternoon. He was such a good kid. Had so much promise and enthusiasm, that you really couldn’t help but want good things for him. I guess—in the end it wasn’t enough for him to fight anymore. He let his disease get the better of him, Lane, which is what I don’t want for you. This is why I’m here to show you that those three people came into your head to show you why you should fight, and do what they couldn’t.”
“Why should I, huh,” Lane shouted furiously slamming the file shut. “I sit here and I feel and I hurt and I dread every single thing that is being said because I have to understand why my life has been utter shit, and why everyone I care about never cared about me because they were never real. I’m not even fucking real doc!” She tossed the folder aside. “So, you tell me what the hell should I be fighting for when I don’t get to live.”
The doctor sighed eyeing Lane with hallowed cheeks as Lane sat silently gazing out the window. She liked Lane and wished there was some way to save both girls, but the possibility didn’t exist. One body wasn’t designed to share two minds, which was why people with the syndrome who didn't seek help ended up hurting themselves or others.
Olivia was right. Lane had self-destructive tendencies, and not to mention a mental illness that caused her to land them in the situation they were in now. She couldn't be saved.
The jury was out, and the case closed. There was nothing else that could be done.
Epilogue
One month later…
Olivia was still institutionalized. Her life had become a broken record that didn't stop playing until someone made a scratch. She woke up, ate breakfast, took pills, went outside until it was time for therapy, and then she and Dr. Collins went over her life, her mistakes, her problems. They'd made progress in a lot of areas, one of them being her mother and brother's death.
Her sadness, grief, and blame was what triggered the change and created Lane. She finally had to accept the fact that their deaths weren't her fault, and there was nothing she could have done to stop it. Although she still fought with herself about it, she eventually had to let it go in order to move on to a better place.
She also realized that without Lane, she really had nothing to be angry about seeing as Lane was the reason for her anger. She became angry because she hated the fact that Lane had a life, and wasted it everyday, while she was fighting to get out for five minutes. She wanted what Lane had, not knowing it was hers all along, and she simply needed to fight for it.
She remembered the exact moment Lane wasn’t there anymore. She'd woke up that morning two weeks after being on heavy medication, and it felt as if a weight had been lifted. She could breathe for the very first time in years. Lane was finally gone, and at first there was this sadness in her chest, but after a while it faded, and it was just Olivia.
She was sitting in the garden, watching rain clouds forming in the sky, turning the once sunny day into an angry dark afternoon, when one of the nurses approached. “Olivia, sweetheart you got a visitor,” she said standing a few inches away. Olivia was surprised, seeing as she'd never gotten visitors before, and no one knew she was here. For all the world knew Olivia Bennett formally known as Lane Bennett had either died o
r moved away.
“I do. Who is it?”
“Some guy. A very handsome one at that. You never told me you had a boyfriend.”
“That’s because I don’t.” Not unless he had found her, she thought as her heart kicked up a storm in her chest. She had thought about Castell every day, and after that day in her apartment she had no idea if he was dead or alive.
As she entered the social room, she spotted him sitting at the same table Lane and her dad used to share. He was gazing down at the table, so he didn’t see her enter, but she took that time to admire how handsome he was and how much she'd missed him. His hair had grown out some still sticking out in that sexy way it always did. His shoulders were slumped forward when he rested his hands on the table. In all the time she had known him he had never seemed so normal, even though he was dressed in one of his expensive suits.
She stepped into his line of sight, meeting his blank gaze before he leaned back in his chair. Sitting facing him with an impassive expression, she said, “you found me.”
He was silent for a few seconds as if surprised she knew who he was. After their last encounter she couldn't blame him, since it wasn't one of her finer moments. “Took some doing, but I came as soon as I could.” He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in weeks. It was probably how she looked too only wrapped in a lovely blue and white pajama set.
“How?”
“Did some digging, found out you came here to visit your dad a couple times a week before he went missing. After I couldn’t find you at any of your regular places, I came here. I couldn’t let my father know where you were.”
She shrugged not caring if his dad did good on his promise or not. She couldn’t hide, didn’t have the resources too, especially with the kind of man that he was. She bet he already knew she was here, and was waiting for the right opportunity. “It’s alright, nothing either of us could do about your dad.” She inhaled gazing at her clamped fingers before biting the inside of her cheek. She knew why he was here, and it was time she told him the truth and stopped hiding who she really was. Returning her gaze to his she sighed. “I’m guessing you want an explanation?”