Shattered

by Ava Conway

  “And how about you?” Dr. Bergman asked, looking at Flynn. “What is your story?”

  Flynn shrugged and let go of my hand. “No story. Just the truth.”

  “The truth? And what’s that?” Dr. Polanski asked.

  Flynn glanced at me. “I seduced Mia and convinced her to have sex with me in her office.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Flynn, don’t do this.”

  He turned his head and met Dr. Polanski’s gaze. “If anyone is at fault here, it’s me.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “I was the one who approached her and initiated the relationship. I had taken her stuffed animal and used it to get her to have sex with me.”

  “No.” I stood. “It’s not true.”

  “Sit down, Mia,” Dr. Polanski said.

  “I can’t. This is wrong.”

  “Do as she says, child,” Dr. Bergman said. I met his stern gaze and then did as I was told.

  “Well, this puts a new spin on things,” Dr. Polanski muttered as she glanced around at the four of us. “Is there anything else?”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “This was my fault.”

  “No,” Flynn said as he met my gaze. “It’s mine.”

  “So many words, so few facts,” Dr. Jacobs muttered.

  “Okay,” Dr. Bergman said. “I think I’ve heard enough.” He waved his hand in the air. “You all may go back up to the long-term-care ward. We’ll notify you when we make a final decision.”

  We all stood to go.

  “Not you, Ms. Horton.”

  I glanced at Flynn. He searched for my hand, secretly squeezed it, then glanced at the others behind me.

  “I’ll find you again, Mia. I promise,” he whispered.

  Tears filled my eyes as I nodded. He let go of my hand and followed the others out of the room. The door shut behind the orderlies and Flynn, leaving me alone with my superiors. Slowly, I returned to my seat to face my fate.

  “You can’t think that after what has just happened we can let you back up on that floor,” Dr. Bergman said.

  “No, sir.” I twirled my pen in my hand. Around and around it went, but the repetitive movements did little to settle my frazzled nerves.

  “You have been relieved of your internship, Ms. Horton,” Dr. Bergman said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have already talked to your professor and you will be getting a failing grade,” Dr. Polanski said.

  “Yes, of course.” I stared at the ground, unwilling to look my accusers in the eye.

  “People have been prosecuted for such behavior,” Dr. Bergman said.

  I stopped twirling my pen and raised my gaze to meet his. “Prosecuted?”

  “Yes. The patients here have fragile mental states. Romantic relationships can be detrimental to their overall mental health.”

  “I see.”

  “We should prosecute you, but we won’t,” Dr. Polanski answered. “However, we have made a strong recommendation that you will never work directly with patients at Newton Heights again.”

  “I understand.”

  “We have spoken with your adviser and have suggested another avenue of study,” Dr. Polanski said.

  I shifted my gaze to her. “What?”

  “Laboratory work.”

  “Like with rats and stuff?”

  “Not necessarily.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been watching you, Mia. Working with patients who have mental health issues takes a lot of inner strength and resolve. We put rules in place for a reason . . . not only for the patient’s benefit, but also for ours.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do.” She let out a long breath. “I work with Flynn and others like him every day. It’s very easy to forget that they’re sick sometimes, but the hard truth is that they have a lot of issues to work through. Our purpose is to help them, not impede their progress by encouraging their behavior.”

  I thought about how I had thanked Flynn each and every time he had gotten physical to protect me. Did I encourage him? I didn’t think so, but then again, I didn’t discourage him, either.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I said.

  “I know I’m right.” She studied me for a moment, then smiled. “Do yourself a favor, Mia, and take this as a learning experience. Grow from it. You have a lot to give. You just need to find your passion.”

  “My passion.”

  Dr. Bergman passed a sheet of paper over to me. “Here.”

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a letter indicating everything we have discussed today. It is on your permanent record and in the file system at Newton Heights and our hospital affiliates. If you try to get a job working directly with patients again, this will come up as a warning.”

  “I understand.” I placed the paper in my briefcase and pulled out the stack of files. “Here.”

  “What’s this?” Dr. Polanski asked, taking the files.

  “It’s my assessment of the patients who were in my care.” When Dr. Polanski raised her brows, I continued. “I didn’t want to leave without fulfilling my job.”

  Dr. Polanski nodded. “Thank you, Mia. That will be all.”

  I stood, and the rest of the room stood with me. Each of them shook my hand in turn.

  “Good-bye, Mia,” Dr. Polanski said. “Take care.”

  I left the conference room and made my way through the foyer of Newton Heights for the final time. A great sadness filled my heart knowing that I would never see Flynn again. I had hoped that what I had done for him was enough. I hoped that he could somehow find happiness among all the rules and schedules of hospital life. I’d miss him terribly, but knew that this was for the best. Flynn needed to take time to focus on himself. He needed to heal.

  I did, too.

  I made my way back to my car and fell into the driver’s seat. Pulling out the recommendation, I glanced it over, then focused on the last line.

  “A laboratory?” I asked. I had always hated those chemistry labs in college and couldn’t imagine myself working in one. Then again, psychiatry wasn’t all about mixing chemicals. Perhaps I’d be all right.

  “Of course I’ll be all right,” I said as I shoved the paper away and put on my sunglasses. I was Mia Horton, and I always landed on my feet.

  I was going to be better than fine. I was going to be fucking fantastic.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Several Months Later

  I STEPPED into the small diner and was once again taken aback by the cheerfulness of the place. They had the same retro decor, the same talkative families ordering omelets and home fries and the same busy staff with ready smiles. I had been coming here for years, and nothing had changed.

  Despite this, things felt different. The room was brighter and the people happier. Elvis, instead of singing about the Heartbreak Hotel, was shaking in his blue suede shoes. Customers tapped their feet to the beat and hummed the familiar tune. Waitresses seemed to dance across the floor as they carried their orders to their tables. As I scanned the room, the artifacts didn’t look like a mismatched collection of odds and ends, but memories from a bygone era, of an easier and happier time.

  But they were the same staff, the same artifacts. They hadn’t changed, I realized. I had.

  “Mia!” Lucy waved her arms frantically, trying to get my attention. I grinned and waved back. So much in my life had changed, but this one thing—my monthly morning breakfasts with Lucy—had stayed the same.

  I loved that fixture in my life. There was something very comforting about seeing my best friend in that booth. It centered and stabilized my world. Lucy had helped me more than she probably realized. Without her I don’t think I would have been able to navigate all of the changes in my life.

  Or losing Flynn. Leaving Newton Heights was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do. It was for the best, however. I believed that way down deep in my bones. I had to believe it. If I fought Dr. Polanski and tried to stay, I would have
just made things worse for both Flynn and myself. If I had tried to visit him, I don’t think either of us would have been able to move forward. We both needed time to grow and heal.

  It didn’t mean that I didn’t think about him. Not a day went by that I didn’t wonder what Flynn was doing, or if he was all right. I hoped that he was moving forward with his healing. As Nesto had said, it was a terrible thing for a fighter to lose his fight. I hoped that Flynn fought for his health. He had so much to live for.

  “I’m so glad you came.” Lucy gave me a tighter-than-normal hug.

  “Of course I’m here. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know.” She let go of me and shrugged. “We both get busy, and you have that paper to write.”

  “Oh, I finished it a few days ago. My adviser already corrected it.”

  “And?” Lucy asked.

  I grinned. “And I got an A.”

  “Oh, my God, Mia. That’s amazing!” She leaned over the table and hugged me again. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks!” For the past several months I had been helping scientists conduct a clinical trial to evaluate a potential new sedative that would quiet and calm a patient without making them lethargic. After watching the nurses at Newton Heights inject those patients with strong sedatives, I knew that there had to be a better way to bring them under control. I hated how out of it a person looked after being injected with sedatives. The trial still had a long way to go, but the initial study showed promise. More important, I liked organizing the data into spreadsheets and graphs so that something meaningful could be learned. I felt like I was making a real impact in people’s lives and possibly changing them for the better.

  “I think it’s my true calling,” I told Lucy. “I like it so much better than working in the hospital.” In the lab, there was no one to impress. The data spoke for itself. No longer did I have to worry about what I looked like or what to say. The data didn’t care if my skirt matched my top, or if my hair was in a messy bun or down loose around my shoulders. It didn’t care about my past, or if my life was full of turmoil. I could make a real difference in people’s lives while just being myself.

  “That’s amazing,” Lucy said. “You seem so much happier, too.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I am, I guess.”

  “But . . .” Lucy said when I didn’t continue.

  I thought about my sister, and how she had a new boyfriend. It wasn’t anything serious, but she was trying to move beyond her marriage and the toxic environment she had lived in for years. We had talked on the phone a few times, and I mentioned a few of the other options for having children Flynn had told me about during our talks. My mother had been correct. My sister was aware of her options, but her husband had been rather stubborn. He was unwilling to compromise, and it was his stubbornness—not my sister’s infertility—that led to the demise of their marriage.

  She wasn’t happy, but she was content, and I suppose I was, too. No longer was I under the shadow of our family curse. With my sister getting her life back together, my mother no longer singled me out as the “good child.” There were no more unrealistic expectations, and a lot of the pressure to succeed had been eliminated. Over time I had come to realize that no matter what you believed, nothing about your future was set in stone. Just look at me. I had worked years to become successful in one profession only to end up doing something completely different. I had stopped worrying so much about what might happen to me someday, and tried to live more in the moment. I may or may not have a family in my future, and I was okay with that. I had finally learned what Flynn was trying to teach me all along.

  Things change. People change. As long as you had hope, anything was possible.

  Things were much better in my life than when I was at Newton Heights, and yet I could not help but feel like something was missing. There was this emptiness in my chest, just waiting to be filled. It was as if there were this part of me that didn’t feel complete, as if it were waiting for something.

  “Ah, there you are.” Lucy slid out of the booth and stood. I followed her lead.

  Jayden’s smile was warm as he gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hey, Mia.”

  “Hey, yourself.”

  He moved to hug Lucy, and his affection for her was obvious. Jayden had proposed to Lucy just the month before, and both of them were still walking around in that new-proposal glow.

  “Sorry I’m late, but I had to go pick up a friend,” he said as he wrapped his arm around Lucy’s waist.

  “Friend?” I asked, looking around. That’s when I spotted him standing alone, a few feet from our table. He had been watching our exchange, and his gaze heated as it met mine.

  Flynn looked the same, but strangely different. Gone was the blue bandanna. Gone was the familiar T-shirt and hoodie. He had exchanged his ripped jeans and holey sneakers for new jeans, a fresh, solid-green T-shirt and a leather jacket. The hard angles and fine lines were gone, and his features were more open and relaxed. He looked better, healthier, and as desire sparked to life and raced through my veins, I realized, more handsome.

  “Flynn,” Lucy said as she closed the distance between them. “Jesus, you haven’t changed a bit.”

  Flynn dragged his gaze away from me and smiled warmly at his friend. “Lucy. It’s good to see you.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed first one cheek, then the other. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d walk out of that place.”

  “Neither did I.” Flynn’s gaze found mine once more. “It helps when you have the proper motivation.”

  I felt the heat rise to my cheeks.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you, Mia, but I have to go,” Lucy said.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  She looped her arm around her fiancé’s waist and smiled up at him. “Jayden wants to take me furniture shopping.”

  I raised my brows. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” I asked Jayden.

  “I know, right?” Lucy grinned and squeezed her arm around Jayden’s waist. “I need to strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “Okay, okay. That’s enough.” Jayden chuckled and glanced at Flynn. “It will be nice to have another guy around to even things out a little bit.”

  Flynn snorted but said nothing.

  “I’ll call you later Mia, okay?” Lucy asked.

  “Okay.”

  Lucy hugged me and then did the same to Flynn. “Have a good breakfast.” She waved, and before I could protest, she and Jayden were out the door.

  “If you don’t want to stay . . .” Flynn said.

  “No, no. It’s okay. I just . . .”

  My thoughts scattered as he closed the distance between us. It took an enormous amount of willpower not to throw my arms around him and hold him close.

  “How did you get out?” I asked as he motioned me to the booth.

  It wasn’t the most eloquent question I could’ve come up with, and as soon as the words left my mouth I realized that they could have been offensive. “I’m sorry,” I said as I slid into my seat. “I didn’t mean that you didn’t deserve to be released, it’s just—”

  “I know.” He cleared his throat and took the seat opposite me. “I was pretty fucked up.”

  “You never called.”

  “I didn’t have your number.” He shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think Polanski would have agreed to us communicating after what happened.”

  “Yeah.” I frowned and folded my hands on top of the table. “About that. I’m really sorry that I didn’t stick up for you.”

  “But you did.” He waited until I met his gaze before continuing. “Nesto said that you came back and tried to set things right with Polanski. That was why you got fired.”

  “Yeah.” I folded the corner of my paper napkin and tore it off. “But I should have done more. It wasn’t right of them to put you into confinement like that.”

  He covered my hands with his own. “Don’t do this, Mia.” />
  I glanced up. “Do what?”

  “Blame yourself.” He squeezed my hand. “I don’t blame you, and you shouldn’t, either.”

  I turned my hand until our palms touched. He felt warm and soothing. I didn’t realize how much guilt I had over the whole incident until it all rushed out of me in that moment, leaving me feeling dizzy and weak.

  “What happened after I left?” I asked as I squeezed his hand back.

  He let go of me and sat back as the waitress came with coffee and took our orders. Once she was gone, he leaned forward in his seat.

  “Dr. Polanski believed you. Johnson had been a problem for a while, and there were some complaints from other patients. Nothing quite as bad, and no solid proof, so she couldn’t do much about it. Thanks to you and me, she had enough to be able to kick Johnson to the curb.”

  “He got fired?”

  Flynn nodded. “I still got a stint in confinement for using my fists. She thinks I should have gone to Elias or one of the other orderlies for help instead of beating Johnson’s face in.” He flashed me a wry smile. “I respectfully disagreed.”

  I chuckled and took a sip of my sweetened coffee. “How long were you in confinement?”

  “Just that one night. Then they took me out for your hearing. When we went back to the floor they made me take special one-on-one anger management classes to deal with my ‘issues.’ Right before we went down to meet you, Nesto told me what happened and how upset you were that they did this to me. He also gave me your gift.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out Freckles. “When I saw this, I knew that I had something to live for. If I could get myself better and out of Newton Heights, I might possibly have a future.”

  “You always had a future, Flynn.”

  “I wanted to be able to hand this back to you.” He brushed his fingers against mine as he handed me Freckles.

  I stared at the little stuffed bunny in my hands. She seemed so familiar and yet so different. I had changed a lot since I had given Freckles to Flynn. No longer did I need a stuffed animal to make myself feel better. I could do that on my own.

  “Is everything okay?” Flynn asked.