“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Yeah, I have.”
We eat in silence for a while. Then Maya says, “I joined a photography club today.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Haven’t touched a camera in over a year, but… I joined the club.”
“That’s good.”
She looks surprised, like she expected me to dismiss it. “It’s just a club.”
“It’s a start. Sometimes that’s enough.”
I have no idea what she went through, but one thing is, I can talk to her freely, I relax a little around her.
Chapter 7
Maya
My therapy sessionwith Dr. Williams gets rescheduled again, this time to Friday. Which means I go almost two weeks without seeing her, and by the time Friday arrives, I’m barely holding it together.
“Tell me about the nightmares,” Dr. Williams says once we’re settled in her office.
I describe the bathtub, the blood, the cold. The relief. The way Carter’s voice sounds in the dream versus how it sounded in reality, he was screaming in the dream, but in reality, he was crying.
“And they’re getting worse?”
“More frequent. More vivid. More…” I struggle for the word. “Real. Like I’m back there and it’s happening again.”
“What do you think is triggering them?”
I think about the blood on the ice, about Ryder’s injury, about watching someone else destroy themselves and feeling helpless.
“I met someone,” I say. “He’s… he’s hurting himself. Not the way I did, but still hurting himself. Pushing too hard, ignoring his body’s limits, trying to be perfect even though it’s killing him.”
“And seeing him triggers your own trauma?”
“I guess. Or maybe it just reminds me how easy it is to destroy yourself while everyone watches and nobody stops you.”
“Did you want to be stopped?”
The question catches me off guard, and fir a long time I stare into nothing, while I think about the question. But there is only one answer which comes to me.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Part of me wanted Carter to find me. Part of me didn’t. Part of me wanted to die, and part of me wanted someone to tell me I didn’t have to.”
“And now? What do you want now?”
“I want to help him. This guy I met. I want to stop him from making the same mistakes I did.”
“Because helping him helps you?”
“Maybe or maybe because I couldn’t save myself, but I can save someone else.”
Dr. Williams leans forward. “Maya, you can’t save him. You can support him, you can care about him, but you can’t save him. That’s his work to do.”
“But—”
“Just like your recovery is your work. Not Carter’s, not mine. Yours.”
