Your Unsteady Heartbeat

The furious spinning of her head was making it difficult for her to balance. She couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that doctor Odwale was working with the people who were related both with their and her personal case. Couldn't believe that a person they were supposed to trust, who had been working with her kid all that time was connected to the scientific experiments that the company had been doing on people. She needed to call Flynn, to make him drop therapy, but firstly she needed air. The long hallway with glass window seemed a good idea, it was huge and being able to see through the glass didn't trigger her claustrofobia. However, it was raining, she hadn't noticed it when they got there. As she tried to push away all her memories and her panic, the clicking of the rain brought her back to the water tank; she felt herself drawing, someone watching her from outside, then her arms were hurting. She looked down at them and she saw them bleeding, she could understand that she was just imagining it, her panic being the reason why she couldn't distinguish reality from memories anymore. She let herself fall against the cold glass wall and suddenly someone was touching her. Her brain told her to fight, to try to get that person away but she was just too scared to react. She felt someone's hands holding hers tightly as she closed her eyes and curled into a ball to get as small as she could to protect herself. She heard someone call her name, it was a voice she could recognize but her ears were muffled, unable to catch any other sound. Suddenly she realized that the grip on her hands had softened and now it had turned into a gentle stroke. She managed to open her eyes and through her blurry vision she could spot a pair of familiar green eyes looking back at her worried. It was Cal. She instinctively touched his face to be in touch with reality, tucking on his beard way harder than she thought she would and she felt even worse thinking she might have hurt him. His shush filled the air, he was trying to do everything he could to calm her down but it wasn't really working. Her vision became clearer once she let her tears run on her cheeks. His thumb made sure to dry them as far as he could, softly stroking her face. She wasn't the kind of person who liked to show her feeling and it was even worse with her fears so he thought that she might have dried those tears as soon as she could if she had been able to, but since she wasn't he did it. His heart broke at the vision of her like that, so vulnerable and scared when he was used to see her as a fierce woman who always managed to control herself in public so that no one could see her cry or panic. She stared to cry and pant between sobs, closing her eyes to avoid his gaze.

"He had Flynn" she breathed out.

His heart stopped. He had always managed to see her only as a co worker, even as more than that if he had to be honest, but he had never seen her as a mother. Seeing her so broken for what might have happened to her son made his heart ache. Even in the middle of a panic attack her son was the first thought she had. He wasn't a father so he could't even imagine what she was going through in that moment.

"He had Flynn, he had Flynn this whole time" she repeated sobbing and looking up at him worried.

"Who had Flynn?" he asked stroking her face softly, trying to calm he down.

Who had her son? How did she know? Did she saw someone while exiting the room? Did she mean the man hey talked to? He didn't see anyone on his way there.

"Odwale had Flynn" she managed to say, softly stroking his beard and looking down at his lips, avoiding his eyes.

Who was Odwale? He remembered her talking about that man sometimes on the phone with Nick, he must have been her son's psychologist since he heard her ask how the therapy was going; but how was he implied in all this? And how did he found them to start getting into their lives? It must have been horrible to know that the person you thought was helping your son's mental health was now not only the first suspect in their case, but was also connected to her own one. He gently cupped her face, drying all the tears by softly stroking her face with his thumbs, trying to calm her down but it wasn't really  working. He could see the panic attack was over but now sadness and adrenaline was flowing out of her in waves. He could feel her panting, trying to catch her breath as he kept shushing at her.