The Wilds - Season 3

Chapter 1 - Free Falling

Saturday, August 31st. 6 am.

The beeps from the machines didn't seem to be any more distracting than the coming and going of people in the hallways, in and out of the doorless room. Toni squeezed her eyes knowing it was morning already, and that she would probably be very hungover if she got the facts from last night straightened out in her mind.

She frowns her forehead upon realizing she's not at home, nor anywhere she knows. Is she in a fucking hospital? She really opens her eyes, taking it all in. The white walls, the open curtains, the TV hanging on the wall, the IV on the side and... Marty?

"Hey, Marty!" Toni tries to say, but her voice comes out very hoarse as she feels her throat burn. "Psst!" She tries out again as she sees Martha sleeping on the couch next to the window, a few feet away from the bed she was on. The athletic brunette takes a look at her left hand that was burning as well, finding the IV connections under her skin, attached to her veins.

She takes a deep breath while trying to sit up, holding on the metal rail on the right as she feels a little deezy. She must have produced some sound as she finds Martha hugging her sideways. "Oh sis, I was so scared!" There was some panic in her voice, as well as some relief. Toni scoofs, not fully aware of why she has woken up in a hospital.

"Yeah, sure... I'm alright, Marty. Let's get these things off..." Toni starts moving her hands to where the IV was placed when her right hand is grabbed by Martha, who looks dead serious at her.

"Alright? We thought you were dead, Toni!" Martha hisses through her teeth, barely opening her mouth. Toni arches her eyebrows, taken aback by the initial harshness. "You weren't conscious or breathing, Toni. You fingertips were fucking blue!" Martha's tone had switched to something between angry and sad, which left Toni speech and motionless. She was ready to tone it down by some notches, as she would usually downplay any serious situation, but Martha knew it was coming.

"Strangers took you here while messaged me, Toni, at freaking 4am! What the hell were you thinking?" she finally seemed to let it all out, causing Toni to swallow hard as she took in the seriousness of the situation. Yeah, she knows she had been drinking more than she should, but could anyone really blame her? After what they had been through with the Island experiment, cooperating with the FBI, moving to a new, bigger city... Wasn't she allowed to, just, let it go, a bit?

"Marty, I'm pretty sure you're just overreacting..." here she was, again, as always, trying to appease the whole situation. How bad could it have really been? She remembers going to the party with her new teammates. They had played some games and, yeah, she had had some whiskey and vodka, a couple of tequila shots and some beer to wash it all up. "C'mon, it's not like we haven't done it before, jesus!" She lets it out following her train of thought, literally thinking out too loud. Martha looks at her again, locking eyes on her with some ferocity on them. Yet, she says nothing, not with words anyway. Martha just presses her jaws together, holding her own torso, visibly pissed at Toni who just can't seem to understand the gravity of that situation.

"Mom and Dad have signed off the papers. You're going to rehab..." She says in nearly a robotic way, prompting a wave of anger to take over Toni as her blood starts boiling "... if your kidneys haven't failed you, that is." And just like that, all the anger turns into despair, as Toni feels like an infinite hole had just opened under her. Martha had left the room, but the weight of those words were left there, lingering, heavy in the air.

Rehab. Kidney failing. What the fuck have you done, Toni?

Saturday, September 1st. 10am.

"... like a fucking failure..." Toni blurts it out as she brings her palms to her head, brushing her fingertips at her forehead. She takes a deep breath, starting to scratch her eyebrows as she keeps her eyes and mouth shut.

"Can you tell me anything about what you're thinking, or feeling?" a calm, female voice comes from Toni's left. It was a gray-haired woman wearing an olive dress, sitting with a notebook on her lap, very shrink-like. Toni takes a deep breath once more, recoiling her shoulders as her elbows sink into her knees.

"I've already said it, I feel like a fucking failure, goddammit!!" Whatever was going on inside her had really hit a nerve. The girl's neck was as red as her jaw and cheeks, really burning from all of the angst kept inside.

"Tell me about the drinking then." The woman changes her tone. Although she is polite and keeps her calm and stillness, there was some sort of demand on the way she let the words out there. Anyone would just fill that silence up with a follow up question, but not her. It's like she already knew that Toni needed that space to wage the amount of information she wanted to let out.

"I've always drank..." Toni states, scratching her eyebrows in a harsher way, making the area redder than her face had been a few seconds ago. "... it's always been there, you know? Foster care is a sick joke!" She takes some of her eyebrows off her face, looking at the bits of her between her fingertips.

"Hm... So it's something that you would easily access?" The woman takes some notes on her notebook, quickly, circling whatever she had just gotten there. It catches Toni's attention from the brown leathered couch she had been sitting on for nearly 40 minutes.

"Yeah. Alcohol has always been there, readily available, just like cigarettes. First with my birth mom, then in most of the foster homes... It's really fucked up how much of those guys get away with it, you know? Most of the social workers seemed to prefer having us stay with 'whole families', but most of the dad's were just fucking alcoholic douchebags. You should write that up in there!" Despite the harshness in those words, Toni speaks in a softer, calmer way, as if she was really taking an analytical ride through memory lane. She motions for the notebook, her eyes meeting the elder lady's, and she suddenly chuckles at a thought.

"Isn't it somewhat ridiculous, not to say fucking fucked up, that I literally poisoned myself to an extreme state just when most of my dreams came true? I mean, I was finally adopted by the very family that I had chosen for myself. They don't even have alcohol around the house, except for the occasional 6-pack of beer or a bottle of wine... How fucked up is that?!". There seems to be some sort of regret or resentment in Toni's words, as if all the hope was gone and she just had to pick her pieces up before going on with life.

"People tend to let the guard down when they feel safe." The woman replies, catching Toni's gaze as her eyes wandered around, as her mind kept rushing on those words she had just been cooking up her head. The young one looks at the elder's straight face and bursts out laughing, as if she had just heard the sickest joke. It takes Toni nearly a couple minutes to calm herself down.

"... so, yeah, I feel like a fucking failure!" she circles back, letting a puff of air out, suddenly taken by something that resembled anguish. "I've always told myself I'd never be like my mom..." she sighs as she did when she realized she was just following in her genitor's footsteps "... fucking failure!" She repeats to herself, strands of hair falling down and on the side of her face as Toni gets her feet up on the couch and rests her face on her knees, holding her legs.

Her interlocutor looks at her and takes some notes on her notebook, proceeding to clear her throat before ending their session. "We should meet here again, tomorrow at the same time, ok Willow Bluebird? You may leave now."