As It Was (COMPLETED) (wattys2023)

Through Her Eyes

Your mother tells me you spent yesterday evening with a friend." Dr. Bellecourt said following a very uncomfortable ten-minute silence. She reached up and tightened her blonde ponytail with a forced smile. "That is a monumental step, befriending someone."

"He's not my friend." I mumbled, hardly audible. If we hadn't been in a room so silent I could hear the mechanics of the bathroom a few doors down, she wouldn't have heard it.

Unfortunately, she had, and it was the first words spoken in her presence, which of course, to her, would also be a "monumental" step.

"And why is that?" she questioned, shifting her Mac on her thick thigh. I retracted my legs back on to the sofa I sat on, tucking them under my butt.

"I don't trust him." I said softly, curling my cold fingers against a small tear in my jeans.

Oblivious to my discomfort speaking on the topic, she looked at me over her laptop. "Why do you think that is?"

"Because the two people I trusted with my life tried to end it." the words escaped me before I could stop them. They felt like a blow to the side of the head, leaving me disoriented as I tried to comprehend what I'd just told the psychiatrist. Still in and out of reality as she spoke, I only watched the middle-aged woman's purple lips move, but couldn't hear a word she said. Then, almost as if it were an outside force bringing me back to reality, a loud clap of thunder sounded through the room. I threw myself to the floor and crawled around the side, dragging my body along the Persian rug so quickly I could feel the carpet burn on my elbows as I sat myself upright against the side of the grey sofa.

One, breathe. Two, you're okay. Three, you're safe. Four, they're gone. Five—

"Everly." Dr. Bellecourt cautiously lowered herself to the ground on my left side, her computer having vanished into thin air. She touched a hand to the carpet, nodding slowly. "Think about the textures of the carpet. A big, deep breath in, then release it slowly."

My entire body was trembling, tingling from my fingertips up my arm and into my chest as I tried to catch my breath. The doctor's image was fading in and out with the tears that blurred my vision, her voice calm and steady, as if she'd done this hundreds of times.

"Listen to my voice. The drawl of every word." she continued, then moved a little closer to me. "I know it can be annoying when I talk. Like a Dolly Parton audible on replay."

The joke was enough to break the spell and I looked toward the window, watching as the rain fell in sheets, fogging the window and flooding the street. I felt her warm hand grasp my cold fingers, and slowly turned back to her with a shake of my head.

"It's okay." she assured, squeezing my hand. "You're okay, Everly."

Lies, I wanted to say, I'm never going to be okay again.

I couldn't even sit and a place of security without the shooting finding a way to creep beneath my skin and pierce through the walls I continuously had to rebuild around me to keep my guard up.

That morning, the screams, the gunshots, the tortured look on Brady's face as he nodded and laid himself over me until his breathing grew ragged, our blood muddying into a pool beneath me. The trapped, agonizing cry that threatened to escape me as my brother hunted me down like I was an animal. They all played on a continuous loop in my head, flashes of the day preying on my every thought. Some days I climbed into the shower and screamed and banged my hands against the wall until they were bruised and bloody. Some days I questioned why I was more deserving of walking out the building alive than that of the forty lives taken.