Their Girl: The Hunt

Chapter Eleven

Three weeks later...
Lorenzo's (POV)

Reluctantly we had no choice but to pay off some of the hospital staff so they would discharge Alissandra early. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be and that was probably because she flipped and lashes out any time one of the nurses tried to go anywhere near her, she wouldn't even let them change her dressings which was just going to cause the infection to get worse. At first they recommended they should sedate her again but I couldn't let them do it her. She'd spent weeks having to do stuff against her will if she wanted to go her then so be it.

We'd been back home for 3 weeks now. 3 weeks of hell. When she wasn't in a catatonic state staring into the abyss, she was freaking out if anyone moved too quickly or got too close to her. And that wasn't even the worst part, then there was the nightmares, she'd scream and thrash around in her sleep but the problem was none of us could even get near her to attempt to calm her down. If we even tried she'd kick, scratch and punch to get free. She even fucking bit Alec one night, when she had a nightmare it was like she was possessed. It wasn't intentional, none of it was and we knew that. It was like she'd switch into full blown panic mode where any type of reasoning just wasn't possible. The only way we could get her to calm down was if Luca was there, she wouldn't even be in the same room as any of us without him there with her. He'd been practically living here since she got back because there was no other option. Luca was a great guy he was everything that Alissandra needed right now but that's what hurt even more. It was more the fact that she couldn't bare any of us near her when all we wanted was to comfort her.

The first thing we did when we got back to the house was contact Tillie, she was an old friend of ours from college that was a psychiatrist now. We'd asked her to help with Alissandra and she'd been doing some therapy with her, although it didn't seem to be working. I was sitting in the office trying to keep myself busy when she gently knocked on the door and came in.

"How is she?" I asked gesturing for Tillie to take a seat.

She sighed and slumped herself down in the chair like she was exhausted which wasn't exactly surprising Alissandra was having that effect on us all at the moment. "Honestly Lorenzo I don't know" she replied with a sadness in her eyes that i recognised all to well, we all had that right now. "I've never worked with someone this hard to get through to. It's like she's not even there"

"And the thing with Luca" I asked.

We'd all been wondering why he seemed to be able to get a different response out of her. He was able to talk to her, help her with her dressings but us. We were a threat to her.

"It's called a Trauma Bond" Tillie sighed. "She's bonded to him because he made her feel safe during a time when she experienced significant Trauma" but she was safe now. She was safe with us and we would never hurt her but Alissandra seemed terrified of us. "Her attachment to him is the only thing bringing her comfort, unfortunately it may be a while until she is able to feel safe without his presence" He'd made it very clear he wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes and I could tell he felt in the middle of all of this. As much as he wanted to be here for Alissandra he'd said so many times how he didn't want us to think he was stopping her for moving on. "It's a good thing she has Luca but it's also keeping her stuck in that place. It'll be good if you can all work together to try and slowly pull her away" she me looked directly in the eyes "and I mean slowly"

"How do we do that?" I sighed back. I wanted nothing more than to help her through this we all wanted to but we had no fucking idea how to.

"I don't think it's you that she's scared of I think in her head she's still stuck in that place where everything is a threat to her you need to slowly remind her that she is indeed home and safe" that wasn't exactly going to be easy when she wouldn't let us near her.