Treacherous

Epilogue

Blaise

I saw her again, one year later. She was in the art room, working with another girl on a project involving paint and marshmallows. I stood outside the window, watching them with no intention of entering.

It was one step in healing, my therapist had told me. Seeing her again. He said I didn't need to necessarily speak to her, but I needed to see her, to conquer my fear that she was going to come back to finish what she had started.

Which was ridiculous. She wasn't able to come back. She'd been imprisoned in this hospital ever since the night she attacked me. She was never going to be able to come back because she was never going to leave this place.

That didn't stop the nightmares, though. The anxiety that came each time the doorbell rang and each time the phone rang. It never went away and I didn't think that it was ever going to. Lessen? Perhaps. Disappear? Doubtful.

Even standing in the cool hospital, I felt like I had just run a marathon. I could feel the sweat slide down the back of my neck. My pulse racing. My legs quivering under the weight of my body. And all I had done was walk down the hallway.

She looked happy. That was the part that hurt the most. She was laughing with the other girl, paint covering her hands as she used them to tell her story. What was she saying? Was it about how she got in there? What she had for dinner? The types of medicine she was on?

I didn't know and it made me sick to think that I actually wanted to know what she was saying, to hear her voice. I wanted to know how many relapses she'd had. How many other people she'd harmed. Was she doing better? Was she doing the same? I didn't know and no one would tell me.

My father said it was insignificant. Alissa was afraid it would cause more harm than good. My therapist wasn't allowed. I hadn't spoken to her family since they had come to speak on her behalf for the attack. Everyone was keeping me in a bubble, treating me as though I might break at any moment, and it was suffocating me.

"Blaise?" Alex asked softly, putting his hand on my shoulder. I flinched away, not taking my eyes off Galina. "We can leave if we need to."

I shook my head, unable to speak. It felt as though someone was stuffing an entire bag of cotton balls into my mouth and they were slowly working their way down my throat. Like I was suffocating, but not suffocating at the same time.

Lionel Richie said that love will conquer all. All what? Every person? Anything that happened in your life? Sometimes love doesn't conquer all. It's the thing that tears you apart, makes you so weak. Love was the reason I got into the situation that I had and it wasn't the thing that I was going to rely on to get me out.

I knew I had people who loved me. People who had kept Galina's progress a secret because they were protecting me. Sometimes you can protect a person too much, though. A year later, a kidney transfer and hundreds of hours of therapy later, and I was just now seeing Galina for the first time.

A year was too long of a time to be afraid of the unknown.

Why didn't they see that I had needed to know? That they were doing me more harm by not telling me the truth? I could have taken it. I could have understood if they had told me that it was as if she had never relapsed at all. If they had told me that she hadn't gotten better, I would have been able to deal with it. They hadn't even tried to at least give me a small clue about her.

That was why it was such a shock to see her.

I hadn't known what to expect. Was she going to be in a padded cell? Handcuffed to a bed, screaming her head off? Or, was she going to be the girl that I had loved. No, still loved. As much as I hated it, a small part of me still had feelings for her and that was not going to change. I could never completely let her go after everything that we had gone through.

"Blaise, we should go," Alex said, breaking into my train of thought. "We don't want to push this."

I glanced at him before back at Galina, who had begun to clean up the table while the girl moved their creations to a drying rack. "Just another minute."

"Blaise—"

"One more minute, Alex," I snapped. I didn't look at him to see the shock on his face. I could see it in the reflection of the window.

Galina washed her hands in the sink and then waited by the door for the girl, a small smile playing on her lips. I watched as they left the room and walked down the hallway, turning the corner just a few feet away from us, talking in a whisper like they were in middle school again.

Galina's eyes lifted and met mine, briefly, before a guard took her attention away. I stood there, frozen, as Alex spoke insistently to me, trying to get me to leave. I didn't listen to what he was saying. The blonde girl in front of me had my full attention once more.

Galina turned away from the guard and met my eyes properly this time, a nervous look on her face. She lifted her hand and gave a small wave, her hospital bracelet sliding down her wrist as she did so.

The corners of my mouth twitched, but I made no other move. She brushed a strand of hair from her face and took a step towards me. My pulse quickened out of fear, the cotton balls returning to my mouth.

Luckily, the guard stopped her, speaking to her in a voice that I couldn't hear. "Blaise," she said, looking over the guard's shoulder at me.

"Galina," I whispered.

Then, I turned and walked away as I should have done that first night I met her.

X.X.X

Author's note: Thank you for sticking with me through this crazy story. When I started it, the ending that it currently has is not the one I had in mind whatsoever. I was going to do a typical sci-fi story. One where she transforms into a heroin, saves the day, stops the gang wars, and falls in love with the boy at the end.

However, when I realized that the story wasn't turning out to be what I wanted, that I actually hated what I was writing, I decided it was time to think of a different way to write it. It needed something to spice it up because I felt as though I was writing the same scenes over and over again.

That was how I ended up with Galina having a mental illness and it all being a projection of the treatments that she was receiving. Blaise went from a criminal to her savior. Everyone whom she had met through her journey played a crucial role in her life after.

So, thank you again. You reading this entire story and making it to this author's note proves to me that maybe it wasn't as bad as I believed it was. That being said, I would still appreciate any and all constructive feedback that you may have for me. Thank you for a third time. I hope that you enjoyed this journey with me.

X.X.X

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This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people is merely a coincidence. This work is a work of my imagination. Any similarities to other works of art are coincidental.