Is It A Dream?

Dr. Bennett

A few weeks later, Linda day in Dr. Bennett's office. Danny had called and said she needed to be seen, but he didn't say it was an emergency. In the few weeks, Linda got worse, and everyone knew it.
"So..." Dr. Bennett looked at the notes she had. Danny had told her the basics of what happened over the phone. "Your husband tells me you were kidnapped."
Linda nodded, very nervous. She didn't want to be there, and she felt like she was on fire. She was probably running a fever, like she had a few weeks ago, but she didn't really care anymore.
"And the people who kidnapped you, they assaulted you, too? More then once?"
She nodded again, pushing her hair behind her ear.
"How do you feel about that?"
"Bad." She kept her gaze to the floor, "ugly. Rotten. Not good enough. Broken. Scarred. But I'm okay."
"You are scarred, that's true. But you can turn the scars into something better, something beautiful."
"How?" Linda hated how her voice cracked, "they're not normal. It's not like my gun-wound scar. It goes deeper than that."
Dr. Bennett wrote some notes down, "Lemme ask you something, how do you sleep?"
"... under a blanket?"
"A... separate blanket. You won't let your husband touch you, will you?"
"It's not my fault!" Linda hated how  her emotions got the best of her. "My family thinks I'm not fine, but I'm am! I'm totally and completely fine! I'm not suicidal or anything like that! Besides! How would you feel if you were-" she sobbed, not being able to talk.
Dr. Bennett frowned. She would have to prescribe antidepressants for sure.
********
"Reagan," Danny answered his phone without looking at the caller ID. "Oh, great, yeah. What's the verdict?..... what? Why?.... yeah. Yeah, I see it..... okay... okay.... thanks." Danny hung up, and looked to Baez.
"Who was that?" She wondered. Over the years, she and Linda had become best friends, so naturally, the Latina Detective was worried about her friend.
"Dr. Bennett's office. Linda's on antidepressants now. They'll probably put her back on the crap they made her take when she was shot."
Baez nodded, "She's going to be okay, though, right?"
Danny shook his head, and mouthed, "I dunno."
*******
Linda pouted a few days later when she received the orange bottle filled with white pills. She sat in her room, staring at the bottle in hatred. She had gotten worse, instead of better, since she broke down at Dr. Bennett's office. Linda locked herself in her room all day, barely ate anything, didn't let anyone touch her. She wondered how she went from understanding her situation and excepting it, to reliving it everyday in complete fear. Dr. Bennett said that she was still in shock up until the moment she had her breakdown.
Linda threw the bottle out of sight. She was fine. She wasn't suicidal, she wasn't going to hurt herself to try to feel something. In truth, in the very back of her mind, a little voice was telling her to stop kidding herself. She wasn't fine. She needed help. But she ignored the voice. "I'm fine."