Silver Lining

24. Therapists and panic attacks

2 days after

By the time I woke up the next day, I had started to feel a little bit better. After several doctors had looked at the wound on my chest and consulted, everyone agreed that I needed antibiotics, and thank goodness they had, because I was beginning to feel worse and worse.

They put a thingy in my forearm, and connected it to a bag of fluids, the antibiotics, which was hanging off a drip. The drip looked like a big silver hat stand on wheels. I had to drag the drip around with me whenever I got up to go the bathroom or anything. I didn't look at my forearm because even with the medical tape and bandages around it, you could still see the needle piercing my skin, which reminded me of the knife, and me helplessly struggling against him on that grey stained couch.

***

Around midday Elizabeth and Steve came to visit. Elizabeth and Steve were my parents, but I called them by their first names. I don't know why I did, and I couldn't remember a time where I didn't call them by their first names.

"Madison! How are you feeling?" Elizabeth asked, leaning down to give me a hug and kissing me on both cheeks.

"I'm alright," I said with a shrug.

"It must of been so scary for you, I can only imagine what you went through," she said.

"We bought you some flowers. And coffee," Steve said, changing the subject. Elizabeth gave him a look, but I nodded to him gratefully. I really did't want to talk about it.

"Thank you, they're beautiful," I told them. About the flowers, not the coffee. But I was pretty pleased about the coffee too, because the hospital coffee wasn't too great.

Theo went to find a vase or something to put the flowers in, and Steve sat on the end of my bed, and Elizabeth in the armchair. "Beanie! I have a joke for you," Steve said. He had called me Beanie since I was a kid, because kidney beans used to be my all time favourite food. Even as a kid I wasn't that big on junk food. "A turtle is crossing a road when he's mugged by two snails. When the police show up and ask him what happened, the shaken turtle replies 'I don't know. It all happened so fast.'" I laughed a little bit, although it was forced. If I didn't laugh Steve would definitely know something was wrong. We told each other jokes all the time, and even when the joke wasn't funny we laughed, because to us jokes were funny in general, even if the joke itself wasn't funny.

"How is Winnie?" I asked Elizabeth.

"She's doing okay, she said slowly. "The tumour hasn't gotten any bigger." Winnie was one of Elizabeth's closest friends, and when I was a kid, Winnie was quite often at our house. She was diagnosed with lung cancer last year.

"Happy twentieth, by the way. Have we seen you since then?" Elizabeth asked. I guess she didn't want to talk about Winnie. I know the feeling.

I nodded. "We had dinner at Theo's parents house one night, remember?"

"Oh yes, I remember now," she said nodding.

"The old age makes her forget, Beanie," Steve said, and we both laughed. Elizabeth stood up and pretended to smack the back of Steve's bald head.

***

I don't want to do this, I thought to myself. I don't want- I don't need- to talk to a therapist. I was fine.
'Yeah Mad, just keep telling yourself that' said the little voice in the back of my head.

"Okay, the therapist should be here any minute, honey, so your dad, Theo, and I will go have some food in the cafeteria until you're done," Elizabeth said, kissing me on the cheek.

Theo gave me an apologetic glance as they left, and I put on a smile and waved at him. As soon as they were out the door, the smile fell off my face.
I didn't need a therapist. I was fine. The ordeal was over and done with, and once I was out of this hospital, life could go back to normal. Would go back to normal.