“Ana, this is in your best interest,” Dr. Lombardi tells me during our session on Monday as I’m sitting in the comfy chair across from hers, absentmindedly twirling my dark hair in my fingers.

“No,” I say stubbornly. “I won’t do it. You’ll have to physically force me or inject it into me for me to take those pills. I will not do it.”

“Why are you afraid of them?” She asks me. “They’ll just help you sleep.”

“Yeah, they help me sleep but then I go into this deep sleep or something and I start remembering things that I don’t want to remember. I have nightmares and they’re really dark and I promise you that they’ll do more damage than good. I had one small little nightmare, that doesn’t mean that I need sleeping pills just to make those nightmares even worse. Where is the logic in that, really?”

“Okay, well we’re not going to force you to take your pills,” She tells me and my shoulders slack with relief because I was honestly terrified that they’d throw me into solitary and put a needle in my arm if I resisted. “But they will be there for you if you ever feel like you need them.”

“I will never feel like I need them,” I assure her. “They’re the reason that I’m here in the first place.”

“What do you mean by that?” She wonders, cocking her head to the side, tapping the bottom of her pen on the edge of the paper.

“I mean that at first, I was depressed which was understandable, so they gave me these sleeping pills so of course, I start taking them because I think that they’re going to make me better. But before I started taking the pills, I didn’t remember anything about that night- it was all just a big blur and I only knew what the doctors could tell me. Little did I know, however, that they started bringing back all of these hidden memories from that night in the form of nightmares. That’s when I really went bonkers. I only tried to kill myself after I started remembering. If I could just forget again, everything would be so much easier,” I explain to her.

“I know that I’ve said this before but I really just want to stress that I think that if you just go through what happened, and you open that door instead of trying to shut it off completely, it would really help your healing process,” She tells me sincerely.

“Or it could just make everything 200% worse,” I suggest. “And I’m not willing to take that chance. I don’t want to think about it. Just thinking about thinking about it makes my skin crawl right now.”

“Okay, I understand that,” She nods. “But maybe it’s just something to consider for the future.”

“Speaking of thinks go consider, I have been thinking of that thing that you told me to think about. Reasons to live and whatnot,” I tell her, referring to the crummy list that Niles was able to scrap up yesterday. Once I rudely barged away from him yesterday, he apparently gave the piece of paper to Nurse Sophie because later, she came up to me and handed it to me during dinner time. Now, it’s tucked in my journal up in my room for safe keeping although I almost wanted to just throw it away.

“Really? That’s fantastic,” Dr. Lombardi grins at me, seemingly proud of me and I don’t know why, but that kind of makes me happy. “Have you come up with anything so far?”

I shrug. “Not really. Macaroni pizza, Nsync, and Dickenson poetry is about it. I also want to live long enough to at least finish this book that I’m reading by Virginia Wolff because it’s pretty amazing. I’ll have to add that to the list when I get upstairs.”

“You have a physical list?” She wonders, apparently surprised that I actually wrote down all of this stuff.

I nod, leaning forward with my finger still twirling through my hair. “Yeah. This guy, Niles, he was kind of helping me with it yesterday so we brainstormed. It was humiliating.”

“Niles… as in Nurse Sophie’s brother? Why were you talking to him?” She asks me and for a moment, I worry that I might have gotten Sophie and/or Niles in trouble for telling her that he was back with the patients when I’m not so sure that he really is allowed back there.

I’m in too deep now so I can’t back track what I’d just said. “Yeah, briefly. He was waiting for Sophie, so we kind of talked for a minute. I don’t know, I guess he was just trying to help out.”

“Do you feel like he really did help you out?” She continues to press the subject.

I shrug, trying to think about it as best as I can but in all honesty, I’m not too sure if he helped out by making that list for me or not. “I don’t know yet.”

“I’m honestly surprised that you allowed him to help you, given your history,” Dr. Lombardi says to me.

With a wide grin, I roll my eyes at her. “Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Lombardi, the guy scares the bejeezus out of me but he’s kinda nice and he means well. He might not talk to me again after yesterday- I got kind of spooked with this whole pill business and I snapped at him. I feel bad about it but I guess it’s done now.”

“You said that it was humiliating, why do you feel that way about your conversation?” She persists, writing something down on her notepad.

“Because he’s normal,” I remind her as if I really have to. It’s pretty obvious why the conversation was a little humiliating for me, I don’t think that I should have to spell it out for her. Although, I guess that’s her job, to make me spell things out for her and dissect them. “Making a list of things to live for? He must think that it’s so ridiculous.”

“Do you care about what he thinks of you?” She wonders, looking up at me with her eyes boring into me.

I open my mouth to say no but when I do, I realize that what I just said kind of counteracts that. If I don’t care about what he thinks of me then why would I feel humiliated about writing that list yesterday? Don’t I have to care at least a little bit if I was embarrassed? “I… guess I do. I don’t know why though, it doesn’t really make any sense.”

“Maybe you two are friends,” Dr. Lombardi suggests. “Do you guys talk often?”

I shake my head. “No, not really. I don’t think that we’re friends at all. He’s just nice, I guess.”

“Well either way, I think that your trust in men has increased incredibly according to the notes in your file,” She informs me.

“Yeah, I know,” I nod, remembering how I used to be much worse than I am now. I’d almost be afraid of my own father and my two brothers, I’d flinch away from their touch or when they spoke too loudly, I’d just start crying. It was terrible. Now, I’m obviously not that skittish and I’ve grown to not be so afraid of everybody around me, but I’m still suspicious and timid. I don’t think that that’s ever going to go away. “It’s taken me three years of intense therapy, but I can finally talk to guys without feeling like they’re about to murder me.”

“I know it sounds small,” She says, detecting my sarcasm, which isn’t hard to do considering how incredibly sarcastic I am almost all of the time. “But it’s still something to be proud of.”

“Thanks,” I sigh, not really knowing what else to say to that.

“Anyway, is there anything else that you want to talk about today?”

“Yeah, I want to know where Mia is,” I tell her, deciding that maybe Dr. Lombardi could give me some answers as to where my friends are because I’ve been worrying about them since Renée went off on the stretcher. I haven’t heard anything about anybody since then and then they took Mia away and I haven’t seen her since that either. “And how’s Renée doing? Do you know?”

“Mia is being taken care of in a solitary unit just as a precaution,” She tells me, which surprises me because I wasn’t actually expecting her to answer my questions. Most of the time, if I ask about another patient, they tell me that the information is confidential or something. “Considering what happened to Renée, we can never be too careful. As for Renée, she’s still in the hospital but she’s recovering well. I don’t know if she’s coming back here or not though.”

“I miss them,” I tell her. “I wish that they were still here.”

“Have you tried making new friends?” She suggests.

I shake my head at her. “No, I’m not very good at that. The only reason that I’m friends with them is because they approached me. I can’t actually start a conversation with somebody that I don’t know at all.”

“Okay, well I suggest that you try to put some effort into meeting other people around the facility. It might make your adjustment here a little easier.”

“But Mia and Renée are coming back,” I remind her. “So I don’t really have to make new friends, I can just wait it out.”

“Well I’m not sure how long it’s going to be before they’re ready to join you in the common areas again,” She says. “It might be soon but I don’t know. I just think that you’d enjoy your time here more if you had more people to talk to.”

“Sure, I’ll think about it,” I tell her although I’m not really sure that I will be thinking about it. I’m more comfortable by myself anyway. 

“That’s all I’m asking,” She smiles at me. “Anyway, I think that’s all I have for you. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about before I let you go?”

I shake my head. “Nope. That’s about it, doc.”

“Alright, have a good evening then, Ana,” Dr. Lombardi dismisses me with a friendly smile. “And I hope that you really consider everything that we’ve talked about today.”

“I will,” I assure her with a small nod, standing up from my soft chair and then I turn to leave the room to go back to the common area. “See you later.”

When I get in here, I look for Mia or Renée , which is something that I do every day even though by now, I’m pretty positive that neither one of them will be anywhere in sight. The common area is pretty crowded and I can see through the windows that there are a lot of people outside too, enjoying the nice summer weather. My comfy chair in the corner is being occupied by a guy reading a newspaper so I start looking around for an empty area to sit in or decide on something else that I can do by myself.

Before I find something to do, however, I see a familiar person standing outside on the patio. He’s hard to miss considering his leather jacket sticks out like a sore thumb among all of the baby blue scrubs. I know that Niles might not want to talk to me anymore considering that I was kind of rude to him the last time we spoke but I feel like I should at least apologize to him for how I acted. It wasn’t really his fault, I was just freaking out about those stupid sleeping pills and he was just an innocent bystander.

When I walk outside, I approach him from behind so he doesn’t see me coming and then I stand beside him, resting my elbows on the banister in front of me. “Hey,” I greet him.

He looks over, looking kind of surprised to see me standing there. “Oh. Hey.”

“I’m sorry that I was mean to you the other day,” I tell him, cutting right to the chase because I don’t really know how to do small talk. I’m pretty bad at it, I think.

He blinks a few times, apparently trying to process what I said. “Were you mean? I didn’t think that you were mean.”

I shrug. “I thought that I was. But anyway, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I guess,” Niles says, seemingly confused as to why I’m apologizing at all but he just decides to just go with it instead of trying to figure me out, which is his best bet.

He doesn’t say anything after that, so I consider just walking away but right before I do that, he starts talking again.

“How’s your day going, Ana?” He wonders randomly and I wonder if it’s because he could tell that I was about to walk away and he just wanted to say something to ensure that I’d stay. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

“It’s been okay, I guess,” I shrug. “What about yours?”

“I haven’t really done anything incredibly exciting. I woke up, went to practice, and now I’m here waiting for Sophie’s shift to end so that she can take me home because I don’t have a car.”

“What practice?” I wonder curiously.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that whenever we’re conversing, we’re always talking about me but I know like, absolutely nothing about you. So what is it that you are practicing all of the time?” I ask him again as I turn around to lean against the banister with it pressing against my back and I cross my arms over my chest.

“Hockey practice,” He tells me. “I’m on a club team so we practice a lot. Usually on Mondays and Thursdays. I get a ride to the ice arena but the guy that I ride with has a job right after practice so he can’t take me home and the arena is just around the block from here, so I just have my sister take me home.”

“You play hockey?” I wonder with wide eyes.

Again, he looks confused by my reaction but he doesn’t say anything to express that confusion. “I do. Why?”

“I love hockey,” I grin. “Seriously, it’s such a cool sport.”

“Really?” He wonders with raised eyebrows.

“Why is that so surprising?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know, just that a lot of people prefer football and baseball and all of those ‘ball’ sports.”

“Well, not me. Hockey is the best and it’s actually so much easier to understand than football. For me, anyway. Are you any good?”

“I’d like to think so,” Niles chuckles. “I was captain of our team in high school so I guess I’m pretty okay.”

“That’s so cool,” I say. “I used to go to hockey games all of the time with my brother because my parents hate anything athletic and my other brother isn’t much for hockey but Peter always loved taking me to hockey games.”

“Past tense?” He notices, expecting me to elaborate more on the subject.

The ghost of a smile passes my lips as I look up at the sky and then over to Niles. “Well, when he got addicted to drugs again and I went crazy, our season pass to the Los Angeles Kings got put on the back burner.”

“The Kings? Really?” He wonders, seemingly offended by my mentioning of Los Angeles’ NHL team, which is the team that we’d always go see since they usually played at The Forum or the Stables Center and they were relatively close to our house.

“They were close to my home back in LA. Why? What’s wrong with the Kings? They were really good at winning, if I recall correctly,” I say with a small laugh.

“Sure, they’re okay,” He concedes. “But Anaheim is way better.”

“The geese?” I ask him, trying to remember what the Anaheim team’s mascot was.

“They’re the ducks,” Niles reminds me. I just give him an ‘are you serious’ look before he rolls his eyes at me and then says, “Okay, I know their mascot is kind of lame, but they’re still a really good team.”

“Don’t kings eat duck?” I wonder teasingly with a small smile tugging at the corners of my lips.

“Like I said- the mascot is lame but the team is awesome. They have 31 points to your Kings’ 26 in the season,” He says.

“Have they played against each other?” I ask him since I don’t actually follow hockey at all and to be honest, I’m not a diehard Kings fan, I’m pretty much a fan of the Kings just because they’re the team that Peter would always take me to see when he’d come home. When he was in between jail and rehab, he’d stop by the house but because my parents despised him and Penn hated talking to him too, I’d be the only one that would want to see him and he’d want to see me so instead of staying at the house where he’d just fight with everybody, he’d take me out to a hockey game and it’d be so much fun.

He nods. “They have. Twice this season, actually. Anaheim once the first one and then LA won the second. They both went into overtime though, so they’re pretty evenly matched, I guess.”

“Wow, you really know your stuff,” I say, obviously impressed by how he knows all of this right off of the top of his head like that.

He shrugs. “I really like hockey.”

“Niles,” Sophie pokes her head out of the door that barricades us from the inside common area.

“Yeah, is it time to go?” He wonders, turning to face his sister as I do the same, offering her a small smile even though she’s really just looking at Niles so she doesn’t see it.

She shakes her head, pursing her lips a little bit. “Not quite. I just need to have a word with you really quick and then I have to make my rounds before we can go.”

“Okay then…” He trails off slowly before giving me an ‘I’ll be right back’ look. He follows Sophie into the building and when they’re a far enough distance away, I start following. Being the curious busy body that I am, I want to see what’s going on because like I said earlier, eavesdropping is really the only way that I can ever find anything out because people are always afraid to tell me things directly.

They go into the nurse’s station near the front of the common area so I tip toe to the wall that separates the nurse’s station from the common area to see if I can overhear what they’re saying and luckily, I can hear them if I’m super quiet. This is how the conversation goes:

Niles: What’s up?

Sophie: From now on, when you come here, I want you to stay out in the visiting area.

Niles: Why is that?

Sophie: Because I think that you’re getting too close to Ana.

Niles: How? She’s a nice girl, we’re just talking.

Sophie: Niles, I know that she’s a nice girl but she’s been through a lot. She might get too attached to you or you might think that you can save her or something. I don’t know but I do know that nothing good can come out of this relationship.

Niles: We were just talking, Soph. Maybe she just needs a friend. Have you considered that?

Sophie: She has friends. I don’t think that it’s good for her that you’re interfering with her recovery, alright? Look, just trust me on this and just stay in the visiting area where you should be anyway. I know what I’m talking about.

Niles: We were just talking about hockey. How is that destructive?

Sophie: Niles.

Niles: Sophie.

Sophie: You don’t know anything about her, okay? You have no idea what this girl has been through.

Niles: I know that she has been in and out of places like this for three years. She has depression and a bunch of anxiety, I know that much.

Sophie: How do you know all of that?

Niles: She told me. See? We’re not all that terrible together after all.

Sophie: Has she told you why though? Why she had to be admitted in the first place?

Niles: Um. No. That doesn’t mean that I’m harming her by just talking to her sometimes.

Sophie: Look, I love you and you know that but right now, you’re being an idiot. I’ve been doing this for a while. Just trust me. You’re playing with fire here, Niles, and she’s not good for you and you’re not good for her. Back off. I have to go finish my rounds which gives you just enough time to go say goodbye to Ana. For good.

After that, I speed walk back through the common area to the patio, where I was standing with Niles earlier so that they don’t know that I overheard that whole conversation. A few moments after I return to the banister, Niles appears from the door as well, walking over to me with a slight frown.

“What was that about?” I play dumb.

“My sister is just being weird,” He shrugs. “She doesn’t like that I’m talking to you.”

“She doesn’t want you to be friends with a basket case,” I nod in understanding. “I totally get it. It’s fine.”

“I thought that you said we weren’t friends,” Niles points out with raised eyebrows.

With a light grin, I say, “Well that was before I found out that you play hockey. But that changes everything,” Of course, I’m just kidding but I do think that maybe we could be friends. Not just because of the fact that he plays hockey but also because he’s super nice and kind of easy to talk to and, although he still scares me a lot, I think he’s really cool. I’m kind of sad that we won’t be able to talk any longer.

He chuckles, obviously realizing the joke. “Well, anyway, Sophie thinks that I’m slowing down your recovery, which I really don’t want to do, so I’m probably going to stay out of the way from now on.”

“That’s…” I trail off, trying to think of the right word to use for how I’m feeling right now but I feel conflicted. “Unfortunate.”

“Well, do you have any paper?” Niles asks me.

I shake my head. “I’m fresh out. Why?”

He pulls a pen out of his pocket, which seems like a random thing to keep with you, and then he holds his hand out. “Give me your hand then, I’ll give you my number. Just in case you want to talk sometime.”

“You can’t write on my hand, they’ll see it and then they’ll start asking questions about it,” I say, thinking about how I don’t want Dr. Lombardi to tell me that I’m not allowed to talk to Niles. Maybe I won’t call him at all but maybe I will want to call him. Whatever I decide, I want it to be my decision. Whether it’s good for my recovery or not, I want it to be my decision who my friends are whether the nurses and doctors like it or not. I lay down on the bench beside the banister and lift up my baby blue scrubs to reveal a thin line of my waist. “Here. Write it upside down so that I can read it.”

Niles bites back a laugh and then uncaps the pen before bending down to start writing his number on my hip.

When the tip of the pen touches my skin, I can’t help but let out a little shriek because of how ticklish I can be but I try to keep as still as possible even though I can hear Niles laughing at my reaction.

“Hey, what’s that?” Niles wonders after he’s done scribbling down his number. I can feel him rubbing his thumb along a ragged pale red scar that runs from my inner thigh that peeks out from behind the elastic band of my pants and touches my hip bone.

Pushing his hand away, I sit up on the bench and adjust my scrubs to hide the new ink on my skin. “I believe in layman’s terms, they call it a scar,” I respond sarcastically, anxiously pulling some of my hair behind my ear.

“Well, I can see that. What happened though?” He asks me, seemingly very concerned about it, which I find kind of sweet but also really humiliating because I hate when people see my scars. I guess it’s completely my fault though, considering it was my idea that he write his number there in the first place.

My eyes go wide as I look up at him although I’m not sure why. “Not a story worth telling.”

“It looks like it hurt like a bitch,” He says.

I shrug. “Wouldn’t know. I don’t remember it happening. Anyway, I guess I won’t be seeing you later but I don’t know, maybe I will.”

“Are you actually going to call?” Niles wonders, letting my change of subject happen easily, which I appreciate a lot.

Again, I just shrug. “I haven’t decided yet,” I inform him honestly.

“Well, it’s been nice hanging out with you, Ana,” He assures me.

“Yeah,” I timidly agree with him, feeling the air between us grow a little thick and awkward because of the fact that me saw that scar and I’m sure that he can tell now that it’s part of a big story that I don’t feel comfortable telling. I think he feels bad for bringing it up at all but he doesn’t want to say anything about it. I decide to just end the conversation now because he’s going to be leaving soon anyway, so I offer him one last wave before heading for the door. “Bye, Niles.”

Just before I shut the door behind me, I hear him say, “Bye, Ana.”

And I wonder if I’ll ever talk to him again.

-----------------------------

Song: I Wanna Get Better by Against the Current feat. The Ready Set (Originally performed by The Bleachers)
Picture: Fan cover by sweetamour

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Title: Summer Love
Author: spaghetti_tacos
Genre: Fan Fiction
Summary: Alex hates Harry. Harry hates Alex. Things couldn't be more simple, right?
Wrong.
When Alexandra goes to spend the summer with her childhood best friend, Niall Horan, nothing turns out the way she planned. After a bad flight, a broken phone, and a really bad day, Alex felt that the summer had to get better, because it couldn't possibly get any worse.
Until she met Harry Styles.