“Myla, you need to calm down. Jonathon! Get something to sedate her with,” she screamed at him as he grabbed his doctor’s bag from the bed. I pushed her off me, forcefully, screaming for JJ. I felt a stab in my arm of a needle and I crawled towards the stairs with my mother above me attempting to pick me up from the floor and comfort me.
She grabbed the back of my shirt with one hand and grabbed the top of my arm with the other and hauled me to my feet. “I’m sorry, Myla. You shouldn’t have found out this way. I’m so sorry, baby,” she gushed. But all I could see was JJ’s face in front of me and that killer smile he had. His words ‘I’ll always be there for you’ rattled around in my head like a broken record and as everything around me suddenly blurred I took a step back. She screamed my name and reached out to grab me to stop me from falling. It was too late. I lost my footing, she couldn’t reach me and I fell.
That day, I lost everything. I shut myself down and blocked it all from my memory. I didn’t attend JJ’s funeral. I never visited his grave. It was my fault he died because if I hadn’t of called him hysterically, he wouldn’t have broken speed limits in Germany trying to get back to me, to be there for me like he had always promised.
I blamed my mother. It was easier to blame someone else. Everything that happened that day to me became a distorted version of reality. I suppressed my memories and only remembered what I wanted to remember. It was too painful to remember the truth. I hurt too much. I couldn’t be around Darcy. I pushed her away and I never stepped foot inside her house again.
My mother made a pact with me when I had awoken in hospital and she broke the news of my miscarriage. She told me “You don’t need to tell anyone about this, Myla, because if you do you’ll have worse to deal with,” again, in my brain I took it as a threat because at that point in time she had become my enemy. “I’ll keep your secret until you’re ready.” She had whispered as she sat stroking my head. She kept me off school for the following week to allow my bruises that I had sustained in the struggle and the fall, to heal.
I’ve never really dealt with my grief because in my mind, through the shock, I believed that when I saw my mother that day with Mr. Banks on the bed, they were sleeping together, when really, he had been there to break the news about JJ on his way home from his doctor’s practice.
My mother took me to all the shrinks in the state to try and get me to talk. The only way I could cope was to thrum my finger on anything that I could find, it brought me peace, but it didn’t free me from the shackles of pain and remorse. She kept everything from my father and sister to protec
t me.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which is an anxiety disorder caused by very stressful, frightening, or distressing events. This caused me to become irritable all the time, have problems sleeping and nightmares, although my nightmares were that of my distorted reality of what I believed happened that day.
Now, as I lay here on Dr. Greco’s ‘shrink’ couch and talk aloud about what really happened that day, I feel free for the first time since I was fifteen. The pain will never go away but with each session, it’s easing. I’m learning to cope and to finally let go and to move on.
If I had the chance to see his smile, hear his voice, and touch his skin again, I’d grab it with both hands and I’d never let go.
So, Jonathon Junior, if you can hear me, I’d give anything to see your smile again, I’d give anything to tell you that I’m sorry, so sorry, but most of all, I’d give anything to tell you how much you meant to me and that I love you.
You’ll always have a piece of my heart. Until we meet again.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“So, this is our last scheduled appointment for a month, Myla. How does that make you feel?” Dr. Greco asked as she sat herself up on the couch with a smile.
“It feel’s good, but are you sure I’m ready? Like, what if I need to go back to more sessions?” She asked, slipping her shoes back on.
“I’ve been seeing you twice a week for the last eight months, do you still feel like you need to see me more than once a month?”
She stood up and walked slowly towards the large bay window and stared out to the grey sky of London, the Christmas lights twinkled above the trees and she smiled. “No,” she whispered.
“Have you made any plans to get in contact with Kai?”
Her heart quickened at the sound of his name. She had missed him, terribly. When everything had come out at Grace’s wedding reception, he had held her and kissed her and told her it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have foreseen what would have happened that day. That he would stand by her and be there for her, if she sought some professional help. But she needed to come to terms what had happened, with what she had put her family through, especially her mother and what she, herself had gone though. She needed time to find herself, and she needed to be able to let go of the past before she could build a future with Kai. She decided to stay in Florida an extra week but wanted him to return to London and continue with his life until she felt strong enough to deal with her feelings towards him. In his anger, hurt and irrationality, he told her straight if she sent him home without her, not to contact him again when she returned to London.
“I want to contact him, I ask Brody every time I see him how Kai is, clinging onto the slightest hope that he tells me something other than, ‘yes he’s okay’.”
“Only you can decide, Myla if you want to ignore his wishes and attempt to make contact. If he chooses not to speak to you, you will need to understand that that is his choice and you do not blame yourself.”
“I understand. You told me once when I first spoke to you about Kai, what will be will be, if we were destined to be together, fate would step in. If I never see or hear from him again, at least I have happy memories, right?” She turned around and smiled, taking a seat on the windowsill.
“Yes, Myla. You’ll always have those happy memories of him. How are those letters coming along?”
“Good. I wrote one to Darcy, Casper, and Mr. Banks. I wrote from the heart and told them everything, I also told Darcy and Casper that I have forgiven them for what happened. I understand that it was my behavior that pushed Casper to Darcy in the first place and that I wished them well in their future together.”
“I’m impressed Myla, this idea of yours shows how much you have grown since our first session, when you referred to Casper as Beelzebub,” he laughed and shifted his weight in his seat.
Dr. Greco reminded Myla of her father, he was a gentle giant and had made her feel at ease from their first meeting. He was a large bald man and wore black spectacles, that forever kept sliding down his nose earning a jolt from his forefinger to push them back up the bridge, constantly. “What about the rest of your family? How are things progressing there?” He asked, taking a sip of his lukewarm coffee.
“My parents are still seeking marriage counseling and have recently moved to New Hampshire to start a new life for themselves. Grace and Jack moved into the old family home a few days ago.”
He sat nodding his head, making notes in between stroking his fuzzy black beard. “How do you feel your relationship with your mother is going?”
She pushed herself to her feet and sat back down on the couch. “It’s still strained, but we are working on it. We speak every day on the phone, and as you know and I plan to visit them in their new home for New Year’s.”