He Stopped Protecting Me When She Came Back

3: 3

When I woke again, Roderick was standing by the bed with a cup of medicine, looking down at me.

"Acute pneumonia. You've been running a fever for two days."

My hand went for my phone on instinct.

Gone.

"Give me my phone."

Roderick looked away.

"Florence says you keep reading those negative support-group chats, and you've been contacting your old doctor for psychiatric meds. That's bad for the desensitization."

"You're not in any state to go back to that conservative treatment. You can't keep leaning on pills."

Florence walked in with her notebook.

"I've already spoken to Dr. Chavez. Her whole approach relies too heavily on medication. It isn't right for the stage you're at now."

"To keep her from interfering with the treatment, I deleted her number."

Roderick held the cup out to me.

"Drink it. And stop looking at her like that."

I didn't take it.

His patience ran out. He set the cup back on the table.

"When you start living like a normal person, that's when you get your phone back."

I didn't beg him. There was nothing left in my eyes but emptiness.

The way I looked at him seemed to unsettle Roderick. He turned and picked up his coat.

"I'm taking you somewhere in a bit."

Half an hour later, he led me to the ground floor of an abandoned building.

When the basement door opened, a smell of rust rushed out.

Under the dim light, a wrecked car shell sat in the corner.

The front end was caved in, the windshield shattered into a web.

My feet froze.

Three years ago, this was the car that came at Roderick.

I shoved him out of the way and took the hit myself, two ribs broken, left with severe post-traumatic stress.

And from that day on, I never slept through a single night again.

Roderick gripped my shoulder and pushed me forward.

"Facing your fear is the only way to cure PTSD."

My fingertips clawed at the doorframe.

"Roderick, don't."

Florence stood behind him, notebook tucked in the crook of her arm.

"Maggie, traumatic memories have to be recoded. You need to trust Roderick. He's helping you."

Roderick's hand bore down harder.

I was shoved into the basement, my knees hitting the concrete.

The iron door shut behind me.

I threw myself at it and pounded, my voice shaking.

"Roderick, let me out."

He watched me through the iron grate in the door, exhaustion pressed down in his eyes.

"You stay in there and look at it. Look until you're not afraid anymore."

I shook my head, my fingers hooked around the cold bars.

"I'll die in here."

Something shifted in Roderick's eyes.

Florence said quietly, "That's her exaggerating the fear. You can't let her lead you around."

He closed his eyes for a moment, and his voice hardened.

"Maggie, I'm so tired."

I froze.

Roderick looked at me, and there was a worn-down grievance in his voice.

"I just want you to go back to being that sunny girl you used to be. Can't you spare a little pity for me too?"

I let go of the bars.

Florence took his arm gently.

"Roderick, you're doing the right thing. Desensitization was always going to be a breaking-out-of-the-cocoon kind of process."

Their footsteps slowly faded.

The basement held only me and that car.

I sat down against the corner, my fingers digging bit by bit into the wall.

The rust, the broken glass, the sound of brakes, all of it came pouring out of the dark.

I bit down on the back of my hand and didn't scream.

Over ten hours I clawed a patch of plaster off the wall, my nails torn back, blood smeared across the gray-white surface.

Twice, someone came to the door.

Once it was Roderick. He stood there a long while and didn't open it.

Once it was Florence. Through the door she said, "Progress noted. She's stopped calling for help."

I heard myself laugh, very softly.

So it wasn't that they wanted me alive.

It was that they wanted me to stop calling for help.

Before dawn, a sheet of paper slid under the gap in the door.

It was in Florence's handwriting, laying out the next stage of the behavioral desensitization plan.

At the very bottom was Roderick's signed consent.

The date was the day before the safety barrier was removed.

I held the paper in my bleeding fingertips, and my chest drew tighter, inch by inch.