Rachel Eos (runrachelrun) wrote in darker_london, @ 2018-04-08 12:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | rachel eos |
Home (Rachel)
Rachel had spent a little over two weeks in the hospital while Abby tried to get her balance of medication right. Despite all evidence to the contrary she thought Abby must be so annoyed by now, as she cycled through nausea and shakes and sometimes the inability to open her eyes in the morning, as she begged to go back on her old meds even if they didn't work, they were still better than this. She hated them. She hated them and hated them but kept taking them, every day, because she didn’t have the strength to go up against Abby and Danny and Harley and Lee and Zoe and Cai and everyone else who was telling her she had to get better.
There were a lot of things she didn’t want to talk about in therapy but it wasn’t as terrible as she thought it could have been. She didn't have to talk much about her past at all. Abby focused on working out a plan for looking after herself once she’d been discharged, how she was going to keep herself from getting so bad again, what she was going to do if she did. Lee worked on this with her too, planning a routine, every day. On the day before she was discharged Harley came in and Lee and Rachel showed him the plan and worked through options, what she’d do while he was at work, how he could help.
Harley agreed to everything. “Thank you for coming home to me, princess,” he said, stroking her hair before he left that day. “It would break my heart if you left.”
Zoe came by after dinner. “You know you could still move in with me,” she said. “Liz is so good at looking after people.”
Rachel shook her head. Her dad was trying to hard and she should to. “I’m the only family he’s got left,” she said. “No.”
“I’m not ready,” she told Lee, the morning she was discharged. “I’m not ready I’m not ready,” shaking her head and arms wrapped so tight around herself to hold the wild fear in.
“You are,” Lee told her gently. “You were ready yesterday. You have a plan. You have so much support for when you need it. It’s okay to be scared, but remember, you can do this.” She grabbed onto him, thinking, maybe if she had another breakdown they wouldn’t make her leave, because leaving felt as risky as going to live in the wilderness by herself. She didn’t have the survival skills. She’d slip down a ravine and freeze or starve to death. Leaving the hospital didn’t feel like going home, it felt like being abandoned.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, remember,” Lee said, laying her plan out on the table once she’d got her breath back and detangled. He was going to do several home visits, see how she was getting on with everything. “You’re going to go home and make spaghetti with your dad, you’re going to watch Bring It On again and remember Noah’s amazing moves, and then you’re going to Skype with Danny and drink hot chocolate till it’s time to sleep. Then I’ll be there in the morning right after breakfast to check in. You can do this.”
I can’t, Rachel thought, even though they’d been over the plan so many times, right down to the finest details like what parts of dinner Rachel was in charge of and what parts were Harley's, right down to what film to watch and when to call Danny. She’d already done all the decision making for tonight, and Harley and Danny were both in on the plan. It couldn’t go wrong. She was going home on Friday afternoon so she had the whole weekend to settle back in to life at home before Harley had to go back to work on Monday. Two days of taking it easy but with nice things too. On Saturday she was going to go on a spring picnic with her friends. On Sunday she was going to go to church with Cai. And then they had a plan for Monday as well: Lee would come and pick her up from home in the morning and take her back to the hospital where she had check up and therapy with Abby. She’d spend a little time in the rec room after that then Danny was going to meet her for lunch because he only had morning classes. After that they’d meet Cai after school and have afternoon tea with him and Zoe and after that Harley would be done with work and he’d pick her up and they’d have dinner and a film and hot chocolate and she would have made it through three whole days.
“Noah did have some amazing moves,” she said faintly. He’d been the reason why she chose to watch Bring It On again. Watching his sequence from beside Lee at the film night he’d organised had made her want to get up and dance it too. She hadn’t. She’d stayed on the couch wrapped up in her blanket and watched, but it had been the first time she’d felt like dancing in forever.
“And one day you’ll show us yours and blow him right out of the water,” Lee said. “You’re going to be just fine, Rachel.”
I’m going to be fine, Rachel thought, feeling like an echo. Gonna go home and sleep in her own bed. Gonna visit Danny at his house and see Wolf. Gonna go to Zoe’s and watch Zoe teach Danny how to run. Gonna learn how to make tortillas from Nonnie. Gonna take her pills every day and pretend the lead-bone drowsiness and the headaches and the terrible things it did to her whole digestive system were tolerable because at least they weren’t as bad as trying to dry up all her blood out of her body.
Gonna try and remember somehow it was all worth it.