The Darkest Part

The Darkest Part: A Living Heartwood Novel

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CHAPTER ONE

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Wasteland

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Sam

There's a universal truth. One that I never questioned. One that, when planning out the rest of my life, I felt confident was solid. This truth was my rock, my constant. And all the other bullshit didn't matter.

           

Tyler Marks loved me.

           

He would always be there. By my side. The one beautiful certainty in my bleak existence.

           

My forever.

           

But then a cruel and bitter reality stole everything.

           

Only, I refused to accept it. When you're so sure of something, when you trust in it, believe in it with your whole being, nothing can change it. Not even death.

And this alternate reality? The one where I sleep until three in the afternoon, don't shower for days, forget to eat...garnering strange, pitying looks from my parents and friends when I'm caught talking to myself...? It's just a temporary limbo I've stumbled into.

           

Everything is hazy and faded gray around the edges like a dream. Or a nightmare. One that I will wake up from and Tyler will be there, his strong arms holding me. Comforting me. And the world will make sense again.

           

It <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has to.

           

With a half-hearted sigh, I sink farther into the too-soft chair, trying to become invisible—like the love of my life standing off to the right in my peripheral.

           

"Sam won't begin to get better unless she starts taking her medication," Dr. Hartman states seriously, her perfect manicured fingernails visible as she laces her fingers together on top of her lap. She tucks in her chin, her dark eyes looking up to pin my mother with a severe glare. "If you're not helping her, you're enabling her. Sam needs to be on her meds."

           

My mother swats a stray hair from her vision and then crosses her arms over her chest defensively. "I'm not enabling her," she says, and glances at me quickly. "She's nineteen...almost twenty. I can't force-feed her pills as if she's a child. Don't you think I want her to take them? But it's her choice."

           

Sure. My choice. As if I'd choose any of this. As if I'd choose to be sitting here right now, being talked about like I'm not even in the room. Technically, I <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">am an adult and didn't have to consent to "treatment." And I really shouldn't have allowed my mother to talk me into letting her come to this session. But no one really has control over any of their choices in life. They just find some measure of control in choosing from options after the fact.

           

Like the options I have now: take antipsychotic pills to treat a condition I don't have, or continue to argue with my family and doctor, digging myself deeper into this limbo wasteland.