Saving Jasper | ✓ [COMPLETE]

Chapter 23 - Undiscovered Secrets

    Today was Jasper's first day of therapy. Anne, the social worker, had visited with us last week. Last week was the end of July, and August was slowly making its approach. After printing directions out, Jasper and I had gotten into the bug and I let my parents know that I would be taking him over to the outpatient center. Jasper had a determined look on his face. Despite his struggles, I knew there was a part of him that wanted to get better. He had come along way, and I was proud of him for not backing down now.

While most people would have expected him to, he was only pushing through. He wasn't going to give up without a fight. As I drove, I realized how much this situation reminded me of Jennifer Holloway. She was in the hospital, hooked up to machines, but she wasn't giving up either. Mason knew that to. Mason believed in his mother, just like I believed in Jasper. The people who had it the easiest, I realized, were put in the toughest situations. Mason and I didn't have it hard. We lived simple lives, and were close to graduating and moving on to college.

Just when we had settled in for the ride, an obstacle was thrown right in our path. Jennifer's illness, and Jasper's condition. Because these weren't just obstacles, they were people who meant something to us, instead of working our way around them...we had to work alongside them. It almost wasn't a choice. I mean, if I hadn't agreed with my dad, that I could help Jasper, where would he be now? Locked up in some asylum, being fed tranquilizers by night and sleeping on a therapist's couch by day?

That wasn't where he belonged. He need human interaction, and not just any human. One who would accept him as her only patient, and who wouldn't give up on him so easily. I wasn't stupid--I watched those TV shows. Those shows were the crazy person has a maximum of two weeks to recover, and if he doesn't, he's thrown in the loony bin. Jasper would recover, but not in a time frame of two weeks. Something like this...something that required human interaction, learning, site-seeing...it required time.

I glanced over at Jasper as I drove. I wondered what exactly Anne was going to do with him. Surely, she would set him up with some therapist. Was he going to sit on one of those long, black leather couches? Would he talk about his earliest memory with Nora? Or would they put him to sleep through hypnotism and weasel the answers out of him that way? Thinking about this made me wonder if he was comfortable talking about Nora yet. Every time I had tried, he had gotten too frustrated with his emotions to find the proper words.

She was a touchy subject. When he had gotten to my house, almost four months ago, he was terrified that she would come back for him. Even after I assured him that they had her locked away, I could still see the fear in his gray irises. I could hear it as he tossed and turned, suffering through night terrors. Whatever she had done to him while she kept him in that cellar all those years, was still haunting him. It was understandable that he couldn't find the words to talk about her. She was someone who had hurt him, kept him hidden, and nearly destroyed him.

She wasn't someone he could just easily talk about.

"Do you think you'll be okay, going in alone?" I asked, just to be sure. He looked over at me for a long moment, his eyes resting on my face.

"Yeah, I don't see why not. I'll be fine, Char." He smiled, shrugging his shoulders a little. He didn't look scared, and he still held onto that look of determination. I slowly pulled into the parking lot of the clinic. He opened the door and started to get out. I touched his hand and he froze, looking back at me expectantly.