Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Sixteen

I had to tell him.

After Doctor O'Reilly led me to the medical wing—after he spent minutes upon minutes, hour after hour trying to get me to just calm down—I had to tell him everything. He kept telling me that it was a choice. I had the choice to tell him or I had the choice to keep it hidden, but both of us knew that it was different this time. Both of us knew that something had changed.

Phineas O'Reilly was not a man who let many things scare him, so it was usually a good idea to pay attention to the things that did.

So I told him. I told him everything. I told him every secret I knew and even some that I didn't. I told him about the voices and the stress—the fits and the anxiety. I told him that I couldn't look Bill in the eye anymore and that I lived in the shadow of paranoia, constantly fearing that Luke or Scout or even my own mother would wake up and decide to betray me. I told him everything, and it was hard.

He didn't respond. Didn't offer any wise advice. He just listened, and I didn't hate him for it. Of course, this would all go in my file after I left, but while I was there, just the two of us, all I could think about was how nice it was to finally have someone on my side who knew everything.

He told me to get some sleep. I told him that sleep sounded like an excellent idea. "Your mother loves you, Morgan," he said.

"Yes sir," I replied, but we both knew that I couldn't quite believe it.

As if left towards my room, I crossed paths with my mother—or, well. I didn't cross paths with her as much as I stumbled over her. I didn't see her at first, sitting up against the wall, shadows swallowing her whole. Her hands were in her hair and she had rings under her eyes. She bore a striking resemblance to a very worried Matt, but then I caught myself remembering that it was Matt who bore a striking resemblance to her.

She didn't say anything. I didn't say anything.

Instead she stood, walked into Phineas' office, and shut the door behind her. I could have hung back—could have listened to them discuss treatment options and medications and whatever else it was that scholars said about people like me. I could have, but I didn't.

So I listened to my doctor's orders and I tried to get some sleep, mostly because I didn't want anything like this to happen again. The attacks and the anxiety—those are both scary. But hallucinations? Voices? That was a whole new stop on the crazy train, and I had no desire to climb aboard.

I would rest. Take some days to figure everything out. Keep my nose down, stick to the books, and just be a damn kid for a second.

But, you see, Alice and I have this running joke—nearly as old as we are. The joke is that I can't make it a week without something happen to me. You might think that it sounds simple enough. Seven days. 168 hours, most of them spent either asleep or on the toilet, so really, it shouldn't be that unreasonable, right?

Six days. I was six days into everything. Six days of going to class. Six days of restful, eight-hour nights. Six days of being the exemplary daughter, student, and young lady. Never in my life have I been so close to making it the full seven days when, wouldn't you know it, Charlotte Woods came up to me after dinner, shoved a water bottle in my chest, and said, "Let's go."

Okay. So, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but when Woods says let's go, it's not exactly an option.

Except usually she's saying it to an entire class. Usually she's got a whole herd of students at her back, so it was with great reluctance that I followed my CoveOps teacher outside. Alone.