Detained

02.

❝Some Way Out❞
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Six years later, May 2016
San Antonio, Texas

"Moira, you can stare at the clock all you want; time isn't going to change my mind—until you give me proper eye contact and answer my questions, we'll be here all day." She didn't even flinch when her psychiatrist, Dr. Aneta Schuenemeyer suddenly spoke up.

Moira could feel her eyes stinging as she stared at the impressive, wooden grandfather clock planted on the left side of the office, the thin hand slowly ticking away. One second felt like a minute, one minute felt like an hour, but in reality it was two hours. Two painful hours.

That's how long Moira had been frigidly sitting in the lively office. She fidgeted in the stiff leather couch and pulled roughly at the hem of her loose sweatshirt. All she planned on doing today was sitting in her room and staying away from the rest of the patients in the hospital, but when Eleni popped up and told her she was expected in Dr. Schuenemeyer's office in fifteen minutes, alarms started going off in her head.

Meetings with her psychiatrist were always scheduled for Wednesday and Friday; today was Saturday, and Moira didn't want to spend thirty minutes with Aneta—let alone two hours—being asked so many questions, like how had her day been, or what were Moira's thoughts solely focused on at the moment, and what nightmares invaded her sleep—the type of questions that were used to pry and make her head spin.

"Did you take your medicine this morning after breakfast?" Aneta softly asked, obtaining a slight flinch from Moira.

Breakfast.

Moira furrowed her eyebrows as her face expressed spurn and disdain. This morning, once again, Moira was severely close to having a panic attack after another patient had managed to touch her—a simple touch to the shoulder to anybody else, but a nightmare to Moira.

She sighed, nodding slowly. "Yes," was uttered under her breath and her eyes cast down to the floor.

Aneta lightly tapped her pen against the clipboard in her hands as her eyes watched the black young woman in front of her with an intense gaze before she huffed and leaned all the way back in her oak wood chair. "Then what's the problem, Moira? You're usually more... cooperative... in our meetings? Why the sudden difference?"

Moira clamped her hands together tightly as her fingertips turned white. "What do you want? Our meetings are usually on Wednesdays and Fridays; it's Saturday. You're asking me to look you in the eyes, even though you know I can't do that. I hate doing that. Asking me about nightmares I don't want to talk about—I don't want to talk about any of this."

Aneta stared at Moira and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped as if she was trying to find the right words to say. She rose from her seat in the wooden chair and moved over to sit next to Moira, and the patient pressed herself into the arm of the sofa to place more distance between them.

"I'm going to be honest with you, okay? Your mother and father called the administration here at the hospital earlier today. They want you to be discharged."

Moira directed her gaze away from the grandfather clock and set them on her closed hands. They wanted her to be released? They barely visited her here, and now they wanted her out even though they didn't know of her status?

While everybody else in the facility spent their birthdays or family days with close family or friends from the outside, all she would get was a card from her parents. Every single birthday for the past six years had been spent in her room, reading their impersonal crappy birthday cards with the same message written in the exact same spot; the bottom right corner.

Happy birthday, Moira. Love, Mom and Dad.

The only ones who took the time to catch up with her was Rowan, and their half-sister, Ah'Misha. Even though both of the thirty-year-olds stayed upstate—Rowan residing in Illinois, and Misha staying in New York—they still called Moira weekly while her parents only lived an hour and forty-five minutes away and couldn't even pick up the phone.

"It's been six long years. You've been here since you were eighteen, Moira. You're twenty-four-years-old now. Your parents don't want you to stay here forever, just like me and my other colleagues working in the facility. Though much hasn't changed, some growth has definitely occurred."

"You can handle close presences, hold full conversations, when you're comfortable; big accomplishments and big steps from where you were six years ago. I want you to face the outside world, and not be afraid, but how can you do that when you can barely hold eye contact?" Dr. Schuenemeyer quizzed, slightly indicating she wanted Moira to look her in the eyes.

But that was the problem. Moira didn't want to face the outside world. Why go out and try to live in a world, just for the same incident or something similar to happen again?

"Moira, please," Aneta pleaded with a light voice, and Moira had to close her eyes to block out the thoughts of Stacy using the same tone when he had assaulted her. She suddenly opened her eyes and reluctantly turned her head to face her psychiatrist.

Aneta's hair was a bright platinum blonde, cut bluntly to her shoulders with black, unbleached roots sprouting from her scalp. She had glowing, aging porcelain-like skin. A straight nose, thin lips; Aneta seemed to be the picture of perfection. It was when Moira made it to her eyes—framed by short black lashes and the shade of a bright, frightening gun-metal blue—that she began to spiral back into chaos.

The images from the past she'd experienced outside the Montecito Apartments burned into her mind, and Moira quickly looked away, her breathing erratic and in a disarray. She couldn't stop seeing dark brown eyes; dangerously sweet at first before they flickered with malice, and Moira had to scratch at her arms and shake her head just so the memories could go away.

Aneta nodded, rising up from her seat next to Moira, and pulling down her skirt, "Not the best, but certainly a decent try. I'm going to let you go now Moira, but—" Aneta paused, reaching out with an opened left hand to stop Moira who had quickly risen from her spot on the leather couch.

"Your parents have threatened to sue the facility; they believe that our methods haven't benefited you, and the progress that you have made isn't adequate enough for them. Usually in most cases, you being released is set on my terms, but since my practices are being questioned and soon to be investigated..." Aneta didn't have to finish, Moira knew exactly where she was getting at.

There would probably be a huge lawsuit and she would have to stay even longer while it transpired. She kind of wanted to be okay with it, but realized that she couldn't be.

Did she want to go out into society again? No.

Did she want to stay in the hospital forever? No.

Moira was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and she wouldn't find a solution until she took the time to acknowledge what Aneta, her parents, the staff in the psychiatric hospital, and somewhere deep inside, even what she wanted.

Progress.

Moira nodded her head before she quickly retreated from the room and headed back to her accustomed quad. In the beginning, she wanted a way out from the unfamiliar hospital, and she had found it now. The real question was if it was safe enough for her to leave.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks for reading chapter 2 of "Detained". Hope you enjoyed it and the next chapters after it. Leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it.