Remember This✔

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Molly, are you listening?"

"Hm?"

"Hello." Alan waves a hand in front of her eyes and then pulls it back when she looks at him.

"Sorry," she mumbles. "What were you saying?"

They're sat outside on a bench after he convinced her to take a long morning walk around the hospital grounds. It's a chilly day and Molly is wearing a coat that she tucks her hands into as she stares at the cloudy sky. She's been trying to listen but her mind is somewhere else. She spent most of her evening waiting for Charlie to call and when he didn't she dragged the disappointment into her morning.

"I've got some good news," Alan says. "After your release tomorrow I'm going to continue our treatment plan at your home."

"Is that allowed?" she whispers. "I thought you were a hospital psychologist?"

"It took a lot of convincing but they're increasing your funds. I'll be able to make home visits twice a week and I'll be on call whenever you need me."

"You don't do that for any of your other patients. Why me?"

"None of my other patients have been in therapy as long as you," he says. "Your case is different, you know that."

"Do you think I'm still a risk?"

"Honestly, I do. I'd like to believe otherwise but no amount of psychology degrees can make me understand someone whole." He pauses with a long breath and looks out at the trees as he asks her a question she's been dreading to answer. "When was the last time you thought about killing yourself?"

She truthfully doesn't know. At the beginning she imagined she would spend the entire five days thinking about it, lying through her teeth just so she could be released and try again. But Saturday seems so long ago now. As though she's lived a lifetime in between.

"I can't remember."

Alan smiles as he looks at her. "That means it wasn't today."

"No," she says. "Monday night was the last time I felt out of control. The truth is, I'm confused."

"That's a good thing. Confusion is the pause. You just have to see past it. If I've confused you then I've done my job right."

Molly grins and then it drops. "I was so sure that it was what I wanted. In fact, I've never been surer of anything. Now there are all these doors opening. Opportunities. I didn't have them before."

"Because you never imagined yourself as an adult before," he says. "Your teenage years have just slipped right by and usually those are the years that we start to develop our talents and skills that prepare us for the future. You'll have to think about what you want to be, the life you want to lead, career choices and stability. And eventually, a husband and children."

"Maybe I'll adopt," Molly whispers.

"Or maybe you'll adopt. Either way, that life is yours. You can do what you want with it. You can choose to fill it with positivity and you can choose to spend it with someone that will make you so happy that all of this will feel like a distant dream. You can be that person; I know you can. You might be a lost cause to every other therapist but I don't believe that such things exist. It's never too late until fate says so."

Molly sighs. "I have so much catching up to do. I don't even think I'll graduate."

"Oh come on, a smart girl like you? You'll have no problem catching up. Graduation is months away."

"But what about everything that comes after?" Molly says doubtfully. "School will end and then what? I don't even know if I have enough money to go to college, what would I even major in?" She is mostly asking herself these questions and she's starting to panic about it. She wonders if that's normal, if every other person her age is experiencing the same doubts.