~ Past separated them, now pain will bring them together.~
A teenager Sofia Hayden, experiencing her falling apart family isolated herself slowly from everything that she held dear, especially from her best friend Max Wilder who had just realized hi...
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"I won't allow it."
"Your permission is not actually required," was Sofia's instant shot back to Max, who dragged a hand down his face in frustration.
"Why don't you understand that the doctor is clearly suggesting you not to leave, Sofia!"
"But he has also admitted that no one can stop a patient should they decide to get the hell out of the hospital," Sofia said, exasperated. "I'm positive that my recovery will go fine at home, where you wouldn't summon a psychiatrist to give me shock therapies every time I have a nightmare."
"There's a huge difference between shock therapy and a consultation," Max repelled, growing more agitated. "I can't believe that, like those minority of the population, even you're prejudiced about psychology and limit its treatments to only last-stage insanity, shock therapies, and mental hospitals. Even a vegetable vendor knows these days that people get counseling for grief, trauma, depression, and phobias. I should have known your knowledge is limited to only carrots and cabbages."
Sofia's mouth had fallen open for a moment, but she was quick to school her expressions. "I can assure you, Max, that I'm aware of what a psychiatrist does and doesn't. And no," she raised her tone heatedly. "I'm not one bit prejudiced about them or their treatments. And take it as a warning," she scowled. "Keep the vegetables I work with and the vegetable vendors I deal with out of your sentences, or your fear of me poisoning your food will become a reality someday."
The doctor, nurse, and psychiatrist gathered in the room, and a ward boy at the doorway—all were whipping their eyes back and forth from Sofia to Max and from Max to Sofia, almost as if they were following a tennis ball in a gripping, live match.
"Why are you so eager to leave?" Max seemed merely an inch away from blasting into flames. "Why would you not let the psychiatrist help you, huh? When you are yourself very much aware of the trauma jamming its roots still within you?"
That was the height of Sofia's patience. Breathing heavily in boiling fury, she countered back, "Because by doing all this, the bills will come out taller than your unnecessary tall height, so stop asking why and throw your pea-sized brain into a freezer to cool off."
And she regretted it immediately the very next moment when the scowl Max wore on his face softened. His expression turned from confusion to understanding, from irritation to forbearance.
"Sofia, I will—"
"No," He was cut in mid-sentence, her voice stiff. "You won't."
Max sighed softly. "It doesn't actually matter who pays."
"It matters to me," Sofia stated firmly.
"This stubbornness is completely needless, Sof."
"Stubbornness?" Sofia raised a brow defiantly. "To me, this is my self-respect, liberty, and—" she gasped, forgetting what she was about to say next, realizing right there, right then that he had called her Sof,for the first time he returned, after so... so long.
