Path To Restoration (Fighter's Den, #3)

Chapter 19 - Delilah

"And then what happened?"

I grit my teeth, my fingers digging into the cushion of the single-seater almost painfully. I know I'm glaring at my psychiatrist but I can't find it in me to care.

"I told you. I'm done for the day." I swipe at the lingering tears on my face with a quick hand.

I feel exhausted. Drained. Reliving my worst nightmare over and over is somehow supposed to help me heal but in this moment I want nothing more than to sink to my knees and cease to exist. It's too much.

"You're not." She insists, folding her hands in her lap. Her calmness only angers me. "You always stop talking about the nightmare at this particular part—the part where you look at your surroundings after the crash. Why won't you talk about it? What do you always see? Are you afraid of it?"

"Please." My voice is small. "I'll tell you at our next session."

"You've been saying that the past two sessions. This has to go somewhere, Delilah."

"I don't want to talk about what I always see. It's not even what I actually saw that day. It's a figment of my imagination so what does it matter?"

"It matters enough that this part of your dreams paralyze you with fear. And it's exactly what you see at this part that has you screaming awake so I know, imagination or not, it's got to be bad."

"But it's not even real. It's just something messed up my brain is making me see."

"Define 'messed up.' Is it an object? A person?"

Leave me alone, I want to scream. Can't you see how hard this is?

I swallow against the bile in my throat when I recall the image that has kept me up at night for the past month and a half. Even thinking about it sends a cold shudder down my spine and the urge to cry takes over once again.

"It's horrible. You're going to think I'm crazy or something." My voice cracks and the tears breakaway. I try to wipe them away but they're falling faster than I can keep up with. I skip a hand over my mouth when I fail to contain a sob. God, I've have enough heartache to last a lifetime. When will it end?

"Who says it's crazy? Under what context can it even be considered crazy?" She leans forward in her seat and demands my undivided attention. "You've already predetermined what this dream says about you and now you're scared to expose it to me. How do you know for sure that what you saw in your dream is something negative to begin with? How do you know your personal demons haven't convinced you that what you saw is truly a bad thing instead of a natural response or something that actually makes sense given the level of trauma you faced?"

My crying takes a momentary pause at her words and I'm unable to do anything but blink. "Well, I...I..."

"You don't know that." She answers for me. "Not until you open up to me and I can help you figure it out. I know it seems like I'm torturing you because I'm pushing you well beyond your limit but you need to understand that your resilience is compromised, Delilah. You went through trauma and now you have a very narrow belief in what you can and can't handle. Your fear is causing you to believe you can't handle this. I have a much clearer lens and I won't push you past what I know you can handle. Today you are ready to tell me the next part of your dream. I would not be asking this of you if I wasn't one hundred percent sure."

"You really think I can do this?" I ask a little timidly.

"I do." She smiles, probably the first smile she's given me ever since we started our sessions, and I feel just a little less crappy. But I'm still hesitant to admit what she wants me to.