These strange steps

22

Week 3

When she wakes up, a letter has been slipped under the door. It's been signed by both Tony and Joel, and it has a list of names on it.

Most of them she's expecting.

One of them, she was hoping they would somehow-

Well, what, forget about?

She sighs, and picks it up and puts it on her desk, and then trudges off to the cafeteria, where nobody is judging her because nobody can actually see what is going on inside of her head.

Three out of of ten is starting to feel like her baseline comfort level.

That's... a lot more than fifty percent.

...

Santana,

I don't really know how to put this to you, but I'm just going to be straight forward and ask you to react as the adult that you are, now.

My therapy team has concluded that a lot of my hang-ups in fact drag all the way back to high school, and that events there have led to a series of decisions on my part that I otherwise would not have made, and am probably better off undoing in the coming few months. The key here seems to be how hard I have pushed myself to have a career that makes mere mortals quiver, without paying any real attention (until it was too late to do anything about it) to my personal life, and whether or not I was actually happy doing what I was doing.

They suspect that I ended up here, at least in part, because of what the first two years of high school at McKinley were like.

Would you be okay with Joel Fischer calling you? He's my 'normal' therapist, if you like, and I think the idea is to set up some sort of joint counseling session in the next few days. We can do it over Skype so you don't have to come in.

Please don't be incredibly angry about this. I know that you're not who you were back then anymore, and I protested the idea that we had to talk about this at all given that you are now one of my closest friends, but as much as they say that I am in charge of my own recovery, I'm not the one who sets the rules.

Send my love to Britt,

Rachel

...

The wig goes back on, and she stares at the McDonald's entrance all over again.

"How do you feel?"

"Angry," she says, before taking a deep breath. "I'm-so furious that I'm being defeated by this ... this virtual slaughterhouse of bad taste. I don't even want to go inside, but it's pathetic that I can't. I can't believe that this is what my life has come down to-I can't buy a McFlurry, and I'm so angry about it, Tony. I'm just-"

He smiles after a second. "What else?"

"I'm-upset. That these other people, who don't know me from Adam and who I'll never see again, have this kind of control over me."

She glances over at him, and watches as he produces the tranquilizer dart and then pops the glove box, shoving it inside and then looking at her again.

"We won't be needing that again."

"What, I'm cured now?" she asks, rolling her eyes. "Just because I'm-so sick of this?"

He laughs. "Well, no, if you were cured you would be in there getting me a fucking McFlurry, Rachel. But what you are is no longer at risk of losing completely control over your own emotional state."