Bound in Love

Chapter 48

Ellie bounced her leg back and forth with her arms folded around her chest and her eyes set on the window behind Eric, watching the sun setting beautifully on the lake. It had been like that for the last month since Heaven had been living with her grandparents. She would comply with her therapy but she wouldn't even face him. Their sessions were strange to say the least. She would speak just the necessary if he asked anything instead of being spontaneous as she used to be and as she should be. Eric knew she was resented and sometimes he wasn't sure how to analyze her posture if cooperative or not cooperative which would make their process even harder. He decided not to take it into account not to make things worse.

"How are you today?" He decided to ask, rolling his pen between his fingers as he used to when he too was nervous.

Her attitude left him nervous somehow. There, she turned her head slowly and looked at him, but not uncrossing her arms or her legs and not stopping bouncing her right leg back and forth.

"You ask me that every day." Ellie responded quietly. "You see me every day. Every day I have the same answer."

"I have to and you should answer anyway." Eric told her, taking the opportunity to look in her eyes. "How are you?"

Ellie shrugged first. He could interpret her gesture as she didn't care, but he knew it wasn't that. She just wanted to tell him that it's the same every day. She turned into a difficult patient. Difficult to talk to. Difficult to read. Chris was being easier to deal with. He was cooperative.

"I am ok." Ellie gave him the answer she'd give him every day.

Eric stayed silent looking at her, thinking if he should pull her strings that day or leave it as he had been doing. He decided for the first. He leaned his elbows on their desk and looked in her eyes, making Ellie pull back as if she wanted to get up from her chair and run away. Her limit was the back of the chair though, to which she leaned on.

"Define ok, Ellie." Eric asked her. She shrugged again.

"You know I am not ok." She told him, raising her tone a little. "I would be entirely ok if my daughter was here with us. She's not..."

"You see her every day." Eric stated just to make her see the silver lining of the situation if there was one. "She's at your parent's house. She's not under the Social Services care."

"She should be with her parents. Chris and I." She affirmed with tears in her eyes. "Going to my parent's to see her is not enough. My daughter had her first solid meal and I wasn't the one to give it to her nor her father. When I got there it had already happened, I couldn't even witness it. We are missing little things..."

"I understand..." Eric nodded.

"No, you don't." Ellie affirmed. "You have no idea how Chris and I feel about this. It's not easy."

"Other than that." Eric asked taking some notes. He heard her release a sarcastic giggle.

"Other than that... you say it as if it was a small aspect of our life when in reality it is the most important aspect in our life." Ellie told him. "Nothing is more important to us than Heaven. No one loves her more than the two of us." Ellie paused there looking at Eric to see if she would get some reaction, but he was motionless, and she continued. "We are both working. You know it. Chris never stopped and I started working from home so I wouldn't be alone at home thinking about the situation you got us in."

"You got yourself in it" Eric stopped her right there. "I followed a medical protocol. You got yourself into self-medicating."

"Is it ethical to make your patient feel guilty?" Ellie attacked him.