To when I return

24. Pieces

Mark woke up in the middle of the night like that. In his dream his wife had died. Again. He can't remember a time when his dreams didn't include losing her. If there has been time when he had these dreams. Before the plane crash the dreams had been about Lexie leaving him, like she had left him all those years ago. Before he had moved to Boston he had had nightmares about getting her back just to have her leave again and even when they had been kids, he had been afraid to lose her. Now the dreams are way more radical. She would die. Almost every time she would die.

"Mark?" Lexie's very tired voice pulls him back to the right dimension. She pushes herself up from the mattress to get leveled eye to eye with him.

Mark looks at her and says: "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"That's my line." She tells him and looks at the clock. "What's going on. It's three in the morning"

"Just a bad dream. I promise you I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"Only if you do."

"Lexie..." But the look that she is giving him is enough for him to lay back down. Lexie looks satisfied as she lays down on top of him. "Okay what are you doing now?"

"Forcing you to stay down. You can't get up without me waking now." Lexie answers placing small kiss on his shoulder and closing her eyes. She was out in a minute. Mark took this time to just feel her. He needed her. He needed her more than she will ever know. With that thought he also falls asleep.

"I think you should talk to someone." Lexie says, while they're driving to the hospital. She keeps her gaze on the horizon but can feel Mark giving her small gaze before quickly turning his eyes back to the road.

"Can we have this conversation when we don't have three toddlers in the back seat?" He sighs after moment of silence.

"Three out of three are asleep. I think we can keep this conversation up." She looks at the boys before continuing "There is not a night where one of us, if not both, wakes up from a nightmare, Mark. Don't you think it's getting exhausting?"

"I'm not waking up every night."

"You're waking up every night. We both are and you know it. Elian and Asher have been sleeping through the night for months already and somehow we still won't go a night without waking up."

"10 minutes awake per night is not that rare."

"It's not healthy. If we keep doing this, we are driving ourselves to burn out. I know it's my fault. I do. That's why I want to try and fix what's broken. And as much as I hate it myself, therapy helps."

"If I agree to try, will you drop this?"

"We'll see."

"Is it okay for me to force my husband to see a therapist?" Lexie asks as she sits down to table where Link was alone.

"I mean... I don't think I get a say on this after forcing you to not only to therapy but also into rehab." He says looking back at their late teen years. "Why? Are you planning on doing so?"

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know. He woke up from a nightmare. Again. And I know it's my fault. He has abandoning issues because of me. He denies it but I have ran away more than once and then I almost died and... Yeah. If he says he doesn't have an issue, he is lying."

"You did tend to flee when ever things get hard, but you were a kid back then and-"

"Before you finish that thought you do realize that I'm avoiding my mother, sister, people I grew up with like it was a plague as it feels sometimes."

"But you wouldn't do that to Mark."

"Yeah not anymore. I did push him away for six months and avoided him the best I could till I realized he was almost as broken as I was."

"You have a problem."

"Well at least I'm working on it."

For a moment they are quiet. Lexie sinks to her thoughts what forces Link to pull her back to reality. 

"Well if you think its best for Mark you could try and talk him into it. Maybe make it some sort of couple's thing." 

"If I suggest him to see a therapist with me, he will think I want a divorce."

"Do you?"

Lexie didn't answer him, she just gave him a death stare for even asking, before she sighs: "So not only do we have abandonment issues, but we also have communication issues."

"Well for his protection, with you, who doesn't?"

"True." she sighs again. She look into space again for almost three minutes before Link snaps her back from her thoughts. "Oh. Sorry"

"Have you taken your meds today?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You keep zoning out the same way you did when ever you had depressive episode in high school."

"No. Actually I was just thinking about that." Link gives her asking look and she answers "Adriana was diagnosed with ADHD right before they moved to Seattle."

"I know, where are you going with this."

"We talked a long time before we booked her appointment because we saw something wasn't quite normal. I keep blaming myself for not seeing it earlier but on the other hand it's good to know that she has help now." Lexie looks at the one person who has been there with her for over half her life, before continuing "We all know that I likely would be dead if I didn't learn about my pregnancy 16 years ago. I just wonder if we would've ever even ended in that situation if my family would've been more observant with me."

"You mean because Adriana and her situation got attention quite early on, she got help before everything escalated further. You getting diagnosis earlier would've made huge difference in everything you went through."

"Something like that. Maybe I wouldn't have turned to alcohol if I would've known."

"Look at us. High School's cancer boy and the girl who turned to a crazy alcoholic. Wondering what could've been. That is what they will always be Lex, What ifs. I'm saying this because I love you. You need to move on. There is no use for you to wonder, what if your bipolar was discovered when you started showing first symbols. You can't go back in time. No one can. You can move forward. Start by talking to your damn husband again. Go to therapy together. Or don't. Just figure out how to move forwards."

"When did you become so wise?"

"I didn't. I just have been watching this show for two decades."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. The past twenty years have been the best of my life."

Hey guys, sorry for disappearing... again. So Lexie has bipolar. Suprise? She has had this whole time in my head I just never thought to write it down to the text. At least not directly. I hope you enjoyed this mess of a chapter. I'll be back with new chapter soon I hope. Take care till then. 

If anybody wonders, life sucks. More like change sucks. So I start college next Monday in a city I have never really been to before I moved here little over a week ago. I spent like two months on looking for apartment. That wasn't fun. As much as I, introvert with AS,  like the piece and silence... Well I'm not good with change and with my zero social skills, well it's difficult to move to a place where closest person you currently know lives couple hundred kilometers away. I hope that after things smoother out a little I can go back to regular updating. 

This chapter is named after Red's song Pieces.