Fades To Black (Complete)

July- The Therapy

Camila

I sit and listen to the therapist introducing herself. She looks nice but there's a pity in her eyes when she looks at us that I can't stand

She discusses the process, the small print, her hopes for our time with her and then asks us for ours and that's when the uncomfortable silence descends.

Shawn looks to me and I look away, unwilling to meet his gaze.

I hear him let out a puff of air through his nose but I try everything I can to ignore it, just as I have been doing ever since he destroyed our kitchen. Ignoring him and the life going on around me

Trying to keep my head above water when all I really want to do is let that water fill my lungs, suffocate me and take me to my daughter

"Mrs. Mendes would you like to start?" She gives me what I assume is her most sympathetic look but how can she really have sympathy for me when she has no idea what this is like. Her sympathy is for an imaginary situation, imaginary feelings and her lack of knowledge as to how this really is, how it really plays out, how it really feels makes me so bitter I just shake my head and refuse to talk.

"She won't talk, she never talks"

His words don't provoke me the way he hopes they will, instead they send me further into my mind, further and further I go til I'm cowering in the darkness of myself desperate for endless distance from the man I once loved more than life it's self

"Okay Mr. Mendes. What about you? Where would you like to start?"

He shifts and sighs then reaches for his water but doesn't pick it up. I silently beg him to remain quiet, knowing without doubt where he will want to start but unwilling to sit and listen to a word of it

"The day it happened..."

"No!"

"Mrs.Mendes please..."

"I knew you would do this, you know I don't want to talk about this, you know I don't want to hear..."

"Its not all about you Camila"

"No, that day's all about you, right? What you did or didn't do!"

"Mr. Mendes, Mrs. Mendes... Shawn, Camila, this process will only work if you allow each other space to talk about and explore their own pain, Shawn, please continue. Camila, if at any time it's too much you can let us know"

I want to tell her it's too much already, that what is coming is everything I have been avoiding but I bite down on my tongue and allow myself to remain silent as my heart begins to pound in my chest and my brain begins to panic at the information that's guaranteed to rush it and then overwhelm it

"It wasn't my fault"

"I never said it was your fault!" I snap back without looking at him

"Well you act like you blame me"

"Well I don't" I cross my arms and legs and still refuse to look at my husband

"I took Elena to a tea party"

The sound of her name being spoken out loud causes my chest to shrink around my heart and squeeze it tight, I feel my throat constrict as I feel myself begin to panic that I can't take in enough air

"Stop" my voice is a squeak and I see the therapist encourage Shawn to keep going

"She had a nut allergy, we told the hosts, they promised they could accommodate her, she'd been there before, we trusted them but one of the other guests didn't know, they brought a gift that contained peanuts. I turned my back for just a few minutes to talk to another parent but in that time the kids had found and eaten  the gift"

My head fills with images of her little face, the way her cheeks looked like a chipmunk as she ate and the flushed red when Shawn would make her giggle uncontrollable. She was like me with a passion for eating and for 5 years we had checked everything she ate, every situation we went into we made sure there was as little risk as possible.

One party...

One gift... Was all it took for us to lose her.

I shake my head trying to shake the images from my mind

"I knew the second I saw her something was wrong. I administered her medication, we called an ambulance, I did everything I could, I swear Camila I did everything right"

I hear Shawns voice begin to crack, I can't imagine what it must have been like to be there with her, to watch her deteriorate and be able to do nothing but God how I wish I was there.
That it was my voice she heard, my hands she felt, maybe if she knew her mama was there with her she would have fought a little harder, maybe, just maybe that's all it would have taken for her to make it through and we would still have her here and we wouldn't be living this hell

"I did everything right, everything I could, everything I had been taught "

"Yeah you did everything except save her" it's out of my mouth before I can stop it

"Nobody could have saved her Camila. Nobody!"

I could have.

I'm her mother, if I had been there I could have saved her.

I could have convinced her to hold on but I wasn't there, I was in some stupid fuckin meeting talking to people that don't matter about things that don't matter whilst my baby suffered and hurt and... died

I should have been there

I drop my head into my hands and attempt to force the thoughts back

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