Untouchable - maya and carina

chapter 22 - opening up

"Ok, Maya's worried about you"

We went back into the lounge, and I sat back with Maya, ava staying on the other side of the couch. There were tear stains running down her cheeks that Maya could obviously see.

"What happened?" she whispered

"a panic attack"

"Poor girl, they're awful"

"yeah"

We sat there watching tv for a bit and I could tell ava had calmed down. I wasn't paying too much attention to what we were watching but it must've been something triggering for Maya as Ava turned to me and said:

"Hey, is she ok, her nose is bleeding"

"Oh no" I sighed

"what's wrong?"

"She gets a nosebleed whenever she had a PTSD attack, but she hasn't had one in weeks so it's going to be a bad one," I said calmly

"Can I do anything?"

"Would you mind if 2 people came around? There 2 doctors, one of them is Amelia shepherd, she was your doctor, and then her partner kai" I said trying to reassure her they're good people

"Yeah, ok," she said hesitantly

"they're really nice, Maya likes them, which is saying a lot because Maya is usually really judgemental," I joked making her smile

I knew it was going to be hard to pull Maya out of this one so I called Amelia to ask if they could come and help.

"Hey carina," Amelia said on speakerphone, I thought it would help ava if she knew what we were saying

"Hey Amelia, you're on speaker by the way, but Maya is having a PTSD episode and I think you're going to need to help get her out of it because she seems stuck"

"Yeah ok, can kai come?"

"of course,"

"Ok we'll be there in 3 minutes, oh is ava alright?"

"Yeah, she's ok, see you soon"

"bye"

I was rocking Maya back and forth trying to help bring her back but unlike usual, she wouldn't budge

"Are these the attacks she was talking about?" Ava asked

"Hm?"

"She said something about panic attacks that she gets, is this what it's like?"

"She gets two kinds of attacks, panic attacks, and PTSD attacks. Panic attacks are like what you just had, and this is a PTSD attack. In the panic attacks, she just gets scared and hyperventilates and just overall freaks out, but when she has PTSD attacks, she disassociates, hallucinates people, doesn't know where she is, which is why I end up calling for backup."

"And I thought she was lying" she half laughs, not knowing how to react

"Does she get angry?" she asks nervously

"She can, but she doesn't get angry at other people, she gets angry at the situation and gets annoyed that even though nothing bad physically happens now, the attacks won't go away," I say truthfully in case it happens

"So, she won't hurt me?" she says quietly

"Absolutely not, the most she's done is kick a wall or a cabinet, but she would never hurt you"

"Will she hurt herself? She said she used to cut"

"To be honest, I don't know. She relapsed once because she had a hallucination that wouldn't go away and she was angry, but now if she starts scratching at her wrists or her neck, I can stop her"