Meet me in the Middle

Chapter 40

Oh Dio. Questo non sta accadendo! This can't be real. There is no way I just heard her correctly. I lean over the armrest of the couch for some fresh air to not throw up all over this office. I look over at Diane because I'm too scared to look into Maya's eyes and learn the true meaning of her words, but the therapist is a statue. So, my gaze shifts over to Maya who gives Diane a look that screams, 'I told you so'.

"Ti prego, dimmi che è uno scherzo. Tell me you're lying." I want to shout at her but I'm finding it hard to hear my own voice from how gutted I feel. The guilty look on Maya's face does absolutely nothing to calm my fears. I watch her throat move as she swallows her next words before she gently stretches her hand out to mine still on the couch. I pull it away immediately and the defeat in her eyes makes me wish that I didn't.

"I'm sorry." The soft broken whisper of those words makes me feel more like shit than I did when I started yelling at her in my office earlier. She also moves further away from me on the couch on her side and the distance between us is ripping holes in my soul. I look at every curve of her face as the shame takes over her features and she curl into herself once more and every cell in my body is begging me to go to her and tell her everything is alright, but my heart is stopping me. Making me paralyzed to her pain.

"The treadmill incident. Was it...Were you...Did you...ehm, was it deliberate too? Did you take something beforehand?" She patiently waits for me to form my words into coherent sentences, while shaking her head, already knowing where my mind took me. "No. No! I promise. That was an accident." I let out a sigh of relief. I don't know if I would've been able to live with myself if I walked out of her life after a suicide attempt. "Insomma, when did you try? Before or after you were committed?" Although, I don't believe that there is an answer in this world that will make the reality more bearable.

If she tried killing herself before the whole situation at the hospital, then I missed it. I knew she had mental health issues, and I was so scared for her safety when she went out on calls, but I was never scared of her not coming back because she didn't plan on it. On the other hand, if she did it afterwards then how much of my actions and words contributed to her choice? How could I be so blind to her pain and suffering, that I chose to draw a line she wasn't allowed to cross when she desperately tried to come to me for help?

Maya looks at Diane guiltily before turning her head back to me. At least she wasn't shying away from this anymore. She was standing her man and facing up to what she did. She was finally letting me in, even though I did not expect for the other side of her to be this dark. She links her hands at the back of her neck before she clears her throat. "Both..." Just when I thought she couldn't pull the rug out from under me any more, she had to go and say that. "Mio dio, Maya! Che cazzo!?"

Diane tries to step in and intervene, probably knowing how yelling triggers Maya, but Maya lifts up her palm to Diane and tells her to let me work through this in my own way. "You promised, Maya! When you told me about your dad and the clouds. You promised me that when you went for a run in your head, that it wasn't a bad place! That I didn't have to worry about you hurting yourself. You promised me and you made me believe your lies!"

After I explode on her, I try to reel my anger in, but Maya never flinches as I expect her too. She doesn't shy away from her emotions that are clearer than day on her face and I can read all of them. The guilt, the shame, the regret, the pain, the loss, the loneliness. Every single one of them were pouring out of her and this time I allow her to take my hand in hers when she turns on the couch to face me more directly.

"I meant it when I made that promise to you. The first time wasn't a compulsive thought. I knew the situation we were in was dangerous and our chances weren't great. I ran into it because I didn't think. I didn't even realize what I was doing until I failed at it too. I didn't want to die but I didn't necessarily care if I didn't make it out of those cornfields either." She scrunches her eyebrows into an adorable scowl while she waits for me to put together the pieces of what she just told me, and my eyes tear up.