Say My Name [ Teacher-Student Romance -- Robert Downey Jr ]

Ch.78 - Sick No Longer

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Trauma targets youth--children, differently than it does adults. It's disguised in the designs of dark spaces, light casting wary shadows of warning, and patterned products of that one dreary day. It's intimately woven, the way post traumatic stress occurs. It softly wraps up it's victim, curls and growls as it protects it's chosen slave, the thing between the rest of the world and the heaving breathing person that lies way, way, way beneath it.

Charlotte, a becoming spokesmen to these characteristics, recognizes the signs before the side effects take affect.

It's obvious to her, and somehow, somewhere deep inside her, locked up and behind three inch steel walls and twenty feet high fences, is her thanks for going through depression before witnessing Molly's.

Molly who would burst into tears at the sound of a faucet dripping, or of shiny slick floors freshly mopped. Would sob thinking that she had done something wrong that day, things she can't remember, but dreams of anyways.

Molly who gets angry within a second, smashes the platter of food to the ground when nurses plead with her to drink water (but never upset with Charlotte or dad). Angry at the world, then streaming salty tears the next.

It's the medications and the trauma, Charlotte knows. It's being enslaved to a place where adults confine her to repeated tests and needles creeping under her skin. Pinch and prod and touch and take her away from Charlotte.

Charlotte who's there as often as she can be, with either CJ who sings her Beatles songs into rapid rhythmed slumbers, or Izzie baking her whatever her heart desires. To Jay and George just chatting with her, humouring her with drawings of each other and telling her crazy fictitious stories of the land of princess Molly, ruler and adventurer of the realm.

Her friends come visit often and it's sweet. Especially Casey who comes more than the others combined. Driving Charlotte everywhere and generally making home glued to her Lottie's hip. It's sweet and absolutely so CJ. She asks everyday if there's anything Charlotte needs to talk about (be it over text or in person) and Charlotte will either say yes, or no (usually no ((because she doesn't eat to acknowledge it))). Be it her aching chest over Molly's closely called demise, or, or... You know.

The other fact that Charlottes heart hurts for another reason and that's Robert.

She misses him everyday. There's often not a moment he's not somewhere tucked away in her thoughts. Wondering how he's doing. Where he is. If he misses her as much as she misses him--or misses her at all. If he's angry with her. Hates her. Despises her. Regrets their time together. Wishes it had been time spent carving holes into an empty room than spent time trusting her deceitful ways. Or if he's still sick. If he's okay. If he's found Ava yet. If he's heard that she got Brandon to recede his charges and claims against Robert. If he were to bump into her again, if he'd turn away from her rather than approach.

She misses him a lot, and a lot of the time (but especially this day ((Valentines Day))). .

She increasingly needs to feel like he existed to her. That he wasn't just some amazing, perfect man she dreamt up and than woke up to this nightmare where a six year old fights pneumonia and other things that scare Charlotte to the grave. Albeit Molly does not care to listen to that jargon when most often Frozen is playing.

She still lives and breathes Frozen after all these months and when Charlotte comes to visit her one day and brandishes a small Elsa outfit, she beams. Then sleeps because those are the two things Molly spends her days doing.

Well. She cuddles up to Charlotte a lot, too. She actually gets herself sick to the point of puking when she thinks Charlottes not coming the days she says she's going to because Char Bar is five minutes late to hug her. Though Charlotte hardly spends any time away from Molly, she does split some hours between the hospital and dads to go back home to Izzie's and be home.