Sadie, Someday...

Chapter 21 - A First Step

His reaction was nothing I was expecting. I was used to people taking in gasps and showcasing wide eyes in surprise and shock. Sometimes I imagined them being disgusted and have to look away at the mess I made on my skin. It was so easy for someone to think one thing when they hadn’t known the whole story behind why it was happening.

Dr. Griffin just watched me carefully, looking down at my cuts with concern. The crinkles next to his deep blue eyes shifted as he moved to write down on his pad again. He was so unreadable, so stone faced and disengaged from the room. Wasn’t he supposed to be feeding me some bullshit line on how it wasn’t good for me to do this to myself? Tell me things weren’t going to get better by me doing so?

He coughed gruffly. “Now Sadie…” he trailed off, pushing up his shirt sleeves and crossing his legs. “Before I ask why, can you tell me what it is that you’re doing to yourself?”

I raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a look that suggested his degrees on the wall behind him were given to him by mistake. “Isn’t it obvious?” I asked, my voice coming out icier than I wanted it to.

He nodded in agreement. “It is. But I would like you to say it out loud,” he ushered me with a simple move of his hand.

Still looking at him quizzically, I said, “Okay…I’m not sure what the hell this would do…” I trailed off, biting my lip as the words were about to leave my mouth.

I had planned to say it. It seemed so easy. I cut myself. Three words, small syllables. How hard could it be to tell the doctor what was so simply put on display for him just a moment ago? It’s not like he didn’t know. He could clearly see the scabbed and old scars on my pale wrist.

So why couldn’t I just say it?

“I…” I swallowed roughly and looked down at the blood red carpet. How ironic.

“I cut myself...” I whispered quickly, still not meeting his eyes and pulling my jacket sleeves back down so my secrets were covered from the world once again. I felt so embarrassed, suddenly so ashamed of what I’d been doing to myself for all these years.

Dr. Griffin nodded again, his trademark I’d pinned him with as soon as I sat down twenty minutes earlier. “That’s good, Sadie.”

“How was that good?” I questioned, the ice returning in my voice and frosting him with my bitterness. He just made me admit something that I could barely tell my own parents. I was now red-faced and feeling stupid for doing such a thing to myself.

How was this supposed to help me?

“You just admitted the problem. You faced the issue at hand out loud and to someone else. That’s the first step,” he stated, giving me the smallest line of a smile on his hairy face.

I just shook my head at him, disagreeing. “But I’ve already told someone else. That’s already been done.” 

He stopped writing on his pad for a moment, peering at me from above his glasses and wrote down probably what I had just told him. But he didn’t acknowledge my words at first. Instead, he asked another, far more important question.

“Sadie, have you tried to kill yourself?”

The way he said it was so easily slipping from his tongue, so simply worded and without emotion. His eyes were kind, inviting even, but his expression said otherwise. To him, I was just another patient with a stupid problem they couldn’t control on their own. I didn’t mean a thing to him.

My eyes widened at his words and my heart started to beat at a scary rate. Dropping my eyes to the carpet once again, I finally admitted to the problem revolving around everyone I loved. I was coming to terms with what I had been preparing myself to do for almost a year. Flashing back to the suicide note, the way Mason cried in my room and Caden’s face when he told me how scared he was to lose me, my mind was in a frenzy.