Page 38 of My Best Friend Is Broken
“With respect, Doctor, you don’t understand shit.” Nicky’s voice hasn’t risen, but there’s steel underneath it now. “You see a patient having difficulties adjusting to treatment. I see someone I care about being slowly destroyed by a place that’s supposed to help him.”
I press closer to Nicky’s side, drawing strength from his certainty. This is why I need him. Not because he can fix me, but because he sees me as a person rather than a collection of symptoms. Because he listens to what I’m actually saying instead of what the textbooks tell him I should be saying.
“There are outpatient options,” Dr. Chen continues. “Therapy sessions, support groups, medication management. We can arrange a comprehensive care plan that doesn’t require residential treatment.”
“Good,” Nicky says shortly. “Set it up. Whatever he needs, but from home. From a place where he feels safe.”
It takes two hours to complete the discharge process. Two hours of forms and consultations and careful explanations about the importance of continuing treatment. Two hours of watching Nicky handle every detail with the kind of quiet competence that comes from having money and authority and knowing how to use it.
I sit in the visitors’ room and try not to think about how much this has all cost him. Try not to calculate the waste. Four days at three thousand pounds per week, plus whatever fees are involved in early discharge, plus the outpatient treatment they’re arranging. Tens of thousands of pounds that could have bought him a better car or a holiday or anything other than my spectacular inability to cope with getting help.
But when I try to apologize, he cuts me off.
“Don’t,” he says firmly. “Just don’t. This isn’t your fault, and it’s not about the money. It’s about what works for you, and this clearly doesn’t work.”
By the time we walk out of Harley Street Psychiatric Care, the sun is setting and London is settling into itsevening rhythm. The street feels impossibly wide after days of narrow corridors, and the noise of traffic and pedestrians is almost overwhelming.
But it’s real. It’s messy and unpredictable and completely uncontrolled, and for the first time in days, I can breathe properly.
Nicky opens the passenger door of his car and waits while I settle myself in the familiar leather seat. The interior smells like his cologne and coffee and the particular scent of expensive materials that I’m slowly learning to associate with safety.
“You okay?” he asks as he starts the engine.
I think about the question seriously. Am I okay? No, probably not. I still can’t handle crowds or sudden noises or being touched without warning. I still wake up screaming most nights and spend my days trying to convince myself that the walls aren’t closing in. I still see threats in every shadow and prison guards in every person wearing a uniform.
But I’m free. I’m sitting in a car that’s taking me home to a place where I can choose when to eat and what to watch on television and whether to leave my door open or closed. Where no one will call me pretty with that particular inflection that means you’re prey.
“I’m better than I was two hours ago,” I tell him honestly.
He nods, understanding exactly what I mean. “That’s enough for now.”
As we drive through the London streets toward home, I think about the staff at the hospital, how genuinely concerned they seemed about my wellbeing. How Dr.Chen really did want to help, and Emma really did care whether I was comfortable.
But caring and understanding aren’t the same thing. They saw someone with PTSD who needed professional treatment in a controlled environment. Nicky saw someone who’d been caged for five years and was being slowly destroyed by another cage, even if this one had better food and softer lighting.
Maybe that’s what love is, in the end. Not fixing someone or healing them or making their problems disappear. But seeing them clearly enough to know what they actually need, even when it’s not what the experts recommend.
I lean my head against the window and watch London blur past, and for the first time in days, I feel like maybe I’m going to survive this after all.
Even if surviving means accepting that some kinds of help hurt more than they heal.
Even if it means trusting that the person who loves you might understand you better than the professionals who trained for years to treat people like you.
Even if it means going home to figure out healing on your own terms, in your own time, in your own way.
The apartment building comes into view, and I feel my shoulders relax for the first time in four days.
Home. Whatever that means now, whatever we can make it mean together.
It’s enough.
Chapter thirteen
Nicky
My dream falls away as Liam slides into bed with me. Somehow, even deeply asleep, I know it is him. I don’t freak out or reach for my gun. I simply shuffle over a little to make more room for him.
He presses himself close to me, nose to nose. I drape my arm around him, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
