3: 3

When I woke again, Roderick was standing by the bed with a cup of medicine, looking down at me.

"Acute pneumonia. You've been running a fever for two days."

My hand went for my phone on instinct.

Gone.

"Give me my phone."

Roderick looked away.

"Florence says you keep reading those negative support-group chats, and you've been contacting your old doctor for psychiatric meds. That's bad for the desensitization."

"You're not in any state to go back to that conservative treatment. You can't keep leaning on pills."

Florence walked in with her notebook.

"I've already spoken to Dr. Chavez. Her whole approach relies too heavily on medication. It isn't right for the stage you're at now."

"To keep her from interfering with the treatment, I deleted her number."

Roderick held the cup out to me.

"Drink it. And stop looking at her like that."

I didn't take it.

His patience ran out. He set the cup back on the table.

"When you start living like a normal person, that's when you get your phone back."

I didn't beg him. There was nothing left in my eyes but emptiness.

The way I looked at him seemed to unsettle Roderick. He turned and picked up his coat.

"I'm taking you somewhere in a bit."

Half an hour later, he led me to the ground floor of an abandoned building.

When the basement door opened, a smell of rust rushed out.

Under the dim light, a wrecked car shell sat in the corner.

The front end was caved in, the windshield shattered into a web.

My feet froze.

Three years ago, this was the car that came at Roderick.

I shoved him out of the way and took the hit myself, two ribs broken, left with severe post-traumatic stress.

And from that day on, I never slept through a single night again.

Roderick gripped my shoulder and pushed me forward.

"Facing your fear is the only way to cure PTSD."

My fingertips clawed at the doorframe.

"Roderick, don't."

Florence stood behind him, notebook tucked in the crook of her arm.

"Maggie, traumatic memories have to be recoded. You need to trust Roderick. He's helping you."

Roderick's hand bore down harder.

I was shoved into the basement, my knees hitting the concrete.

The iron door shut behind me.

I threw myself at it and pounded, my voice shaking.

"Roderick, let me out."

He watched me through the iron grate in the door, exhaustion pressed down in his eyes.

"You stay in there and look at it. Look until you're not afraid anymore."

I shook my head, my fingers hooked around the cold bars.

"I'll die in here."

Something shifted in Roderick's eyes.

Florence said quietly, "That's her exaggerating the fear. You can't let her lead you around."

He closed his eyes for a moment, and his voice hardened.

"Maggie, I'm so tired."

I froze.

Roderick looked at me, and there was a worn-down grievance in his voice.

"I just want you to go back to being that sunny girl you used to be. Can't you spare a little pity for me too?"

I let go of the bars.

Florence took his arm gently.

"Roderick, you're doing the right thing. Desensitization was always going to be a breaking-out-of-the-cocoon kind of process."

Their footsteps slowly faded.

The basement held only me and that car.

I sat down against the corner, my fingers digging bit by bit into the wall.

The rust, the broken glass, the sound of brakes, all of it came pouring out of the dark.

I bit down on the back of my hand and didn't scream.

Over ten hours I clawed a patch of plaster off the wall, my nails torn back, blood smeared across the gray-white surface.

Twice, someone came to the door.

Once it was Roderick. He stood there a long while and didn't open it.

Once it was Florence. Through the door she said, "Progress noted. She's stopped calling for help."

I heard myself laugh, very softly.

So it wasn't that they wanted me alive.

It was that they wanted me to stop calling for help.

Before dawn, a sheet of paper slid under the gap in the door.

It was in Florence's handwriting, laying out the next stage of the behavioral desensitization plan.

At the very bottom was Roderick's signed consent.

The date was the day before the safety barrier was removed.

I held the paper in my bleeding fingertips, and my chest drew tighter, inch by inch.

4: 4

When Roderick opened the basement door, I was sitting beside the car shell.

I wasn't shaking, and I wasn't crying. I just looked up at him and smiled.

His eyes lit up at once.

"Maggie."

He rushed over and pulled me in, his palm pressed flat against my back.

"Thank God. I knew you could do it."

Florence stood in the doorway. Something like surprise crossed her eyes, and then she smiled.

"See, Rod? Scientific intervention works."

Roderick held me tighter.

"You're finally better."

I rested my chin lightly on his shoulder.

"Mm. Better."

For the next two weeks, I acted like a normal person.

I got up early to make porridge, ironed Roderick's shirts, and when Florence came by to take her notes, I even poured her a glass of warm water without being asked.

The way Roderick looked at me slowly eased.

He took me out to see friends, telling everyone that Florence had saved us both.

Someone praised how good she was.

Roderick nodded, and there was a lightness in his voice I hadn't heard in a long time.

"She pulled me out of the mud too."

I sat beside him, looking down as I pinched off a withered leaf from a sunflower.

I'd bought that pot the day I was discharged three years ago.

Roderick had held me up while I took forever choosing it, saying the house should always have a bit of color in it.

Now it sat by the gap on the balcony, its leaves dried and curling at the edges.

I watered it every day, and still it withered, bit by bit.

Florence followed my gaze and said with a smile, "Plants have to adapt to an open environment too. You can't shelter them so much."

Roderick said, "She's right."

I nodded.

"Right."

That evening, I cleaned the study.

The document folder wasn't sealed shut, and a corner of an English letterhead was showing.

I pulled it out and saw the transfer consent form Roderick had already signed.

Destination: Munich, Germany.

Term: three years.

Pressed beside it was a plane ticket to Munich for the same day.

The name on it was Florence.

At the very bottom was a drafted breakup compensation agreement.

One house, one million dollars, and once the care arrangement ended, neither party would interfere with the other.

I sat at the desk and read through those few pages, one after another.

So the so-called recovery was just the paperwork that lightened his load before he left.

He wanted me to look normal.

That way, when he walked out, he could say I was already better and didn't need him anymore.

Roderick's voice came from outside the door.

"Maggie, I'm working late tonight. I won't be coming home."

I put the documents back where they were.

"Okay."

He seemed pleased by how calm I was.

"Get to bed early. Don't wait up for me."

"Mm."

When the lock clicked shut, I walked out to the balcony and touched the sunflower's dried-out leaves.

The veins were so brittle they crumbled at a touch.

I found the phone Roderick had hidden on top of the cabinet, a thin crack running across the screen.

I opened the notes and typed slowly.

"Your stomach medicine is in the second drawer on the left. Don't take it on an empty stomach."

"You're allergic to mango. When you buy a cake, don't just pick the pretty one."

"Your knees ache on rainy days. Remember to turn on the heat."

"Don't overwater the sunflower on the balcony. It didn't drown. Its roots rotted a long time ago."

I paused for a while, then kept writing.

"Roderick, I used to think that if I took that car for you, I could take on every disaster between us too."

"But people get tired."

"You're finally free."

"And just like you wanted, I've recovered too."

"In this moment of dying, I'm perfectly clear-headed, perfectly normal."

Three in the morning, and the wind was strong.

I lined my slippers up neatly at the edge of the balcony.

The phone lay beside the slippers, its screen resting on that note.

The stainless steel railing that had protected me for three years, Roderick had torn down with his own hands two weeks ago.

He'd said it was nothing, really, with it open like that.

Bracing myself against the wall, I stepped barefoot onto the cold edge.

The city lights below were far away.

The phone buzzed suddenly.

A message from Roderick.

【I've booked the flight for tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to Munich with Florence.】

【There's an agreement on the desk in the study. Maggie, since you've recovered, let's end this with a little dignity.】

I glanced at it, then pressed the screen dark.

The wind caught my nightdress.

I took one step forward and jumped