Hi everyone, my beta reader friend recommended that I leave a reminder before this chapter about the trigger warning at the beginning of Chapter 1. I personally don't expect this one to be harder to read than some of Liam's that have already passed, but I figured better safe than sorry. I don't want to give away too much here about what's going on in the chapter, but if you have any specific concerns about the trigger warning feel free to comment here or send me a message. x

This chapter is also pretty information-dense, so I probably wouldn't recommend reading it while you're half asleep (looking at you, ohlee).

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june-august 2014 : 6 years and 1 month ago

Lily was not a fan of waiting rooms.

She had only been sitting in this uncomfortable chair for a few minutes, but it felt like an hour had passed already. With her eyes firmly locked on the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital plaque on the wall, she tried to focus on her breathing and not panic about the hellish week that was ahead of her. Sharing a room with a stranger. Being observed like a lab rat. Isolated from everyone she knew.

Last night was one of the worst of her life. Mom and Dad tried to explain the conversation that they had with her psychiatrist, but the damage had already been done. How was she supposed to trust any of them when they were talking about her behind her back?

She didn't even want to talk to Henry, yet she let him in when he came knocking at her door. She was mad at him, so mad that she wanted to cry and scream at him until her throat was raw and force him to keep his mouth shut and let her do it. But somewhere deep inside her, she acknowledged that he was on her side and knew that his nosiness was coming from a place of concern. He had made it abundantly clear that he was against this whole thing.

And she couldn't afford to not have him because life as she knew it was slipping away between her fingertips and he was the one thing she felt kept her tethered to who she was. So she didn't scream at him. And she didn't cry much, not immediately. That came a little while later when Mom cracked the door open to reluctantly hand Lily a piece of paper. It was a list of everything she should and shouldn't pack.

No electronics.

No glass containers.

No necklaces, rings, or bracelets.

No books.

No pens or pencils.

No drawstrings.

No belts.

No shoes with laces.

Shoelaces, seriously? She stared down at the paper for a long moment.

Lily had become so accustomed to the constant stream of tears that she didn't even realize she was crying again until Henry's arms around her pulled her awareness to her own body, which was shaking with sobs, and the awful sound that was coming out of her.

"I'm sorry," she managed, voice wobbling.

"Shh, it's okay. Get it all out. I get it."

She clung onto the sound of his voice and the familiarity of it, unable not to feel as though she were about to be brutally ripped away from him. But a new ache formed in her heart upon hearing his words, a pain of the loneliest kind.

"No you don't," she whispered.

He got very quiet after that. She knew he knew she was right.

A tear tumbled down her cheek and splattered onto the paper. This was it, her confirmation that she was absolutely insane. It didn't matter how much Henry told her she wasn't.

People didn't worry about you hurting yourself with your freaking shoelaces if you were sane.

So now, as she sat in the waiting room, she was wearing a pair of those cheap plastic flip flops you usually only ever wore to the pool. She looked about as great as she felt, dressed in an old pair of leggings and a grey tee shirt. Her parents were at the front desk, politely making small talk with the nurse while they filled out paperwork.

Henry was sitting in the chair next to her. He asked this morning if he could come with them, but whether he felt like he owed it to her to make up for last night or if it eased his own stress to keep an eye on her until the literal last second, Lily wasn't sure. He was being awfully quiet.

Something was off with him, even more off than it had been the past few days. He was more on edge, more fidgety. He couldn't stay entirely still, nervously tapping one sneakered foot and shifting positions in his seat more than he needed to. And he wasn't looking at her. Lily gradually pulled her eyes off of the wall and onto him, attempting to decipher the cause of his increased agitation. He didn't try to comfort her now and simply stared at a door at the other end of the lobby.

His aloofness wasn't doing anything to quell her anxieties. Why had he come in the first place if he was going to be like this? She didn't understand what was going on until a machine faintly beeped somewhere in the distance.

A distant storminess settled in Henry's eyes and a small frown on his lips. It finally dawned on Lily that he wasn't really with her, not fully. She was watching a person who was neither here nor there, drifting like a lost spirit back and forth between one reality here in this waiting room and one in a different waiting room of the past.

It all clicked. Lily quietly spoke. "You hate hospitals, don't you?"

This yanked his attention onto her. He reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"I'm fine. You'll be fine. We're fine." He said all of this with a small smile but entirely too quickly to be convincing.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Henry irked her by interrupting and changing the subject. "There's a vending machine down the hall on the right if you want something."

She didn't remember seeing any vending machines, so he must have come in a different way than she and her parents did. He showed up a few minutes after them. Not that any of this really mattered - she didn't care about the dumb vending machine.

"You didn't- I didn't think about-" Her throat was dry and tight. It was impossible to find the right words to speak to someone who lived with more pain than you'd ever experienced, especially when that person was trying to deny that they were hurting. No matter how much she opened up to him, no matter how many times he saw her cry, it never got easier to talk about Sarah.

"Why did you come?" she asked delicately. "You don't...no one wants you putting yourself through that."

He didn't answer yet but leaned over and rested his head against the side of hers. Finally ceasing his foot tapping, he instead occupied the nervous itch by gently rubbing her thumb with his. She felt his presence start to have its usual calming effect on her as they silently sat there for a few moments and she prayed that it was helping him, too. Life was always miserably unfair to Henry Caruso, yet the boy held in his own sadness to cure everyone else's.

"Because," he sighed, the sound so faint that surely only Lily would hear it. But that tiny sigh was like twelve years of broken dreams being released into the cold, unforgiving world. All he had lost and all he never wanted his little cousin to have to endure. "It's no fun to be the one in the waiting room alone."

Lily tried not to anxiously pick at the plastic hospital wristband on her arm as she was guided by a nurse down the hall to talk to her doctor. She had only been given a couple of minutes to set her bag down in her room and take a moment to breathe.

Actually sitting down and meeting Dr. Reilly offered a small amount of relief. She seemed nice enough. She smiled a lot, maybe a little too much.

For a second after the nurse left and closed the door, the room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. And it was depressingly bare.

"Lily, do you know why you're here?" Dr. Reilly asked, not unkindly, but Lily thought that was a stupid question.

Because I'm psycho? "Not really."

Dr. Reilly went on to explain that Lily was experiencing what they called early psychosis and that her week there would hopefully help them start to form an idea as to what was causing it. Psychosis - an overarching term that could include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disordered speech - was a symptom, not a disorder itself, so the challenge was to now figure out what was behind it in Lily's case.

She had hoped that they would have an answer for her at the end of the week, but she quickly learned that they were trudging through much murkier waters than she realized. Psychosis could apparently be caused by a number of mental health conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, that all required vastly different treatments from one another.

Dr. Reilly admitted that Lily's mention of noticing herself going through mood swings was a bit of a red flag. They had to determine whether that was from regular teenage hormones, a side effect of the psychosis, or the least likely but most disruptive possibility - bipolar disorder. Accurately deciphering that was going to require tracking the pattern and duration of her extreme moods and if they were present at the same time as the hallucinations over a period of weeks or even months, not days. Needless to say, it was a lot.

At least Dr. Reilly tried to leave Lily on a positive note. She said that because the symptoms weren't too severe right now and were getting treated early, she was very hopeful that a combination of medication and regular psychiatry appointments would allow Lily's life to look similar to how it did before this all began. And although it was going to take some time to nail down an exact diagnosis, they would probably try starting her on a low dose of an antipsychotic medication in the next few days.

Lily left that meeting clinging onto the hope that they could find something that would work for her soon. If anyone had asked her a month ago if she wanted to try going on medication, she would have been very hesitant, but right now she was open to anything and everything that would stop this.

The week was slow. Not as stressful as she expected, although there were definitely some stressful parts. The hallucinations were mainly auditory and mainly came at night, making it nearly impossible for her to sleep. Never had she experienced something simultaneously so terrifying and frustrating. She kept hearing these two people talking in her room, except it wasn't quite the same as hearing. It was more like having extremely loud thoughts that she couldn't control where the inner voices speaking were separate entities from herself. She would sit up and look around, but there was always no one there. So she'd lay back down and pull the covers over her head, scared that if she did look again, there would be someone there.

At least they didn't seem to linger into the day most of the time. But being told that it wasn't real didn't make it any less real to her in the moment.

Besides that, the week was mainly characterized by talking with Dr. Reilly, writing her thoughts down in a journal, and eating food that tasted like cardboard. There were a couple of days where she was allowed to have visitors for a thirty-minute window, so her parents came one day and Henry came the other.

Talking with Mom and Dad gave her some resolution that she didn't know she needed after the fiasco the other night. They acknowledged that they messed up and that it shouldn't have gone how it did. Henry had apparently been on the verge of hysterics, much more distressed about Lily than she had realized, and all they were trying to do before it escalated into what it did was reassure him that they had a plan for her.

She forgave them, both because she believed they were genuinely sorry and because she didn't have the energy to stay mad at them. She supposed she sometimes resented that they weren't always very good at reading her emotions and comforting her, but they couldn't be perfect. She wasn't exactly an expert at communication herself.

Henry's arrival two days later was a breath of fresh air amidst an environment that was beginning to feel suffocating. He looked more peaceful, more well-rested, and when he stepped into the room it was as though he carried in with him a glimpse of the colorful outside world. There was a vibrant summer out there waiting for her. She found it in the bright white of his shirt, the way his brown hair was slightly lighter than usual from all the sunlight, his crystalline blue eyes, and the richness in his voice when he gave her a hug and a little, "Hey, loser." It was like finally opening the window in a stuffy room and feeling that first wonderful breeze tickle your face. In the process of adjusting to this existence of muted greys, Lily had forgotten that the rest of the world was a kaleidoscope.

He assured her that she wasn't missing anything too exciting. He had picked up an extra shift at work and gotten his car serviced. Truly thrilling stuff right there. The sad thing was that to Lily, just about anything was genuinely exciting to hear about right now.

Their half an hour together flew by way too quickly. Even though she only had to survive one more day here, she didn't want him to leave. He made sure to give her an extra-long hug before any nurses could come in and tell him it was time for him to go.

"We'll do something fun this weekend," he promised. "Go to the movies or something."

Popcorn and a cherry slushie sounded so good. She could definitely put up with another twenty-four hours here if it meant being rewarded with movie theater concessions.

She pulled back from the hug enough to see his goofy smile and felt sunnier than she had in weeks. "Why'd I ever think you were so bad?" she contemplated.

The smile turned almost wistful, albeit appreciative. "Don't go convincing yourself that I'm some sort of great person that I'm not. I'm just trying my best like you are."

She shrugged. "You're pretty great to me."

"Do you think cats can eat french fries?" Lily pondered.

A surprised laugh left Henry. "Let's maybe not test that theory. I still can't believe you weren't joking when you said you were getting him a harness."

"He wanted to come outside," she whined. "He was lonely!"

He gave her a lighthearted eye-roll. "He was not." But he reached over to the cat lounging between them and scratched behind his ears, eliciting a loud string of purrs.

Henry was supposed to be working right now but had gotten out of it at the last second when one of his co-workers asked to pick up an extra shift. Lily was relieved that he was giving himself a short reprieve. He had been working crazy hours for most of the summer trying to save up as much money as he could before he went off to college and now that school was a mere three weeks away, he seemed to be pushing himself even harder.

But for the moment, they got to live in their little bubble where problems didn't have to exist, just the two of them. And Beary. They had come to the park, now sitting on a blanket under the shade of a huge tree and munching away on an order of fries. Smoothies replaced their usual McFlurries because the ice cream machine was broken.

It was Lily's idea to bring Beary with them. Henry was reluctant and also terrible at saying no to her. The leash was wrapped around his hand in case Beary tried to run after a squirrel or something, but it turned out that he was even lazier than they thought he was. While he hadn't been a fan of the car ride, he had stretched out on his side as soon as they put the blanket down and then refused to move.

It was the closest to a perfect day they had gotten in a long time. Today was one of Lily's good days. It was difficult to try to describe the differences between the good days and the bad days, but her psychiatrist Dr. Powell, who she was seeing twice a week now, helped her find some good words for it. Odd ones, but useful.

Her brain was like a television and on good days it played one color channel. It was straightforward. She could focus. But on bad days it tried to play hundreds of fuzzy black-and-white ones at once. It got distorted.

As strange of a metaphor as it was, it gave her a means by which to communicate to everyone - Dr. Powell, her parents, Henry, Katie - how she was feeling at any given moment. She used it frequently, particularly because one common element of psychosis treatment that was proven to be successful was keeping your family educated so that they could support you. Mom and Dad came to a therapy session with her every other week, which drained her in the moment but seemed to be helping in the long run.

Overall, she was doing better, but she was by no means out of the woods. They still weren't completely sure what condition or conditions she had, so Dr. Powell had been adjusting her meds as they inched closer to a more accurate answer. The first antipsychotic they tried had some really annoying side effects, so they switched her to a different one which was working better so far.

Her expression must have told Henry that she was getting lost in her thoughts because he spoke up. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty colorful," she promised.

That was clearly the answer he had been hoping for, so she was grateful that it was true. Smiling, he reached over and playfully ruffled her hair to annoy her before popping another french fry in his mouth.

There were only a couple of troubles lingering over her like a gloomy rain cloud. "I found out I'm gonna have to do these extra tutoring sessions once school starts," she explained, picking the last of the fry crumbs out of the bottom of the carton. "Dr. Powell's schedule is too full to change my usual time until October, so I'll have to miss two of my classes twice a week."

"Oh, those aren't too bad," Henry assured her, elaborating after she quizzically raised her eyebrows at him. "I had to miss a couple of weeks freshman and sophomore years because I got pneumonia."

She didn't recall hearing about him having pneumonia, but that wasn't particularly shocking. Those were the days when they avoided each other as much as possible, so she hadn't heard much of anything about him.

She felt slightly better after hearing that from him, but there was still the remaining problem. The bigger problem, the one she had been able to avoid while focusing on her mental health crisis.

Him leaving.

Her heart ached with a million different emotions as she glanced over at him. He didn't notice because he was looking down at Beary, a small smile forming on his lips as the cat lifted his chin up, demanding that Henry scratch under it. Lily almost giggled as he affectionately obliged. He could complain about her buying a cat harness all he wanted to, but he obviously loved Beary a lot.

She was going to miss Henry so freaking much, yet her emotions towards him going off to college were even more complicated now than they were at the beginning of the summer. She didn't know what to do without his daily smiles and hugs and jokes and words of encouragement. Or those quiet moments where he didn't make her say much because he grasped that talking was a lot of work. She was relying on him more than ever, so the thought of him leaving was painful.

But there was something even more painful, something that made it feel like her heart was getting ripped out of her chest every time she thought about it.

She was hurting him.

For two months, she had been watching him continue to slowly buckle under the weight of all the burdens he was trying to take off of her. She saw it in every hug they shared, every conversation they had about her, every time he spent his hard-earned money on her instead of putting it towards school like he should have been. He seemed like he was mentally in a really good place when he graduated and then she had gone and handed the already anxiety-prone boy a million more reasons to be stressed.

So maybe this was his moment to break free. To run away from her and finally breathe. Lily was dead weight on his shoulders, was she not?

It was with this in mind that she asked her question. "So, um," she chimed up quietly. "Is there, like, a plan for getting you moved into school?"

Henry pulled his eyes off the cat, his mouth rounding into a little o. "Oh my God, I'm stupid. I was supposed to tell you like two weeks ago and I didn't."

What had him so thrown off? "Tell me what?"

He brushed the salt from the fries off his hands. "I'm not going."

She nearly choked on her smoothie. "What?!"

"I'm going to college," he clarified hurriedly. "But I'm not going to Chicago. I'm staying here."

For a second, everything was still. Even the beating of her heart in her chest seemed to cease.

He's not leaving me?

The tornado of conflicting emotions that ensued knocked her off her feet and got her talking. "But...but why? That was your dream..."

A terrible thought struck her. Oh my God. Oh no. He's not giving that up for me, is he? She couldn't allow herself to be the thing that held him back.

Henry simply shrugged. "Yeah, sure, I guess you could say it was. But it was gonna be so expensive. If I stay here I can live at home for the first couple of years and save us some money."

Lily stared down at the blanket, unable to stop herself from doubting him and letting her hair fall in her face to shield it from him. He didn't need to see how bothered she surely looked. "You wouldn't...This doesn't...This doesn't have anything to do with me, does it?"

She dared to peer over at him through her curtain of hair. He brushed it over her shoulder, his expression softening.

"I'm about to sound like a jerk for saying this but it's going to make you feel better," he prefaced.

That was enough to snap her out of her worried state. "Uh, okay?"

"Even if I wanted to stay here just for you, do you think my parents would let me do that?" he pointed out.

"Oh."

She hadn't thought about that, but he was right. As much as his parents valued family, Lily knew they also supported his ambitions. Uncle Rob came here all the way from Italy when he was around Henry's age and never looked back, Lily's mother doing the same a couple of years later. They didn't believe that family was tied to a geographical location. They would surely tell him to go off on his big adventure because Lily would still be there whenever he came back to her.

She shook her head. "Sorry, I'm being dumb."

"It's not dumb. I wouldn't put it past me."

She nearly laughed. "Are you not sad about it?"

He shook his head and the gesture was confident enough to assuage Lily's concerns. "It was my choice. I think...I dunno," he pondered. "I believe in making dreams work. I'm not saying you should give up. But I kind of came to a point where I started to question if it was worth making it work."

Lily simply watched him, a faraway look starting to form in his eyes as he watched the horizon. She wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe the life that could have been, or the new one that was about to begin for him. Maybe his parents. Maybe her. Maybe Sarah. He was always carrying her with him, proudly and literally wearing his heart on his sleeve in the form of an unassuming black tattoo on his forearm. His sister's presence burned into his skin. He'd made her just as much a part of him as his own heart and lungs were so that nothing could take her away again, no matter where in the world he went or how much suffering or joy or changes the universe handed him.

Maybe he was thinking about all of it.

"I like to think I'm an incredibly mature person for letting it go," he quipped.

"Was it hard?"

"Honestly? No," he admitted, his smile returning. "It occurred to me that I have no reason to leave. I have everything I want the most right here."

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I know I just dumped a bunch of information on you guys, so thanks for pushing through it!

I hope it came through in the writing that I researched before I wrote. I'm obviously going to continue talking about Lily's mental health throughout the rest of the book, but this chapter might be the most detailed I dive into it. This isn't something that I have personally gone through, so I don't want to try to speak into it in more depth than I'm really capable of. Hopefully you guys are okay with that! I'm trying to respect my limits since as a student, I'm not able to consistently put hours of outside research into my books. There are obviously a lot of other characters and themes that I'm trying to cover as well.

The next chapter will be back to Liam and it might be my favorite one that I've written so far :) Thank you for all of the support and don't forget to vote if you enjoyed <3