“I know your daughter has spent eight years with no contact from you. I know you basically shipped her off the moment you realized she was sick. And I know you seem to have all but forgotten her for the new family you’ve built for yourself,” I said, facing him.
He clenched his jaw. “Felicity is a troubled young woman who needed—”
“Her father not to kick her across the country at sixteen and turn his back on her.”
“How dare you judge me!” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with people like them? I was married to her mother for fourteen years, and then three years after we were married, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I should have seen it. She was often depressed and her moods would randomly change. The worst was when she had no apathy for anything, not even her own child! Came home one day, and no one had fed or changed Felicity for hours! Where was her mother? Smoking in the backyard! You have no idea the hell that life was. The insomnia, lack of hygiene, lack of appetite—she was dying in front of me every goddamned day. When she died, I was relieved. Every day did not feel like a battle. Then Felicity started to act the same, and I could not do it again. I couldn’t!”
I couldn’t help but picture the life he had just painted and how Felicity lived it. She got a poor set of cards to deal with from the beginning.
“She’s your daughter. When it goes bad, when there is nothing left but her crying in a lonely apartment, you should be the one thing she can count on. Isn’t that what it means to be a parent? What is it with you people, thinking you matter more than your children? So it’s okay to abandon them because it’s hard? Everything you said sounds horrible, but not for you. For her mother, who couldn’t help it. And for Felicity to spend six years believing she had loving, caring friends and then for me to come along and rip that out of her hands.”
My driver opened the door for me, and Governor Ford called out to me.
“Don’t be all high and mighty. Now you have two choices: stay with her, since you obviously love her, and deal with everything I had to. Then you’ll understand what I mean when I say I couldn’t watch her like that. Or you’ll be like me and be another man who has to walk away. Either you suffer with her, or she suffers alone. Either way she still suffers.”
Saying nothing, I got into the car. When the door closed, I punched the front of my seat, “Goddamn it!”
At first I was in shock. Then I wanted to make sure Felicity got help. Now I was just so fucking pissed off and confused.
How did it get this bad so quickly?
Felicity
1:15 p.m.
I could deal with the horrible medicine that made me groggy. I could even handle all the healthy food. The no-wine part I was even starting to calm down over. But therapy was the worst.
“Felicity.” Dr. Butler, an old and large man, who only had hair on the sides of his head and wore the most annoying bow ties, called out to me. He had been my doctor when I was sixteen as well. I looked out the window, staring at the rose bushes. I really wanted to go back to fifteen days ago… when I’d thought I was just a normal girl with some baggage.
“Felicity?”
“I’m not crazy,” I said to him, still not giving him my attention. “I know Mark and Cleo aren’t real. I know I never killed anyone. I’m not crazy.”
“The meds are—”
“No—urgh!” Never yell was one of the many lessons I’d learned here. Taking a deep breath, I faced him. “I hate the medication. It makes me feel like I have no control over my body. But I take them anyway. The medication isn’t the reason I know I’m not crazy. I remember my mom. I’m not like her.”
“Schizophrenia is different for every person—”
“I’m not insane.”
“Felicity, having schizophrenia does not mean you are insane. It means you’re sick. Without the medication, you saw Mark and Cleo the minute you left this facility. Do you remember the last book you read while you were here? You brought it with you and always kept it by your side.”
“No, I can’t remember.” I just wanted to run away.
He put the book on the table. “Look.”
“William Shakespeare’s…” I paused before saying the next two names. “Antony and Cleopatra.”
“You took two characters from a Shakespearean tragedy and made them into your best friends. You don’t think it’s important to know why?”
“No, because they aren’t real,” I said, even as I watched Mark pull a book off the shelf behind Dr. Butler’s head.