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Alex knows that sitting alone on the couch, in the dead of night, nursing a bottle of scotch (or is it whisky?) is a step back towards the life she said she would never return to.
But it helps.
Because these days, sometimes she can’t quite get going. Can’t do anything right.
But this, the motion of bringing the bottle up and the burn of the poison down her throat, this is something she can do right. The familiarity is soothing.
And so she does it. Over and over, staring out into space, curled in on herself, one arm moving the bottle between her lips and its resting place on her thigh.
She knows it’s a temporary relief to fill the hollow pit opening up inside her. She knows—but one day at a time, right?
She counts out each sip backwards from three. Maybe she’ll stop when she gets to zero.
A memory surfaces from the depths. Eliza counts down. “Alexandra, if you aren’t down here when I reach zero—”
But Alex knows better, just like she knew back then. Numbers don’t stop there.
She keeps counting down.
If she hits negative three, it’ll be a nice distribution centered on zero. Maybe she’ll count the additional swigs as numbers in between, keep track until it looks like a bell curve.
Make them part of a probability distribution. Each burn of the whisky is a Bernoulli trial. The outcomes are a success or failure, a yes or no.
Is she a failure?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
How many times does she need to run the experiment to find a different result?
How long until this is insanity and she’s just doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different outcome?
“Alex?”
Oh. She’s lost count. Can’t do that right either.
“Hey.” Maggie’s voice drifts across the room, floating past Alex.
There’s a flicker just beyond the spot on the table she’s been staring at.
Maggie moves slowly into her field of view, barely lit by the stray city lights shining through the windows. “What are you doing up?”
She doesn’t even know anymore.
“Can I hold on to that for now?” An easier question as Maggie kneels down in front of her.
Alex grips the bottle tighter. It’s her tether to this world right now, dulling everything until it’s bearable.
“Please, Alex?” Maggie is so gentle and so caring but the only thing Alex can think is why is Maggie even wasting her time?
“I want to be alone.” She can control her voice, at least.
“Okay,” Maggie breathes, out and in again. “But is that really what you want,” her eyes search Alex’s in the shadows, “or are you afraid to accept help?” The words are soft, spoken with no judgment, but Alex turns her head away all the same.
Maggie follows, sitting herself up on the couch to interrupt Alex’s sightline.
She doesn’t even have the energy to move away.
“Hey.” The palm that comes up to her cheek is soft, and Maggie’s fingers curl by her ear. “I’m here.”
And that—that is so achingly familiar. Where Maggie’s eyebrows pinch by just a fraction of an inch and her head tilts slightly and her eyes give Alex the permission to finally, finally break.
Maggie eases the bottle from Alex’s hands and sets it on the table as she watches watering eyes squeeze shut.
Alex shakes and shrinks into Maggie as her tears are pulled out from nowhere, spilling hot down her face.
Even if it doesn’t help, even if it feels like she’s still drifting untethered… It’s a place to start.
--
Alex doesn’t try to slink out of bed tonight. Because she’s trying to be better for Lucy and Maggie. For herself.
So there’s nowhere to run as the anxiety buzzes under her skin, crawls up her legs and arms, pulls her into herself until she’s acutely aware of the existence of her body.
She can almost appreciate the feeling—under another circumstance, it would be pleasant tingles.
But Lucy’s body heat is suffocating and Maggie’s arm is draped heavily around Alex’s side and there’s tension rising in her muscles, threatening to burst the more she holds back.
She falls back into the dance she thought she had finished back in med school. Tense until she tells herself to relax. Let the buzzing creep back in with each forced breath. Tense to push it back until it plateaus. Repeat with each wave.
She can’t even get her phone to count how many minutes, hours of sleep she’s losing, much less distract herself.
And Lucy just got back from a typically exhausting Washington trip and Maggie’s spare time now is spent with her eyes glued to a case file. They deserve whatever rest they can get.
They shouldn’t have to deal with her.
It’s not like she would even know what to say.
There’s no reason for her chest to constrict like this, for her thoughts to spiral in circles, for the world to vibrate behind her closed eyes.
Something’s wrong and she can’t pinpoint what. She’s not drowning in an MD-PhD program anymore. She has friends and family that she loves and a career that she has excelled in.
There’s nothing wrong and yet—
--
The next time she’s laying awake, teetering on the edge of sleep, brushing against it only to jerk awake again—
Maggie’s out cold but Alex twitches hard enough to jostle Lucy. She inhales sharply, eyes wide and suddenly alert. “Alex?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing.” Alex tries to smile. “You can go back to sleep, Luce.”
Lucy snuggles closer to her. “Nightmare?”
“No. I’m fine.” A half lie.
“Your heart is racing,” Lucy whispers into her chest.
Alex doesn’t know what to say to that.
“Hey, it’s okay. Come on, breathe with me.” Lucy pulls back to demonstrate and Alex’s lungs open up to let in air she didn’t realize she had stopped taking in.
Alex knows about box breathing—she’s done it before. But matching Lucy on each inhale, hold, and exhale makes it easier somehow.
Alex watches Lucy’s fingers count to four over and over, keeping pace with the movement rather than the irregular beat of her heart speeding up on each inhale. Focusing on Lucy’s soft encouragement and reassurance all the while.
“There you go. How do you feel?”
“Better.” Everything’s a little quieter.
“Do you want to try to sleep now?”
Alex nods. She just wants to sleep. Desperately.
But the longer she lies there, the louder the silence gets. It multiplies when her eyes are closed, swirling round and round and
“Alex?”
Alex opens her eyes to look at Lucy and bites her lip.
They’ve all had restless nights before. It comes with their past, with their present.
But this, nights like these—they just feel different.
Or, it’s the same feeling, but pulling her under from nowhere and this new kind of helplessness is throwing her off.
“Talk to me.” Lucy’s voice is low under the hum of everything.
“I—” Alex’s eyes dart away automatically. “It’s just, I can’t—, I feel...” For all the thoughts swirling around, there’s nothing there that she can grasp and pull out. She wants to, wants to give Lucy something, anything, because she’s trying. She is, it’s just not working. “Everything is so loud.” She meets Lucy’s eyes and hopes it’s enough to get her point across.
Lucy nods and something flickers across her face, too fast to make out in the dark. She rolls over in bed and turns back with Alex’s phone. “Can I install an app on this?”
“Sure?” Alex unlocks her phone.
It takes Lucy a minute, and then Alex is presented with a screen telling her to “Press to Start”. Okay.
The droning note that spills out from the speakers has her quickly tapping again to stop it.
“Sorry,” Lucy winces as Alex turns the volume down.
“It’s fine.” Alex pauses. “Maggie’s still asleep.”
Lucy gives her a look. “You know she wouldn’t mind either though, right? We never do.”
It’s true that they never have. But what if this is the time when it becomes too much, when she becomes a burden,
“Alex.”
when she starts dragging them down with her, when—
“Alex, breathe.”
Her phone moves a little as Lucy taps it gently. Right.
It’s softer this time, when she starts the app. Lucy breathes with her for the first few cycles as she paces her breathing to the noise it plays.
It’s… surprisingly soothing. The monotone notes timed with each inhale and exhale are regular, rhythmic, something solid to focus on. Not too stimulating, but just enough to make everything else muted.
This time, when she finally edges towards sleep, it’s quiet.
--
She thinks through it over and over and maybe if she repeats it enough, she’ll convince herself to dial the number.
She’s been (forced) to therapy before. It’s helped, probably. It dredged up things she didn’t realize she needed to work through, at least.
So somehow, she thought that would be it. She’d go for as many sessions as it took, put in the effort while feeling shitty in the meantime, and then she’d be better.
Or at least more functional than this.
Calling to make a therapy appointment now seems like she’s failed.
Nothing traumatic happened this time (or, nothing by her DEO standards). She’s just… not okay.
But she wants to feel better, and that’s what therapy is about.
She just needs to actually call and do it, is the thing.
--
Alex has stopped gasping and trembling, but the ghost of it lingers under her skin even after being bundled in a blanket on the couch.
She’s lost track of how long they’ve been sitting like this, Lucy leaning against the couch arm and her leaning against Lucy. Maggie at her other side, fingers dragging along the inside of her wrist in the way that doesn’t make her skin tingle.
“Have you thought about going to therapy?” Lucy asks quietly. The again goes unsaid.
“I already did.”
“Alex, we know you went before, but it might help to go again.”
“No, I—” Alex shifts back from where she’s lounging into Lucy’s side and sits to face her. “I already thought about it. I made an appointment.”
“Oh!” Lucy’s pensive expression breaks into a smile. “That’s great,” she reaches to grab Alex’s hand. “I’m so proud of you, Alex.”
“So proud.” Maggie wraps her arms around Alex from behind. “It’s so good to see you take care of yourself.”
“I want to. Take care of myself. I know I haven’t been doing the best job and I’ve been worrying you both.” Alex watches Lucy’s expression grow strained.
“You were worrying us a little.” Lucy squeezes her hand a little tighter. “But this is a really good step. And we want to support you, so just let us know what you need, okay?”
“And we can check in occasionally, if you want.” Maggie adds.
“That… would probably be good.”
“Okay.” Lucy brings Alex’s hand up to kiss the back of it, gazing up at her to watch her face. “You always smile when I do that.”
“I just—it’s so—I can’t take it seriously!”
“Mmm, kiss me properly then, Danvers.”
“Not if I get to first!” Maggie scoots back on the couch and pulls Alex with her until they tumble against the other side.
It’s still there though their laughter—the undercurrent of something dragging Alex back. But she’s faced this before.
She can do it again.