Wicked Burn(23)
Author: Beth Kery

Nevertheless, she was more than a little surprised when Rose gave her a searching look before she stood and hugged her tightly. Such an act of caring and generosity from a person Niall had known for less than six months made her eyes burn with repressed emotion.

“Sit down, Niall,” Rose encouraged. She watched Niall closely as she followed her instructions and then sat down next to her. “I was going to ask how you’re holding up, but I think I’ve already got my answer.”

Niall shook her head impatiently, irritated by the rogue tears that escaped her eyes. “I’ve been doing well, actually, until this latest incident.”

“I was a little surprised to see you and your parents here at the hospital,” Rose admitted gently.

Niall explained about Evergreen Park’s mistake with the emergency contact information.

“Your mother and father still think it was a wrong decision for you to give up guardianship of Stephen?” Rose more stated than asked.

Niall nodded as she swiped the back of her hand over wet cheek. “Thank you,” Niall murmured when Rose reached into her large, bright pink bag and withdrew a tissue. “They could accept the guardianship part, I think. It’s the fact that I filed for a divorce that’s really bothering them. A male heir has always been important in the Chandler family. When I married Stephen, my parents got the son they’d always wanted. They were pretty disappointed when I decided to study art instead of get my MBA and go into the family business. But then Stephen came along and they were thrilled. He worked for my father at Chandler Financial . . . not directly, of course. Stephen had his own department but . . .” Niall shrugged, not sure where she was going with her rambling. “Besides, I was brought up Catholic. They feel like I’m abandoning Stephen because he’s broken or something.”

Rose sighed. “If only it were that simple. Stephen’s condition has been an anomaly in regard to traditional psychiatric understanding. His first symptoms occurred after a terrific stressor, of course, but his age of onset was too late to be a classic schizophrenia. He hasn’t responded to medications for a psychotic type of depression, either. He goes through periods of remission but, well . . . you know how he is then,” Rose said sadly.

Listless, lifeless . . . vacant, Niall thought automatically. She couldn’t say what had pained her most over the years—Stephen’s manic, agitated, often violent psychotic episodes, or the long periods where he sat and stared out the window without uttering a word, refusing to eat or attend to his most basic grooming and hygiene needs, completely immune to her presence. When he ranted at her it was awful, but at least in doing so he acknowledged her existence.

Against her will the image arose behind Niall’s eyelids of the way her parents looked this morning in the hallway as she stood at the door beside a potently virile, nearly nude Vic. They had remained icily silent about the whole incident, but even a second of considering what they must be thinking of her made Niall cringe internally. Some part of her struggle and mortification must have shown on her face, because Rose put her arm around Niall’s shoulders in a gesture of compassion.

“Niall, thousands of family members of severely mentally ill people have to make similar decisions, and very few of them have suffered the awful extenuating circumstances you have. Didn’t the counselor you saw tell you that there’s no right or wrong to your decision? It’s you who has to be at peace with it. Not your parents. Not your friends. Not me. Not even Stephen. You, Niall.”

“Stephen suffered as well.”

Rose nodded briskly in agreement. “He did. I can only imagine what he must have suffered . . . what he still suffers.” She studied Niall with kind, dark eyes. “He’s responded in the only way he knows how. I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have drunk myself into a psychotic oblivion and decided to stay there if forced to face the same circumstances the two of you have. But here’s the thing, Niall . . .” Rose added more gently, “You can say that. You do know. You chose to continue with your life even when it meant you had to carry on alone.”

Niall just shook her head, made speechless by the emotion that gripped painfully at her throat. Why did it always hurt so much when someone said something like that to her? Was it some sort of deficit on her part that she hadn’t crumbled under the stress and grief as Stephen had? Did that mean that she’d cared less for their son than Stephen had, loved Michael less?

No. No, now she wasn’t being fair to herself, just as she hadn’t been fair to herself by stretching out this tragedy for so much longer than need be. Niall wondered if there would be a day in the rest of her life that the thought of her precious little boy’s senseless murder wouldn’t cause such an acute stab of pain that she was left literally breathless.

Tears streamed silently down her face. Rose had only meant to be reassuring and kind by her words. Niall’s lingering doubts about her decisions were the party at fault here.

The tears came from another source, as well. Niall kept so much locked fast in her heart. She had for so long now. Maybe it was foolishness, maybe it was fear . . . maybe it was nothing more than stubborn pride that made her suffer in silence.

Whatever the reason that she kept so much locked up within her, Niall was also starved to talk to someone . . . someone who knew at least something about the circumstances of why her husband—once a funny, intelligent man—currently lay down the hospital hallway, restrained, sedated, almost all evidence of his humanity and vibrancy squeezed out of him by the ruthless fist of grief. Niall longed to connect with someone who had more than just a verbal description of what her husband had become . . . of what Niall had lost.

The clinical psychologist that Evergreen Park had referred Niall to had been kind and attentive, but he’d never really broken through to her. Niall had felt like he was a well-meaning scientist studying a dolphin through a pane of glass. He’d wanted to reach her. But the unavoidable difference in their histories had seemed to make contact between Niall and the psychologist as difficult as communication between members of two separate species.

“Oh . . . dear,” Rose said brokenly when she noted Niall’s expression. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, honey.” She reached into her pink bag and brought out a wad of tissues.

Niall blinked in bleary-eyed surprise when Rose stuffed half the tissues in her hand and used the rest to mop the tears that had fallen on her own ample cheeks.