Author Note: In honor of my birthday today...I decided to cook up a new one-shot. :) Yes...it's kind of weird and strange and unusual. But that's just how I am and I think the PS section needs more weird stories on here, don't you? Well, this one-shot may be a bit OOC, a bit AU. But I wanted to make this one-shot stand out. I really hope yall like it, because I worked so hard on it. Enjoy and don't forget, I love reviews. :) P.S. Thanks SO much to everyone who reviews my other stories! I know i'm really slow on posting and I just suck big time sometimes, but hopefully yall will forgive me on that. And...thank yall for the early birthday wishes! I appreciate it! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Phantom Stallion or any of the characters.
Warning: Contains cutting (sort of), death, etcetera.
A million miles have led me to this place
Where all I've ever loved has been erased
Changing my song to a disenchanted lullaby
With a name I never really felt was mine
-Change My Name by Trading Yesterday
It all starts in a hospital.
(When one thing ends, another begins.)
..
The little girl sits in the waiting room, motionless. Time seems to stand still when bad news occurs. She could see her dad and her grandma pacing back and forth right across the room. She saw a black haired boy, only a few years older than her, staring in her direction. And she saw the waiting room television turn off in the blink of an eye.
In her almond eyes, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Everyone was in slow motion. The nurses walking down the never ending halls, the tapping of a blonde haired lady's foot across the waiting room, and even the clock's second hands took forever to reach the next number.
Two hours and thirty-six minutes never took this long before.
.
By the time the familiar doctor appeared in the waiting room, it was one in the morning. It took every fiber in the little girl's body to stay awake to listen into the doctor's conversation with her dad and grandmother.
The conversation did not last long. The only words that were loud enough to reach the young girl's ears were, "I'm sorry Mr. Forster, but we couldn't save your wife."
Before she gives into unconscious, she hears her grandma crying, her dad fighting back tears, and she sees that strange black haired boy staring at her again. His eyes held sadness for her.
..
A few months after the tragedy happens, that small six year old girl hears her dad and grandma talking quietly in the kitchen. The door was purposely shut so she would not listen in, but her guardians were unaware of her good hearing.
"Wyatt, she's not doing alright. Why can't you see that? Do you remember how she use to beg you everyday to let her ride one of the horses? She doesn't do that anymore. All she does is shut herself in her room. Do you know how many times I've heard her crying? A lot. She cries a lot...and I think she needs someone to talk to."
The girl didn't hear anything after that. But before she walked up the stairs to her room, she heard a phone being picked up.
..
She meets Mrs. Guthrie on a Saturday morning. The little girl's dad had told her that she 'helps children by talking to them'. She sits on the plush, coffee colored couch and finally gets a good look at Mrs. Guthrie. Her blue eyes looked like the sky and the wavy, lioness red hair fell down past her shoulders.
Mrs. Guthrie shuts the door, walks over, and sits on a wooden chair a few feet away from the couch. She picks up a notebook and a pen from the little stool beside her chair and asks, "Can you tell me your full name?"
The little girl is not sure where the older lady is getting at. She avoids eye contact with the older woman and says, "Samantha Anne Forster. What's your full name?"
The older woman stares at her and answers, "Emilie Catherine Guthrie. Do you have any siblings, Samantha?"
Shaking her head no, she asks, "Do you?"
"Yes. Two older brothers named Mark and Aaron and a younger sister named Katy Lou."
And then the little girl is crying. Mrs. Guthrie looks shocked and comes over to the couch to comfort her. "Samantha, why are you crying?"
Between sobs, she manages to choke out words. "Because you said Lou. My momma's name was Lou."
The conversation kind of stops there, but it takes one more hour for the therapy session to end.
..
"She might be a special case."
..
Sam will never admit that hearing the name 'Lou' was not the only thing that upset her. It was that Mrs. Emilie Catherine Guthrie looked a whole lot like her mom.
She requests a different therapist.
..
On the next Saturday, she gets that new therapist.
She likes this one. The bouncy, shoulder length blonde hair and hazel eyes reminded Sam nothing of her mother. And unlike Mrs. Guthrie, the new therapist looked nicer and more sympathetic. Motherly would be the right word.
The little auburn haired girl now sits in a similiar looking room. Practically the same. But what made it different was pictures of her therapist's family on her desk in the corner and finger paintings tacked onto a cork board above the couch.
The new therapist sits down on a newly painted white chair and asks, "I would really like to know your name, honey."
"Samantha Forster. I would really like to know your name, too."
The older lady smiled. "It's nice to meet you Samantha. I'm Maxine Ely."
..
The session with Mrs. Ely goes a lot better.
Sam has decided that she's a keeper.
(And she can't help but think that Mrs. Ely looks familiar.)
..
"Do you have any siblings, Sam?"
"No...but sometimes I wish I had one. It gets lonely sometimes. Do you have siblings, Mrs. Ely?"
The blonde lady let out a long sigh. "No, but I'm like you. I wish I had one too because when I was your age, I got really lonely. Maybe that's why I had so many children. So they wouldn't be lonely like I was."
"You have children?"
She nods and answers, "Yeah...six to be exact. My youngest is almost three years older than you."
Sam nods. Then she blurts out what she has been wondering since her first session with Mrs. Ely. "Why do you look so familiar?"
The older, blonde haired woman pauses before she says, "Do you want to know why I chose to take over your therapy sessions after you requested another therapist?"
Sam nods at the question and she continued speaking. "Because I saw your picture before I accepted you as my patient. I recognized you from the hospital from a few months ago."
The small, auburn haired girl remembered instantly. Mrs. Ely had been the blonde lady tapping her foot across from her in the waiting room.
"Who was that little boy with you? Was that one of your kids?"
"Yeah...that's the youngest. His name is Jake. Maybe you two could have a play date sometime."
The young girl nodded. She always wanted a friend.
..
The session ends and for some reason, Sam feels better.
Mrs. Ely was acting like the mother that she has lost only a few months ago.
.
It's a Sunday when Sam meets Mrs. Ely's youngest son, Jake Ely.
His obsidian colored hair and tanned skin look strange in her young eyes.
But strange is considered a good thing to her.
..
The hole in her heart was finally starting to heal.
..
Years come and go, and the hole eventually comes back after another accident.
..
A newly turned fourteen year old wakes up to a bone white ceiling, beeping monitors, and a severely bruised body. She manages to lift her heavy head off an unfamiliar pillow and looks around at her surroundings.
It's a hospital. She sees the monitors hooked up to her arms and she sees her friend Jake in the bed across the room. He's unconscious and looked as bad as she felt. He was bruised, scarred, and damaged. Probably how she was.
But it doesn't make any sense. What even happened?
As if on cue, her dad entered the room and he automatically smiled at the sight of her. He made his way over to her side and sat down in the hard, metal hospital chair. "Hi honey, how are you feeling?"
"Bad. What happened?"
Wyatt paused to collect his never ending thoughts until he finally managed to speak. "Sam, you and Jake were in a car accident. He was driving you to Clara's for a birthday dinner and, well, this deer jumped out in front of the truck. Jake swerved on impulse."
Sam nodded. Now she remembered.
.
The moment her dad left the room, she cried. Accidents happen, but the same accident was never supposed to happen twice. Sam had noticed that almost the same exact thing happened to her mom almost eight years ago.
A person drives a vehicle, random animal jumps out of nowhere, person swerves, and then...person dies.
..
She was supposed to die that night.
..
During the eight days that she was in the hospital, the doctors ran test after test. She only had a rib fracture and a slight concussion, but with the doctors still running tests, something else had to be going on.
And then the day she's released, she is suddenly labeled a victim of neurosis. The doctors explained it as an 'invisible injury' and it requires some psychotherapy (like she needed more therapy) and some type of medication that she could hardly pronounce the name of.
How the hell is she supposed to deal with all this, plus school work, plus chores, plus plus plus?
..
Sam thinks of what she sees as a 'perfect solution'.
One that makes her forget all her problems, just for a little while. An escape that is bloodless, yet painful. She thinks it's genius.
By the time Sam gets back home from the hospital, she escapes up to the solitude of her bedroom. She rummages in her desk drawer until she finds it. Grabbing the spare set of car keys, she walks over and sits down on her twin sized bed.
Her bright yellow comforter seemed to get duller as she slowly drags one of the rusty, silver keys down her porcelain skin.
The pain makes her eyes water, but it feels so good and she kept on creating scars on her arms until she was so tired that she just had to stop.
.
But then one day, the keys dig into her skin too deep.
And there's blood. While she is slowly seeing black, she hears Jake's panicked voice in the background.
Oh yeah. They were supposed to go on their first date that night. And of course, it happened on her fifteenth birthday.
Why now? Why with Jake as the witness to her self-mutilation? Why?
..
And she's suddenly in the hospital...again.
..
This time, she wakes up to see Jake, with his head slightly tilted and his body slumped, sleeping in the hospital chair. She leans over to grab his abandoned black stetson on the bedside table and she throws it at him. It makes a plop noise and Jake is awoken.
He was a light sleeper.
She smiles shyly and whispers, "Hey..."
Confusion turned to anger which turned to hurt which turned to grief. "Sam, what the hell were you thinking?" Crap, it's lecture time. "You could have killed yourself! You could have died! I know this 'self-harm' stuff made you feel good, but just look at you now. Do you know how much your family would've suffered if you had..." Closing his eyes, he slowly took a deep breath. When he opened them, he looked her directly in the eye. "Samantha, do you know what I would've gone through if you died? Did you for once stop and think about other people's feelings before you-"
His voice drowned out as he finally saw tears emerge. Salty water spilled out of her caput mortuum colored eyes, over the sunken bags under her eyes, and down her snow white face. Jake swallowed back his own tears, sat down on the side of her bed, and pulled her into his arms.
He stroked her unwashed, auburn hair as she sobbed into his shoulder. When her sobbing is under control, she repeats the same phrase over and over again.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"-Please forgive me, Jake. Please!"
..
He did forgive her. After all, she was his fallen angel. He would do anything to make her happy. As long as she promised to never run keys over her arms again.
To make sure he believed her promise, she throws the oh-so rusty set of keys off the top of the hospital building.
..
Five years past by quickly, key free of course.
..
"Sam, the baby is almost out. I just need a few more pushes, just a few more, for you to see her."
The woman, who was drenched in sweat, pushed as if her life depended on it. She's terrified and tired and she just wants her daughter out of her. She holds onto her husband's hand for dear life, making sure to dig her nails into him. Besides, if she has to go through pain, so does he.
She keeps pushing.
Push. Push. Push.
And then there comes that demonic shrill cry from herself as she feels the release of pressure.
..
On the mother's twentieth birthday, her daughter is born at exactly 1:09 a.m. on a Saturday. The newborns name means 'safe place' and 'meant to do'.
Welcome to this crazy world Haven Destiny Ely.
..
It all starts in a hospital.
(When one thing ends, another begins.)