#shephunt

She couldn’t stop thinking about the drugs. She hadn’t felt good, being drugged, and she didn’t know why she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Everything felt…softer, like the harsh edges of reality were blurred just enough to make them hurt less when they cut into her. She just wanted it to hurt a little less, and she just needed Charlotte. But Charlotte was a lost cause, so she tried a new tactic.

“Come on, pick up, please. Someone, anyone, come on.”

Richard wasn’t answering either. She felt like throwing her phone at the wall. Where the hell was everyone when she needed them? This one time, and they were all M.I.A.

“Please, please, please.”

The phone stopped ringing and went to voicemail for the fifth time in a row, and she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t call Owen. He’d just dropped her off, and she promised she’d be fine. She told him she had people to talk to and that she’d be okay, and she was such a mess. He deserved a break from all her crazy. Besides, even when Owen understood her and accepted every screwed up piece she was made up of, there were some things he could never quite relate to. This was one of them.

“Addie, come on, Addie. I need you. I need my sister. I need you, please.”

It was like a mantra she was repeating as she dialed every number she could think of. And at last, Addison Montgomery came through.

“Hello?”

“Where’s Charlotte?”

“Amelia?”

“Addie, where’s Charlotte?”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Addison, where is Charlotte?”

“She’s…. She took the past few days off. One of the girls got sick and now they’re all…. Amelia, what’s wrong?”

“I need you….” Her voice wavered and she took a minute to steady it. To make absolutely certain she wouldn’t break down. Addison wasn’t the one she really needed right now. “I need you to get Charlotte. Get her on the phone or tell her to call me or… Anything. I need you to get me Charlotte.”

“Amelia, tell me what’s going on. What’s the matter? What can I do?”

“Get me Charlotte.”

There was a pause, then: “I’ll go tell Cooper to try calling her.”

Amelia sat, ear pressed to the phone, waiting for what felt like an eternity. Addison must of left her phone in her office while she went to get Cooper, but she could just imagine the conversation. Amelia is acting strung out and hostile again. We need to get Charlotte to talk her down, see if she’s in trouble again. Again, again, again. What’s wrong with Amelia Shepherd this time?

She closed her eyes and listened to the noise on the other end of the phone. She pictured what would be happening in LA. Violet would be gone, off to promote her newest book. Jake was probably comforting a crying and distraught mother-to-be. Cooper would be trying to work, stressed over his sick kids, and then Addison would walk in and shake up his world a little more. She almost hung up, guilt overcoming her for crashing into their lives with another Amelia Shepherd Catastrophe, but then she heard a door open and heels clicking on the floor. Addison.

“Cooper called Charlotte. She didn’t pick up. He says she’s probably not near her phone and can’t hear it, or she would’ve answered.”

Amelia sighed shakily. So that was it. She was done.

“He’s going to run home and tell her to call you, okay?” Cooper, her hero. “I’m going to stay on the phone with you until she calls. I’m going to be right here, doing some work, and we don’t even have to talk. I’m just going to be right here for you, alright?”

“Alright,” she agreed, and so they waited. It was quiet again, but the silence wasn’t nearly as empty as it had been before. She didn’t feel as jumpy or on edge, and when her phone finally started beeping with the alert of an incoming call, she felt calm.

“Thank you, Addison. I just…. Thank you.”

She hung up and accepted the new call.

“Amelia.” Her voice was loud and worried and anxious all at once, in the Charlotte-esque way only she could pull off without it sounding unkind. “What happened?”

“I…” She finally had someone to talk to, someone she thought she could talk to, and she couldn’t find the words. “I need to talk to you about something, but I need you to remember you can’t, like, run up here all freaked out and a mess to try and save me because your kids are sick and you can’t leave them, so don’t even try suggesting it. I know Cooper could handle it, but he shouldn’t have to, so I just need to tell you something and I need you to talk to me and not to threaten to put your life on hold to come save me.”

“Okay,” she said. So Amelia talked.

“There’s a bar across the street from the hospital where I work. A nurse invited me to go out with him there, so I went. I didn’t drink. I asked for water. But he must’ve…slipped something in it. He gave me drugs.”

“Did you go to a meeting?”

“Yeah, I’ve been to meetings. I have people here, well, a person and he’s…helped. I’m okay. I don’t want to drink, and I don’t want to get high. I mean, I think about it, but I don’t think I want it. Not really.”

“I’m proud of you, Amelia. I know this must be hard-”

“No, it’s not…. I don’t want to get high. After he drugged me….” Her voice broke, and she didn’t know how to say it anymore. She didn’t know how to put the words together to tell her closest friend in the world something that would make her relive one of the worst times in her own life. “It was awful, Charlotte. He was awful,” she finished, praying she’d understand.

“Amelia.” Her voice was more alert now, urgency lacing every syllable. She pictured her in her living room, a complete mess from the kids and having no time to clean, sitting upright now, back stiff. Her hair would be thrown up messily, a quick necessity before she got up in the morning to take care of the girls. She would probably be wearing yesterday’s clothes, unconcerned with her own state in the midst of the chaos. In short: a motherly disaster. She didn’t need any of Amelia’s pain. And yet, she asked, “What did he do?”

She started crying then. Quietly, but loud enough to be heard over the phone. She tried to restrain herself, but Charlotte being so busy and stressed in her own life and still genuinely caring about what was wrong broke her.

“Amelia,” she said again, but this time it was softer. Apologetic. Understanding. Full of remorse and pity and regret. “Talk to me.”

“I can’t,” she choked out. “I can’t talk about it. I thought I could. I thought with you…. But I can’t.” A beat, then she continued anyway, “I can’t talk about the way he grabbed my arm and twisted it when he pulled me into the alley. I can’t talk about how he hit me so hard I blacked out for long enough to forget what was happening. I can’t talk about the way his hands felt…. How I didn’t want to exist anymore. How I wished I’d been hit so hard I was still unconscious. How my life felt worthless. How I felt powerless. I can’t talk about how I fought him, how for such a brief, flickering moment of hope I thought I could escape. How the other man I thought would save me just helped hold me down. How he said, “This one’s a fighter,” like it was some joke, like I was just another in a long line of fighters and losers. I can’t talk about it because it’s all just a messed up blur, and it’s a struggle to make out what happened and what didn’t. I don’t want to, either. I don’t want to remember it. I can’t talk about it because I might remember something else, something my shattered mind mercifully forgot, and that will make it worse. And I can’t imagine it being worse, Charlotte. I don’t think I’d survive it. I’m barely surviving now.

“You know, they thought I overdosed all on my own? They thought I did that to myself. That I’d chosen to do drugs. They thought I was that weak.” She laughed hollowly. “But I was so strong. I kicked that guy’s ass. You should see him, Charlotte. They say he was almost dead. I almost killed him, and I am not weak. I’m surviving. I’m the strong one.”

She pictured Charlotte’s smile. Sad, probably, right up to her eyes. Her eyes would be sad, but she would be proud too. Pitiful and proud, that’s the look. That’s the look everyone reserved for her.

“You’re the strong one,” Charlotte agreed, and Amelia almost smiled too. They had one for everyone at the practice.

“Addison’s the maternal one,” Amelia recited.

“Cooper’s the childish one.”

“Sam’s the hot one.” She laughed a little.

“Violet’s the crazy one.”

“Sheldon’s the foolishly optimistic one.”

“Jake’s the new one.” Charlotte paused, then added, “Not so new now.”

“Jake’s the perfect one,” Amelia said thoughtfully. “He always knows what to say.” They didn’t say anything for a moment, reveling in the silent moment of companionship. Then Amelia remembered, and said, “And Charlotte’s the bitchy one.”

Charlotte laughed, a real, happy, authentic laugh. “Still? I’ve come a long way, missy. You’ve been in Seattle too long if you think I’m still the bitchy one.”

“We need a bitchy one! It completes the set. We’re a family, and there has to be a bitchy one.” They were quiet again for a bit.

Then, “So who’s this person you found in Seattle? Does he get to be part of the family? What’s his ‘one’?”

She laughed a little at the first thing that popped into her head, and she knew it would sound incredibly lame, but she said, “He’s just the one.”

“What are they doing to you up there? Have you lost your mind? Since when are you a positive ray of sunshine talking about finding ‘the one’?”

“Ah,” Amelia said. “The Bitchy One speaks.”

“Hey, I’m all for it! If we all get a ‘one’, Coop’s got that spot locked. I believe in love and forevers and all that crap now too. I’m just saying that you never did.”

“I guess I’ve changed.”

“You have.”

There was a pause, and then Amelia said, quietly, “I wish this hadn’t happened.”

“I do too.”

“I keep blaming myself. I knew something was wrong. And I know it’s not my fault, but it still feels like I should’ve done something. And you’ll say ‘no victim blaming, it isn’t your fault for what he did to you,’ and I know that, but I still can’t help thinking it.”

“The world is a messed up place, full of messed up people. You just ran into one who was a little more screwed up than the rest of them. It’s not your fault for being in that situation. It’s his, for taking his pain and reacting to it in a way that caused someone else pain.”

“I feel like I’ve been through so much, and I should just know how to handle it by now, you know? Like I just keep bothering everyone over and over with all of my freaky, dark, traumatic crap. My dad died and my best friend died and Ryan and my baby and Mark and Pete and Derek…. I should know how to deal with pain. I shouldn’t need other people to talk me through it anymore.”

“You know what you would’ve done a few years ago if this happened, Amelia? You would’ve gone off after they set you loose and you would’ve scored some oxy and gotten high. That’s how you would’ve dealt with your pain on your own, so that you didn’t have to inflict it on anyone else. Today, you moved mountains to get ahold of me so you could talk instead. That’s not weak, or bothersome, or you failing in any way. That is your new strength. That was making the right call. That was you knowing how to handle it by now. You have changed. It’s called character development, Amelia. It’s called success.”

That was the thing about Charlotte, Amelia reflected as they started into small talk about their lives and friends. She wasn’t the bitchy one anymore, not really. She was the maternal one. And the childish, hot, crazy, foolishly optimistic, perfect one. She was the strong one. She was everything good about all of them, combined into one. No matter who she found in Seattle or who ‘the one’ turned out to be, Charlotte would always be her one. She was everything Amelia aspired to be. She was her inspiration. She made her believe that people could change and be everything they’d ever hoped to be. She was always there when she needed her.