The counselors at the Hope to Heal Center helped Hannah get settled into her new surroundings and room. She unpacked and put the clothing she had brought away into a chest of drawers and a closet. She had more than enough space as her roommate gave her exactly half of the space required. Even though they were there for 90 days it was hardly a resort vacation so nobody needed tons of clothing. Most of the residents of the center wore sweats every single day just to be comfortable. Hannah had eaten already that morning so she was just starting to get a little hungry when the door to her room opened and a woman walked in whom, as soon as she saw Hannah, stopped dead in her tracks. It was Caddie.

"Oh my God! Hannah!" Caddie rushed over and gave a stunned Hannah a hug as the latter returned it.

"Caddie? You're my roommate?" Caddie laughed and nodded.

"I guess so. My old roommate was discharged two days ago. She was an older woman. I've been here for a week thus far. But what are you doing here?"

"Well it's a rehab center and I need to recover. I'm a meth addict. Need to get my life back on track plus there's my illness of course."

    There was a deafening silence as what Hannah just said, hit Caddie like a sledgehammer. She was horrified. She knew then that it was all her fault; she was the one who introduced Hannah to meth in the first place. In trying to help her old friend, Caddie had inadvertently done more harm than good. For the first time in her life, Caddie truly hated herself. She had never done anything to hurt an innocent person or anyone for that matter but she had and it was Hannah of all people; the one that was always her closest friend and confidant in college. She didn't know what to say or do except help Hannah get situated and show her around the facility.

    The young women wondered around the secluded park and Hannah marveled at its beauty. She could see herself spending hours there and said as much to Caddie who smiled despite of herself and said that that was exactly what she did. She was one of the few patients that took advantage of the outdoors. Mostly everyone preferred to sit on the veranda if they ventured outside at all. According to the counselors, the patients never really thought fresh air was a huge part of their recovery until their time was almost up.

    The first few days while Hannah got herself situated within the place and the therapist saw her in a few one on one sessions', she and Caddie spent as much of their time in the park just talking about different things. They wanted to catch up and yet they skirted around the sensitive topics knowing full well that they would have more than enough time in the group therapy sessions to go over each and every one. So they concentrated on lighthearted things, which were amazingly still easy to find and remember despite all the horror that both had gone through, especially Hannah and Caddie's inner turmoil over what she had done to Hannah.

    It was during one group therapy session about a week into her stay, that Hannah finally opened up to everyone and told them about her diagnosis, being taken to different doctors who didn't know jack shit about anything and told her she was crazy. She shared with the group of about 10 people about her warehouse days and what had drove her to become a full blown meth addict. She not once said Caddie's name as the person who introduced her to the drug though Caddie wanted so badly to take the responsibility for her damage though she could see that Hannah was going to do something drastic regardless.

    She wiped away tears as she recalled finding out about Sister Grace's death after the burial and only because she had come home when her estranged husband's parents were reading him the riot act about it. Hannah told of her husband's betrayal with the walking STD from next door and everyone shuddered as she spoke of all of the news stories that implicated Scarlett in getting other people ill with different diseases. They were all glad that Hannah had tested negatively for everything; she had enough on her plate.

    Then to Caddie's shock she told the group about Shanel, Randall, and the DEA and how she nearly came to be locked up though thanks to Allen's belief in her and because she hadn't been a part of the drug ring, she wasn't in the Scorpio case which everyone had known about as it was all over TV still. Randall was still standing trial in the other two states and Texas wasn't ready to accept him just yet. Most of these kinds of cases dragged on for months if not years. Hannah knew it would be a long time before things would settle down in that case. As she spoke, she hoped Allen was getting some much needed rest from both the case and her.

    After telling everyone of how Shanel died and nearly harmed her, she wound down her story and said that it was Allen who had helped her become stronger and believe in herself enough to go get the help she needed. Or start the process at least. The addiction could be dealt with but what about M.E? It still didn't have any proper treatment anywhere in the world or a cure.

    That same night, Hannah woke up vomiting badly. Caddie jumped to her feet and ran to get help. Nurses on duty rushed in and sat by Hannah as she continued to dry heave. They wanted to call for an ambulance but Hannah begged them not to. She had had enough of those and hospitals to last her several lifetimes. She wasn't sure whether it was still her body's reaction to cravings and withdrawal from meth that was making her so sick, the illness, stress, or purging her brain of the story that afternoon. It could have been all of the above.

    After a while, the heaving subsided and she lay on her bed covered in sweat, breathing shallowly. While the janitors on duty cleaned up the room and the bed and changed everything to clean linens and sheets, the nurses and Caddie helped Hannah take a shower. There was a full moon outside so everything had an eerie glow about it. It almost seemed as if the shadows cast by the moon were laughing at Hannah and her plight. 

    Thankfully the nurses on duty were trained at administering IV's and they attached one to Hannah after she showered and changed as she lay in bed. Because of the excessive vomiting, they weren't sure she would be able to keep herself hydrated by drinking water so they decided to bypass the stomach and get the drip going so it could go through her veins and enlarge them. Finally at 4am, Hannah fell into a fitful sleep still attached to the IV. She had told the nurse in charge that her primary care physician was Dr. Weller and the nurse called her at 7am just before there was a shift change to inform her of what was going on.

    Dr. Weller made a 'house call' at 9am that morning. It turned out that she made frequent visits to the center to help with withdrawal symptoms and other issues. Her whole office of doctors' were on call for the clinic and had an office in Fort Worth as well. Hannah couldn't believe her good fortune; Dr. Weller was really the only doctor that had attempted to help her with her illness and was the one who had originally properly diagnosed her with M.E.

    After spending some one on one time with Hannah, the doctor gave her some Zofran for her nausea so that she could stem the urge to throw up and asked for one of the doctors in her office to bring multiple tubes so she could do a full blood panel on Hannah. This wasn't just for meth anymore but included all of the viruses that had been previously tested right before her diagnosis. Dr. Weller wanted to see where Hannah's illness markers were at. When her blood was drawn, they took 14 vials of blood out of her and she had to lie down because she was incredibly dizzy. The viruses that were going to be tested were Hashimoto's, EBV, Lyme (and co-infections); Herpes, Mono, Influenza, and a slew of others Hannah couldn't even attempt to pronounce or spell.

    After such a hard night and equally exhausting day, Dr. Weller advised Hannah to spend the day in bed just recuperating but Hannah didn't want to hear it. She had spent enough of her life in bed. So instead Caddie borrowed one of the wheelchairs in the facility and wheeled Hannah to the park where they sat by a small pond and just rested while talking about M.E. Caddie was there for Hannah every moment she needed anything. It was a cross between redemption for having started her on this self-destructive path and because she truly cared about her friend's wellbeing.

    Hannah didn't join the therapy sessions for a few days as the night of vomiting and the massive blood panel had rendered her extremely weak so she spent those times during the day on the veranda while the others were in therapy. She never ventured alone into the park unless she was accompanied by someone. It was safer that way. Finally, when she was ready for a one on one session with the therapist, she told the man about the reoccurring nightmare she had had while living at the warehouse.

"What was the nightmare about?" He asked her gently.

"I would be in bed in my house, unable to move or talk. I couldn't beg anyone for a glass of water because I was alone. I watched as the seasons passed and I grew older and older until I had gray hair and wrinkles, lying in a bedroom filled with a stained carpet and cobwebs everywhere. I couldn't cry out for help, there was no one to come. I was alone and dying in that decrepit place." She sobbed as she spoke.

"And then what happened?"

"I would wake up screaming. This nightmare kept coming to me and I sometimes would feel like I was teetering at the edge of sanity so I would shoot up some more ice just to stave away the night waiting for the daylight to chase the shadows away."

"It is very possible that this was all part of the psychosis that meth causes in the brain. Your fears become real paranoia and manifest themselves in dreams."

    Hannah had nodded and ended the therapy session after the allotted hour of time. It was something to think about as she headed to dinner and sat next to Caddie as she ate in silence. That night it crept up on her like a slimy fog from the back recesses of her brain. Everything in sharp unyielding detail as she screamed horribly, tossing, and turning. Caddie had to shake her awake as people rushed into their room looking panicked. Sitting up in bed and breathing hard with her eyes bugging out of her head, she finally understood.

"It was real! It was real!" She moaned.

    The awful dream had in fact been a repressed memory of a time when she was bedridden and Chris wasn't home. She needed a glass of water badly and it was morning. She knew Chris wouldn't be home for hours. This was right before the Christmas where he called her 'defective' in front of his parents. To her horror, she realized she couldn't move much; a Novocain feeling had taken over her entire body, numbing it to the point where even moving her tongue along the roof of her mouth felt alien.

    She lay there as she watched the sun move from the east to the west in shadow and heard kids playing outside as the day progressed. She even unwittingly soiled herself because she couldn't make it to the bathroom. It was an experience so degrading and traumatic that her brain locked it away until now. On top of that, it was one that repeated itself many times. And though it had brought it back in the form of that nightmare, that's all she had thought that it was; a part of her defunct brain sending out weird signals.

But this wasn't a nightmare......it was heartbreaking reality.