Chapter 2The Lie of Mental Illness

"Harper, you must be exhausted. I had a room set up for you."

Chad guided me down the hall and pushed open the door to a tiny guest room. "I didn't touch any of your things. Everything is right here."

He looked at me, his expression suddenly stern. "You need to behave. If you cause trouble, I will have no choice but to send you back to the ward."

Without waiting for a response, he quickly stepped out of the room and closed the door. He was probably rushing back downstairs to comfort Mary.

I looked around the tiny space. It used to be a storage closet. It was so small it could barely fit a twin bed, and there wasn't a single window to let the sunlight in.

All of my belongings were shoved into a single, massive cardboard box in the corner. It was taped shut so tightly it looked like a coffin.

I ripped the tape open. Inside were all the things I had bought when I was pregnant. Parenting books. Fairy tale collections. The tiny onesies and little shoes Chad and I had picked out together.

And right at the bottom, tossed aside and buried under a thick layer of dust, was our framed wedding photo.

Tears fell off my chin, splashing onto the glass and blurring our smiling faces.

Through my tears, I couldn't stop laughing.

Chad. We weren't even officially divorced yet, but you were already living with another woman like husband and wife. You even raised a son with her.

Were me and my dead baby just a sick joke to you?

I carried a genetic predisposition for severe mental illness. When I was in college, the psychological torment became too much for my mother, and she took her own life.

It was Chad who grabbed my hand and pulled me out of that suffocating darkness. He literally changed his major and studied psychiatry specifically to save me.

He promised he would stay by my side forever. He promised he would protect me from ever having an episode. And he promised that even if I did get sick, he wouldn't be afraid. He would cure me.

We fell in love. We got married. And then, I got pregnant.

During my pregnancy, my hormones wrecked my emotional stability. I started experiencing minor, terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations.

Chad's private practice was booming, and he couldn't stay home with me. So, he brought his clinical assistant, Mary, to live in our house and take care of me.

Slowly, I started noticing things. The lingering glances. The flirty, hushed conversations. The undeniable, sickening intimacy between them.

The heavy psychiatric medication Chad prescribed made me chronically drowsy.

But one night, I woke up early. I walked out to the living room and saw Mary sitting squarely on Chad's lap. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, and she was giggling uncontrollably.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

Chad scrambled up, terrified. He rushed over and wrapped me in a tight hug. "Harper, relax! Mary was just giving me a clinical update. Don't let your paranoia take over."

"There is a hickey on her collarbone."

He pinched my cheek, offering a helpless, patient smile. "You silly girl. You are hallucinating again."

I violently shoved him away, my emotions spiraling. "Chad, I am looking right at you! You are constantly holding her, constantly flirting with her! Do you think I am completely blind?!"

A cold needle pierced my arm as Mary pushed a heavy sedative into my vein. Her voice was sickeningly soft. "Harper, Dr. Montgomery and I are just colleagues."

My tongue felt thick. "Really?"

"Yes. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. You will feel better when you wake up."

After that night, my "symptoms" escalated rapidly.

I saw Mary dumping white powder into my nightly glass of milk. Chad swore it was just a prenatal calcium supplement.

I heard a baby crying in the empty nursery in the middle of the night. Chad told me it was just the neighbor's cat in the alley.

And then came the night I supposedly grabbed a kitchen knife, walked into Mary's bedroom, and nearly plunged it into her heart.

"Harper, you were sleepwalking again."

Chad was carefully bandaging a deep cut on my hand, his eyes incredibly tired. "Last night, you stood over Mary's bed holding a butcher knife. You absolutely terrified her."

"Your condition is deteriorating rapidly."

He gently stroked my hair. "We need to increase your dosage, okay?"

I stared into his bloodshot eyes, suddenly unable to tell who was actually sick.

Was it me? Or was the entire world losing its mind?

The agonizing inability to separate reality from hallucination absolutely shattered me.

I started self-harming. I took razor blades and sliced into my own arms, just to feel something real. Because the physical pain was so much easier to process than the psychological torture.

Chad started looking at me with undisguised exhaustion.

Until the day Mary walked into the living room and explicitly told me she was pregnant with Chad's baby.

My eyes were totally hollow. I backed away, whispering frantically. "No. No, it isn't real. You are a hallucination. Get away from me!"

Mary stepped forward, backing me into a corner.

Her cold, venomous voice drilled directly into my skull. "Chad stopped loving you a long time ago."

"Look at yourself, Harper. Your hair is falling out. You look like a corpse. You are constantly screaming about conspiracies. What kind of man could possibly tolerate a freak like you?"

"You should do everyone a favor and kill yourself, just like your crazy mother did!"

Every single word she said precisely snapped the fragile, terrified strings holding my sanity together.

I lunged forward, desperate to tear her face off. Mary smiled a triumphant, evil smile.

She violently shoved the handle of a kitchen knife into my hand. Before I could process what was happening, she forced my own hand backward. The blade tore through my skin, sinking deep into my pregnant belly. Hot, thick blood poured out of me, soaking my clothes.

The physical connection between a mother and child is absolute. The agony ripped my soul apart.

I looked toward the crack in the study door. I saw a pair of eyes watching me. I begged for help.

The excruciating pain swallowed me whole. My knees buckled, and the world violently spun out of control.

Through the haze, I swear I saw my baby grow tiny wings, crying softly as it floated up toward the ceiling.

Mary started screaming at the top of her lungs. "Harper, no! Stop hurting yourself! Your baby is in there!"

"Harper!"

Chad threw open the study door and sprinted into the room. He scooped my bleeding body into his arms, a look of pure, horrified devastation on his face.

Mary dropped to her knees, sobbing hysterically. "Chad, I tried to stop her! She just grabbed the knife and stabbed herself..."

"She... she has completely lost her mind."

When I finally woke up, I was strapped to a bed in a psychiatric ward. My stomach was totally flat.

That "treatment" lasted for three excruciating years.