Time to Survive

"Okay. Have a seat and think about the outfit that you'd want me to get you." Jason had noticed that Davis was not in the mood for this.

Davis was still amazed by the mall. Seeing this many people in one place made it difficult for him to maintain his concentration. He tried picturing the malls back in his home and all he could imagine was some few hundred people at best. His attention returned to the thought of the outfit he wanted.

Diaz had gone to the inner room of that stall to talk to some other people. She seemed pretty close to Jason and his colleagues. She was always laughing with them, shaking hands, and making funny faces. They felt like family to her.

She came back and sat next to Davis who was just idling in thought comparing this mall to the 'shops' they had back in his place.

"So you still wanna hear my story, or you got on you want to tell me."

"How long are we taking here? I'm starving."

"I asked Jason to get you some designs so that you can look good instead of smelling like my grandma's foot."

"Okay, so are you going to continue telling me about you?" This time around, Davis was just concerned about knowing what had happened to her in school that made her isolate herself.

"So I was telling you that I used to do things on my own sometimes and others, I'd do things with people." She started.

Diaz told him that this situation worsened and her mother thought that she was just being a child so she stopped caring. She would wake up on some days and feel like she had the energy of a horse and in others, she would feel like she was not in the mood for anything.

These episodes became serious two years ago and no one seemed to bother because they were used to her acting this way. It was believed that that was just Diaz messing around. She tried maintaining her mood but it was as if she could not control herself.

She said that she felt like she was not in her body and for her, it was the body controlling the mind. This sounds like an awesome horror movie for those who enjoying bingeing in such. She went home from school one time and she saw her dead grandfather in her room. She did not tell anyone about it because her grandfather told her never to do so.

One time her mother bumped into her speaking to her grandfather and she screamed. She went and called Diaz' father to tell him what had happened. From that day they started getting concerned. They kept monitoring her every morning when she left and in the evening when she came back.

After a week, her mother entered her room and asked to talk to her. She insisted that they went to see a psychiatrist so that she could get an evaluation. However, she refused. She said that her grandfather warned her that this would happen and all they wanted was to take her away from him.

She refused and on that night she ran away from home with the help of her grandfather, not knowing where she was going or what she would do now that she wasn't at home. That was when she met Jason who helped her that night and spoke to her the next morning to go back home and explain to her parents how she had been feeling.

After some good convincing she went home but didn't find her parents so she decided to skip school that day and sit on the couch because she was not feeling like it. She watched all the movies she could find but her sadness was not going anywhere. It usually was her new roommate on such days. On that evening, her parents did not come home, instead, it was the police who came by and told her that her parents were not going to ever come back. They had been involved in an accident the previous night.

For this part, she had to pause for a while because her tears were flowing like a stream in the rainy season. She sought for all the strength she could find so that she would continue narrating to Davis who was shaken in all aspects. He didn't even know how to comfort her. He had never lost anyone close to him at his age meaning that grief was not a feeling he had registered.

She finally found the courage to continue. Her aunt then came by later and took her to her place with everything she had. She was so sad that she thought of taking her own life. She felt guilty for having left home that night. This made her parents look for her and they were dead because of it.

At her aunt's place, she was given a room alone on the first floor. She could not stop thinking about how she had killed her parents. She knew that everyone in the streets and at school knew that it was her fault and from that day she chose never to speak to anyone again because they thought ill of her.

At one time, after school, she went back to her aunt's place and in her room she found her parents sitting on her bed. They talked to her, told her they loved her, and that it was not her fault. They asked her to visit the psychiatrist and everything would be okay even though she would never see them again. She felt like she had no choice but to visit a psychiatrist to fulfill her parent's wishes.

After narrating her exhibitions to a psychiatrist she was asked to visit again with the company of her aunt, which she did, and it was confirmed that she was suffering from bipolar I disorder. Her fears were confirmed. She was sick in the head.

She did not know how to feel about this because she denied being sick the night that she left and knowing that her parents were right about her need to see a doctor, she felt more guilt. She did not take the antipsychotic medication she was given because she still wanted to see them.

One time they convinced her to let go and that her life was more important than theirs at that point. She had to let go and went back to the psychiatrist. She was reevaluated and subjected to antipsychotic medicine with cognitive-behavioral therapy. She adhered to the medication and had to go back to the psychiatrist every two months for a follow-up process.

Her situation in school had worsened and no one wanted to relate with her when they heard she was sick. She had no friends left except for Jason. On the evening that they met, her psychiatrist had asked her to make a new friend and who would have made an easier target other than a lost person in the streets of Tenei.

Her story was cut short by the continuous screams and running outside. Everyone in the room entered full flight mode. There was no time to discuss what was going on. Davis grabbed Diaz' hand and dashed out of the stall to bump into a large stampede of people trying to get out.

From a calm place to chaos, the numbers in the mall became anything but fascinating. Davis had to make sure that she was safe in this whole mess. Suddenly, the air was filled with the deafening sound from a loud burst that came from inside the mall. It was time to survive.