Winthrop Prep -- Episode #10 -- Breaking Point

Things change.

Caterpillars tuck themselves away in nice little cocoons, but do not emerge again as they were. Instead, they’re butterflies. Not necessarily beautiful butterflies, not always colorful, not always bright, but butterflies, nonetheless. People aren’t all that different. Push them too far and sometimes they build cocoons of their own, a place they can retreat to when they get too close to the breaking point. But, what comes out, it’s not always what went in. Sometimes the person has changed … but, sometimes, it’s a different person all together. Not necessarily a good person, not always a nice person, not always a kind person … but a different person, nonetheless.

                

So was the occurrence at the Reynolds Center on the thirteenth night in October.

                 

Ted Bishop was beside himself. For two long weeks his daughter had been locked away. She refused to see him, refused to see anyone but her therapist. Once, he passed her room and saw her, curled up in the corner. She was crying for Jasper.

Beth: Is there anything I can get for you?

Ted: No, I’m fine, I’m just –

Beth: Worried. I know. I spoke with Dr. Fitzgerald this morning.

Ted: Has there been any change?

Beth: No. Bianca is still very fragile. But, the good news is she hasn’t mentioned Layla since she was admitted. She hasn’t said much of anything, though.

Ted: I hate seeing my little girl go through this.

Rachel: How do you think I feel?

Ted: Rachel?

Rachel: Were you even going to contact me?

Ted: We tried you at the hotel in Antigua.

Rachel: Why is she here?

Ted: Beth is my fiancée, Rachel. She belongs here.

Rachel: Fiancée? Our daughter is on the verge of mental collapse and you’re getting engaged?

Ted: We got engaged before – you know what? I don’t need to explain myself to you. I’m glad you’re here, for Bianca’s sake. She needs all the support she can get. Our daughter was just abducted and her boyfriend was killed in an explosion. The last thing she needs is for you to turn this into how it’s impacting you.

Inside her room, Bianca was overwhelmed with thoughts of her lost love. She knew she had to stop thinking about him. Thinking about him brought the pain and the pain brought …

 

Her.

Layla: Stop thinking about him.

Bianca: I can’t.

Layla: You have to. Thinking about him is too painful. You hurt, I hurt, remember? I don’t like to hurt.

Bianca: I love him. I didn’t tell him.

Layla: Eh, I was Team Sam anyway. Your love for him was a shallow, schoolgirl crush compared to what you allowed yourself to feel for Jasper. He could never truly devastate you that way. But, I think you knew that deep down.

Bianca: What can I do?

Layla: You can close your eyes. Promise I can make it stop hurting for both of us.

Bianca considered it for a moment. She was fighting, she knew what would happen if she surrendered, if she retreated inside herself and allowed Layla to make things better. But, how long could she be expected to fight? Her soul had grown weary and her strength was almost all gone. 

Still, she didn’t give in. Instead, she turned away from Layla and went back to the painful place. Maybe it hurt so bad she couldn’t stand it, but Jasper was there.

Layla: Fine. But, you’re going to need me soon. When you do, just close your eyes and I’ll be there.

Dr. Fitzgerald met with Ted, Rachel and Beth in his office.

Dr. Fitzgerald: I’m glad I could meet with all three of you today.

Rachel: How is she, Doctor?

Dr. Fitzgerald: Exhausted. Her grief is overwhelming her. The nightshift nurses that handle her floor reported to me twice this week that they’ve had to sedate her because she was crying out for Jasper. When they went to check on her, she became violent, calling them Alison, telling them she was going to kill them.

Ted: Has she said anything else about Layla?

Rachel: Layla? She’s talking about Layla again?

 

Beth: She asked for Layla in the aftermath of the explosion.

Dr. Fitzgerald: I was hoping you could tell me a bit about Layla.

 

Rachel: She was Bianca’s twin sister. Layla was always fiercely protective of Bianca, but she died in a boating accident when the girls were seven.

Dr. Fitzgerald: What happened?

Ted: I took the girls out on our boat. They used to love Sunday nights spent out on the lake. I had the anchor down and I was cooking on the grill and the girls were playing. Layla got up on the railing and she slipped. I heard Bianca screaming and I jumped in after her, but it was so dark.

Rachel: I should have been there, but I had a spa appointment I couldn’t miss.

Ted: It wasn’t your fault. I should’ve been watching them better.

Rachel: I could have helped you look. Maybe we could have found her and saved her. They never recovered the body, Dr. Fitzgerald.

Dr. Fitzgerald: I’m very concerned about your daughter’s mental health. She’s had all the mirrors removed from her room, the door replaced with non-reflective glass and there are incidents where the nurses have overheard her carrying on conversations, both sides.

Ted: It’s happening again?

Dr. Fitzgerald: I believe so. She’s fighting it, hence the removal of the mirrors, and she hasn’t fully fractured yet, but beneath the weight of her grief and the memories she’s recovered of the first time she retreated into her Layla persona, she is most undoubtedly splintering. I believe in time, we can mend the damage to her integration, but if she experiences another trauma, another threat on her life, I do not know if we’ll be able to stop her from fully splitting.

Rachel: Then, what will happen?

Dr. Fitzgerald: If she splits, Layla becomes an identity separate from Bianca with her own goals, her own needs and her own desires. Integrating Bianca with her defense mechanism was one thing, integrating her with an entire new personality will be a far more difficult task and something I’m not sure she will ever truly recover from.

Later that afternoon, the nurse fetched Bianca from her room. The walk was careful, Bianca trying to avoid mirrors. She saw Layla in the mirrors when she first arrived. Not that it mattered. She saw her everywhere now.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Did you sleep well?

Bianca: I haven’t slept since I got here.

Dr. Fitzgerald: I prescribed you a sleeping aid.

Bianca: It doesn’t help. I close my eyes and I see … I see Jasper in the cabin, bound and helpless and the bomb going off.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Do you want to talk about Jasper today?

Bianca: No.

Dr. Fitzgerald: You told me you recovered your memories of the night your stepfather died.

Bianca: There’s something wrong with my memory. I’m remembering more and more every day, but I’m remembering wrong.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Wrong how?

Bianca: I remember the attack, but I remember Layla being there. I remember her telling me to just lay still and let her handle it and then I’m standing there, looking down at Pete’s body. She couldn’t have been there, though.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Tell me about Layla. What was she like?

Bianca: There was a time when we were children that I was so weak and sensitive. Kids would pick on me and my headbands and Layla would defend me. She was always protecting me, it seemed. I remember one time, there was this boy she liked. His name was Jonathan. Jonathan was making fun of my headband and Layla slugged him. She knocked one of his teeth out, but in 

her defense, that tooth was already loose. She told him if he ever wanted to share her juice and cookies again he’d apologize and he did, because Layla could be scary when she wanted to be. I asked her why she did that, and she said, ‘You hurt, I hurt.’ Then, when he was gone to the nurse, she turned to me and said, ‘It is an ugly headband, Binky.’

Dr. Fitzgerald: Why do you think you saw Layla that night?

Bianca: Because, I was scared. I needed her again, just like I needed her when I was little. He was hurting me. She made it stop.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Have you seen Layla since the night Jasper died?

Bianca thought. She could tell him the truth, maybe he could fix it. But, what if Layla was right? What if Bianca did need her to make the pain stop again? Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she could walk this tightrope without her safety net beneath her, so she lied. She said she hadn’t seen Layla or even thought much about Layla since that night. Then, she returned to her room.

At sunset, Bianca was in her room when she saw a dark figure pass by her door. It whispered her name and told her to follow.

She did. She followed it out into the rec room, to the lobby, to the dining hall, always one step behind. 

Bianca: Is that you, Layla?

Layla: No. We should go back to the room. This isn’t right.

But, she heard the voice again, the whisper telling her to follow. And, she did because the voice sounded like Jasper.

When she stepped out onto the bridge connecting the Reynolds Center towers, she realized why.

Because, the voice belonged to Jasper’s father.

Roger: Hello, Bianca.

Bianca: Why are you here? I thought you’d be in jail by now.

Roger: I was. But, in my experience with the Sunset Valley Police Department, I’ve found them entirely inept. It was very easy to escape from the officers transporting me to prison. Then again, I suppose it was hard for them to think with bullets in their brains. Same for the nurse on your floor. Hope you weren’t too attached to her.

Dr. Fitzgerald had told her everything. Alison took Jasper on his way to the police. He’d called them, told them he had proof Franklin was innocent. Ted’s efforts to get the bail denial overturned had worked, and so they released Franklin, which was when Alison found him. Then, she locked them both in their respective cabins and she rigged the explosives and waited for Bianca to wake up.

Bianca: What do you want from me?

Roger: Vengeance. I lost my son because of you.

Bianca: You lost your son because some girl from Kansas got a little too huff-happy with the corn fertilizer.

Roger: You made him think he loved you and that girl used it to punish you. If you hadn’t killed her father, none of this would have happened.

 

 

Bianca: If her father hadn’t attacked me, I wouldn’t have killed him. Probably.

Roger: Attacked you? Yeah, I heard about that. I bet that was just a story you told to get out of the charges. ‘I was a poor, innocent little girl and the big bad man had his way with me.’ You probably came onto him and screwed with his head the same way you messed up my poor Jasper. But, I can see why he fell for it. You’re quite beautiful. 

 

Bianca:  Stay away from me.

Roger: He had Cynthia, only fair that I get a piece of his girlfriend, don’t you think? And, you aren’t quite as used up as she was.

Bianca: I told you to stay away.

Roger: Did you know she was pregnant? It was in the Medical Examiner’s report. Cynthia was carrying my baby. Or Jasper’s baby. Or Franklin’s or the milkman’s or the chem. teacher’s…that’s why she was 

blackmailing Rebecca. She was going to get money from her, enough to live on for a while, go somewhere, raise the baby. She honestly thought she got to be happy after making everyone around her miserable. You and she have that in common.

Bianca: Do I look happy to you?

Roger: No, but I can make you happy. I’m sure I can do everything Jasper could.

Bianca: Stop it!

But, he didn’t stop. He put his hands on her, and reflexively … she closed her eyes.

Roger stood, bewildered as the caterpillar slipped into her cocoon … and a vicious butterfly emerged. A butterfly that was most decidedly not Bianca.

Layla: Do you know how old you are? Do you even leave fingerprints anymore? And, you think that this wants any of you? Pete, he was bigger than Bianca was, but you? You’re a knit catheter cozy from the old folks’ home and I’m pretty sure I can take you.

Roger: Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?

Layla: Bianca’s not here right now. Leave a message after the beep and she’ll get back to you … BEEP.

Before Roger could say anything at all, Bianca … or whoever … grabbed him and threw him from the bridge. His body landed in a crumpled, broken mess on the ground. Dead.

Layla: Told ya.

Ted, having heard the commotion, came running out onto the bridge.

Ted: Bianca, honey, did he hurt you?

Layla: Of course not, Daddy. He tried. He fell. Very sad.

Ted: Thank goodness you’re alright.

Layla: Never been better.

That night, once the police were gone and everything was squared away, Dr. Fitzgerald went to Bianca’s room to check on his patient.

Dr. Fitzgerald: Ted, I’m afraid there’s a problem.

Ted: What is it?

Dr. Fitzgerald: Your daughter, she’s gone.

He had no idea. At Aquarius, Layla used her considerable charms to get past the bouncer, went inside and ordered a WooHoo on the Beach.

Barkeep: That’s your third one tonight, lady. You just get out of prison or something?

Layla: Or something.

Barkeep: Haven’t seen you around here before. I’d remember a girl like you.

Layla: Special occasion. Today’s my birthday and tonight is the last night I plan to spend in Sunset Valley.

And, as Layla went to chat up the cutie in the hot tub, she heard Bianca screaming for Jasper … and shut her down. This body was Layla’s now and she knew how to keep it safe. No love, no emotions, no pain. Just lots of drinks and lots of cute boys and lots of fun.

And, Ted would never, ever see her again.