12
The first time Cassie had taken Mom to the emergency room, she’d just turned seventeen and she’d found her mother curled up in a ball in the corner of the bathroom of their tiny apartment in Flagstaff, Arizona. She wouldn’t speak to Cassie. Wouldn’t respond at all, just kept staring at the plumbing and muttering about soldiers climbing up the pipes. Cassie had managed to coax her into the car and driven to the nearest hospital. She could still taste the raw panic, like sheet metal in her mouth.
After two days in the hospital, with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome and a prescription in hand, they’d resumed their lives. But nothing had ever felt the same after that. Cassie was always on alert for another breakdown. And they’d happened. Four more times, she’d driven Mom to t
