Page 22 of Teddy Bear

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder was loose and barely palpable, given that several prosecution experts managed to disprove it with ease, and that no psychological testing was 100% consistent with Danny's claim of complete insanity and unconsciousness at the time of the crime.

However, he managed to save him from the prison that would have been inevitable without him, and that was a real miracle that everyone admired. Danny once again proved his influence, as well as the power he possessed.

At his great insistence, and since we didn't have much choice (our villa was completely burned down) but to rent a private apartment, my mother and I moved to Danny's isolated house by the lake that had belonged to his family for decades.

It was a slightly neglected, rustic, and very comfortable building, where we could peacefully recover from the shock and stress we suffered. Although the mother was quite against it, it turned out to be a really good decision.

The air near the lake was unusually salty and wild, and the very proximity to the water and partial isolation from civilization made me feel quite free at times - just staying here was healing and invigorating for mental health.

It was a feeling I desperately craved, and for which I was ready to do almost anything - freedom, the complete absence of restraints and shackles.

Haunted by my own judgment of guilt, although my father was on trial and not me, deeply convinced that I was the root of the deep misfortune that befell us, I lived in shackles that made every step hard.

The house by the lake was for me like a hiding place, in which I managed to recover only fragments, parts of my long-lost self, but which, like no other place, did not have the strength and power to heal something that had long ago cracked and broken inside.

Of course, the recovery was also complicated by the fact that from the day I saw him next to the head of my hospital bed in the intensive care unit, I fell madly in love with Danny.

It was one of those things that happens to you - a thing you can't control, and which, according to fate written in the milky and spilled path of the bursting stars, unfolds beyond your control and desire.

I fell in love with Danny so hard, so helpless and ridiculous, that I was ashamed of myself.

Something about him was deep, and painful, and inexplicably penetrated every part of me.

The days passed quickly, in a kind of strange, thick fog, which in the early hours of the morning or on cool nights fell on the rippled surface of a deep lake.

Sometimes I would just stare at the blue, greenish, and hazy reflection inside the lake window and watch my unnaturally elongated face looking at me from the other side, trying to untie the knot that tightly bound all those difficult and painful events in an unbreakable chain inside my brain.

I mostly didn't succeed in that.

Preoccupied with my own madness, guilt, and unhappiness, I withdrew from social circles and a trivial life.

I mostly spent my days doing nothing and talking to no one, in the quiet isolation of Danny's rustic ranch.

He, on the other hand, thought that my recovery was going quite well, and that I was currently in some kind of mourning, that I needed this process and that we should not interrupt or disrupt it by force.

Denny, arbitrarily and without question, in a way assumed the role of my therapist and assigned the right to guide me through this difficult process and period I was going through, and, as a true expert, he justified my almost complete isolation, withdrawal and graveyard silence to which I surrendered.

The reason for that, I guess, was that, according to his view, I managed to save a spark, just one tiny, little flame, but big enough to prove that the fire in me still hasn't gone, and the potential that that tiny flame can grow into something huge, if only we give it enough time.

Danny came every weekend to visit my mother and me and bring us groceries. He talked to us for a long time, carefully and patiently, about whatever we wanted.

My mum offered to pay for his food and, in a way, for all the effort he put in around us, but he earnestly refused.

She was somewhat humiliated and devastated by the very fact that, after the luxury of the grandiose villa, we were now living in the isolated house of my father's best friend, but Danny managed to convince her with his psychiatric charm that this was the key to recovery and immediate distancing from the problems we were still not ready to process.

The fact that Danny even paid our bills drove my mother crazy - she didn't take a single day off from work, and worked day and night, even overtime, to provide us with our own roof as soon as possible.

She suffered terribly, and unlike me, she found escape in work.

I, on the other hand, didn't mind Danny's benevolence. I secretly hoped she'd never get enough money for that freaking apartment she kept talking about, and that we'd never leave the serenity and hazy comfort of the lake house.

At that time, I think that, which he quite supported by his behavior, I was in the idealization phase, where I saw Danny as God himself and a true savior.

I enjoyed his attention and tacit, unspoken affection.

The fact that he was so unreservedly good and willing to help my mother and me was clear evidence that there was much more than just respect between us.

Somehow I got the idea that Danny was as fascinated and obsessed with me as I was with him.