“Sure, I can do that. What time?”
“The nurse told me six, after our dinner time. Can you bring me a few books as well? All they have here are just mysteries and thrillers, and I can’t bring myself to read any of it.” The last thing I needed was any more murder and suspense in my life. I needed one of my comfort reads, no matter how dark they were.
“From which bookcase?”
“The one at the top of my landing, dark romance, please. Those are the ones I haven’t started yet, so just surprise me.”
“Okay, I can do that. Let me take Riley on a walk, and I’ll be there at six. I love you, Rae.”
“Love you, Mickey.”
Hanging up the phone, I felt a small sense of relief. A minuscule part of me had feared that maybe she would believe what the doctors had told her. She knew better than that, though. She knew deep down that anything I had done to cope with stress wasn’t about trying to kill myself. Even with the trauma we endured growing up, we had promised to always be there for one another, and I wasn’t going to break that promise now. The thoughts lingeredin the back of my mind. Selfish thoughts of ending my internal battle, being free from the burden of enduring the mental torment. But my promise to my sister was greater; I would never go back on it.
I checked the clock on the wall, it was only four thirty in the afternoon, so I went back to the lounge to spend some time with Kendi and Andrew. Thelma had left about an hour ago to take a nap before dinner, saying the medication they had put her on not only killed her appetite but made her drowsy as well. Tyson had grabbed a book and gone back to his room while the rest of us had decided to try and pass the time by watching a movie.
Kendi voted nothing scary, Andrew didn’t seem to care much either way, so our options from the DVDs were some old Adam Sandler movies, a few rom coms, or Pirates of the Caribbean. Cable was apparently something the clinic hadn’t invested in for the patients. I put the disc into the DVD player and handed Kendi the remote. As the opening credits started to roll and a ship appeared in the dense fog, I found it hard to focus on anything other than how to get out of this mess.
There was no getting out of the program early, not when you didn’t voluntarily check yourself in. I would be forced to stay the entire duration of the program regardless of what had happened. What I couldn’t figure out is where things went wrong. I had sent Craig the breakup text after coming to terms not just with the cheating, but with how his behavior towards me wasn’t acceptable. I had made sure not to place blame, including saying thathe wasn’t happy either and that I wanted him to be happy. Everything I had done in preparation to send that text had been thought over and analyzed at least a dozen times, to make sure I wouldn’t leave room for error. Never in a million years had I thought things would transpire the way they had that night.
Our fights had escalated before, even to the point of becoming physical, but never on that level. He’d always been able to maintain some form of self control so that he never seriously hurt me. I’d suffered bruises occasionally, small ones that were easy enough to hide since with my scars, I wore long sleeves anyway, but most of the damage was emotional. The nail in the coffin that ended our relationship was realizing I no longer knew who I was. My entire existence had been changing into the person he wanted me to be. I wasn’t growing into a better person, or even changing for the better. Slowly, I found myself disappearing while he meticulously erased everything I had ever been.
Every ounce of confidence I had possessed had slowly eroded away during our relationship. Nothing had happened quickly, not from my perspective. His tactics were subtle, almost unnoticeable when I was in the moment facing them. He wore the most remarkable mask, passing off as a caring person when he wanted to, hiding the rotten core beneath.
At one point, he had me convinced that I was the reason he lost his temper so frequently. It had taken months of trying to distance myself from him to see that it wasn’t me. It had never been me. Iwasn’t in control of his inability to control his own temper. He just wasn’t capable of accepting responsibility for his own behaviors.
“Johnny Depp isn’t just an actor, that man is an artist,” Kendi stated, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“I’ll have to agree with you on that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie of his that I haven’t liked.”
“I haven’t been to the theater in ages,” She mused, slouching back on the couch and getting comfortable as Elizabeth Swann woke suddenly from her dream about the fateful day they rescued William Turner from the dark waters.
“I think the last movie I saw in the theater was La Llorona,” Craig had taken me to see it. I had loved the universe that the movie was set in, but he hated horror movies, though. He had fussed the entire ride back to my house about films being unoriginal nowadays and asked me to pay him back for the tickets since he didn’t enjoy it. Funny, considering he told me since it was our anniversary, I could pick whatever movie I wanted for us to see. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty when trying to pick out what would have been considered red flags in the circus of our relationship.
Kendi pulled back her beautifully long, thick braids and tied them together with a purple scrunchie she had pulled out of her pocket. A comfortable silence settled between us. She hadn’t forced me to try and talk. When our conversations started to drift into uncomfortable territory and I made it obvious I didn’t want to open up, she would change the subject to somethinga little easier to dive into. Books were a big thing. I had found out over the past few hours that she was an avid reader just like me. She even dabbled in dark romance, a topic I found difficult to discuss with most fellow readers because it wasn’t widely accepted.
We had spent the better part of two hours after lunch talking about books, our favorite authors, and things in the books that we wanted to try. Kendi revealed to me that she was about my age, despite her small appearance, and had just turned twenty-seven before her parents convinced her to check herself into the clinic to get help with her anorexia.
She also shared my love of animals, though she didn’t have any of her own at home; her apartment complex didn’t allow pets. I wished I had some pictures of Riley to show her. I loved showing him off. He had been a box puppy dumped off at the local animal shelter. I happened to be working the day they brought him in for his initial exam. The vet I worked for did discounted services through the shelter to help them lower their adoption costs. Falling in love instantly would be an understatement. Riley was a pure German Shepherd from what we could tell, with no health issues, so the reason he was abandoned remained a mystery to us. He was however, the perfect dog. To use the term Dr. Faris had come up with years ago, a soul dog.
Dinner followed the same routine as the other two meals had, except that Brandon was still not with the group. Thelma had woken up just as we lined up next to our rooms for a headcount before going down to the cafeteria. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a brownie were served onto our trays for dinner, tasting just as good as the other meals had been. Thelma even managed to eat a little bit of her food without feeling nauseous, Kendi encouraging her the entire time.
Neither of them had any visitors coming tonight, so after dinner, they both headed to their respective rooms to unwind while I waited in the lounge. In the main lobby, outside of the large metal doors that lead to our wing, were small private rooms with no doors used strictly for visitors during the appropriate hours. Two nurses sat at the desk in the center of the room at all times, close enough to hear what was being said and watch for any violations of the clinic’s policy.
Cindy told me once my sister was through the check-in process, they would find her one of the empty rooms and then come to get me. All visitors had to undergo a rigorous search before coming in to see a loved one. No jewelry was allowed, —nothing with ties, including shoes or clothing items. Visitors could be turned away or offered slipper socks if they were wearing any laced shoes. The only thing the visitors didn’t have to do that the patients did was strip down and have photographs taken of their naked bodies. Cindy also let me know that any belongings or clothes my sister brought me would have to be searched before they would be allowed in my room, when I had told her Micky would be bringing me some comforts fromhome.
At five minutes past six, the nurse who had taken over Cindy’s shift, Shemar, came to let me know that I had a visitor waiting for me. He was a pleasant, soft-spoken man who I would have guessed to be in his early forties. Shemar gave me the rundown of rules one more time as we made our way down the hallway and towards the metal doors. I wasn’t allowed to physically touch a visitor, I had to stay within sight of the nurses on duty, and if there were any issues, I was to go directly to their station and wait until one could escort me back to my wing. The similarities between this place and prison seemed to be almost parallel, though it was only my best guess since spending the night in prison wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.
He swiped his badge and led us out into the main lobby, where a few other visitations were already taking place, with patients from other wings of our floor. The room my visitor was in was located closer to the end; the other rooms were already occupied. Visiting hours were only from six to eight, so they were limited to thirty minutes per visitor to give other patients a chance to see their loved ones with such a limited space to share.
My heart lightened at the thought of finally getting to see my sister after the time I had spent alone. The company of the other patients wasn’t comparable to the companionship of her. Even if I wouldn’t be able to hug her, just being able to talk to her and see her face was enough to make the weight on my shoulders lessen.
Shemar stopped at the second-to-last visiting room and waited for me to approach the open doorway. Anticipation prickled along my skin.
“Here we are, Miss Devlin,” he said, holding his arm out to indicate the room to me.
I stopped short as I stood and faced the visitor in the room, my body leaden, preventing me from entering the space as my heart rate skyrocketed. Craig was sitting calmly in one of the chairs in the visitors’ area, smiling at me like we were a normal couple and he was picking me up for a date. I couldn’t believe they let him in the clinic, let alone as one of my visitors. My heart sank into my stomach as my dinner threatened to make a reappearance. I could feel the belt around my neck like it was never removed. It was stuck there, growing tighter and tighter as he squeezed and squeezed. His wolf-like grin was not noticeable to anyone but me, I knew what he was after, I alone knew what he wanted.
“Miss Devlin?” Shemar’s voice sounded far away, as if I was trying to listen to it underwater. I was drowning internally from my own blood, my heart was pumping too fast, it was going to start pushing it out of me until it was no longer in my chest cavity, but beating on the floor while I slowly died. Because right now I was dying, and there was no one there to help me.
