Brandon kept his distance from us after our confrontation with him in the lounge the previous evening, at least in a way. He didn’t speak to us, but it didn’t stop him from leering at me as if he was imagining me exactly how he described last night. I had to seriously wonder what type of lawyers he had that got him out of spending time in the criminal ward and housed in the behavioral side with people who weren’t child molesters.
Kendi had theorized that he had some deep pockets and was able to buy certain privileges. She also told me he hadn’t really said much in their group times until I arrived. He hadgiven off creepy energy, but had mostly just watched, keeping his mouth shut. I had to wonder if it had to really do with me or if he was just growing tired of keeping his dark desires to himself and wanted us all to suffer along with him through his own version of hell.
He glared at not just me but at Kendi as well. Other than both of us flipping him off at the same time, no one paid him any attention over breakfast. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to provoke him, but he was earning it with the constant leering. Tyson and Andrew still sat with him, either completely unaware of what he was doing, or simply not wanting to get involved. Either way, I couldn’t blame them. His issue with women wasn’t up to them to solve. It wasn’t their fault they were stuck with the creepy hallmate like we were.
On our way back from breakfast, instead of going into the lounge or my bedroom like the rest of the patients, I lingered by the nurses’ station until Shemar was done checking off his head count from getting us back. He wasn’t as talkative as Cindy was with us. He was a stickler for rules and didn’t like to deviate from them. A frown was permanently etched onto his features, making him appear much older than he probably was.
“Can I help you, Miss Devlin?” He asked, lowering his clipboard and tucking it under his arm.
“I was wondering if it was possible to call my therapist?”
He pulled his clipboard back out and started flipping through pages. Being nosey, I couldn’t help but try to seewhat he was looking at. Schedules, it looked as though he was flipping through all of our individual schedules.
“You have a session scheduled with him tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, I know that, that’s why I’m asking if it’s possible for me to call him this morning? I promise it won't take but just a minute.”
“Is it related to your treatment here?”
I thought for a moment, if it was worth telling Shemar, it was about Craig after he too witnessed my meltdown at the last visitation. Shemar’s demeanor made him less prone to accepting sarcasm as a form of communication; every rule must be followed, strictly black and white, no gray areas existed where he was concerned.
“If it’s not an immediate concern, I think it would be best to wait until tomorrow when you have your scheduled session with him,” He said after a moment mulling it over, tucking the clipboard back under his arm.
“What would qualify it to be an immediate concern for you to call him?”
“Are you feeling suicidal or having thoughts of hurting yourself?”
I didn’t hesitate when answering him. “Yes, massive ones, big ones, almost hopped over the counter to try and drown myself in the vat of bacon grease at breakfast,” I said with a straight face. I wasn’t, not at the moment, but if that’s what it took just to be able to talk to my therapist on the phone, then it was what I would say, even if I embellished it a little bit.
Shemar looked at me quizzically, obviously unimpressed with the flair I put on my confession. I could tell he didn’t believe me; I was too calm. But was he willing to risk that I wasn’t being serious despite my attitude?
“I am under a severe amount of emotional distress, and I’m a very creative person. Would you really want it on your conscience that I did something after asking you for help? That you could have stopped it?” I strummed the strings on his sympathetic side, playing him like a guitar. No one would want that guilt following them around day after day.
Oh, he totally didn’t believe me by the way he looked at me, judging me worse than a whore setting foot in a small town church. He could read me like a book, but he couldn’t risk ignoring my words. Sighing heavily, he pinched the bridge of his nose, signs of beginning to become stressed out, setting in from our interaction.
“Wait right here while I go make a phone call,” And with that, he ducked into the nurses’ station, where I couldn't hear what he was saying. I didn’t bother to take a seat in the hallway while I was waiting for him; instead, I stayed right where I was where he could see me and not be able to claim he forgot about me.
He went over to one of the computers and typed for a little bit. I assumed he was trying to bring up Daxton's contact information before picking up one of the office phones. I had to give Shemar props, even though he did a horrific job hiding his annoyance at my persistence; he did a fairly decent job at attempting to helpme out. There was a small gap in the plexiglass installed around the nurses’ station, but it wasn’t big enough for me to properly eavesdrop. The other nurses didn’t pay him much attention as he started speaking into the receiver, his mouth moving quietly. As he spoke, I watched him pull a bottle of Tylenol out of the desk drawer and toss two pills in his mouth to swallow. I must have given the poor man a headache already this morning.
It wasn’t long before Shemar hung up the phone and said something to one of the other nurses sitting behind a computer monitor before he came out of the door. He still held his clipboard tightly under his arm as he gave me a look that conveyed my nonsense better not happen again. I probably could have done without the dramatic flair in an attempt to talk to my therapist, but I was out of patience when it came to dealing with anything revolving around my ex-boyfriend. If being dramatic helped get my point across, then I was more than ready to don that hat.
“Mr. Bradshaw will be here within the hour,” I opened my mouth to thank him, but he cut me off, “And I do hope, Miss Devlin, that this is a serious issue you need to discuss with him and won't make it a regular habit. We try not to make it a habit to call our therapists on their days off.”
“I promise it’s serious and it won't become a regular thing,” if only I felt like explaining the situation to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to try and reason with anyone that I felt wouldn’t take me seriously. It was too much to consider doing, opening myself up toanyone who just wanted to look at the mess inside without helping me sort it out. Not that it was anyone else's problem to handle my issues. I felt like a freakshow exhibit when I opened up, come inside, ladies and gentlemen, and witness a mentally ill woman as she slowly kills herself with her panic-induced disease. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to witness a state-of-the-art procedure for the main attraction, lobotomies!
Shemar excused himself to do the quarter-hour rounds while I made my way back to my room. With my nerves finally settling, I was able to slowly begin to think straight. When I got anxious, when something put me into fight-or-flight mode, it was hard for me to process a single thought when it felt like I was being overrun by thousands of them. One would start to form only for another to take over, a never-ending cycle, none ever completed. It left me feeling out of control when all I wanted to do was maintain some form of it—like battling the dense fog surrounding the mountains early in the morning, a damn near impossible task. Helplessness was something I didn’t like to feel, and I was feeling it too often lately.
Instead of giving in to the urge of picking at my bandage in an attempt to get to the stitches underneath, I pulled out my journal and lay on my bed, writing for the first time since the incident with Craig. It was hard to picture the event when I tried to look back on it; my mind was stuck in survival mode and couldn’t remember small details other than the fear and the blood. Anydetails that I could remember, I wrote down. The sauce I had been cooking changed to blood; the difference when looking back was impossible to tell what had landed where, the bright red color a blur in my mind. I didn’t want to forget the feeling that he gave me; I wanted to use it as motivation to keep to my decision to stay away from him, both now and when I got released. I had found my desire not just to survive but also to fight in the midst of our confrontation.
I wrote about his anger and his manipulation. Looking back through new eyes, it was almost like I was a different person when I examined past events. He wasn’t as obvious about it all the time, the red flags well hidden in the carnival of mayhem. Sometimes—more often than not—he was subtle when he tried to take control. My mother had been that way, too. She would use sweet words to carry vile hidden meanings; compliments to an audience's ears were heartbreaking insults to her victims.
Writing about the attack helped calm my anxiety a little more while I waited for Daxton. Truthfully, I was hoping to just speak to him on the phone; I never expected him to be making a trip to the hospital just to have a session with me.
In my version of events, I made changes. Not to manipulate or mask the truth, but to process things in my mind. Craig became a monster —a creature out of one of my beloved horror movies—rather than a man. The beast he was had come to life, destroying the flesh suit he wore to hide his true self, ripping it toshreds from the inside out as he rebirthed his identity. His words remained the same, ever taunting me, ever putting me down, and trying to keep me in my place. But it was his blood that ended up being spilt, not mine; his pain left in that house as I let my imagination take me away. I scribbled across the paper, ignoring the tape on my bandage that kept snagging on the edge, the need to tear at the stitches in my skin slowly melting away. There was a darkness that lingered in my mind when it came to thinking about Craig. Violence like I had never known before hummed inside me, my pen acting as an outlet for its fantasies, a sword in my hands as each word cut him down to pieces.
I was so enraptured by the images in my mind that I was describing on paper that I didn’t notice anyone entering my room, watching me like a cat would watch a mouse.
“I’m curious, what has you so occupied that you haven’t noticed me yet, Rae?” I jumped, nearly falling off my bed and throwing my pen in the process. A deep chuckle came from the intruder who was leaning against my dresser, only a few feet from me.
