My feet moved toward Ollie, and he jerked against Stanley.
“No, Mia. Stay back,” Ollie pleaded, then winced when Stanley twisted his arms back, finally getting him into the zip-ties. My head darted between the two of them, feeling completely powerless as I took another step forward. “Jake, get her back!” Ollie shouted, and Jake pulled me away in seconds, keeping me farther than arm’s length—farther than I ever wanted to be.
Ollie pressed his forehead to the cement for a moment before turning to face me again. Tears fell from his bloodshot eyes and over his lips as my hands shook at my sides. “Mia, listen to me. You have to stay with me even when I’m gone, you hear me? Don’t let it burn out. Promise me,” he begged, but I couldn’t form any words. My body weakened in Jake’s hold and Ollie’s eyes screwed shut as more tears fell before he opened them again. “Dammit, Mia. Promise me!”
Before the last light went out in my mind, I was able to speak.
“I promise.”
Chapter Fifteen
“And Ifone day I
don’t recognize you,
I’ll love you anyway.”
—Oliver Masters
WHEN I’D SHOWN up to Dolor, I had been sure of two things. First being the fact I would do whatever I could to get kicked out to spite my father, and second … I needed to find someone to fuck in the meantime. Needless to say, I’d accomplished both.
My brown hair blew violently in the night wind while Stanley and I walked across the green lawn to building B—also known as the “Looney Bin.” Stanley stayed quiet and composed, keeping his eyes fixed in front of him. But I could tell by his stance he was ready to pounce if I made the hasty decision to take off into a sprint through the woods, and because of how much weaker I’d become between the lack of physical exercise and my unhealthy eating habits, I wouldn’t doubt his ability to catch up to me.
As we reached the entrance, he pressed a button on the black intercom beside the steel door and rambled off some words my head was not mentally prepared to comprehend before the door buzzed open. Stanley walked in behind me and handed off a clipboard to another security guard through the opening of a glass divider. The security guard, with a shaved head and bags under his eyes, looked over the clipboard before buzzing another door open as if it were a natural reflex.
We walked through the second set of doors and Stanley advised me to wait for the nurse to arrive. He handed my suitcase to the security guard, and I wondered if I’d ever get to wear my Dolor shirt again. I stood at the entrance of a long hallway, which I was sure led straight to hell. The walls on both sides were lined with white doors, and the fluorescent lights flickered as a buzzing sound sizzled through its eeriness.
A lady in white scrubs approached me and handed me a clean stack of gray clothes. “Follow me,” was all she said. I turned back to Stanley, and he lowered his head in a single nod. Would this be the last time I would ever see Silent Stanley as well?
I followed the small woman down the poorly lit hallway before she made a sharp right-hand turn. Another corridor branched off, darker than the previous hall. Low moans and cries from the rooms we passed sent shivers up my neck and down my spine. Scared to speak, I quietly shuffled close behind her as if she could protect me. The constant feeling of a presence behind us kept my head turning behind me and over my shoulder.
We approached one of the white doors. The lady walked in after me as we entered a small white bathroom, nothing like the community bathroom back in the main building. This one wasn’t nearly as clean. Water dripped from a spot rotting in the corner of the ceiling as she turned on the faucet in one of the three stalls. Dark red stained the cracks in the tile.Is that blood?Holy shit, it is blood. My head snapped in her direction as if she heard what I was thinking.
“Undress. You need to remove all jewelry, articles of clothing, and any hair accessories,” she explained without looking me in the eye. “You’ll shower before I show you to your room.”
I did as I was told, afraid if I didn’t listen, she might grow horns or sharp fangs before ripping the flesh off my bones with my blood spraying against the same tile, joining the others.
The water was cold. The temperature only brought back memories of Ollie and me holding each other on the floor of the stall in the community bathroom. He’d hugged me so tightly that night under the water, it had managed to wash away my relapse. He’d been my only antidote in a time I was against myself. He’d always been my cure, but I’d been too far gone to see it before.
The only item in the shower was a bottle of soap, which smelled like baby powder. I used it in my hair and over my body before rinsing off and stepping out. The lady kept her eyes on a book in her lap as I dressed.
The gray drawstring pants hung low on my waist, clearly a size too big, but everything would be huge. I had no meat on my bones anymore. I pulled the plain gray t-shirt over my head, and then the plain gray sweatshirt. It was much colder in building B than in the main building, and the sweatshirt made sense.
The quiet, tiny lady had a young face, but gray painted the part in her hair. She kept her dialogue to a minimum, only speaking to give me instruction, and never looked me in the eye.
Much like me, she detached herself from those around her. But her reasoning was different. Only here, she became this cold and removed person. If she grew an attachment, it made her job more difficult. I wondered at what point she had changed to this. Was there someone she’d grown to like? Had something happened to said person? Did she know I wasn’t going to make it out of here alive? Was that said person’s blood on the bathroom tile?
She walked me to my room. A stiff mattress lay over plywood, with no other furniture in the room. No pillow, no sheet, only a mattress. Not even a window in the wall.Only a fuckingmattress.
I curled into a fetal position over the blue mattress, wanting and willing to cry, but no tears would come out. So instead, I stayed still—lost in my own head, wondering what Ollie was doing, if he was enjoying the company of liquor and Bria during his midnight rendezvous, or forced in solitary confinement after the incident in the hallway. Was he thinking about me?
Ollie had cried. I had seen my dad cry before too, but it hadn’t affected me in the way Ollie’s tears had. Seeing him cry before me had only intensified the pain in my chest. Like someone had taken a dagger and pierced my heart, then twisted it. It hurt, and I knew if Jake hadn’t pulled me away, I would’ve done anything to make sure he knew he wasn’t alone. To wipe his tears and hold on to him the same way he became my angel in my darkest hours. Ollie had cried, and now he was alone. Or was he?
Either way, there was nothing I could do about it.
I was unable to measure time as it passed. The door opened numerous times with the small lady on the other end offering me food, but I declined. It was hard to say how long I’d stayed in this fetal position, staring at the blank wall in front of me. There was no sun, there was no moon, and there was no clock above the door—only white padded walls, and this fucking mattress. The irony in all this was, it was how I’d expected it to be before stepping foot out of the limousine on the first day I’d arrived. The psych ward was how I’d imagined it.
Not emerald eyes, inked skin, and a beautiful soul.
