Her steps slowed, and she put her back to the wall, the endless details crumbling her resolve. Slowly, she slid downward, wishing for the fog to come and wash things away.
“There you are,” Charlie said, kneeling in front of her. “How’d you get stuck way down here? You know you’re yellow ward.”
Yellow. The color of cowardice. Theme in Yellow. I spot the hills, with yellow balls in autumn. Symphony in Yellow. And like a yellow silken scarf, the thick fog hangs along the quay.
“Come on. Let’s go look out the window.”
Charlie led her to the big picture window in the recreation room and she assumed her usual position, staring out into the endless sea of red sand.Red. Wavelength of 620 to 740 nanometers. My love is like a red, red rose.
“What sorts of activities do you recommend for a person with a condition like my brother’s?”
The voice cut through the haze in Gemma’s mind.It’s him!
Slowly, she turned from the window. He stood there, just inside the doorway, his spectral eyes scanning the room. When they met hers, she felt as if an explosion went off in her chest. She actually moved a hand to cover her heart, it was beating so hard.
There was no Nurse Simmons to stop her this time. Concentrating with every fiber of her being, Gemma stepped forward. Her legs kept moving, her feet propelling her onward, until she was a couple feet away from him.
“You—your eyes.”
He stared at her, and she felt like those eyes were setting fire to her, enabling her to burn off the fog around her. But what did she say to him? How did she make him understand what effect he was having?
“Hello there, young lady,” he said with a nod. Then he turned back to the round man, the one she’d seen around RPS before. “What’s her condition, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“She’s from yellow ward. Catatonic usually. But she seems extremely active today.”
There was a little crackle from the round one’s wrist, then a beep. He held the machine on his wrist up to his mouth. “I need Simmons in the rec room please.”
No.
Simmons would shoo her off, take her away from the man and his calming eyes.
“Calm,” Gemma said with confidence, taking the hand from her chest and placing it on the man’s chest. He was tall, so she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “Calm eyes.”
The man smiled down at her, covering her hand with his own. “It’s okay,” he said over his shoulder to the round man and another who stood behind him. “I have this effect on many females.”
The other male snickered. His eyes were dark, his features similar to her perfect one. But when she looked into the other one’s eyes, she felt no calm. Just a boiling anger that immediately disarranged her thoughts.
Focus!
His hand was burning her skin, his touch bringing warmth that worked its way up her arm to her chest, filling her with such a sense of wellbeing that, for a moment, the world was crystal clear. She wouldn’t waste this opportunity.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “I’m Gemmaline.”
“Gemmaline,” the man replied, low and vibrating her senses. “That’s an interesting name.”
“You’re beautiful,” she blurted out and heard the male behind her perfect one laugh out loud.
Then she was being dragged away, hauled back so that his hand lost contact with hers. “No!” she shouted, pulling back against her attacker.
“Calm down, Gemma,” Simmons grumbled. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you today!”
“Let me go!”
Charlie came up beside her, trying to help. “Please, Nurse Simmons. She’s never been able to talk like this before. Can’t we try and communicate with her?”
“She doesn’t need to talk,” Simmons said, drawing Gemma’s arm up behind her back in an uncomfortable position. “She needs her meds.”
“No, please,” Gemma said. Once the fog descended, she’d never be able to make the perfect one understand. “I just want to talk.”
Already, her focus was slipping. Already, the calm of his eyes was being overtaken by the storm in her mind. Simmons held a cup of pills to her lips but Gemma batted them away, scattering them all over the floor.
With the nurse distracted, she pulled away and rushed back to her savior. Dropping to her knees, she locked her hands around his legs. “Please,” she begged. “Please don’t let them.”
“Wait,” he said, his voice heavy. “She’s not hurting anything. Maybe we can—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fleming,” the round one said, “but it’s really for her own good. If they get too emotionally excited, it takes hours for them to calm down, and sometimes, they do damage to themselves. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Simmons with a needle moving closer.
She gripped his legs tightly, praying for her savior to intervene.
