The guard holding me down goes to help, only to fall to the ground with his hands making a steeple over his bloodied nose.
Fast and with undeniable precision, Dessin twists an orderly’s arm around his back, and much like the time he snapped my assailant’s neck, another loud crack pops from the orderly. One with a broken nose, and now one with a broken arm. Dessin punches the third one in the jaw, and with a moment’s pause, blood drips from his mouth.
I scream as the air refills my lungs. I jump to my feet, shuffle around the table, and throw myself between Dessin and the orderly. Dessin blinks furiously as I push him against the wall, his eyebrows cocked upward, making no effort to hide his surprise at my intervention. But he doesn’t hurt me. Does not push me out of the way.
His chest is moving wildly under my hands with a loss of breath.I question if it is from the fight, the rage, or my hand touching his chest.
“Please,stop,” I plead. His fiery gaze bounces back and forth between each of my eyes, and his jaw grindsin fury.He’s probably still in some sort of pain from whatever they were doing to him.
I stare at him another moment and recognize the panic in his eyes. When I was four years old, my father brought me to the red oaks, and we swam in the lagoon below. I wandered off on my own in the water and decided to swim as deep to the bottom as I could. I didn’t get far before I ran out of air, and me being only a little girl, I panicked. Before I could inhale the water, my father pulled me out and threw me onto a rock to make sure I didn’t drown. I spit out the water I’d swallowed and began to cry hysterically. The look I saw in his eyes was the same look I see in Dessin’s.
“I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m not hurt,” I whisper, placing my hand over the side of his face. The sting of hatred is muted for a moment in his glossy-brown eyes, then replaced with pain. His head falls back against the wall in defeat.
“What happened?” I growl at Suseas.
“We don’t know. It happened so suddenly. He started throwing things around in here, yelling, and pounding on the walls. When we tried to calm him down, he went ballistic and kept telling us to ‘leave her alone!’” I look back at Dessin, who just stares at me, unyielding in his supreme knowledge.
“What were you doing to him? Why was he in so much pain?”
“We used a radiation mobilization on him until you came.”
I step toward her and try to remain calm.“I need you to leave…now.” I enunciate each word, each syllable, carefully, as if I am speaking to a child. But on the inside, I’m unhinged like a wounded animal. Seeing him howling in pain conjured a feeling I’ve never come close to feeling. I wanted to hurt them. To strap them in and watch them suffer. They hurt him. And that struck me like a bat to the cheek.
Suseas leaves with the severely wounded guards—no objections, no farewells. Dessin slides down the wall I pushed him against, adjacent to his bed that is flipped over on its side.Unboltedfrom the concrete.
He sighs. Eyes closed. I sit down on the floor, trying to pull my uniform down as much as possible. This feels like the time when he took me to the basement when I tried so hard to break through his steel armor.That feels like a lifetime ago.
“Who were you talking about?” I ask.
“Did he hurt you?” He scans my face with his eyes.
I shake my head. “No, he just knocked the air out of me. I’ll live.” But apparently, I’ve answered his question incorrectly. He just nods and smiles as if I’m living in another world. Like I’m the one institutionalized.
“Suseas said you were yelling ‘leave her alone.’ Who did you mean?”
He contemplates lying for a moment—I can tell by the way he lifts a brow a single millimeter in amusement. Then answers vaguely.“I had a visitor.”
“Impossible,” I say. “You aren’t allowed to have visitors other than me.”
He rolls his eyes at this. “Perhaps you’ve underestimated a higher power.”
“Like Martin?”
Dessin wrinkles his brow and grimaces like what I’ve said has insulted him.“Certainly not. That sweaty bastard would likely piss himself before facing me again.”
I push my fingers against my lips and let out a sound I haven’t heard since I was young and small. It hums pleasantly from my chest, tickling its way up my throat.
Immediately his eyes meet mine, stretching wide, eyebrows arched to the sky.
And now he is grinning.
“Youlaughed,” he says, flustered with levity.
I look down, smiling. I forgot how good it felt to actually laugh, release the built-up tension from my chest.“Yes, I did.”
“That was—incredible.” His eyes soften. “You know I haven’t heard that—well, it’s a pleasant change from your constant frowning.”
“Why?” I twist my fingers in a loose strand of hair.“Everyone laughs.”
