“Thank you, Sara,” Elijah said nodding his gratitude and walking back towards the elevator. He pressed the button and waited for the elevator to arrive. When the doors slid open, he leaned inside, pressed a random floor button and let them shut with a soft whoosh and a ping. He waited ten seconds before heading back to the nurse’s station where he slipped around the desk and began tapping at the computer.
He inputted Delores’s full name and date of birth, all the while checking over his shoulder in case Sara came back. Delores’s notes finally came up, and Elijah let out the breath that he had been holding since he found out that she had tried to kill herself. He could breathe again as relief threaded its way through his tense muscles. He made a brief note of what floor and room she was now in and clicked the home screen for the computer.
Elijah took the stairs to the bottom floor and then he followed the maze of whitewashed hospital corridors to where Delores was. His thoughts briefly skipped to Paul and the fact that he hadn’t contacted Elijah to let him know that Delores had woken up.
He made his way down the corridor and was glad to see that this floor was busy, and he could slip around unnoticed. Room number one thirty-two loomed in front of him like a neon sign. His chest began to ache. He’d worried for so long over her, imagining every scenario of what he would say when he finally saw her again. He needed to know why she would leave without speaking to him first, and why she would try to kill herself. Was it because of him? Had he done something to push her towards this? Or was it something more? Michael’s face pushed to the forefront of his mind and Elijah gritted his teeth. The thought of getting those answers was as worrisome as it was relieving.
What if, he thought with quiet dread, it had all been a lie. What if she’d never meant any of those things and her feelings towards him had just been because of her mental health. Perhaps she hadn’t been herself this entire time and he had in fact taken advantage of a very sick woman without even realising it. He felt sick to his core at the thought.
Three steps away he stopped, a window looking into her room was there, the blinds to it partially open. From his angle he couldn’t see her, but just knowing that she was there and alive was comforting. He took another step, closing the distance between the two, hoping with every fibre of his being that she would be happy when she saw him. That she would cry and apologise for running away. That she would ask him to get her away from Michael and his controlling ways no matter what.
Elijah took another step forwards, his hand reached out, a slight quiver to it. He placed his hand against the cold metal of the door handle and waited a beat before he took a deep breath and pressed down, and slowly the door opened.
The room was quiet, the television in the corner was turned off. Delores was asleep, her pale face turned away and facing towards the outside world. She looked peaceful, Elijah noted, as she always did when she was asleep. It was as if her broken and fractured mind couldn’t find her in her dreams, and the things that plagued her waking life couldn’t find her when she was sleeping.
He clicked the door closed and turned the blinds to shut, already knowing that he had very limited time with her. He hated to wake her; to drag her back into a waking hell, but he desperately needed to speak with her. He walked forwards, his footsteps all but silent on the cream linoleum flooring. When he reached the side of her bed, he took a moment to look at her. He allowed himself some small sense of relief that whatever had happened and, whatever would happen, she was alive. That was all that was important.
“Delores?” he whispered, her name like a wish on his lips.
Delores stirred, her eyes slowly flickering open. She winced against the brightness of the room, her forehead crinkling against the pain. She turned her face away from the window, and slowly her deep brown eyes focused in on Elijah.
“Hi,” Elijah said softly, and forced a small smile.
He swallowed and reached for her hand, noticing that his own was shaking as he took hers and wrapped his warm fingers around her smaller ones. She was cold and pale. Her hands felt bony beneath his, and he noticed the hollowness to her features. She still hadn’t replied to him. Her eyes were watching him with dazed amazement as if trying to work out if he were real or not.
“Do you remember me?” Elijah asked, though he hated to voice the question. The thought that Delores might have forgotten him and all that they had shared was almost too much for him to bear. She swallowed and nodded slowly, though her eyes remained confused and apprehensive.
“How are you?” he asked again.
“I should be dead,” she finally replied. “Elijah, I should be dead. I should to be dead after what I did.”
Chapter Thirty.
Elijah
Hot, salty tears flooded her eyes, and Delores began to cry.
“No, no, you shouldn’t. You should live. You need to live!” Elijah pleaded with her as she came apart on the bed, her tortured suffering escaping out of dry cracked lips. “Please don’t say that, please, please,” he begged her, hoping to stem the flow of pain that suddenly erupted from her. Like blood from a wound, she bled out her suffering with hot tears and soft mewls.
But his words fell on deaf ears.
“I should be dead,” Delores repeated, over and over again, muttering more to herself than to Elijah. “I should be dead. I should be dead. I should be dead…” the final chant died on her lips in a wail of pain, and she gripped her head in her hands and pulled at her hair.
Elijah leaned forwards and wrapped his arms around her frail body before pulling her towards him, her clawing fingers releasing her hair. He hushed her, rocking her back and forth, back and forth, as she sobbed and sobbed. Her tears created dark blotted patterns on his new shirt like the ink stains her therapist used to show her.
‘What do you see, Delores?’He’d ask, his head cocking to one side in that sympathetic yet equally condescending way.
‘A bat.
A mouse.
A cloud.
A heart.
A landscape.
A face.
