I’m no expert; I can spot the signs of postpartum depression and I once helped diagnose a case of the much rarer puerperal psychosis, but that’s the extent of my dealing with illnesses of the mind. But it doesn’t take an expert to diagnose this kind of crazy could be life shortening. For me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, panic beginning to crawl up my throat. ‘I’m sorry he hurt you.’
‘Don’t you apologise for him,’ she snarls. ‘You’re nothing to him—just a hole, like the other whores! He needs me—only me. Anyone can see that—you just look like me. But you can’t be me. And you can’t have him.’
‘Okay. It’s okay,’ I say, holding out placating hands. ‘Whatever you want. You can have whatever you want, but you need to let me leave.’
‘No one’s leaving.’ She says the words as though this is obvious. ‘I can’t let you go. Let you see him. Poison his mind.’
‘I won’t. I promise. Whatever—’
‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up!’ She takes another step in my direction as my scour my mind for words that might help me—words of reason. Of apology. Something to snap her from the grip of whatever this was.’
‘If you kill me, he won’t want you. The same way he didn’t want you when Tom die.’ Her face turns as grey as the fingers she has wrapped around the gun. ‘If you want him, you’ll have to think of something else.’
‘What else.’ Her face contorts with grief. ‘I tried everything! I tried to love him. I told him I couldn’t live without him. And I won’t!’ From the doorway, movement catches my attention though I force my gaze to focus on her. Please, God, whoever it is, please let them move away quietly without drawing attention. Please let them go for help.
‘Samantha, please. Let me help you.’
‘What, you going to kill yourself because I can’t see any other way you’d be of use to me.’
‘I could talk to him. Make him listen to you.’
‘You can’t trust a doctor. Doctors lie. In the army, they fill you with chemicals before you’re deployed, then they try to force you to take meds that make you ill. Then as thanks for your service, you get medically discharged by one of them, and find yourself in the world with nothing. Nothing! So you see, the only good you are to me, is out of the way. Dead.’
The word reverberates around the room as my cry choke me, tears beginning to course down my cheek. Then, in a blur of movement, Ben slides silently through the locker room door. Still dressed for his morning run, the look of determination on his face is almost as frightening as the girl approaching me rapidly with the gun.
His hand on her wrist.
The crack of bone I recognise.
The wretchedness of her cry.
The gun flying across the room
His knee on her back, one arm in his, the other lies twisted by her side.
All the tension and adrenaline I’d bottled up inside explodes. My whole body begins to shake, my teeth chattering violently. My knees feel like they could give, were I not sitting, and my chest heaves, my lungs unable to inhale enough breath fast.
‘Hang in there, sweetheart.’ His expression is as fierce. His love, too.
A moment later, the door burst open with a rush of people. Security guards and Mr Travers, who pulls my sad and sorry form from the bench, pulling me to the side of him as he shield me from the room with his body.
‘So that’s your Captain Monroe, is it?’ he says, his eyes dipping to me, concern tugging at his features.
‘This is—’ I inhale and start again. ‘This is Ben.’
‘The way he thundered into the place, I imagine he could take over small countries, should the fancy take him.’
Police arrive next, they bring more guns. It doesn’t make me feel protected, rather the opposite. Next come a team of paramedics, which strikes me abstractly as a little ridiculous. We’re in a hospital, surrounded by medical professionals. I don’t see Samantha being led away though I try to close my ears to her cries. Pitiful outcrying’s. Despairing. Begging. Declarations of love. I don’t realise I’m being passed from one male presence to another until I inhale a deep breath full of the man I love.
‘You smell really bad,’ I whisper into his chest.
‘It’s called fear, half-pint.’ He releases a deep breath, his lips finding my head.
‘I think it’s called entertaining the yummy mummies by running in those shorts. It’s almost winter, you know.’
‘Stop talking,’ he whispers hoarsely. ‘Just let me hold you and hide my tears in your hair a little bit.’
