“Yeah, like what?” I jumped up on the table and kicked my feet back and forth.
The sensation was still new. Or old. Or both. The weight of my lower body. The way the cuffs of my pants brushed at the sides and had the air tickling my ankles. I couldn’t be sure if I actually felt it or if my brain just remembered how it was supposed to feel and had me thinking I did.
Honestly, it didn’t matter as long as I could move 'em.
I wasn’t stumbling around like a baby deer. But I had to focus on not tripping over my own shoes more than I remembered having to do back when walking was a regular occurrence for me. Which was hard for someone so used to focusing on everything and nothing at once.
“What happened to you, for starters.” The doc pushed his chin out towards my legs, his hands shoved into his pockets and the bottom of his lab coat folded back behind him. He tried his hardest to look professional. Not a hair out of place and those nerdy glasses propped low on his nose. “Your parents. Even your name.”
“I told ya my name, Doc,” I reminded him.
“You told me a lot of things. Not all of them true.”
I cocked my head to stare at him across the room. “Everything I say is always true. It’s just not always true anymore.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” the doc cursed. He was losing his cool. You could tell 'cause he didn’t usually cursearound the patients or the other docs. He was trying so hard to fit in. To pretend he belonged here.
What he didn’t realize was that he belonged here as much as the rest of us. He was just standing next to the table when he should have been strapped down to it, having his head examined too.
It was the thing I liked most about him. The fact he was so messed up on the inside and he didn’t want anyone finding out.
“It means…” I took a long breath. “What’s true now ain’t always true later. And what was true before might not be true anymore. Hell, what’s true for me might never be true for you. Doesn’t make it any less true, does it, Doc?”
“That’s just a bunch of words, kid.”
“Maybe for you. But for me, it’s just the truth.” I shrugged, letting my lips curl into a half-smirk. “Okay, think of it this way. What if I told one of the nurses that Dr. Lambert is wearing a yellow shirt today? Would I be lying?”
He glanced down at himself as if he didn’t already know what he was wearing. “My shirt is green.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Doc. Would I be lying?” I repeated.
“You wouldn’t be telling the truth. So, yes, you’d be lying.”
“Now, what if I told you I was color blind?”
He quirked a brow. “Are you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is… what I see is yellow. What you see is green. Two different truths depending on whose eyes you’re seeing them from. If you ask me, life is like that a lot of the time.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
BELLATRIX
Iwoke with a start. Popping up off the bed and quickly realizing I couldn’t get very far. Something was holding me down, and I wasn’t coherent enough to try to figure out what it was yet. Instead, I focused on my breathing, the pounding in my chest, and the bright light causing sweat to bead on my forehead and drip onto my lashes.
I scrunched up my face to try to get some of it off and felt a few droplets disappear into the hair around my ears. It sent an unexpected chill down my spine.
I was hot and cold and panicked.Nakedfrom the chest down. My stomach flipping around and grabbing for my throat, and my throat so tight it wouldn’t let anything pass through it. It was trying. I just wouldn’t let the vomit out. I was too old and too fucking sober to be throwing up on myself.
I peeked one eye open and immediately shut it again. But not before I noticed I wasn’t in the apartment anymore. The room was whiter. Wider. More sterile. The smell similar to the time I overloaded the washer with bleach. Which wasn’t helping withthat vomit feeling. And I could hear two sets of shoes moving around. One close, the other closer.
“She’s waking up,” a voice said from above me. Casper. He had this mix of humor with an edge of sharpness on the verge of bleeding over that meant it couldn’t be anyone else.
“A shot of adrenaline will do that to you.” I didn’t recognizehim. He sounded like someone who didn’t know how to put the pack of cigarettes down, though.
When the light above me dimmed and the underside of my eyelids stopped glowing a bright-orange color, I chanced another peek. Prying the left side open and then the other to find Casper staring back at me with a shit-eating grin. All teeth and no lips.
“I’m gonna kill you,” I hissed and tugged at the plastic straps securing me to a hospital bed. He must have taken me back to Briarwood. That or some place that got its interior design tips from their monthly issue ofNuthouse Chique.
