Insanity (5 page)

Now I’m angry. And flustered. And emotional. I fold my arms across my chest, suck back my oncoming tears and stalk back toward the house.

Damien is at my side in a nanosecond. He touches my shoulder and I shrug him off with a harrumph. He reaches for my bicep and clutches it. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Back inside,” I snap. “Now let go of me.”

Damien doesn’t listen and clutches my arm tighter. “You can’t go back in there.”

“Who says? I live there.”

“What if he woke up?”

I peel his fingers off my arm. “Then I’ll deal with it.”

“Deal with it?” Damien raises his voice. “Deal with it?” He grabs both of my shoulders, gazes deep into my eyes and shakes me. I’m terrified, yet mesmerized by the emotion in his eyes. “No, Addy, no.” He lets go of my shoulders and runs a shaky hand through his hair before bringing it down his face. “God, Adelaide. Do you know how beautiful and smart and witty you are?” He sighs and shakes his head. “Of course you don’t,” he points a finger at my window, “because you let him make you believe otherwise.” He closes the gap between us, tangling his fingers in my hair, gazing lovingly into my eyes, his lips a breath away from mine. “You can’t go back there. I won’t let you. I won’t let him hurt you anymore!”

I swat at his hands, untangling them from my hair. “You know I have to,” I snap. “I haven’t even graduated high school. I have no money. No job. No license. Tell me, Damien, what will I do? Where can I go? Where will I live? How will I support myself?”

Damien takes a step closer. “Me.”

I laugh and judging by the howl I let out at the end, I know I sound like a lunatic. “You? How will you do all that? You haven’t even graduated. And what about college? Aren’t you going to Yale in the fall? I won’t let you give up on the things you want in life for me.”

He fans the tips of his fingers across my cheek and I look away. This is killing me. He has so much to look forward to and if he stays with me, I’ll continue to drag him down. I’m like a whirlpool in the middle of a choppy sea, once you’re in my grasp I’ll have no choice, I’ll snatch you by the leg, and pull you under.

“Don’t you see, Addy?” His voice is soft and there’s so much warmth in it, that just by listening to it, I feel my body overheating. “I want none of those things. I don’t care about Yale. I don’t care about the other things you think I want in life. Because the truth is, Addy, the only thing I want and won’t give up on is you.”

I close my eyes and tears dangle on the edges of my long lashes. My heart thunders like the gray sky before a flash of lightning peeks through the darkened clouds. My stomach feels like it has grown a pair of legs and is sprinting up my esophagus. “Stop, Damien. Please.”

“Addy, I—.”

“Just go,” my voice cracks with a mixture of pain and forcefulness.

“Addy, I don’t understand.” He moves toward me and I fight off the hysteria that’s building up inside of me, trying to hold every part of me together when it really feels like I’m falling apart.

“Just leave!” I scream as tears rain down my cheeks and my shrill high-pitched voice echoes through the humid, night sky.

Damien’s eyes widen and he clutches his chest. His eyes flit to the ground and he staggers backward the tiniest bit. By the surprised look and the way he’s clutching his chest, to me it looks like my words have punctured his heart and that’s what breaks me.

I can’t keep a straight face anymore. I can’t keep my emotions in check anymore.

I wail out in agony and run from him.

Back to my house.

Back through my window.

Back into my bed.

I wrap my pillow around my head and scream as an agonizing pain pumps through my body. Cocooning myself in my blanket, I continue sobbing softly into my pillow. Daddy’s snores bleed through the walls and hearing his garbled breathing causes me to relax a little. I’ve convinced myself that everything I’ve just dealt with would feel worse if he was awake. Then again I have a twisted thought and think that maybe just maybe the physical pain from Daddy’s, fist might numb the emotional pain and that keeps swelling and swelling and swelling inside of me.

I’ve come to the heart wrenching realization that Damien is too good for someone like me. He is bright and beautiful and smart and is going to have an amazing life, far far away from here, and far far away from me.

He’ll find a lovely girl at college. They’ll get married. Have a dozen beautiful babies. And they’ll be the envied couple that everyone looks at when they imagine what love and happiness should be like. They’ll be the picture of perfection.

Damien deserves that. He deserves all of the blissful and incandescent happiness in the world.

And there’s a sick feeling, swirling around in my gut that lets me know he’ll never find that kind of happiness with me.

Chapter 6

~AFTER ~

Dr. Watson is listening to music.

His back is to me, but I can see the vinyl spinning on the record player behind him.

Claude, Debussy’s, Claire de Lune.

It is one of my all-time favorite songs.

I’m not a music snob. I appreciate every type, whether it’s rock and roll, jazz, even Motown, but there’s something truly beautiful about classical music. It’s almost haunting the way the melody can work its way inside of your soul because there’s no one crooning words to distract you from the roots of the song.

Sometimes, when Daddy wasn’t around, I’d sneak and listen to the radio. And I always find my fingers twisting the knob to the classical station.

Closing my eyes, I listen attentively, allowing the sound of the piano to fill up every part of me. I’m calm, relaxed, and I breathe in deep, catching a whiff of Dr. Watson’s cologne that permeates the air. It smells exotic yet musky. Like the damp earth in the early morning mixed in with a tropical rainforest.

I exhale and open my eyes. Dr. Watson is facing at me, staring, as a soft smile curls on his full lips. “Do you like this song?”

I sit down in the folding chair in front of him. “I do.”

This is the seventh time I’ve seen him for treatments since he’s arrived here and I’m starting to grow more comfortable around him. Beneath the gorgeous hard face and cool stares, I think there is good person lying dormant. He’s just not the warm type and that’s okay. Not every person on the planet is supposed to be the same.

Sometimes I find it difficult to not admire him in an adoring kind of way and I wind up comparing him to Damien. I know that in a way, that is wrong, because Damien has my heart and soul, but for some strange reason I have this attraction to Dr. Watson.

Maybe it’s because despite what everyone else says about him, I get the genuine feeling that he really does want to help me. That he really does want to see me get out of here someday. As unrealistic as that sounds.

Dr. Watson cuts into my thoughts when he says, “I thoroughly enjoy classical music.”

“As do I.”

He smiles brightly and I find myself smiling in return. I love Dr. Watson’s smile because every time he flashes me one it’s like his face lights up and every feature on his face shines. It also reminds me that he is capable of warmth. It’s just a side of him he doesn’t show too often.

On the edge of his desk is something new, a silver rimmed picture frame. I trace the back of it with my fingertip, “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

Picking up the frame and the flipping it over my mouth falls open at what I see, a child. A beautiful child. A girl who can’t be more than two years old. “You have a daughter?” I gasp, still taking in the sight of the little girl in the picture with round rosy cherub cheeks, a flawless ivory complexion, and the most stunning violet eyes. “She’s very beautiful,” I comment as I place the frame back on his desk. I find it odd that the photo is in color. I’ve never seen a photo in color. I didn’t even know one could be made. I shrug and banish the thought. I decide it must be some new advancement in technology that I haven’t heard about.

“Thank you.” His eyes center on the photo. “I’m afraid she gets most of her beauty from her mother though.”

“You’re married?”

“Does that surprise you? Aren’t most people who have children married?”

“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s just that you look too young to be a doctor let alone be married with a child.”

“I’m not that young,” he chuckles. “I’ll be thirty in two years.” He shifts in his chair, making himself more comfortable. “Now, enough about me. Let’s go on to you. After all, this is your treatment session.”

“What about me?” I always get nervous before my treatment sessions with him. Mainly because sometimes if there is a topic I don’t feel comfortable talking about he’ll push me until he can pry the words out of me.

“Why don’t you tell me about your mother?” His voice has an adamant ring to it and I know there will be no way I’ll be able to change the topic of conversation.

“I already told you about my mother,” I retort. “She left when I was ten.”

Now begins the prying. “And you remember nothing else about her?”

“Not much.”

Dr. Watson hits the button on the tape recorder. “Why don’t you think about it for a second?”

I take my time and rack my brain over the memories I have of my mother. I don’t remember her ever laughing. I don’t remember her ever being happy. But there is one thing that comes to mind. “Lavender.”

Dr. Watson lifts an eyebrow. “Lavender?”

“Yes. She used to smell like lavender.” I take another second as more of the memory pops into my mind. “She had this roll on lavender perfume that she used to dab on her wrists. When I was little, sometimes I’d sit next to her at her vanity and she’d dab some on mine. Then she’d say,
a lady should always smell nice
.”

“What else?”

“I remember her name. Monique.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Try, Adelaide.”

His incessant pushing irritates me. I don’t like talking about either one of my parents because one abandoned me and the other used me as a human punching bag. All I want is to forget the past ever existed, but there’s a part of me that’s afraid and the other part just wants to move on with my life and focus on getting out of this place.

I fold my arms across my chest. “Do you do this with all of your patients?”

“Excuse me?” His deep voice goes up an octave. “Do what with my other patients?”

“Force them to talk about things they don’t want to talk about,” I huff.

A stern look crosses over Dr. Watson’s beautiful face as he gets up from his chair and walks around to the front of his desk. He sits down directly in front of me, his honey eyes harden like dried concrete. “Adelaide,” he addresses me formally and I grit my teeth because he knows I prefer to be called, Addy. “My other patients and how I treat them is none of your concern. It is important as far as your treatments go for you to talk about your past because there’s a part of your memory that’s missing. Sometimes when we think of things from the past it triggers other memories of things we’ve forgotten.” There’s authority in his tone and a flush in his cheeks. It appears I’ve upset him. Well, he’s upset me too.

I stand in front of him, anger blossoming inside of me and I clench my fists at my sides. “And what are you going to do if I don’t talk about it? Feed me more pills? Inject me with more sedatives?” I lower my voice, fury quivering in my vocal cords. “Electrocute it out of me?”

Dr. Watson’s eyes widen then narrow. He stands slowly and I keep my eyes on him as he reaches full height, towering over me at about six foot two to my five foot one. “You watch you’re tone and mind my authority, Adelaide, or—”

“Or what?” I scream. “You’ll send me down to the basement? Schedule me for a lobotomy just like you did with, Suzette?”

Suddenly, Dr. Watson snaps, lunging for me and grips me by the arm. Even though fear is surging through my bloodstream I’m determined to show no fear and keep a hard look on my face. He backs me up into a corner and my back hits the wall by the door with a thud. He’s enraged, his warm beautiful eyes menacing, his chiseled jawline taut. “Where did you hear that?” he growls.

“What does it matter? It’s true isn’t it?”

He raises his voice. “Where did you hear it?”

I keep my eyes deadlocked on him and spit out, “Some of the other patients.” There, I hope you’re happy, you smug bastard.

He releases my arm and begins pacing in front of me. Then after a second he runs his hand through his shimmering locks of gold. He’s mumbling, “They said,” are the only words I can make out.

“They said, what?” I ask with a bit of boldness. He waves me off and continues pacing. Something is seriously wrong here.

A second later, he stops mid-pace and with a quick pivot, faces me. His lips form a straight line and his eyes won’t meet mine. “You’re done for today,” he dismisses me and walks around the other side of his desk, sitting down in his chair, his back to me. I watch him pick up the phone and dial a number. Unsure of what to do, I remain where I am until he yells, “You’re done, Addy! Go!”

Backing away from the wall, I creep toward the door, worried that any sudden movement might set him off. Out of all of the time I’ve spent with, Dr. Watson, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him lose his cool. The man is always calm. Always reserved. During that outburst, he almost looked—
no
—he did look terrified.

~ ~ ~

At dinner, I sit alone at the end of the long, cafeteria table and push the over-cooked spaghetti around on my tray. I stare at my lonely meatball in the right corner and jab it with my fork. The fork doesn’t even penetrate the surface, it bounces right off.
Eww
, the ball of meat is fake. You know, not a homemade meatball, a meatball from a bag.
Disgusting
. I guess with all the other nasty food they serve around here, I shouldn’t have thought otherwise. Giggling interrupts the play-date I’m having with my entree and out of the corner of my eye I see Aurora, licking the sauce from her noodles and flinging them across the cafeteria. I remain focused on the noodle in her hand as she chucks it. The slimy strand of dough sails through the air before landing in one of the girls’ hair at the table across from ours. I do my best not laugh. After everything that happens here, at least I can count on Aurora to be somewhat entertaining.