After she died, p.26
After She Died, page 26
part #1 of Girl Broken Series
“Grab a bite to eat,” she says. “You’ll need your energy for later. Tonight is going to be quite draining, to say the least.”
As I walk away from Elsie, a shudder runs down my core at the thought of what she has planned for me overnight. The mere concept of being strapped down in a hospital bed while people watch over me and monitor my brain is more than I can handle on a good day. With the added threat of another seizure hitting me at any point in the night, it’s hard not to think I’m already being punished for my crimes.
Elsie rushes back through the security doors, leaving me with the bitter taste of failure in my mouth. I had a chance to see my file, but I screwed it up. Hesitation crippled me, and now I’m paying the price.
My mind runs around in circles as I try to work out how I will ever access my file. How am I supposed to coordinate with Lily to be a distraction when I can’t even talk to her? It comes across as a cruel joke the hospital is playing.
I take a spare seat at one of the tables. The patient next to me knocks over her plastic cup of water. A few drops spray up and land on my hands. It’s colder than I expected and feels almost like snow on my skin.
My mind wanders to the days when Faith and I would play in the snow behind the cabin. We were little. Barely old enough to make snowballs and throw them at one another. She’d hit me and I’d hit her, but one time my snowball got her in the eye. She ran off to Dad and tattled on me. He told us both off and split us apart for the afternoon.
It’s one of the many fragmented memories I have of the past, but today, I can recall that time with more clarity than ever before. I’m outside the cabin, by myself. Mom and Dad are inside. I know because there’s smoke coming from the chimney. My sister’s not around. The snowball upset her so much, she refused to speak to me. At least, that’s how I remember it.
The trees are all covered in a layer of white, and the lake is frozen over. It’s always frozen over in my memories. It amazed me when I was young that so much water could undergo such an intense physical change. Did I make an extreme transformation the day Faith died? Did something in me mutate and put me on a path of destruction?
I still don’t understand how I could have murdered Faith. I’m not violent. There isn’t a killer inside me waiting to come out. But I’m told otherwise, and I still can’t remember what I did that day. Will I ever?
I stop thinking about the past as a headache kicks in. Another damn migraine. Why now?
“Did you read it?” Lily whispers.
“What the hell?” I say. Confusion spins me around as I try to find where her voice is coming from, but I don’t find her anywhere in the room.
“Down here,” Lily says.
I glance at my feet and discover Lily under the table. With the lunch service underway, there’s enough chaos around to keep her hidden from the staff.
“What are you doing?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Begging for scraps. What do you think? I’m trying to talk to you.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“So, did you find anything? Please tell me you did.”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t do it,” I say.
“Come on. I gave you the opportunity. You were in there alone.”
Lily must have seen me leave with my psychotherapist for a private meeting. Did she cause a scene to pull Elsie out of the room? Elsie obviously didn’t want me to know that’s why she left me alone in her office. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It’s not like these assholes can make things much worse. We’ll try again soon.”
“Try again? I can’t do it. It’s too much. Why can’t you just tell me?”
“You don’t understand,” Lily says loud enough for the other patients to hear. “I need you to see your file so we can figure out what it means.”
Lily’s obsession is taking shape. What is so important in that file that would drive her to hide under the table like this?
“I’ll try again.”
“Please. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch. I have to confirm what I saw was real. Because if I can’t trust my own eyes, then I guess I must be crazy.”
I let Lily’s thought hang in the air.
“If you don’t think you can do it, I’ll find another way,” she says.
“Lily. Come on. You’re getting yourself all worked up here. Is it worth it?”
She closes her eyes and exhales. “It will be. I’ll find a way. You’ll see.”
“Lily, wait—”
She drops closer to the floor and crawls away from me before I can talk any sense into her.
54
Before
A steady silence overtook the cabin. Scott and I sat on the recliners and stared dead ahead at the empty fireplace, both of us out of words to share as we waited for my mom to arrive. She should have been only twenty minutes away by then, give or take some traffic.
My cell vibrated in my pocket, sending my heart into my throat. A shaky hand fished the device out to reveal the caller.
“Who is it?” Scott asked.
“My mom,” I replied. My gaze narrowed in on the picture of Mom, Faith, and me squished together. It was my mom’s favorite photo of what remained of our family, so I made it her contact image.
“Maybe she’s close,” Scott said.
“That, or she’s been delayed,” I said with a sigh. I couldn’t help letting negativity creep into my every thought.
“Better answer then.”
I slid my finger across the screen to answer and slowly held my cell to my cheek. Mom spoke before I did. “Kay? You there.”
“Mom?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“What?”
Mom took in a breath. “I got a flat. Two of them, actually. I’m not far out of town. I’ll need Scott to pick me up.”
“Don’t you have a spare?” I asked.
“Yeah, one. Not two.”
“Right,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’ll get my insurance to tow the damn thing to the nearest shop and sort it out later. Tell Scott to come pick me up. You can stay at the cabin in case your sister comes back.”
“Great idea. I’ll tell him now.”
Scott nodded three or four times as I explained the situation to him. “Okay. Find out where she is, and I’ll be on my way.”
Mom sent me her location using her phone. I taught her how to do that last year. I never thought the skill would ever actually be needed.
I loaded up the approximate address on my maps app and faced Scott. “She’s about twenty-six minutes away. I’ll text it to you now.”
Scott was already on his feet, pulling his keys from his back pocket.
“He’s on his way, Mom.”
“Thank you. God, this day is going downhill fast. I’ll see you soon.”
Once Mom had hung up, I followed Scott out the door. He hurried along, his head buried in his cell, checking out where he needed to go. “Drive carefully,” I called out to him.
“Will do,” he yelled back.
I would have given anything to have gone with him. Sitting around the cabin on the off chance Faith decided she’d punished me enough was more than I could stand. But I didn’t have a choice. Faith was about as predictable as a raging fire, meaning I had to prepare myself for anything.
Scott revved the butt out of the engine on his F-150 and sped away from me down the road. He disappeared around a bend lined with thick trees. I didn’t start walking back inside until the sound of his truck faded into the day.
As I returned to the cabin, I noticed the big rocks along the walkway that the kids had thrown at the back wall. What was Faith thinking? Did the thought of me spending time alone with Scott really upset her that much?
I was about to move on when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. Something that didn’t belong on the creaking walkway. A grizzly bear key ring sat on one of the wooden boards, pressed against the side of the cabin. It was the same one I saw hanging off the end of my neighbor’s finger when we retrieved Faith from his property.
I dropped to my knees, bashing them hard on the cracking wood. I scooped up the key ring with one quick sweep of my hand.
Spinning my head around, I directed my complete attention toward my neighbor’s house. I didn’t know what his name was, or why his key ring was sitting on the ground outside Mom’s cabin.
My stomach filled with rocks and dragged me closer to the deck as several possibilities flooded my mind at once. I clutched the key ring tight and studied every minor detail of the cheap souvenir. It was definitely the one I saw only a day ago. There was no doubting it. But the question I needed answered more than anything else was simple yet terrifying at the same time.
Had my neighbor done something to Faith?
My cell found its way out of my pocket and into my hand as I started running toward the house next door. I dialed Scott and waited.
“What’s up?” Scott said over the sound of his engine.
“When you were trying to find what Faith had been drinking yesterday, you went through the neighbor’s yard with him, right?”
“Yeah, why? What’s wrong?”
“And he told you he was heading back home?”
“Yes. He was on his way out when I spoke to him.”
“But you never saw him leave?”
“No. Why? What’s going on?”
I explained to Scott about the key ring.
“Are you sure it’s the same one? Just about every store in town sells that souvenir crap.”
“It’s the same one. I know it.”
“Maybe it fell off his key ring when he went for a walk and Faith found it on her way back to the cabin.”
I reached the house next door. A cursory glance suggested the place had been shut down and sealed up tight to keep everything tidy until the next visit. There was no car in the driveway, the curtains were drawn, and a pile of wood by the side porch had a cover tied over it. The property held a sense of quiet that implied no one was home. But they had to be.
“Do you want me to come back?” Scott asked.
“I don’t know. Should I call the police?”
“And tell them what? You found a key ring. I don’t think they’ll do much about it.”
My eyes darted around the exterior to my neighbor’s house as I tried to detect the slightest bit of proof there was someone inside. I rushed up to the front door and rapped my knuckles three times over the solid wooden surface.
“Maybe they can talk to this guy and clear things up. He might be more likely to answer the door that way.”
A sigh came over the line from Scott. “But, he’s not there.”
“He might be. He could be pretending he’s not home to mess with us.”
“Kay, listen to yourself,” Scott said. “You sound like you’ve lost it. I’m coming back.”
“No, don’t. My mom needs you.”
“She can wait until we clear up this key ring thing first.”
I let a moment pass by as I listened to the sound of Scott turning his truck around. With a whisper I said, “Thank you.”
“I’ll give your mom a call and tell her something has come up and that it might take me too long to reach her. She can catch a ride into town with the tow truck.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t mention the key ring or the neighbor just yet. I don’t want to freak her out.”
“Good point. Keep it vague. There’s no point—”
I don’t remember if I finished my sentence or not, but the next thing I was conscious of was a smearing of dirt on my lips. I awoke with my face smashed on the ground of the neighbor’s dusty driveway, with blurring, fading vision and a numb sensation in the back of my head.
What happened next only confused me more. I floated up and felt like someone was flinging me around. I landed with a thud in my chest, but I hadn’t fallen to the ground. My body was up high. The sound of footsteps and the moving grass below told me I was being carried away from my neighbor’s house.
I tried to speak, but the mere thought of producing words seemed to confuse me more. Instead, I began to fade. My vision drifted in and out as a gradual darkness swept in.
One second, we were out on the side of the road. The next, the driveway to the cabin floated below. Who was carrying me? And why were they taking me to the cabin?
Before I could put anything together in my failing mind, I found myself inside on the bathroom floor. My head was sideways with two boots close by. They looked worn and rough around the edges. I’d never seen them before.
“You should have left it alone,” a male voice said. It sounded familiar. Was it my neighbor’s voice?
As I tried to roll over and see the man’s face, I heard Scott’s F150 in the distance.
“He’s too late to help you.”
No, Scott was about to arrive and head inside. He would find me here in two seconds flat.
The door to the bathroom clicked shut. What was this guy going to do? Was he about to wait for Scott to come inside?
My cell buzzed in my pocket.
“I’ll take that,” the man said as he helped himself to my phone.
The next thing I knew, my body got pushed to the side of the room, away from the door. Again, I faded. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to stay conscious, I was about to pass out.
But I still had enough left in me to observe what the man was doing. The rug that sat on the floor of the bathroom got pulled out to the side. The man dropped to his knees and showed me his face. He was my neighbor.
I didn’t panic or freak out. The desire to understand why he attacked me was too much to ignore, so I studied him as best I could.
On his hands and knees, my neighbor patted around the flooring of the bathroom until his fingers grabbed hold of a small handle. He twisted it and lifted a section of floorboards. A hinged, wooden panel rolled away from my face, revealing the entrance to what I could only assume was a storage area. Whatever it was, I didn’t know it existed until that moment.
With a groan, I tried to move, but my neighbor picked me up and dragged me down into the void via a ladder. In the dark, I felt the cool surface of stone slap against my face. With the remaining bit of energy I had left, I rolled to my back and saw the man up top dragging the rug back over the hatch door before he lowered it down over his head, sealing us in the dark.
I was alone in a pitch-black hell with a man who’d just hit me over the back of the head. If Scott didn’t find me soon, I was as good as dead.
55
After
Lily’s determination for me to see my file leaves me swarming with anxiety for the rest of the day. By the time I come to terms with everything, I’m due back in the EEG room. The night I have ahead will be one of the most trying times of my life. I can’t imagine it being anything other than torture.
Elsie returns me to the EEG room and explains how the straps on the bed work. “They aren’t painful or designed to harm you. They are a means to prevent the accidental removal of the EEG cap by keeping your arms down at your sides. Should you have another seizure, they will also help to stop you from falling off the bed until a nurse arrives.”
I shake my head. “Will they also stop me from feeling claustrophobic?”
Elsie ignores my sarcasm and steps closer to me. “You can do this. I know you can. Three nights is all I’m asking. We’ve decided not to keep you in here during the day to ease you into the process.”
“Okay,” I say as a sense of relief washes over me. I’ll still struggle to survive the night, but the knowledge that daytime will bring me a small dose of freedom will give me enough strength to begin this hell.
“I know you’ve been dreading coming back in here, and I don’t blame you, but we need to do this. It’s the only way forward.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I say. But then Lily’s words rush into my brain, prompting me to ask Elsie what’s in my file that is so damning and confusing. What would cause my only friend in the world to freak the hell out? But I don’t say a word. How can I? There’s no point. Elsie wouldn’t tell me if there was something bad in my file. If she wanted me to know, the conversation would have already taken place.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to relax your breathing before I set up your cap and strap you down for the night.” Elsie smiles at me as she leaves the room.
I feel like a prisoner on death row being given their last few moments of life to reflect upon the things they’ve done wrong. It’s close to the truth. The main difference is, I have no true idea what I did to my sister. All I possess in place of the knowledge is an overwhelming guilt that’s buried in the pit of my stomach.
The cameras all stare at me on standby. Once I’m set up and installed into my bed, they will begin recording and capture every agonizing second of my night. It makes me wonder if anyone has to go over the footage the next day.
Elsie returns and begins the twenty-plus-minute procedure required to ready me for bed. She hits me with small talk, possibly to distract me from each awkward stage of the undignified experience.
“How are you coping without Lily?” she asks me.
“Um, you know. Okay, I guess.”
“I heard you two were trying to speak to one another in the common area.”
I can only assume she’s talking about the first time that happened and hope no one saw Lily sliding around under the table at lunchtime.
“I understand it might be a little frustrating that we’ve split the two of you apart, but surely you recognize that Lily is not stable company for you to keep.”
I hold my gaze on Elsie as she speaks to me.
“I’m not saying Lily isn’t a nice person, but with her condition and ever-fluctuating mania, she’s not someone I want you to spend time with right now.”
“Why?” I ask without thinking.
“Because she is likely to tell you things that aren’t real. She’ll try to pull you into her paranoid thoughts. And given the reason you find yourself in this hospital, I don’t think her behavior will help you heal.”
