Break

by CD Reiss

  Then silence.

  I listened to the sound of my heartbeat. My breaths. Felt every inch of my body against the sheets and clothes. The air had weight. It smelled of bleach and oranges. The mint in my mouth was swallowed into the lingering taste of dinner.

  I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I felt called to do something I hadn’t considered in my rush to put things inside my body. I let that purpose fill me in the empty space of the night. Breathed it in. Let it sit. Breathed junk out.

  I lost count of how many hours I was awake, or how many breaths I took. Time on the clock wasn’t important. Only the lightening of the ceiling as the sun rose mattered.

  It was Wednesday. It was the day I took matters into my own hands.

  Frances opened the door to the conference room, and I held my breath. Deacon walked in. He still took up too much room. Still commanded and demanded without speaking a word. Still looked at me as if I was his and his alone.

  “You have half an hour until session,” Frances said, looking at Deacon then me. “Do not leave this room.”

  I nodded. He smiled at her. Her eyes narrowed. She found him attractive, of course. She was human. She left, snapping the door closed.

  “Hi,” I said in a little girl voice I didn’t know I had. Shit. I’d have to buck up.

  He sat next to me and scooted his chair so our knees were touching. “Kitten.” He took my hands.

  “Don’t call me that.” I couldn’t look at him, but his eyes were on me. I knew it by the way my skin reacted.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “You were right. I’m not submissive. Not the way I thought. Not the way I thought I needed to be.”

  “I think that’s where a lot of your acting out came from. You can switch. I can teach you.”

  “Yeah. You could. I know. All that. But I don’t think that’s going to do it for me. Maybe. I don’t have any answers. I want a fresh start. Need one, actually. And I needed to say that before saying what I wanted to see you about. Because I’m not going to be bossed into doing anything. It’s my life.”

  He didn’t speak. He just let my words hang between us as I watched how our hands looked together. I was too small for him. Too insignificant. And while that would have scared me before, now it seemed so true it freed me.

  I looked at him. He was waiting. He’d put on aftershave and a clean suit so I could tell him this. Better make it good.

  “The last time I was here, they removed my IUD, and I was too medicated and fucked in the head to know it.” Understanding passed over his expression, and I rushed to fill in the space. “You’re going to ask if it’s yours—”

  “Stop.”

  He was still a dominant personality, so when he said stop, I stopped.

  “I’m asking no such thing.”

  “I need you to let me go.”

  He unclasped our hands and leaned back, elbow on the table, finger tapping his lip. “No.”

  “Deacon, really? What the fuck is it with you?”

  “Never.” He tapped his finger to make his point. “I’ll never. Let. You. Go.”

  I let out a breath of complete and utter fucking exasperation.

  “And let me tell you something.” He pointed at me. “I took responsibility for you a long time ago. Now maybe you’ve moved on. But I don’t move on. That’s not my way. You are always mine, and anyone who hurts you has me to deal with.”

  “God, Deacon. Please. Please don’t do this.”

  “I’ve done a lot wrong with you. I pushed you—”

  “I begged for it.”

  “No.” He sliced the air with his hand and spoke firmly. Stating facts. “You were put here, in this place, because of me. I’m going to fix it. I’m making it right for you and my child. Then I’m leaving. Not for me, but for you. There’s nothing here for me after that.”

  “After what, exactly?”

  He stood. I stood with him.

  “Deacon, after what?”

  He grabbed me so fast I didn’t have a chance to blink and held my face, crashing his lips onto mine, pushing his tongue into me. I let him do it. I let him kiss me, and I returned it for the years we’d had, for what he taught me, for being by my side after all the wrong I’d done.

  I gave him that kiss fully, because it was the last.

  The door opened.

  “Fiona,” Frances said, “that’ll be enough of that.”

  I pulled away, giving Frances an apologetic look. Behind her, Elliot walked down the hall in the opposite direction.

  54

  ELLIOT

  I recognized his black Range Rover. Eighty-thousand dollar car. Clean as a whistle. It shone like patent leather and pulled light into it at the same time.

  He came out of the building, squinting in the morning sun. He saw me and didn’t rush. Didn’t slow down or acknowledge me until he was close enough to speak without shouting.

  “Doctor.” He blooped the car. The locks clicked.

  “Mister Bruce.”

  “I’m not threatened by you. At all.” He opened the door to get in.

  “I don’t expect you to be. But I need to get her things. She’s not coming back to you.”

  He slammed the door shut and came at me. I resisted the urge to step back.

  “You let him walk around in the same building with her.”

  “It’s not me.”

  “You let him continue to exist on the earth. To breathe. And not to better protect her. Not for her interests, but yours. You need to keep it secret. You need to follow your boss’s instructions. You need to walk a tightrope, and you put her in danger to do it. If she’s incompatible with your career, then you have to choose one. Only cowards want both.”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. He got in and slammed the door. I got out of the way so he could get by without hitting me, and I watched him go with my hands in my pockets.

  He was right.

  God damn if he wasn’t right.

  55

  FIONA

  Initially, I wanted to talk to Elliot to explain what he’d seen, or didn’t see. I had no idea, then as I got to the end of the hall, I wondered what Deacon had meant by making it right for me. Who was he threatening exactly?

  Was he threatening Elliot?

  I picked up the pace. He wasn’t supposed to be in on Wednesday, so he had no sessions.

  His office door was ajar. I was well aware of what I meant to him while I was in here. I was the end of his career. So I didn’t burst in as if I had the right to. I rapped lightly and pushed the door just a little. I wouldn’t get him into trouble. We’d keep the door open so we’d be seen across the room from each other or sitting with a desk between us.

  The door swung easily into the dark room. The blinds were closed, letting through thin lines in a ruled notebook of light. The desk was still neat. The chair was pushed in. The bookcases were full of the usual thick volumes with acronyms for titles.

  I opened the door all the way.

  The couch where he’d hypnotized me was where it always was, squat and satisfied in its glory.

  Framed diplomas checkerboarding the wall. California Board of Psychology dot-dot-dot squiggle-squiggle. Who had I been then? The same girl? Didn’t feel that way. Jumping over that desk to strangle him for suggesting I’d stabbed Deacon was a million years away.

  Maybe he’d left for the day. Maybe he’d seen me with Deacon and split. Maybe he’d just gone to Alondra. Maybe Deacon was going after him tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he’d implied he was going to tear Warren apart and Elliot was safe.

  I turned that over in my head on my way to the common area with its soothing video of flowers and fields. I had the group thing in fifteen minutes, and I couldn’t talk about anything that was on my mind. Again. I saw someone I knew in the cafeteria, and I got into the food line. The bell for lunch had rung a few minutes before, and my stomach was ready.

  “Hey, sexy,” came a voice so close to me, I heard it just as I felt the body at
tached to it. Fucking Warren.

  “Get away from me,” I hissed and went to a table.

  Over his shoulder, I saw Elliot watching us. He didn’t look right. I had a second to wonder if he’d seen me with Deacon before Warren opened his stupid mouth again.

  “Your brother and I are partying on the roof tonight.” He threw himself in a chair two spaces away. Far enough away to say he wasn’t touching me. “Wanna come?”

  He said “come” with a slither.

  Jonathan clapped Warren on the back. “That shit you said? Baby’s a liar.”

  “Always has been,” Warren added with a wink, and Jonathan sat between us, slapping down his plates. “So, partying tonight?”

  “No way, dude,” Jonathan said, all bro-like. “Not going in the pokey again.”

  They laughed together, and I knew through all of Jonathan’s denials, Warren made my brother feel good, as if he was a part of something. Some boy club made especially for the adolescent son with seven sisters. Was this kid ever going to be a man?

  I looked between my brother and my rapist, and I knew all had been forgiven. Friends again. Nothing but a little roofie-laced scotch on tap for later.

  “Don’t do it,” I said to Warren.

  He just smiled. Behind him, an orderly rushed to us. He was going to pull Warren away from me. I wanted that. I wanted him as far away as possible, but I also wanted him incapacitated for my brother’s sake.

  I didn’t have time to think too deeply about what I was doing, but I wasn’t in some thoughtless rage either. I wasn’t blinded by firing glands or rushes of emotion. “Jonathan, did I ever tell you what Warren did the day I left? Why I looked kind of off?”

  “What?” he asked, poking his fork into his meat.

  Warren tilted his head, as if wondering where I was going with this. One eye narrowed. “What I did? You mean what we did?”

  Of course that was the tack he was taking. I didn’t have time for his shit. I couldn’t allow Warren to meet with Jonathan until I’d told my brother what he was dealing with.

  I very coldly stood and pivoted behind my chair. I moved it, feeling its weight. The orderly behind Warren slowed down since it looked as though I was moving away.

  I breathed and lifted the chair, quickly calculating how to swing it so it didn’t hit Jonathan. There was a scream, a tray clattering. I breathed and brought the chair down on Warren’s head. It bobbed, and he tipped off his chair, splayed on the floor.

  I grabbed a fork and jumped on him.

  In the tunnel vision of violence, I saw that I had enough time to gouge out his eyes. I could see the path of my hands and smell his blood as it splashed on my face. It would feel so good. So good. The last drug I’d ever need.

  I raised my arm to make my vision a reality. I could practically smell his psycho fucking blood. Aggression took up most of my brain, leaving no room for logic.

  I was pulled away before I even touched him. Furniture clattered and squeaked.

  I made a show of resisting, but I had no intention of going anywhere. I called his name. I kicked someone. Got away. Got caught. Flooded with endorphins and adrenaline, I saw Warren being helped up like a victim. A sad, sorry victim who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but there was enough blood going down his face to ensure a trip to the infirmary. Maybe an overnight stay.

  I felt a pinch in my arm as they shot me with a trank, and my last thought was… as successes went, this wasn’t too bad.

  56

  ELLIOT

  I wasn’t kidding myself into thinking I was Deacon Bruce. The man had a core of quiet violence I would never develop. Whatever he had in his head to do to keep Warren away from Fiona was probably more than I was capable of doing, or getting away with for that matter.

  But what I was doing wasn’t working.

  Once Fiona was subdued and Warren taken to the infirmary, I went to my boss’s office and closed the door.

  “Doctor,” she said dryly.

  “You need to do more to separate Fiona Drazen and Warren Chilton.”

  “I hear. She’s really a bag of tricks.”

  “He was standing close to her, whispering in her ear. She has PTSD from what happened. Her reaction was totally within the norm after what he did.”

  “Allegedly did.”

  I put my knuckles on the desk and leaned over it. “He needs to be in a high-security facility. Westonwood runs one in Salton Sea.”

  “Yeah. No.” She pushed her chair back and laced her fingers over her rib cage. She seemed too smug, too relaxed for the conversation. “No criminal conviction, no Salton Sea.”

  “If you won’t do something, I will. This place is a really juicy story for the Times. Psychiatric resort for the rich? They’d love to shred you.”

  “You don’t give a damn about your job at all, do you?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “All this for a patient? A single patient?” She raised an eyebrow, tapped her finger against the top of her hand.

  “Every patient counts.”

  “Tell me something. Everyone else is fine with how we’re handling it. Why are you throwing yourself in front of this?”

  “Am I the only one who cares?”

  “In what way?” She crossed her legs. She was waiting for me to admit the whole thing. Frances was wasting her time as an administrator. Given the right circumstances, she could crack a man open with her posture from ten feet away.

  “I don’t think it matters,” I said.

  But it did. Betrayal mattered. I was denying Fiona three times before the cock crowed. Frances would question me as long as I’d let her, and I’d continue to say she was just a patient until the very edges of my soul were blunted into the shape of renunciation.

  “Say it, Chapman. I’m getting bored.”

  “I’m in love with her. And you can save me the countertransference speech.”

  She leaned forward. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  She swung her computer screen around. You magazine’s website had posted a picture of Fiona and I talking over buttercups in a Koreatown coffee shop. In it, I held her hands as I told her it was all going to be all right.

  “I just wanted to hear you admit it,” she said. “But what we have going on here is enough to lose your license over. From what I can see, this was what you wanted the whole time. So congratulations.”

  “You need to separate them.”

  “Or what? You’re going to tell everyone? With your credibility shot to hell? Now you’re just a disgruntled ex-employee. I’ll let you go to your office and pack up while I inform the board.”

  She turned her computer back and typed. I backed toward the door. I had a lot to say, but no patience for the answer.

  “You know,” she said, “when I was at Loyola, they had a date rape problem they didn’t talk about.” She glanced at me long enough to say, “Jesuits,” then went back to the screen. “Big secrecy game. Like the Opus Dei, those guys. And it didn’t occur to me that someone I went on a date with wouldn’t get the signals for no—like a struggle or biting. I mean I liked the guy. Right? We’re in my parents’ basement and I’m trying to rationalize two things. I liked this guy on one hand. On the other, he’s hurting me. Even during it, I made excuses for him like, ‘He’s choking me, so I can’t say no,’ and ‘Maybe I should have said it louder when he started, but I was afraid my parents would hear because he wouldn’t…’” She stopped typing, sniffed, cleared her throat. “Just do that. Right? I must be mistaken somehow. And when I went to the school clinic the next day, you know what they said?” She made eye contact as if she expected an answer but kept talking before I could give one. “They said, ‘You’ll get over it, Frances. But he’s a shining star. It wouldn’t be fair to ruin his life over this. One. Incident.’”

  I let the story hang there for a moment, fermenting in the sour air between us.

  “I’m sorry.” I had an arsenal of right things to say in that situation. It was part of my training. But she knew m
y weapons of compassion better than I did.

  She cleared her throat again and opened her drawer. “I always leave these on the desk.” She tossed a ring of keys in front of me. “Anyone can grab them. I’m told it’s going to get me in trouble one day.”

  She went back to her work. Was this a trap? The story, the keys, the pantomime of looking away?

  “I’m glad you love her,” she said. “You both need it. Now get out of here.”

  She must have hit a button or something, because the door opened behind me. Bernie, the orderly, put his hand on my shoulder. I quietly took the keys and let myself get hauled away without thanking her.

  I had a couple of boxes of things I’d managed to grab with security’s supervision. None of my files on my patients came with me. Books, diplomas, a few knickknacks.

  I pulled over a mile outside the facility, while still in the quiet wilds of Palos Verdes, and took a deep breath.

  Well, that was fun.

  I’d associated losing everything for Fiona with loud noises and some kind of physical pain. I’d accepted it. Knowing better did nothing to reduce my mind’s commitment to the image of a hammer coming down, being hurled off a cliff, breaking bones, and a shame so all-encompassing that strangers would see it a block away. My left brain I knew that if I lost everything, I wouldn’t cease to exist. But I couldn’t imagine anything after it, and the fear had come from the black hole I’d be sucked into afterward.

  Elliot Chapman was here a minute ago. Now he isn’t anywhere.

  But I was breathing. I was sitting in my car with a normal heart rate. The birds were singing, the leaves rustling, and the world was turning the way it always did.

  I wasn’t afraid for my existence at all.

  I was afraid for Fiona. She was stuck in a ward with a vengeful psychopath, and no one was watching him. I should have done something already. I should have taken care of this instead of trying to stay on the narrow path.