Don't Let Me Die: A gripping psychological thriller

by Alex Sinclair

  “Can’t think up an excuse, can you? Do you care about me anymore?”

  “Of course I do!” he yells. His eyes flick to mine. Now the argument is about to start. “I’m out there busting my ass, seven days a week.”

  “And what am I doing? I not only work full-time, but I also keep this household going.”

  Darren waves me off. “That’s not the same as running a business. I’m responsible for ten guys. Their livelihoods depend on the decisions I make every damn day. You want to compare that to your job and this house?”

  I am expecting this. Darren’s go-to excuse for all matters is the stupid business. I’d set his precious company on fire if so much of our lives weren’t tied up in it financially. I wish we’d never funded the idea.

  I turn away, both arms still crossed, and go to leave. I can’t be bothered arguing anymore. There is no point. He doesn’t respect me enough to see things from my perspective. If he can’t understand how unimportant he makes me feel compared to his business, then maybe this marriage has run its course.

  “Emma, wait,” he says as I clear the kitchen and head for the stairs. He chases after me, and I find myself wondering why. Darren is never the sort of man to pursue me when I am angry. His typical response involves letting me cool off for a day or two. Sometimes I thought he pissed me off on purpose to secure some time to himself. Something was up.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call, but . . . ” He lets his voice trail off.

  I turn around with one foot on the steps. “What?” I ask with a furrowed brow. I can see pain in his eyes that makes me slow down for a moment. He wants to say what is in his head, so I give him one last chance to make things right.

  “We lost the contract today. It happened at lunchtime. I couldn’t stand the thought of telling you, so I didn’t call or text. I’ve just been staring at the walls at the office, not knowing what to do next.”

  My heart sinks. His contract had been six months and countless hours of preparation just to secure the deal in the first place. The real work had only been underway for the past two months. It would be a tremendous blow to the company.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I say. I walk back toward him standing in the doorway and place both hands on his forearms. “Are you okay?”

  “No. This was a huge deal. I’ve fronted a lot of money to get things going. I wasn’t going to break even until at least half of the houses were complete.”

  My mouth falls open. We never discussed anything financial to do with Darren’s company. He never wants me to take on that stress, he would say. I don’t have access to the business accounts to get a picture of where it all stood. Most people would have thought I was crazy to hand over such a large chunk of my inheritance for something I had no real clue about, but that was how much faith I had in my husband. Until now.

  “What happened?” It’s the only question my brain can handle.

  Darren shakes his head and lets out his breath. “I didn’t tell you, but a week ago, we had an accident on-site.”

  “An accident?”

  “Yeah, one of my guys fell from a frame and broke his spine. He’s in the hospital right now.”

  “Oh my God. Who was it?” I know Darren’s team well. We had company dinners every six months. Most of them live in the area.

  “Victor,” Darren says as he scratches the back of his head.

  “Jesus.” Victor was the most experienced guy he had. The man never made mistakes or had taken so much as a sick day.

  “I know. It’s messed up. I don’t understand how this happened, but he fell off the second level of one of the houses and landed right on top of a stack of lumber.”

  I groan with the pain I imagine that kind of impact would involve. Victor is in his fifties, with experience in no other profession. I lower my head as the gravity of the situation pulls me down.

  “But that’s not all.” Darren’s voice sounds shaky—something I’ve never experienced from him. My brows raise again as I stare him in the eyes. How can this get any worse?

  “He’s suing me.”

  “What? Why?”

  Darren gulps in a deep breath. “He reckons the site wasn’t up to code. Says he fell because of that.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Tell me about it. I make sure everything is done by the book. Not one thing out of place. It costs me a lot, but I make the job a safe one.”

  I move in closer, sensing his stress levels bordering on the edge. “So how can he sue you, then?”

  A nervous laugh creeps its way out of his mouth. “His lawyer got the site independently evaluated a few days after. According to them, there were several violations, meaning my insurance won’t cover any of this: his time off, his medical expenses, the lawsuit. None of it. Oh, and to top everything off, we lost the contract because of the accident. So, yeah, everything is basically fucked. How was your day?”

  My heart sinks as my head begins to spin. I stare around at our house, knowing without a doubt in my mind that if we go to court and lose, the home Darren built will be liquidated in the legal mess.

  Darren runs a hand through his hair as the other grips his side. He paces on the spot as the wrinkles across his brow thicken.

  I stop his movement and hold on tight to his sides as I stare into his eyes. “What are we going to do?”

  Six

  After.

  “That’s all the time we have for today, I’m afraid, Emma,” Doctor Shaw says. She closes her notepad and straightens her outfit. “Each day, we will pick up where you left off and build to that moment where everything changed.”

  I shake my head. “Sounds fun, Doctor,” I say, not hiding my sarcasm. “Should be a real blast.” I stand from my seat and wait for Shaw to show me back to the secured ward I belong to.

  “It’s okay to be unsure, Emma. I realize that this will not be an easy thing to relive. I could never even begin to pretend to understand what you went through, but talking about it openly, more so than you ever have before, will be a positive step forward.”

  I scratch my head for a moment as I think about what might have made Doctor Shaw choose this job over any of the million professions she is smart enough to thrive in. Why would anyone want to hear what I had to say, especially knowing the end result in advance? I disgust myself daily. Now she is expecting me to be happy to speak about the very instance my life stopped and killed off a piece of me in a single blow.

  “I’m ready to leave,” I say, not wanting to spend another second in the room. My hands clench into fists. All the while, I swear a truck might burst through the walls and kill us both in a heartbeat. It’s the disturbing mix of anger and fear I’ve come to live with.

  “Right this way, Emma. I can take you back to the ward.”

  “Thank you,” I say, relieved to not need one of the orderlies to escort me.

  We walk past the other offices and slowly move down the corridors of the hospital until we are back through the checkpoints to the noise of the other patients. The absence of this racket is the only good thing the therapy sessions provide.

  Doctor Shaw stands by the final checkpoint with one arm gripping the frame of the magnetically locking door. “Emma, before you head back inside, I’ve got a bit of news for you.”

  My stomach knots itself up. Hearing the unknown always makes me want to shrivel into a ball and die in the corner. My brain can’t handle anything new. I cower away from Shaw as if that might stop her words.

  “Nothing bad. In fact, it’s something positive: Your brother is coming for a visit. We thought it would be helpful for you to lay eyes on a familiar face for a change.”

  My mouth falls open as I try to respond. I hadn’t seen my brother in five years. Despite being twins, the last time we spoke, we were arguing over the same thing we always did: our father.

  “Have a good day, Emma. I will see you tomorrow for the next session. Rest up.”

  With that, the doctor leaves without any other bits of information r
egarding my brother. Either they don’t know about our strained relationship, or they didn’t think to ask how close we were. Figuring the whole thing to be a mistake, I ignore the thought and carry on through to the ward under the watchful eyes of another orderly.

  “Why is James coming to see me?” I ask myself out loud. It’s the only thought I will have for the rest of the day.

  Seven

  I spend the rest of the day in a numb state in the day room, mirroring the last three weeks of my life. I have the option to go outside into the winter sun, but the thought of natural lighting makes me sick.

  The blur of the day room buzzes all around. I feel like the other patients and staff are all set on ten while I run at one. They move around me with urgency while I sit motionless, waiting for the day to end so I can go back to failing in my attempts to sleep.

  There are moments, precious few hours each night, when I actually fall asleep. Those are the best minutes of my current existence. More than anything else, I want to rest in an endless gray void free from activity—free from life. It’s not until the monsters in the back of my mind seep into that private place and rip me from my slumber that I wake up with sweat soaking my clothing.

  One of the beasts pulls me from sleep at around one in the morning, dragging me to the floor in a heap. I can hear myself screaming as I attempt to claw my way under the bed, but the extra bars that run down the sides stop me from venturing under and into the safe space. I am obviously not the first person to try to escape the room under the bed.

  After a minute of reality, I calm down and remember where I am. My screaming has set off the patient across the way. His moaning then follows on to the next lost soul, until the whole ward is ripe with activity.

  The interruption to the rare quiet prompts the orderlies to rush into my room with a syringe full of suffering to dull my sense of self into oblivion, silencing my future cries for at least six more hours.

  “No!” I yell out as they grab my arms and legs. I kick and claw at what I can, not wanting the concoction of chemicals to flood my system. It will help me rest, but I won’t fall asleep.

  The needle goes in after my failed effort to stop the two hulking orderlies from doing what they had done a thousand times before. The sting of ice crawls up my veins and grabs my mind, forcing me into a stupor somewhere between awake and anesthetized.

  The two heroes of the night toss me back on the mattress and place a strap across my chest for good measure. I’m not going anywhere and have no choice but to gaze at whatever section of the wall my eyes land on.

  This is going to be another long night.

  I try to fall asleep there in my room while I stare at the walls and sense my brain cells dying from inactivity. My thoughts transition to James. I think about the day we met up before Dad’s funeral.

  It wasn’t your typical gloomy weather when my father passed away. The cliché rain and thunder from the movies were replaced by bright sunshine and inspirational conditions. I couldn’t stand the thought that people were out, enjoying their lives, when ours had just changed beyond repair.

  James and I met at a café in town. He had moved out of the area a long time ago but had no choice but to venture back into the state with the death of our father.

  We hugged before we sat down outside and settled in for a forced coffee. I wasn’t in the mood to drink even water, but I ordered the usual caffeine fix I shared with my girlfriends on the weekends when time allowed me to escape the house or the day job. Frank was still only in grade school at the time, and was in the last few years of being a young boy instead of a young man.

  “How have you been?” I asked James. The question was not one I wanted to ask, given I knew exactly how he had been. Four years earlier, he lost his fiancée to a rare form of brain cancer. Ever since that day, he had been a mess, to say the least.

  “You know,” he replied. “The usual. How about you? What’s new in the Turner household?”

  I didn’t want to answer at the time, given the struggle we had gone through. My problems are never as big as James’s, so I didn’t burden him with them.

  “Yeah, we’re okay. Just the usual as well.”

  We continued our small talk for less than five minutes. It only took the two of us a little time to catch up on several years of living. We got down to business almost immediately.

  “So, a car accident. Never saw that coming. I figured the old man would outlive us all.” I shouldn’t have been surprised by James’s comment, but I couldn’t help reacting to it. I gave him a twisted face, in a silent admonition to give Dad the respect he deserved despite the rocky relationship he had with James. My mind drifted back to the frightening arguments my father and James would have when James was eighteen. Their arguments eventually led to physical blows, prompting James to leave home.

  “What? Too soon?” he asked with both hands out wide.

  “Yes, too soon. Unlike you, I loved Dad. We actually spoke to one another outside of the main family events.”

  He waved me off. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not coming from a good place right now. You understand that. Consider it the last bad word out of my mouth about him.”

  I scoffed under my breath, not believing him. But the peace needed to be kept if we were to move forward. “Excellent, now we need to talk about Dad’s will.”

  The very mention of the will made James laugh. “What’s there to discuss? He’s leaving it all to you, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. I didn’t know how else to confirm what he would have already suspected.

  “So, what? We’re meeting up so you can brag about that?”

  “James,” I said. “Do you really think I would do that?”

  “Of course not,” he said with a partial smile still on his face. “Couldn’t resist.”

  I shook my head silently and almost reconsidered the next idea out of my mouth. “Dad has left me a large sum of money, enough to change things for Darren and me. I want you to have half of it.”

  “What?” James asked as he sat up straight. “Are you fucking serious? I don’t want that asshole’s money after what he did.” He stood, forcing the aluminum chair he was sitting on to scratch over the concrete footpath. He went to leave.

  “James, wait.” I reached out a hand and gripped his wrist. He stopped.

  “What?” He refused to face me.

  I stare into his eyes and see recent memories stabbing into his heart. When James’s fiancée died, my father tried to reach out and support him at her funeral. Inevitably, they got into an argument that took center place at the wake. James would never forgive Dad for that day.

  “It’s not coming from him; it’s coming from me,” I said.

  His shoulders relaxed a little. I saw him muttering away to himself. He turned back, breaking my grip without force. “Why would you do that?”

  A took a deep breath and exhaled. “You’ve had a rough few years. I haven’t been there for you like I should have. This money can help you in so many ways. You can’t tell me otherwise.”

  A sigh escaped through James’s bared teeth as he looked away while he sat back down. “I guess you’re right. I could use the money. God knows it would be great to move back into a real house.” He continued to stare out into the distance until he faced me again and pointed a finger. “I don’t want any handouts, though.”

  “It’s not a handout or charity, or any other bullshit like that; it’s a sister trying to help out her brother with whatever means she can.”

  He stared at me for almost twenty seconds without a word. “I’m listening.”

  That made me sit back up straight. “Please do, because I want to help you transition out of the system and get some qualified support from one of the facilities in the city.”

  James sneered a little, flaring his nostrils. “And what if I don’t want to use the money for that, huh?”

  “But this is what you need, James. It will—”

  “Bullshit. You’re just like hi
m, trying to control my life. What? You thought you’d throw money at me and solve all my problems? Well, you know what, Emma, you can’t buy me off with Dad’s cash.”

  James practically knocked the café table over as he stormed off. I yelled after him, but he refused to listen to another word. I had no choice but to let him stomp off and leave. He vanished without a trace, and never showed up at Dad’s funeral.

  That was the last time I saw him.

  Eight

  The next morning, I receive the shock of my life when I am placed down in the visiting area and told James will be in any minute.

  It’s been five years. And not just any five years. Life as I knew it had changed beyond recognition. I don’t want him to discover what I’ve become. I don’t want anyone I knew before that day to see me now, but I have no choice.

  My fingers shake underneath one of the fixed tables found in the visitors’ room. I do what I can to hide my jitters, but it is impossible to conceal what is written across my forehead.

  James strolls into the room like it was an everyday occurrence for him to visit his twin sister in the nuthouse. He doesn’t seem nervous or too concerned for his safety given the number of other lunatics who are present in the limited space.

  He comes straight toward me once he spots the husk of his sister sitting as small as possible at the cold, metal table. His confidence evaporates the moment our eyes meet. A wrinkle creases his forehead, as if the reality of visiting a family member in a psychiatric ward finally hits home.

  “Emma?” he asks, double-checking he is staring at the right person.

  I am half tempted to pretend I don’t remember him, but I also am aware the doctors are observing me during this entire interaction. They allowed this meeting to occur for their own twisted needs. Sure, one might argue they are examining me to conclude if I can benefit from a visit with a family member, but I recognize they are only trying to determine how bat-shit crazy I really am.