by Nenny May
Was it always like this?
Debby-Jane didn’t seem convinced. She looked over Paul’s shoulder to the other woman restraining his arm. “You buying this?”
“I don’t really know the dynamic around here,” The girl who’d answered was Evie, a new recruit to the center. Lisa wasn’t acquainted with the new face. But she’d heard about her from Julie who couldn’t seem to shut up about the newbies floating around like freshmen.
“The dynamic is we were walking by and heard a scream for help. Now we could either take this man to the ward or get him out of our institution.”
Lisa’s eyes squeezed shut. “Fine, get him out, he’s parked out front, but he can walk.”
Debby-Jane and Evie shared a disbelieving look.
Even she didn’t believe her own words. But she needed him to cooperate. Just until she got him outside. She would figure something out then.
He couldn’t drive himself home. Not in his state.
Neither could she drive him, not after what he’d displayed.
“You can walk, can’t you, Paul?” She’d made sure to project her voice, to lace it with that recognizable firm tone she’d used on him since their first session.
She couldn’t show a shred of fear in his presence. Not right now. He would feed off her distress. She didn’t need that.
He was unresponsive and a sweat streaked down from her forehead, mixing with the tear stains on her cheek.
She couldn’t wait to get home. She’d been through the ringer enough already.
“You’re parked outside, Paul, stop being so goddamn dramatic,” His head bobbed.
“I know you’re upset,” She rounded her table. “But we need to talk about this outside, and not in the presence of… so many people.” She eyed Debby-Jane who despite Lisa’s efforts didn’t seem like she was going to let go of Paul Campbell.
His head rose and those blue-green eyes had softened. They’d begged for help, his dried chapped lips had opened and shut, once, twice, and then she heard it, a barely audible groan. A small celebratory giggle escaped her. He was back. He wasn’t the monster that had looked at her with a murderous intent. At least at the moment, he wasn’t. She could further study the episode he’d just displayed when she got him to a more tranquil environment.
Where the hell would that be?
She turned to Debby-Jane and in a more authoritative stance, asked; “Can you both please let go of my friend?”
Evie had been the first to untangle her hands from Mr. Campbell.
“Next time don’t scream for help like that if you’re just going to push us away.” Debby-Jane released Paul who’d stumbled and straightened. “Some of us have things to do.”
“I’m sorry for the false alarm,”
Bridget who’d been yet to say anything nodded to the door.
“I’ll schedule a carpenter to come by and handle this by tomorrow.”
Paul had been shaking his head, a hand running through his ruffled hair. “I can, get that. It’s the least I can do.”
“No,” The anger that ran through her was foreign. She didn’t bother to hide it. Not only had he frightened her, but he’d almost cost her their private sessions. She wasn’t going to let him do anything more. He’d done enough.
She’d grabbed him roughly by the wrist and pulled him towards the chairs by her desk giving little concern to the opinions of Bridget, Debby-Jane, or Evie. “Ignore him, get someone to fix that before Stuart sees it and makes me the topic of conversation in the breakroom.”
Bridget nodded. Lisa hadn’t noticed it before, but the woman had her hands folded over her chest in a reproving manner.
“What time would you be in tomorrow?”
The floor secretary wanted to know. She’d sounded tired. Lisa would have liked to sound the same, would have liked to not have her heart rate skyrocket because of the patients she’d faced during her work day.
“I’ll call before I come in, but please have it fixed before I come in.”
And with that she’d turned Paul Campbell.
He’d looked at her like a child anticipating a scolding. She didn’t even know if she had it in her to reprimand him.
“Can you please give us some privacy?” She returned to her desk and begun packing up her things.
The tremors had subsided, and she’d only just noticed. She hadn’t looked up but listened to the retreating steps of the three women.
When what was left of her door clicked shut, she released a breath.
“I’m sorry for that interruption, as you can see, I was about leaving for the day,” She gestured to her bag. If indeed he’d been in a delusional state, he wouldn’t have any memory of his actions. She might as well pick it up from before he’d lost ‘consciousness’.
“Caught you just in time I guess,” He made an attempt to sound optimistic. It wasn’t working.
“If you chose to look at it like that,” Lisa shrugged and shoved her phone into her bag. “Now tell me, what exactly brought you here this evening, Mr. Campbell?”
“She’s missing,” He buried his head in his hands. “I checked our hotel, her home in Portland…” He’d been to Portland? There was enough time. He’d just confirmed it. Enough time for a delusional Paul to commit the heinous crime and return to his Portland home. “The house sitter, Danielle is there, but she isn’t and… God… she can’t find out what I did, she’ll leave me for good.”
His thoughts, words were all over the place. He’d greatly recovered from his delusional episode, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still hysterical.
She wouldn’t be able to make a diagnosis if he didn’t get a hold of his feelings. If he gave room to another episode, this time costing her life. She needed to keep him calm, collected. “Who is she? And if ‘she’ is missing, I think it would be wise to put out a missing’s person’s report.” She picked up and skimmed over the documents scattered on her desk and shoved them into her bag as well. “Or do you want to talk about what you did?”
He shook his head. Claire wasn’t in any danger, he was. He was at risk of losing her. He couldn’t imagine what he would do if he were to lose the woman, he’d been with for three-years of his life. “She’s my fiancé, Claire Fisher. And I don’t think she’s in trouble, I… we got into a fight and I ignored her, and I thought she returned to Portland, but I drove there, and she wasn’t there.”
“Have you tried calling?”
“Of course, I have, but all I get is voicemail!” His voice boomed; she was startled by his outburst. Her fingers curled around her bag.
This couldn’t be happening again.
His mood was all over the place. It wasn’t enough to make a singular diagnosis.
However, combining what she knew from his last session with his episode, she was inclined to believe he could be suffering Manic Depression, though she would need more time to be firm on that decision.
She hadn’t flinched despite being taken aback, rather she’d pinned him with a disapproving glare, one that egged him to reach into his pockets for his phone. His eyes widened and his lips had been pressed in a thin line.
He didn’t bother with a response, rather pressed the phone against his ear, his expression blanked as he rose and let himself out of her office.
Her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted in a sigh of relief.
Even though this was only the beginning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The morning after…
He needed to speak with Lisa Patterson. He hadn’t gotten much of an opportunity after blacking out in her office. After stirring, head heavy and lulled, tongue dry, a bile trapped in his throat to nurses grasping onto his arms, keeping him upright. He hadn’t been able to utter a peep, he’d been waiting for his eyes to adapt to her sharply lit office.
He couldn’t deny that hadn’t been a fantasy of his, a fetish… it had. Waking to two naughty, scantily clothed nurses, arms wrapped around his, ready to do whatever it took to satisfy him…
Though he found it hard to believe the women fully clothed in scrubs that had dug their nails into him cared about his satisfaction. When they’d spoken, it sounded as though they were under water. Or maybe he was. He sure as hell felt like the time he’d almost drowned at Marine Park… or Elmore park, or whatever the place was called now. He wasn’t sure what they intended to do to him, but Lisa Patterson had done everything in her power to get those nurses to unhand him despite the raw fear that had been etched on her creased features.
Dazed and confused, he hadn’t known whether to thank her and reschedule their appointment or leave her be, she’d seemed… disgruntled. He’d been tempted to linger, to steady his feet and ask why her eyes had begged for him to get the hell out her office. He’d racked his brain, forced it to tug on what had happened after he’d let himself into the Wellness Center. He remembered the drive, the walk past the front doors, up the stairs to the second floor and past the floor secretary’s empty table. Everything afterwards was a smudge.
He didn’t have it in him to return to Claire Fisher. To their hotel on 3rd Street. After making doughnuts around 9th Street and the 101 at fifty-five miles per hour, the night spreading its pitch-black wings over the small town, the moon peeking from behind sullen clouds, a fist running through Lisa Patterson’s office wall replaying on reruns behind his eyes, he’d heard her brittle voice again. Not Lisa’s. Claire’s. Her words had jabbed through his strained recollections of his episode. The raw fear that had gripped him waking up in the tight embrace of two women in scrubs was yet to pry its fingers out of his skin.
“I don’t matter anymore, do I?” His eyes had leaped to where she’d been staring straight ahead, occupying the passenger seat. She hadn’t bothered to put on her seatbelt this time. She’d become more courageous. It sparked a flame of resentment in him. This wasn’t even how the real Claire Fisher acted. At least she had the decency to comport herself. This… thing his mind made up was nothing like his fiancé.
Why the hell couldn’t she leave him be? Certainly, he’d cheated, trudged all they’d built through the mud and disrespected her, but was that enough for a fictional version to ride with him everywhere he went? To trail him like a shadow he couldn’t help but loathe?
Anyone he told about the Claire Fisher he was seeing, talking to, would chuck him in the same loony-bin his mother was flung into. She was pegged as crazy the minute she confided in someone, anyone that her husband was speaking to her from beyond the grave. Tillamook Times had been the first to carry the article. Local Skank Diagnosed With Schizophrenia. The shame that had washed over him couldn’t be forgotten. She was ridiculed, shunned from society, forced to live a lonesome life in her Tillamook manor.
And what was worse, for a moment, he’d thought the same… That she was in dire need of an intervention. He’d spent his teenage years pleading with her to see someone, talk to someone…In his defense, she’d lugged around a picture frame. Brought it to the dinner table, to the living room, took it for walks down the street… No wonder they didn’t have neighbors. No one wanted to live next to the woman who took portraits for a walk. He didn’t have friends because whenever they would come over, she would be with that damned portrait of his father, speaking to it as if it were real! He wasn’t crazy. She was. The Detectives had been right about that even if he’d been too hardheaded to see it. Blake Campbell was crazy and that’s probably what got her killed.
Why then had she been clothed in a wedding dress? Her wedding dress from all the wedding pictures with his father? Nothing about her death made sense. Nothing after her death made sense either.
He took his eyes off her and swerved nearly rearing the bumper of a Toyota Corolla. Sticking his hand out of the window, the driver of the navy-blue car let him know just how displeased he was by Paul’s errant driving. “You don’t. My fiancé does.” He clenched his jaw. Is this what it had come to? He was talking to nothing… to a figment of his guilty mind. To the imaginary Claire Fisher his mind concocted in an attempt at punishing him for his own wrongdoings. He’d cheated ergo the mental image of a heartbroken fiancé plaguing him. “You’re in my head, you’re not real.”
He wasn’t like his mother. She never once tried to fight the voice of his father… She’d listened to it, fed it and let it morph into something dark and sinister. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake. He would get rid of the Claire Fisher he’d concocted…he just… didn’t know how.
Pity and concern swirled in his gut. This was the woman he was going to marry. His other half, his forever. He couldn’t face her. At least not yet. That night, he’d returned to American Angels. He didn’t know where else to go. Susanne had been in the middle of a hell shift when he’d wandered through the doors. The crowd had been massive. Tables were occupied, booths as well. The bar had people seated and leaned over it. Bodies thrashed and grinded against each other.
Music thumped; he could feel it on his skin. But he was tired, too tired to kick and shove his body around under the pretense of dancing the night away. His mother was murdered, he had an imaginary fiancé haunting him for cheating and the police department… he couldn’t even get started on that matter. The detectives on his mother’s case were confused and scatter brained. The man… Detective Dawson… was it? Had believed Paul had killed his mother… Why the hell would he kill her? Why in the bloody hell would he kill her?
“What are you looking at, Punk?” A man asked. He was tall, broad shoulders and beefy with an uncomfortable bleached beard. He’d been wearing a pair of sunglasses and carried around a little beard comb between the scratchy locks of hair on his face. Why had he worn sunglasses in a dim bar? The man took quick steps towards Paul by the entrance.
“Hit him,” Claire urged. He hadn’t glanced at her, but he could hear her over his shoulder. He could feel her warm breath on the back of his neck, the hairs at his nape standing on end.
Tilting his head, Paul glanced over the man’s attire. He didn’t dress like a local that was for sure. The skin tight jeans paired with the checkered shirt and boots… It wailed Texas cowboy. Perhaps the man had wandered into the small town by accident? Tillamook locals were casual jeans and at best a plain T. Taking things a little over the top, they were leather jackets. Flannels weren’t selling all that well. He tried to side step the man oozing of one too many shots under Susanne’s voluptuous influence.
He needed to speak with her, to get her to swear to secrecy. What they’d done was a mistake. He needed to alleviate the guilt that manifested the imaginary woman that pursued him relentlessly.
An arm curled around his. It was reflex, the way his fist had connected with the man’s jaw… Only it felt more like a thin flakey wall… he couldn’t get that image out of his head… had he done that? Was that why Lisa Patterson’s features had been distorted with fear? Drawing back, he glared at his quivering fist. His eyes flickered to the man; blood ran down his busted lip. He’d fallen to the floor, glaring up at a startled Paul. He didn’t have a drop of blood on his hand. His heart jackhammered in his chest. Dust. He unclenched his fist. Dust rained down his knuckle.
Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t get his breath to his lungs. Who the hell was that man? Paul wiped his hands down on his pant leg.
“Are you deaf or something?” Susanne was agitated. “I said come with me.” She tugged him to the back of the bar through a door marked employees only and up a flight of stairs. “My dad isn’t home so; you can stay here tonight.” She rummaged through her apron for what he assumed to be the keys. How had his hands been covered with dust and wooden residue when the man’s lips bled? He’d seen the blood… hadn’t he? “You’re causing too much of a ruckus,” She pushed open the door and pulled him in. Flicking on the light, she turned, on her way out the way she’d come. She paused. “Stay here, get cleaned up and be out by before noon.”
“You’re not going to stay?” His eyebrows dipped. What in God’s name was he doing? He was meant to stay away from her, not recall the feeling
of her warm skin against his… He’d returned to her, not to continue where they left off… although the idea was enticing, he’d driven all the way over because he needed to put an end to what he started. He needed to make sure Claire Fisher two-point-zero didn’t manifest out of nowhere again.
“Look, Paul, what we did last time you were here… it was fun… it was…everything I could ask for… but it was a mistake.” She searched his eyes. He nodded.
“Yeah, of course.” He scratched the back of his head. “Goodnight, Susanne, and… thanks,” She smiled.
Shutting the door, he’d been left to his own thoughts. Nothing good ever came from that.
The room she’d left him was an apartment, a loft. He assumed it belonged to her father. Who was her father anyway? The walls were a shade of blue that was unsettling to Paul. The couch was grey, stained with what he could only accept to be ketchup. The coffee table scattered with an abandoned mug and a day-old newspaper, was made from the same walnut that ran over the walls of American Angels. The television in the corner was off. The kitchen sink was overflowing with dishes. The countertops scattered with cereal boxes. He couldn’t see the room from where he was standing, he would need to climb up the stairs, but he could bet it would parallel the rest of the home.
He didn’t have the eagerness to embark on that adventure. He needed to speak with Lisa Patterson. He wasn’t content with the way they’d left things. She was after all the only one he knew that wouldn’t judge him. She wouldn’t see him as a killer the way Detective Dawson did. She wouldn’t chuck him into some psychiatric ward if he were to confide in her… would she?
He wouldn’t fit in at a ward. He wasn’t like the others; he wasn’t psychotic or sociopathic. He didn’t have dangerous tendencies like the others. He was in control of his own mind... He glanced at Claire over his shoulder. She’d been leaned over the couch, skimpily clothed in that red dress of hers he liked so much, the one that cupped her ass perfectly… Semi-control of his mind for what it was worth. People in a ward were beyond rescue. He wasn’t at rock bottom… yet. He just had a little hiccup. Lisa could do something. She could help him get rid of the guilt he felt. It was guilt wasn’t it?