by JB Duvane
I had spent the last few years believing that it was me that he really wanted. After all, it was me he stared at while he came inside of her.
But I had been so wrong. His heart was not with me, and it never would be. I slowly opened the medicine cabinet without making a sound, and rummaged through the bottles of prescription pills inside. I didn’t know what most of them were, but I knew some were sleeping pills and some were pain killers. Being my mother's daughter made me very familiar with the pharmaceutical names of those particular pills.
I also knew that if I took enough of them, my pain would end.
I carefully opened the lid to a bottle of high dosage oxycodone and dumped the whole thing into my palm. Then, silently padding to the doorway, I checked on Max again. While his back was turned to me I tilted my head back, dumping some of pills in, then dipping my head under the faucet to wash them down. I repeated that a few more times until I had swallowed the whole bottle. Tears streamed down my face as I emerged from the bathroom.
Max approached me, slipping the rope back over my wrists.
"Are you through?" he asked.
I nodded. I was through with everything.
"Ok, then. I think it's best that we separate for now. I'll be taking you back downstairs."
“No!”I sobbed as he pulled me down the hall and toward the basement steps. "You can't leave me down there!” I sobbed. "You can't! Please, please don't!" I was terrified that he was going to leave me down there forever. "Please, Max! Please don’t take me down there!”
He said nothing, opening the basement door and gently but firmly pushing me down the stairs and into the room.
I screamed as he shut the door and turned the lock, crumpling onto the cold floor below me.
Chapter 15 - Max
I flipped on the television to drown out the screaming coming from the basement.
My head was pounding and I couldn't think straight. Emily was a murderer, and it was all my fucking fault. The girl was already a mess before any of this happened, and now she was going to have to live with what she had done for the rest of her life. I knew I wasn’t the most ethical psychologist, but I had enough experience to know that Emily was not a sociopath. The girl obviously had feelings, and she felt remorse—which meant this was going to weigh on her the rest of her life.
As horrified as I was by what she had done, there was no way I could turn her in. I just needed time to think. Time to figure out what I was going to do with her. I wanted to help her. I truly wanted her to get better.
I remembered the times that I happened to be at her mother's house while Emily was home on holiday from school. She would saunter into the kitchen and I would flirt with her, asking her about school and her friends, asking her how she had gotten to be so pretty. I had convinced myself at the time that it was innocent, but I know now that it was more than harmless flirting. I meant it at the time and I knew it. I wanted her then, and I still want her now. Even after what she’s done.
Even at the funeral, she showed an obvious interest in me and I still played along, leading her to believe that she could get me if she just acted grown up enough. I was playing games just as much as she was. But what I was really doing was playing with her life. I should have anticipated something would happen.
Emily thrilled me in ways that nobody else ever had. Not even her mother. I had been in love with Amelia, but she was different. She had a hardness to her that could never be softened, no matter how hard I tried. She seemed to thrive on the danger she put her own life in on a daily basis and the thrill of tricking me into being her drug dealer. Emily was never anything like her—and on top of it she had everything I loved about Amelia.
But she wasn't mine to toy with. She was and is a fucking child and she had known what she was doing that night. The night I may as well have fucked her while she watched her mother and me from the hallway. She had never experienced anything even close to love from either of her parents, and I took advantage of that. I’d taken advantage of plenty of patients throughout my career, but this was too much. It was all too much. I had no idea who the hell I was anymore.
I got up to fix myself a drink in the kitchen, and on the way back I stopped in the bathroom. I washed my face then ran my hand over a couple days of facial hair growth while I looked in the mirror. I hated the person I saw looking back at me. I didn’t know when I had become such a monster, but that’s exactly what I was. I wasn’t saving lives, I was ending them right and left.
I opened the medicine cabinet to find something for my headache and when I picked up one of the bottles of oxycodone to look behind it, I realized it was empty. I opened it up and was astounded to see that every pill was all gone. It was the highest mg dosage available and had to be used under close supervision. There had been enough in there to bring down a team of men.
When I returned to my den, I switched on the monitor so that I could see what Emily was doing in the basement. The thrashing had ceased, and I no longer heard her voice. When the screen displayed the scene downstairs, all I could see was Emily curled up in a ball on the floor, writhing and shivering with a pool of fluid collecting on the floor near her mouth.
She had taken the pills.
I rushed down the stairs and found Emily on the floor in a puddle of her own vomit.
“Emily!” I yelled, shaking her shoulders and slapping her face. Her head just bobbed from side to side and her eyes didn’t open. I picked her up and ran up the stairs with her in my arms. If she died I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
I took her up to the bathroom and set her down on the floor, her body immediately slumping to one side up against the bathtub.
“Please don’t leave me, Emily!” I felt for her pulse and checked to see if she was breathing. “I need you!” Tears filled my eyes. “I need you to stay with me.”
She hadn’t been down there more than twenty minutes and she had to have taken the pills right before I had moved her back down there. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been to leave all those drugs in the bathroom where she had access to them. I wasn’t used to keeping any of the girls up here with me and it just didn’t occur to me to clean out the bathroom. Besides, I hadn’t even dreamed that she would try to kill herself.
I rummaged through the drawers and found a syringe and some naloxone, then set everything up next to her on the floor. She had a very weak pulse and I could barely detect any breath sounds so I gave her CPR for a minute, then filled the syringe and shot it into her arm. Within seconds she was gasping and shaking her head back and forth on the floor.
“Emily,” I yelled again. “Emily, you have to listen to me! Did you take all the pills in that bottle?”
Her eyes were still closed even though she was much more active—thrashing her arms and legs around.
“Emily!” I yelled as I slapped her face.
“Y-yes.”
I pulled her up into a sitting position and leaned her against the bathtub, then found something I could use to induce vomiting again.
“You have to take this, Emily.” I pulled her mouth open and got her to swallow some charcoal pills, then gave her another injection. She still had a lethal dose of opiates in her body and I needed to get as much out as possible before it all absorbed into her blood stream.
I held her for over an hour while she alternated between throwing up into the toilet and laying on the cold tile floor. Then when it seemed that everything was out of her system I cleaned her up and carried her to the bed.
“Max,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Max.” Tears filled her eyes as she looked up at me.
“I know.” I brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. “Don’t think about any of it now. Just rest.”
Emily closed her eyes and smiled.
“What are you smiling about?” I asked, my lips still hovering near her face.
“You kissed me.”
“Yes.” I closed my eyes and touched my forehead to hers. “I kissed you.”
I left her alone for a moment while I cleaned out the bathroom. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. I took everything out of the medicine cabinet and drawers that could even remotely serve as a poison. As well as any scissors or anything sharp. I put everything in my room and locked the door that led from there into the bathroom, then spent the rest of the day sitting with Emily.
I checked her vital signs every hour to make sure she was okay. I felt completely responsible for everything. I hated myself for the way I treated her. I couldn’t just let my guard down. I had to make sure she knew her place with me first. I had been an utter bastard and I was going to do everything in my power to take care of her. Then, once she was better I’d figure out how the hell I was going to start acting like a fucking human being.
Chapter 16 - Emily
I didn’t know if I was awake or if it was a dream. Max was there. His arms were around me and we were drifting across the floor while an orchestra played in the background. I didn’t know the steps but it didn’t matter. My feet didn’t even seem to move a step as Max and I twirled around in circles. When I looked up at him his eyes were twinkling like the stars in the sky behind him and he bent down and kissed my forehead.
I was filled with a feeling of love. I had never felt it so strongly and it seemed to travel through every inch of my body. I could feel his love for me coursing through me in waves.
He really does love me, I thought as my eyes fluttered open.
The harsh light of reality made me squint and everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours hit me like a ton of bricks. Telling Max about what I’d done, the basement, the way he’d looked at me with such hatred, and the handful of pills. After laying there with my eyes closed for another few minutes I tried to open them again. I didn’t understand where I was. It didn’t feel like that horrible room. The bed felt soft and there was so much light I had to shield my eyes.
“How are you feeling?”
The sound of Max’s voice sent a shiver down my spine. I let my arm rest on my eyes to block everything out and tried to think.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You don’t remember?”
I turned my head toward his voice and opened my eyes again. “I took some pills …”
“And you vomited them up. If I hadn’t seen the empty bottle I wouldn’t have known until it was too late. You’ve been unconscious for days. You almost died, Emily.” Max was sitting in a chair near the bed—his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“Yeah, so?” His voice sounded softer somehow—with a gentleness that I hadn’t heard before. But still, I knew how much he hated me. I knew I’d never win him back, so what was the point of even trying.
“Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten in days. I was going to hook you up to an IV if you didn’t wake up soon.”
“Not really.”
“Well, will you eat a little … for me?”
I kept my head turned toward him but didn’t look up into his eyes. “Okay. I’m thirsty.”
Max helped me sit up a little and brought a glass of water to my lips. He held it there for me while I took little sips, wincing with every swallow. The muscles in my stomach and skin in my throat were both incredibly sore.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“A little, but I’m okay.”
“Do you think you could swallow some yogurt?” I nodded my head but still kept my eyes down on the bedspread. Max opened up a container that he had on the table next to the bed and dipped a spoon in. I felt better after taking a few bites of the yogurt. It felt nice and cool on my throat. “Do you like that?”
I nodded. I felt like I was being treated like a child but I couldn’t help but love the feeling since it was Max. Having him take care of me like this made me feel like he actually cared. But then thinking about everything that had happened made every muscle in my body cringe. “You should have just let me die.”
“I don’t want you to die, Emily.”
“I fucked everything up.” I was still so weak that I could barely get the words out. “It’s never going to be the same.”
“That’s not true, at all. Besides, maybe I don’t want things to be like they were.”
“Well, the bottom line is you don’t want me here, so what difference does it make?”
“What do you mean ‘I don’t want you here?’ I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t.”
“But that was before—“ My words caught in my throat and I started to cry. I heard the chair move closer to the bed, then I felt Max’s hand brush my bangs off my forehead, but I couldn’t look at him. I was humiliated.
“I still want you here with me. I don’t want you to go anywhere.”
“You mean down in that room in the basement? Do you want to keep me down there?” My head was turned away from him again. His voice sounded different today but I couldn’t bear the thought of looking into those eyes that had looked at me with such hatred. “I guess it’s better than going to jail.”
“Emily,” he started but then paused for a moment. “Will you please look at me?”
I slowly turned my head, pausing a little while to stare at the shadows on the ceiling. I was terrified. Every ounce of my being wanted Max—had wanted him for years. Even now. Even after I’d been held down in that horrible room, I was still willing to let him have his way with me. Just as long as he didn’t make me leave. I felt pathetic.
When I finally looked over at Max he was sitting up but he was still hunched over with his elbows on his knees. His eyes were filled with concern and had dark circles underneath. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I just stared into those dark eyes for a while, trying to work up the courage to ask him if he really had kissed me or if that was just a dream. A part of the peace that took over my body when the drugs hit my system.
“I’m not going to turn you over to the police. I don’t think that will help you at all. But I do think you need help, Emily.”
“I’m a total fucking mess, aren’t I?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. What I did was wrong too—I admit that. What I’m saying is that I don’t think either a jail or a mental hospital are going to provide you with the support you need. I’ve seen how strong you are and I believe that you can get better … and I want to be the one to help you.”
“You mean, you want me to stay here as your patient?”
“Yes.”
“Like my mother was your patient?”
Max paused for a moment and looked down at his hands.
“Emily, I want to make something clear right now. Nothing that has gone on between us has been anything like what went on between your mother and me.” He looked back up at me and the seriousness in his eyes took my breath away. “There is no comparison between the two of you. You are different people and I have felt very different about each of you. I am not trying to replace her with you.
“I’ve been thinking about everything that has happened over the last few years and I know that a lot of what I’ve done has come from a dark place. But the way I feel about you? You’re the only person that has made me genuinely happy in years. There are certain things that happened between us that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind—“
“You mean that night? When I watched you and my mother from the hallway?”
Max stopped talking and looked surprised. “So, you do remember that night?”
“Of course I do. I’ve thought about it for years too. I fell in love with you that night. All I could think about while I was watching you—and every night since then—is what it would feel like to be my mother. To have you inside me and to have one-hundred percent of your attention on me. I found out once I got here and it wasn’t anything like I had imagined it would be. It didn’t feel the same as it did that night—even with you not touching me at all. Ever since I’ve been here you’ve felt like you were miles away instead of inside me.” I looked back up at the ceiling for a moment to gather my courag
e. “Did you kiss me, Max? I don’t know if it was a dream or—“
“Yes, after I brought you to bed I kissed your forehead. You smiled.”
“It made me happy.” I turned and looked into his eyes. “It’s all I’ve wanted since I’ve been here—it’s all I’ve wanted for years. To feel as close to you as I did that night. But instead I feel like I’ve been pushed further away every time I’m near you.”
“I’m sorry. You’re not the only one that’s a mess, Emily.”
“Will you kiss me now?”
Max looked down and continued to stare at his hands for a long time. “I think for now it’s best if you just rest. Your body went through a lot with the overdose and—“
“That’s bullshit. Why won’t you let me get close to you, Max? Why do you want me here if you don’t want to have anything to do with me? I’m just a warm hole for you to stick your cock in, I guess.” I was still so weak that what I said barely came out above a whisper but I was so frustrated I was on the verge of crying again.
“That’s not true, and you know it. Please, Emily. Why don’t you try to get some more sleep and we can talk about this later? I’m exhausted and I really could use some sleep myself.”
“Okay,” I said. I watched Max get up from the chair and walk to the door.
“I’ll be in to check on you in a little while. Do you need anything?”
“No.”
Max went through the door and closed it behind him, then I heard the lock on the door click.
I didn’t really understand what was going on with him. I felt like from the beginning I’d gotten nothing but mixed signals and vague answers to my questions.