by Pace, Pepper
Angel pulled back. He stared at her so closely that she could see his blue eyes flitting back and forth from one of her eyes to the other.
He shook his head. “No, we didn’t stop it. It’s happening now.”
A jolt ran through her. Leslie closed her eyes; a feeling of sickness suddenly overcoming her. She felt herself falling back onto her bed and this time there were no hands to stop her. When she could open her eyes again she saw that Angel had disappeared. Her bedroom was now filled with strange images that she couldn’t make sense of. Sometimes she thought that she was asleep and at other times she felt that she was awake but in a strange place. There was a sound, steady and rhythmic. Eventually it caused her to drag open her eyes.
She wasn’t in her bedroom.
Leslie tried to open her mouth and call out. She felt as if she was under water, swimming her way up to the surface. Everything moved slowly; she reacted slowly and when she called out, no words came forth. There was a tube in her mouth, snaking down her throat. She blinked her eyes and tried to focus.
She was in a room and on her right was a door with several doctors milling about. She reached up to take the tube from her mouth but her hand wouldn’t move. She tried to focus and saw that she was strapped down. Panic began to envelope her and because of it she had difficult time breathing.
Leslie tried again to call out for help but felt as if she would choke instead on the tube that was running down her throat. She tried kicking, maybe she could catch someone’s attention but her feet wouldn’t move. Leslie began panting as her eyes bulged; she couldn’t’ breathe, she couldn’t move…
An attendant glanced over and saw her struggling. He hurried into the room with a pleasant smile on his face. “You’re awake. Sorry about that hon, let’s get this out of your mouth.” She tried to gulp down air but couldn’t, tried to speak, but couldn’t. The man picked up a remote, pressed a button and the bed began to rise. He seemed to be moving so slow when she was gulping down small snatches of air and suffocating!
“It’s ok. We’ll have this out of you in no time.” He sat down on the side of the bed and Leslie felt sweat pour down her face. He gripped the tube. “Cough for me.” She gagged for him and then out came the tube in a stream of slime. She gulped in air and collapsed back against the pillow.
“Sorry about that. We try not to ever let you wake up with the tube in. As a matter of fact, we hope that you don’t remember having a breathing tube.” She pulled against the restraints and the man moved to undo them. “That’s so that you don’t rip the tube out. Its reflex, everyone tries to do it.”
She opened her mouth to speak and her voice came out cracked, her throat was sore. “Wh-why am I here?” He smiled carefully.
“You’re doctor will be in shortly, I’m just a nurse’s aide.” The man gave her hand a gentle pat. This is not the first time you’ve had your stomach pumped. I think you know the routine, IV first and then liquid diet for 24 hours.” Stomach pumped? She gave the man a questioning look. He picked up the remote. “Press this button if you need anything.” He left the room and Leslie lay in bed confused and tired. Despite her resolution to stay awake for a doctor, her eyes began to droop and soon she was sleeping.
The next time that she awoke, Leslie was in a very familiar room. It always made her feel faint when reality and her dreams collided. She looked down at her arms but they weren’t restrained. Her memory felt fuzzy…why was she here? She remembered the remote’s call button and pressed it. As she waited for someone to come, Leslie tentatively climbed out of bed. The IV was still in her arm and she considered pulling it out and running away. But no…she wouldn’t panic. She looked around the small, familiar room that she had seen in her dreams so many months before. No flowers…
Glenn hadn’t sent her flowers…what did that mean? Was it significant? She wasn’t restrained either. Things weren’t the same…
“Hi, I’m Jen; I’m your nurse for the next….six hours, 12 minutes.” Leslie spun and saw a hefty woman wearing white pants and a colorful hospital staff shirt. “Do you need to go to the restroom? I can help you.”
“Why am I here?” Her voice sounded like she had a bad case of laryngitis and her hand moved reflexively to her throat.
“You don’t remember?” The nurse tilted her head and Leslie knew that the look was fake. This woman had no intentions of telling her why she was here. “Well your doctor will be here shortly and I’m sure we’ll get some answers for you then.”
Leslie gave her a disgusted look. She knew, she had files…and months ago Leslie might have demanded answers and caused a scene. Now…the fear of her vision kept her docile. The woman led her to the restroom and then got her settled back into bed.
“I’d like to leave.” She said after careful thought.
“Oh.” The nurse gave her an uneasy look. “You can’t, hon. You’re on 72 hour hold.”
Chapter 7
It was three hours before her doctor would appear. He was a small man of Middle Eastern descent.
“Hello. I am Dr. Budev.” He didn’t offer to shake her hand but he did have a pleasant smile on his face.
I am a bug under a magnifying glass, she thought. She figured that they’d only had her for about 20 hours. They could only have her for fifty more…
“Dr. Budev,” she gave him a grim look. “No one will tell me why I’m here.”
He sat down in a chair that was next to her bed. “Miss Wilke did you try to commit suicide?”
Now she did look at him in surprise. “What?!”
“There was quite a bit of Fentanyl in your system…a lethal dose.”
“Fentanyl! That’s the drugs that my grandmother used to take!” She was shaking her head. “Someone stole that a long time ago, at my grandmother’s funeral. I know it was my Uncle!”
Dr Budev consulted a folder. “Mr. Monty Wilke. Yes, he called the police.” He looked at her. “It’s what saved your life. Had he not called them we would not have gotten to you in time.” Her eyes wanted to pop from her head.
“He was the one that poisoned me!”
“What do you mean?” He asked carefully.
“My Uncle molested me when I was a kid.” Dr. Budev opened his folder again.
“I see. And how long did this last?”
Leslie sank back into her bed and scowled. “Dr. Budev…am I here because you think I tried to commit suicide, or because you think I’m crazy?”
He closed the folder. “When the hospital suspects suicide then you can be held for an evaluation. In your case you have exhibited some other symptoms that concerned your Uncle-” Her mouth gaped opened.
“Um, concerned my Uncle; the child molester?!”
“Yes, he told us about those allegations.” Dr. Budev watched her closely. “Leslie, your Uncle believes that you may have been exhibiting symptoms of paranoia.”
So many things rushed to her mind but she bit them back. “I see.”
“You have experienced a childhood trauma with the loss of your parents which may have brought on post traumatic stress disorder; which would be the reason for your muteness. Then add to that a history of drug and alcohol abuse and self mutilation, and we have the ingredients for mental illness. In the past you’ve been hospitalized for an overdose. You are also a cutter.” His eyes scanned her face, taking in her scars.
She met his eyes with an unwavering stare.
“Your Uncle believes that your recent arrest may have put you over the edge.”
She glared at the doctor. “Would you like me to tell you what really happened, Dr. Budev?”
“Please.” He crossed his legs and continued to watch her as if she were a semi-interesting show on television.
“My parents died when I was five and it took me a long time to want to talk. My Uncle took advantage of that until I finally had to begin talking in order to threaten to tell on him! I felt like a…shell after my parents died. And after what he did to me, I felt less than that. So for a long time I tried t
o find something…anything to make me feel. So yeah, I turned to drugs and I cut.” She felt her eyes sting as she dredged up these memories. She touched the scar on her brow. “I used to wear many piercings, but I pulled those out the very next day after my grandmother died. I guess it was a way to punish myself, or to feel something, but it was also a way for me to reject what I used to be. I haven’t cut since. You can look at my scars…their all old. And as far as drug use…I don’t even take allergy medicine. I’m clean. My Uncle poisoned me, and I know that with every fiber of my being!”
“Why do you think that he would do that, Leslie?”
She felt herself panic. His calm demeanor seemed to indicate that he didn’t believe her…
“Because after my grandmother’s funeral my Uncle tried to take the house that she had left me in her will and I finally did what I should have done long ago. I told. I screamed it out to everyone there.”
Dr. Budev consulted his folder. “Yes. There were several accounts of what appeared to be a minor mental breakdown after your grandmother’s funeral, where you made everyone leave your home.”
“Dr. Budev you have a folder of things that happened, told by my Uncle-”
“No, not just your Uncle, others present after the funeral have spoken about the events of that day.” He closed the folder. “Leslie, why do you think your Uncle poisoned you?”
“This is insane…how would he know that I was going to commit suicide? Would I really call him if he had just had me arrested?! He poisoned me!” She felt tears build up in her eyes. “Don’t you get it?! Because I told on him! He said I ruined his life…He came to the house! He let himself in, and that’s probably when he poisoned something…the Arnold Palmer!”
“The what?” His calm demeanor was maddening.
“The drink. There is lemonade and iced tea mixed together in my fridge. I drank it that night and began feeling sick. If you send someone to the house then it can be investigated! My Uncle is just doing this because I told on him!”
“You told on him at your grandmother’s funeral…over a year ago?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Leslie, your Uncle says that you have made up these allegations. It’s your Uncle’s belief that you are suffering from paranoia.”
“I can’t believe you’ll put me in the mental ward because the man I accused of molesting me says that I’m paranoid!”
“That’s not the reason you’re here. You’re here for attempted suicide and…because you have exhibited symptoms of serious mental illness-”
“This is crazy!” She exclaimed.
“Calm down.”
She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “It’s hard to calm down when someone accuses you of a suicide that you didn’t even attempt.”
“Leslie, what we hope to accomplish here is to give you an evaluation. Here you will have an opportunity to speak to our counselors, maybe even be prescribed a course of medication that may help you. Believe me, if this is all a misunderstanding we will get to the bottom of it.”
She pictured the dream…the vision. She just needed to get to the end of the 72 hours.
***
Leslie spent the next twenty four hours in counseling rehashing the molestation, the period of time when she was mute, her cutting…every bad thing that she wanted to forget. When she was not in counseling she was in a drug induced sleep. She wanted so badly to see Angel but her dreams were empty. She began to understand that taking drugs created empty dreams; it’s why she had seldom seen him when she was a teen…
After one particularly grueling session Leslie returned to her room and spotted flowers sitting on the windowsill. She hurried to them and picked up the card. It was from Glenn. She remembered the envelope that was sitting on the stereo at home. Once upon a time she thought she’d have to show someone that letter to prove that she wasn’t crazy…now she thought that the contents of it would prove that she was….
The last day of her stay, Leslie was called to the counselor’s office where a policeman was waiting for her. She was scared. They were going to arrest her while she was in 72 hour hold?!
“Miss Wilke, I’m Officer Hoffman. I’d like to talk to you about your Uncle Monty Wilke.” The officer told her that her Uncle was being investigated based on the allegations that she had brought against him. Neighbors had seen him entering her house, which raised questions. When they dug through the phone records it was obvious that she hadn’t made contact with him in years. Then how did he know that she was planning to commit suicide? At best he had manufactured a false relationship between the two but it was Dr. Budev that confirmed that it was unlikely she would ever seek him out.
It made her smile when he turned to her and told her that he believed every word she had told him. Leslie gladly gave her statement to file charges against her uncle. Her uncle had overplayed his hand and now he was the one being investigated!
Later that evening Leslie was released. She carried her vase of flowers from Glenn with her as she walked out the door. A staff member of the mental health alliance offered to drive her home and she gladly accepted the offer.
“Can you stay until the locksmith gets here?” The man kindly obliged. Once she was alone in the house she checked the fridge…but the pitcher of Arnold Palmer had mysteriously disappeared.
After getting settled back in her home she drove to the diner. Glenn was working on his computer in his office when Leslie knocked on the door. He gave her an intent look.
“Come in. Sit down.”
She did so, nervously. “I wanted to say thank you for the flowers. How…how did you know about the hospital?”
“The police came to ask me questions. Nobody here knows. I fielded all of the questions and I told them that you were a good person.” He teepeed his hands in front of his face. “Can you tell me what that was all about?”
She sighed and nodded. It wasn’t easy because Glenn was an older man that turned red when she explained about the molestation, but he listened without interruption and when she got to how her Uncle had brought false charges against her he looked very angry.
“I…I understand if you don’t want me to manage for you. After all of this-”
“If I didn’t already know your character, then yes, maybe I would tell you that you weren’t right for the position. But I happen to know that you are a good worker, and a good person, and believe me; I told those cops the same thing. Your Uncle is a piece of shit for what he did to you. If you need me to, I will be a character witness for you Leslie.”
She swallowed back grateful tears. “I appreciate that Glenn.”
Angel was right; his visions had changed her, and those changes had allowed her to bypass a lot of bad things.
***
It felt like forever since she’d seen Angel. When Leslie lay in her bed that night she replayed images of the man that she had grown to love. He was real to her, but he would never be real to anyone else, no one else would ever know him. That fact seemed incredibly sad. She got out of bed and retrieved the letter that set on top of the stereo, still unopened.
This was incriminating now that the danger had passed. It described her dreams and life with Angel. She had used this opportunity to let her story spill from her, to release her. And she had written everything down from her first memories of him to the visions that he’d shown her over the years. Leslie sighed.
She should burn this, or rip it up. But she couldn’t. Climbing the stairs again, she pulled the lockbox from beneath her bed. In it were the scraps of her past, her parent’s wedding bands, a ticket stub to a Prince concert, a baby tooth, her Dad’s sixth grade report card and other tidbits that would only be important to her now. She placed the letter there and pushed it back under her bed. Then she lay down and tried to rest.