"Yeah." I nodded slowly. "How did you end up here?" I realized now that most of the conversations we'd had were about me mostly, I'd never really asked him anything about himself.
"Oh, you know, the way it typically happens. I did some certificate training after I got my associate's degree, and got registered to be a nursing aide, then about a year ago I got offered this job." He shrugged. "Way better pay than back home in Texas."
I titled my head in surprise. "You're from Texas? How did I not know that?" I pressed my hand against my chest. "I'm from Texas too."
He chuckled. "I know that."
"What part?"
"East Texas, the Tyler area."
"Really? That's just a few hours from where I grew up. In fact my dad grew up around that area."
"I know." He adjusted his feet but didn't stop smiling.
"Wow," I said, "You're proving just how terrible of a coworker I am!" I chuckled and covered my mouth with my hand.
"Nah," he sat up, "You're not terrible, Adeline. You're just busy and overworked. I get it." He paused. "Plus, I'm a good listener."
"Yeah, and apparently, I'm just a sucky one, even though my degree should mean different." That was my job to listen, to translate words into reality. "Maybe you should be the psychiatrist." I snorted.
"Well, you do have to listen to those crazies in Ward Z. I think it's safe to say that you get a free pass when you have to listen to those people all the time." He stroked his hand over his short beard. "I'm not sure how you do it, honestly. The brief weekly interaction I have with each of them is taxing enough as it is. I don't think I could spend hours a day with them." He shook head. "Especially Z01, that cannibal guy? I mean, what the actual fuck? Who does shit like that?"
I rubbed my arms and leaned back against the couch. "Yeah, well, believe it or not he's the easy one. He hasn't had any episodes, at least not since I've been here. He is perfectly pleasant every time I meet with him. You'd never know he had multiple personalities based on the conversations we've had." I glanced toward the TV. "The other day we talked about football." I smiled at the thought of it. I'd grown to enjoy visiting with Raymond. He sat across from me with his long gray beard, the scraggly hair poking out from the muzzle he had to wear, and spoke with me about mostly normal things, we had conversations about fishing and go-carts. We talked about TV some, though not much. It had been decades since he'd been able to watch a television show. I'd made an effort to see about getting televisions in some of the rooms, but Christopher shut that idea down quick with a story of televisions and an orderly hung from the raptors by unsecure cords.
"Really? He never says anything while we're in there cleaning up. Then again I guess you know that since you're in there with us." Richard smiled bashfully and ran a hand over his short hair. His teeth were just slightly crooked, not in the gaping, missing teeth, sort of way that Christopher's were, but in an attractive way, so that they added to his charm. "Does Patricia ever say anything when you meet with her?"
Little Patricia flashed into my head with her limp, strawberry blond hair hanging around her face. Visiting her saddened me more than any other patient. I couldn't decide why, though it was probably because she was a child, of which my formal training hadn't exactly prepared me for. I knew how to talk to an adult, especially a grown adult male, but a child who had suffered more debilitating trauma than I could even imagine? I didn't even know where to begin.
"No." I picked a piece of lint off my lap. "Not at all. I was hopeful in the beginning." I'd been all set on what I planned to do with her. I took her off her medication and planned to just talk to her about the world, flowers, everything that she deserved to experience. "But things haven't really changed. She seems more restless now that she isn't on all those downers, but otherwise no. Nothing."
"That bothers you?"
I met Richard's gaze and found compassion there.
I sighed. "Yeah. She's harder for me to treat."
"Why do you think that is?"
I shrugged. "I guess it's easy to treat an adult because they're just that. A person who grew up and made decisions based on a mental illness they acquired or were born with, that landed them here. But Patricia is different from that. She's a child who had those choices taken away from her, by her own family. It's just…sad."
"Well you do a great job, you know that, right?"
I glanced up from where I fumbled with my fingers in my lap. "Thank you." The words were a whisper on my lips—and for good reason. Richard's praise, while he might have believed it, I knew it was all a lie. Actual regret slammed into me, not the phony regret I felt earlier. I'd been fanaticizing about my patient for months. I touched myself while thinking about him – not just once – many times.
You're fucked up Adeline.
"Hey," Richard got up and sat next to me on the couch. "I'm sorry I brought up work." He put his arm around my shoulders. "I came over to hangout so we could do something besides work, and here we are talking about it."
This close, with his big body pressed against mine, I could feel his warmth, and smell the last remnants of cologne he had put on this morning and something else – whiskey. Like he'd taken a shot before coming over to my place. Familiar. I sucked in deep, breathing it all in, and when I exhaled I felt better. He squeezed my shoulder one last time before moving his arm to grab the remote. He moved away, but not as far as before. He played the show he'd been talking about. I watched it with him. I listened as he laughed at the jokes. His laugh was deep, like it came from the very bottom of his stomach. I hadn't heard someone laugh like that quite sometime. It was nice.
Whenever he looked at me expectantly, I would chuckle for good measure, just so he didn't think I was bored. However, truthfully my mind was far away from the television show, and far away from Richard. My thoughts circulated around one person. He sat just a couple hundred yards away in a stale white room inside Ward Z. I imagined him lying in bed, humming his song, tapping its rhythm. The white sheet would dip with the pressure of each fingertip, creating tiny creases that would fan out around the pad of his finger.
"What'd you think?"
"Huh?"
Richard smiled at me.
Aaron's fingers would quicken with the rhythm he hummed, sometimes faster, sometimes slower depending on his mood.
"The show. Did you like it?"
I could hear it. His humming. It filled my head.
He's here.
I jumped up off the couch and whirled around, but no one was there. Richard stared up at me expectantly. He grabbed the remote. The sound stopped.
I lunged and grabbed it from his hand.
"What going on, Adeline?"
"The song!" My hands fumbled with the remote like I'd never held one before.
Richard frowned and scratched his head. "What song? What are you talking about?"
My finger finally found the play button and I pressed hard on the volume button until the music filled the house. "His song!" It surrounded us. The lulling piano music, the drums, they filled my ears. Emotion threatened to bubble out of me.
"Whose song?"
I shook my head and moved closer to the TV. The temptation to wrap my arms around the monitor filled me, but I settled for running my fingers against the screen as the credits passed.
"I have to go see him." I rushed to my bedroom and started ruffling through my things. I had an iPod. It had been forever since I'd used it, but I had one and more than that - I had it. The song. I knew. I'd known it all along, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
"See who? Aaron Whitman?"
The sound of Aaron's name on Richard's lips left a queasy feeling in my stomach.
"Yes." I moved around where he stood, toward my closet.
"Can't it wait until your next session with him?" There was something else in Richard's voice. It wasn't calming and kind like everything else he said.
"No, of course it can't wait." I dug through my closet looking for the small box of belongings I'd broug
ht over from the main hospital.
"It's almost midnight, Adeline."
"Yes!" I exclaimed as my hand closed around the little rectangular electronic. "Found it!" I held it up proudly. "I figured it out!"
Richard sighed, and I met his blue gaze. They held the weirdest strand of disappointment. I couldn't understand it.
I cleared my throat and looked down at my feet. "This is a big breakthrough for Aaron's treatment. It's important, Richard."
Liar.
"So important that you go see a patient in the middle of the night? That seems…" He let his voice trail off before rubbing the back of his head again. "Sorry, Adeline." I could feel the genuine meaning behind the words. "You're the doc around here. You know what's best. I just know how that guy can be. Drove the last psychiatrist out of his mind – literally." He chuckled dryly, but no smile met his lips. "I just don't want to see that happen to you."
I patted Richard on the arm, feeling slightly guilty that I'd been distant and distracted all night. "Thanks for coming over and hanging out with me. It was nice to have company after being alone for so long."
I didn't wait around to hear Richard's response though. With my iPod clasped tightly in my hand I made a beeline for the front door – toward where I'd wanted to be all evening.
Room Z15.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Before
Carl
"You have to do it. You must."
"No, no I can't." I said to them, to the angels. They stood around me while I held the scalpel between my fingers.
"You must, Carl. It's the only way. The only way to save them is to set them free from this life."
My hands shook. I stared down at her. The woman on the table. The anesthesia kept her asleep, gone from where I stood over her with my scalpel, with my choices, with the angels who beckoned me.
Her name was Larissa, a woman in her mid-fifties, with cancer in her lymph nodes. It hadn't started there. Her file said it began last year or maybe longer ago with skin cancer, but she waited to see me. Me. Dr. Carl McTavish. The miracle worker who saved little Susie Lauren. The angels had helped me then, and now they were helping me, they claimed, but in a different way.
"You'll be helping the world, Carl. You'll be saving them. Making earth a better place." I met Octavius' gaze. His eyes were dark, black, darker than I remembered. "Do it, Carl. Finish her." He paused. "Kill one. Save a thousand."
I didn't understand it – how killing Larissa would save the world, but who was I to question the angels? They had their own plan – God's plan – and I was in no place to change it.
They disappeared, until only my nurse, Vida, stood beside me.
"Are you all right, doctor?" she asked.
"I need something. Those dissolving sutures."
Vida frowned. "I thought—"
"Go get them, now! Hurry!"
Surprise covered her face, but she hurried off just the same.
While she was gone, I answered my calling. I didn't remove the cancer from Larissa, I started to sew her back up and when I was done the angels returned.
"We are so proud of you, Carl." They wrapped their arms around me. "This is only the beginning of the good work you will do."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I pressed a shivering hand against the white keypad in front of room Z15. The door leapt open and I moved inside. The lights flickered on.
The door closed behind me.
"I knew you would come."
Aaron's voice drew my gaze to his, but he wasn't sitting at the metal table where I always found him. No, this time he laid in his twin bed up against the wall.
"I figured it out!" I held up the iPod triumphantly.
He sat up and frowned at me. His fingers tapped against his bed sheets, just as I had pictured in my mind. "The song!" I took a deep breath, taking him in. "Your song…" He was shirtless, his chest bare, the words, The throne alone, a place to call home, bold, thick looping script across his chest. They words seemed so much bigger in person, darker. I'd never seen him without a shirt before. Not without the protection of a screen between us.
"What do they mean?"
He glanced down at his chest.
"The throne—"
"A place to call home," he finished for me. "You have to rule your life, Violet, or it will slip away out of your control."
I swallowed, considering the irony of the control he had within this cell, which was none.
"You have to sit upon the throne, you have to make it your own or someone else will run your life for you."
I could see the other words too, there were so many of them, written in the flesh of his chest. Some words stood out more than others. Rage. Destroy. Hate. Turmoil. Some were part of longer lines of text and others stood on their own, off-center and crooked.
"Now tell me."
"Tell you what?" I couldn't pull my gaze away from his chest, the bulge of his muscles, the words. I wanted, no, I needed to touch them.
"The song."
I sucked in a breath. "Oh, yes." I realized I was still holding the iPod in the air over my head. I quickly pulled my arm down and held it out in front of me. I moved through the songs quickly, quiet clicking sounds ensued. "I knew it. I knew from the moment I met you that I knew this song, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was."
I pressed play and the melody of Linkin Park's "My December" filled the airwaves inside Z15. I turned it up as loud as the little electronic would allow.
"I can't believe it took me this long to figure out. I love this song, have for a long time, but I rarely ever listen to my iPod anymore. Too much work to be done. Too tired in the evenings… too…" The image of him on the surveillance screen jumped in my head. All those hours I spent watching him, wanting him. Some nights he didn't touch himself at all. Some nights he would just talk to me, just lying in bed staring up at the little black globe in the corner. He would tell me about everything, outside of himself of course. One time he spent several hours telling me about Dr. Seuss. About how he wrote Green Eggs and Ham because someone challenged Seuss, claiming it was impossible to write a book with less than fifty different words in it. Dr. Seuss accepted and conquered.
"Words are power, Violet." He'd stared up at the globe like he knew I was watching. "They can create magnificent things and destroy even more."
Another time he told me about the sun, and how over one million earths could fit inside of it – the size of it unfathomable.
Aaron Whitman was unfathomable. The knowledge he carried. It seemed ridiculous how small he made me feel, like I knew nothing, like I'd lived in an isolated box all my life - though not in a bad way. I was in awe of him. Utterly and completely. I didn't have it in me to feel bad about that. Not right now.
I looked up and met his gaze, he towered over me. Taller, than I had expected. I blinked – and that's when it occurred to me, the span of that second where my eyes closed seeking solace behind my lids, that I realized something.
Aaron Whitman stood before me, no more than a few feet away.
I didn't activate the chains.
My breath caught in my throat. I'd never forgotten.
I could still push the button. The little remote sat heavy in my pocket now. But I stood frozen staring up into Aaron's twitchy gray gaze. I could smell the generic laundry detergent used on his clothes, the scent mixed with one I couldn't really put my finger on, but it was an all male, a masculine musk. It sucked me in, begged me to step closer, to breathe more deeply.
Push the button, Adeline. You don't know what he'll do to you.
I knew what I wanted him to do.
But he didn't do anything. He stood before me, just a few feet away as the iPod played the song there between us. His song. He started to sing along, the melody, the words, somehow more powerful now, now that I knew. They spoke about the cold, about snow-covered dreams, about pretending.
"Why this song, Aaron?"
His gaze jumped to meet mine. He continued to sing and we s
tood there just feet away from one another, my hands outstretched between us holding the iPod as it played until the song was over.
"The cold broke me, Violet, but I didn't stay broken." He stepped closer to me as the song started over. My hands bumped awkwardly against the tight muscles of his stomach. "Sometimes the thing that breaks you is exactly the thing you need to put yourself back together again." He pressed his hand against my cheek. Hands that were always bound to the table. Hands that were free now, warm, against my face. My lids dipped at his touch. I had only dreamed about it. "It's December now, isn't it?"
I opened my eyes, looking back up at him. "Yes." I paused. "It's December 4th."
He nodded, the smallest crook of a smile forming the corners of his lips. "I could smell it on you. The cold. Sometimes you have to embrace the things that destroy you. Sometimes that's the only way to survive."
"And you embraced it, the cold?" I tried to focus on his words, to understand why he talked about the cold when my skin was so hot. The trembling in my fingers long gone – replaced with a different sort of tremble – a need.
"I had no choice." He tapped his fingertips against my cheek. "Your skin…" His words trailed off, his fingers tapped more quickly. "I've thought about this a million times and finally…" He reached his other hand out and touched my hair. I realized that I hadn't stopped to fix it on my way out of the house. It hung in a loose, messy ponytail. I cringed internally. "Like fucking satin."
I reached out and pressed my hand against his chest, moving the iPod into just one hand. The warmth from his skin flared inside mine along with something else. Many things, lust, fear. They swirled around inside me, though I couldn't seem to settle on just one. They were all a part of me in that moment. Aaron Whitman was a part of me.
"You drive me fucking wild. Do you know that?" He stared down at me and I melted, right there in the middle of Ward Z. I was Aaron's puddle to do with what he wanted. "I can't get you out of my head. It doesn't make sense." He moved closer, his sock-covered feet bumped against my boots. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. Violet. My one letter away. I'm not supposed to want you like this." His fingertips pressed harder with each tap against my cheek. His other hand twirled my hair. His breath fanned out across my face, warm and minty. Purgatory stood out starkly on his forehead. "I wasn't supposed to ever want anyone – not again." His words were a whisper between us.
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