It'd been an entire month since I'd seen Aaron. I hadn't so much as glanced in the direction of Z15. All room cleanings were supervised by Dr. Wintrone since he had the same access I did. I tried not to even think about Aaron. Whenever I did, Richard would show up soon after with his ocean eyes and kind smile and I would forget my dark musings. It was for the best. I only brought out the worst in him – that was clear now. He had some sort of hold over me, something I couldn't shake when I was with him. It made me irrational, unpredictable. My feelings had made me soft, stupid. I couldn't have that – not anymore. I was stronger than that. Better.
"Ungh."
I gasped. "What did you say?"
Patricia sat silent across from me, her eyes focused on the coloring book.
"You said something." Giddiness spread through. "You did, I heard it."
She still hadn't spoken over this last month, she had remained silent, still, but more and more restless.
I had tried multiple times to offer her some different activities. I didn't care what her file said about her starting fires. The walls down here were fire-proof, and that was good enough for me. Truth be told, I wasn't really worried about it begin with. I could sense a change in Patricia. She didn't have to speak for me to know. I could feel it. She had a long road ahead of her, and I wanted to help her through it. The first step would be speaking, finding happiness, a desire to communicate. I wanted to give her those things and I started doing it by making an effort to give her things. I knew, deep down in my heart that no one had ever bothered to give her anything but hurt.
I opened a small box of crayons. It was only an eight-pack and not the standard Crayola like I would have preferred, but it would do.
"Here." I placed them next to the book and flipped it open. "You just take one of the crayons and press it against the page like this." I didn't know if she'd ever seen a coloring book before. "It can be fun." I set down the red crayon I held and flipped through the pages. "And there are all sorts of different pictures to color, so you can just choose the one you like."
I continued talking about coloring, about how it was one of my favorite things to do as a little girl, when the door to Patricia's room opened.
"Dr. Violet, could I speak with you a moment?"
I glanced at the door and locked gazes with Dr. Wintrone. "Sure, Calvin." I pushed the crayon box closer to Patricia and stood. "You try those out while I meet with Dr. Wintrone. I'll be back." Her brown gaze met mine and I smiled. She made eye contact with me more lately than she ever had.
As we stepped outside, I felt giddy, truly giddy for the first time in a long time. "I think I'm really making progress with her. She made a noise today. An actual noise. I can't decide if it was a word or not. I couldn't exactly tell, but I don't think it will be too long before she really starts communicating and…" Calvin fiddled awkwardly with his glasses refusing to meet my gaze. I frowned. "Is everything okay? What can I do for you?"
"There's someone from the board here for a meeting."
"The hospital board?" My mind flashed back to my first day when Gregory Blakelyn, a Silent River Board member had welcomed me to the staff unceremoniously by handing me key card and wishing me luck without even entering Ward Z.
"Yes, if you'll come with me. They're waiting for us in the conference room."
I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "Wait, right now?"
Calvin fidgeted with the buttons on his coat. "Yes."
"Did they say what this is about? We've never had a visitor. Even on my first day, the guy wouldn't even walk into Ward Z with me."
Calvin didn't say anything, but headed down the hall. I hurried to catch up with him.
"What's going on, Calvin?" An uneasy feeling crept under my skin. However, it wasn't due to Calvin's actions. I'd learned over the last month, that he was, in fact, a very awkward guy in most situations.
Once inside the conference room, a place I'd only been inside once on my first day, I was shocked to find the entire day staff, minus Richard, sitting in the room. This included Ryan, the other orderly, Christopher, and of course Calvin, along with a man I'd never seen before.
"Hello, Dr. Violet." The man stood. "I'm Gary Waters." He held out a chubby hand to me, which I shook.
"Uh, hi." He didn't introduce himself to anyone else.
"Thank you for meeting with us. I would say that it's nice to meet you, but under these circumstances, I can't say that's true."
I glanced around. Everyone stared at me. "What circumstances? What's going on here?"
"Please sit." Gary's face was solemn as he motioned to the closest chair.
I did as he requested.
"We've been made aware of an unethical relationship between yourself and one of your patients, Dr. Violet."
"I'm sorry, what?"
A pursed expression covered Gary's face. "An unethical and inappropriate relationship between yourself and one of your patients."
Fear. That's what it was, it engulfed every inch of my being. They couldn't know. They just couldn't. I hadn't even seen Aaron in a month…and our relationship before that, it wasn't even—it wasn't…
"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You have no idea?"
"I don't." I glanced around at my coworkers. Ryan looked uninterested, as he did most days. Calvin fiddled with his glasses nervously. Christopher wore a smug smile on his face. I imagined punching him right in his snaggle-teeth. That made me feel better.
Gary opened his laptop and did some clicking. He motioned to the projector screen on the wall. "In a moment you will see footage taken by the MEI machine located in the small MEI room off the side of the OR last month on December 17th at approximately 1:32 p.m."
A moment of relief spread over me – that was when Calvin and I ran the MEI test on Aaron. I had watched all of his memories; they'd been of his mother and Ruby. They had nothing to do with me. A giggle threatened to burst out of my throat but I tamped it down. They were just mistaken, confused. This had nothing to do with me!
The video that popped up on the screen was something I hadn't seen.
Me.
Me through Aaron's eyes. We were kissing, ravenous. A dance of tongues, dueling, twirling. I seemed to be hanging on to him for dear life, until we pulled apart.
He pressed his hand against my cheeks. Smearing blood across them. My blood. I watched myself glance down at my arms where his nails had cut me open.
"You're so beautiful when you cry." The deep rumble of his voice affected me now, just as it had then, my body fully aware like an electric current had shot through it.
Tears slid down my face on screen, mixing with the blood.
"I never thought I'd find something that repulsed me so much, so beautiful." He cocked his head. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?" I asked, my gaze had a dream-like quality.
"How are you the cold and the warmth all at once?" He tapped his fingers against my cheek. "It's impossible.
"Nothing is impossible," I whispered to him. There was no mistaking the awe in my eyes. The hope, the need, the love. It was almost too much. I should have looked away, but I didn't.
The memory changed abruptly.
"Where the fuck is she? What the fuck is she doing?" From Aaron's point of view, he paced back and forth across the white floor of his room. He hummed when he wasn't speaking. He ran his hands through his hair as he moved and forth. "Fuck. Fuck!" He steps grew quicker, jerkier. "I need to make her understand!" He took a deep breath. "No, shit. I can't. I can't do it." He stopped pacing for a moment, looking up at the rafters before swinging up onto one. He did as many as fifteen pull-ups before dropping to the floor again. "You have to do this," he said to himself.
I suddenly wished that the MEI machine allowed us access to inner thoughts during memories, but it didn't, only the way it was remembered from the outside, strangely enough.
"Okay, okay, okay. Fuck." He punched the wall. "Shit!" He stared down at his hand. Bl
ood dripped from his knuckles.
I distinctly remembered it then, the day his hand had been swollen and scabbed over. Just before we did the MEI procedure. This must have been the night before.
"All right, all right. Fine." He stared up at the black orb in the corner of Z15 and sat down on the edge of his bed. The same bed he'd caged me against. I chewed the inside of my lip. "You want to know the truth Violet, my one letter away?" He chuckled. "I'm a piece of shit. I know that. I've done a lot of things in my life, but I'm not sorry. I'll never be sorry, not for anyone, even you." He shook his head, rubbing hand over his face. "But there's something about you. I need you. The monster inside me…it craves you in a way I've never wanted or needed anything or fucking anyone. It's disgusting and I hate it. This wasn't supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to feel anything for anyone else. It was only supposed to be her." He ran a hand over his head.
"You asked me about her today, Violet. She's real, she existed, but she's gone now. She was my reason. My everything, and now that she's gone my reason was supposed to be gone too." He flexed his hand into a fist over and over in his lap. "But that changed the day you walked into this room with your violet eyes and your beautiful mind.
"It wasn't supposed to happen that way. You understand that, right? There was never supposed to be anyone else for me. Only her, but now you. You fucking showed up and changed everything." He stood up and started pacing. "That night you came to my room with the iPod. You stood there in front of me like the perfect flower that you are. Your eyes held innocence, happiness as you played me my song. The song that kept me going after I lost her. The song that reminded me that I was born of the winter, in the month of December, that it was the cold that broke me and the cold that made me who I am. I survived because I believed, because I was stronger than everything else, than the winter, than the people who tried to hurt me.
"But in that innocence, there was something else, that darkness inside you. There in your eyes it called to me, it begged me to come closer. It lured me in until I was too deep." He moved faster back and forth across the room. "And I knew in that moment, watching the way your face lit up with happiness when you figured out my song, when you sought to understand me and why…" his voice trailed off. "It was too late. I knew it even then that I was too far gone, but I didn't want to admit. I had to fight it because the woman I loved before you…she was everything. You couldn't just come in and be more to me than her. You couldn't do that. You just fucking couldn't. I'd loved her for years, we'd built a life, everything together. You couldn't just come in, in a few months and change all of that. No!" he shouted the last word.
"But you had, Violet." He looked up at the camera, slowing his pace until he stopped altogether. "You changed everything and I knew, with you standing there before me with your innocence, your darkness, the obscurity inside you. I knew I was lost to you. You weren't really mine, but I was yours." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "And in that moment, I knew that if given the choice to bring her back right then or to be here in this room with you, I would pick you every time."
He sighed. "This wasn't supposed to happen. You weren't supposed to happen – but it's too late, for both of us. It's too late." He shook his head and started to laugh. It was that same high pitch laugh - the one that chased me out of Ward Z on my first day. "And now we're both damned." He paused. "Because the things I crave, the things I love, always let me down or die. Or both."
The screen went black. My heart pounded in my chest. Tears pooled in my eyes. He loved me. Me, not her. Not Ruby.
Me!
That's how he knew I hadn't been watching that day we spoke just minutes before his MEI. He knew because I would have heard him. I would have heard this. His words, his confession of love, but I didn't. I'd been in my house with Richard watching a movie wallowing in my own self-doubt, in my own blind hatred of a woman I'd never meet.
I sucked in a shuddered breath. I let him down. Just like he thought I would.
"Dr. Violet?"
I jumped, suddenly remembering where I was.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
I peered at the faces in the room. Ryan's, for the first time, held some sort interest.
"Well?" Gary asked.
Did I? No, not really. I didn't want to talk about this now. I needed to see him – to see Aaron.
"I have to go." I stood up.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Violet, but you're not leaving this room until the hearing is over."
"Hearing? What—"
"This is a termination hearing, Dr. Violet. I assumed you already realized that," Gary said. He adjusted his tie against his fat neck.
I let out a deep breath. I was in the wrong. Absolutely. I knew it all along. But this was Ward Z at Silent River. The rules were different here. There was no chance of rehabilitation. These people were trapped here until their death, surely the rules would work differently in this situation…right?
I met Gary's gaze. "I—well—I—"
"This is a very serious situation, you understand. A doctor-patient relationship is completely unethical and quite frankly illegal. These people are mentally unsound. Aaron Whitman has been diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder with extreme bouts of mania which no doctor has been able to control with medication so far. He has a rap sheet a mile long where hundreds if not thousands of murders have been linked to his leadership in the Purgatory Brotherhood."
"I'm well aware of the things he's done, Gary."
"Then what do you have to say for yourself, Dr. Violet?" He looked at me expectantly.
What did I have to say? What could I say?
You're done, Adeline. This is it. It's over. Everything you've ever worked for. Over.
My mother's face popped into my head. She had her blond hair, so much like mine, tucked behind her ears as she made dinner.
"Don't do this, Adie. Don't go to that place."
I'd been home for less than a week, fresh out of college, a psychiatrist at last. A psychiatrist solicited by the government to work at their top-secret government hospital. At the time I didn't even know the name of Silent River.
"The government asks and we give and give. You don't need to go. Let them send someone else. Not you. You just got home."
She hadn't known that I had never planned to stay. I'd been desperate to get out of there. To get off Wuthering Lane since Maria had died. I never wanted to go back, even visiting made me sick, and I'd done less and less of it over the years.
"I'll be fine. It's a good job. Good benefits."
She turned around then, her gaze meeting mine as she set a plate of rice in front of me. "If you go to that place, you won't come back the same. I just feel it."
I'd ignored her. I'd dismissed her concerns just like I had for years when she badgered me about not visiting enough, not calling enough, not getting married, about putting my whole life into my schoolwork. Her criticisms had followed me around and I'd carried them, but I hadn't listened.
I'd put my whole life into becoming a psychiatrist. My everything.
You blew it, Adeline. It wasn't my mother's voice who whispered the damning words in my head, but my own. I'd been able to justify the burden of my mom's worries, by knowing I was smart enough, good enough, dedicated enough to prove her wrong. But she wasn't wrong.
Gary spoke words as I sat before him in front of my coworkers. I couldn't hear them. All I could do was stare at his jet-black hair – so black it was practically blue. I could barely see a hint of white roots right along his scalp. It reminded me of the black ink in Aaron's skin.
"Dr. Violet?" Gary's voice intruded on my thoughts.
"I'm sorry, what?"
He let out a frustrated sigh, glancing at Dr. Wintrone. "Do you have anything to say for yourself? I won't ask again."
"Oh, yes, yes I do." I cleared my throat. "I…regret my actions." Liar. "I understand how they are inappropriate. I really do." I glanced at each face in the room. "I know
what I've done is wrong in my position and it was completely inappropriate, but I feel like I've really done some good here."
Gary's expression remained uninterested.
"Really, I have," I continued. "I may have stepped over the line, but I've done so much more good." My tone grew more frantic when none of my coworkers piped up to agree with me. "What about Patricia? She's doing better. I can tell. I really feel like I'm on the verge of a break through. I met with her today, even, she's doing better. She's been restless, sure, but she seems like she wants to say something, I can feel it. Just today she made a sound! A sound!" I waved my hands in the air like their movement would help them understand. "This is huge!"
"A breakthrough, Dr. Violet?" Gary flipped through some pages in front of him. "Here it says that when you entered Ward Z you took Patricia Philips off her medication, which consisted of several different anti-depressants, as well as some sleeping medication. Is that correct?"
"Yes, of course, she is a child, barely ten years old, she has no business being on all of those medications." I sighed. "You see, all of those downers on top of each other do not bode well for her health. All of that medication would make a grown adult male sluggish. There's no way she could ever begin to recover or even talk through the things that happened to her while taking that sort of medication."
"Recover? Dr. Violet, I'm not sure you understand the purpose of Ward Z or what we do here, though I thought it had been made clear to you before."
"Well, yes, but—"
"Ward Z is not meant for recovery. These people will never leave. They—"
"Yes, no, I know that but—"
"But nothing Dr. Violet. Your job, simply, was to come down here and ensure that there was peace. That these patients did not kill anyone else. You are a glorified babysitter. That is your job. You are to keep them medicated and calm. But instead you come down here and began sleeping with patients and taking them off their medicine –which is completely unacceptable!"
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