by Krystal Wade
Before she’d climb back up to her room, Josh would always say, “Don’t tell Megs.”
And Rose wouldn’t. And she hated herself for it.
“Nausea is a side effect,” Phillip said now, drawing Rose out of yet another random memory.
How come he never looks like he’s about to throw up?
“Always sick. Always foggy. He doesn’t want us lucid. Never lucid. We have to get out of here. You are like me.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment until she realized what Phillip had said. Getting out of here was exactly what Rose wanted, but why did it sound nuts when it came out of his mouth? “What?”
“We have to run.”
“I can’t run.” Not right now anyway, with her body betraying her.
“Then we’ll die here.” He tapped her wrist again and frowned. “You’re like me.”
Rose had to rub her eyes just to be sure this was real. This guy next to her couldn’t be the same guy who’d walked—drifted?—around here the past—she counted on her fingers just to be sure, just to be sure she wasn’t losing her mind—four days. Couldn’t be the same guy who shied away from her and only said a couple words at a time. That guy wouldn’t talk about running. That guy would barely talk at all. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe he was utterly nuts. Maybe his face was about to melt off.
Rose trembled at the memory.
“Cold?” Phillip asked, stopping near the door to the institute.
“I—I don’t know.” Rose couldn’t feel anything. Not her fingers or toes or arms and legs. Nothing. Her vision narrowed, and her stomach turned. Something wasn’t right. Something felt horribly wrong. Suddenly more sweat broke out all over her skin, and her head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. “I can’t feel anything.”
“Side effect.”
“But this is the first time this has happened, and I’ve been on meds four days.”
Phillip looked at Rose like he felt sorry for her, like he knew something she didn’t, his eyes downturned and unable to hold hers. “New medicine, Rose.”
That was the first time he’d spoken her name, and she would have celebrated the fact she’d made a connection with someone—anyone—had her world not been spinning. “Betty just gave me something before I came outside.”
“Something’s changing, something big.” He nodded once, agreeing with himself most likely. “You’re like me.”
The sounds of the door opening and closing, the women squabbling near the oak tree over who drew the better picture in the dirt, and people’s feet crunching on the gravel path leading to the door all felt trapped inside her head, loud and somehow touching her, upsetting her system more. God, even the smell of antiseptic made it out here and into Rose’s nostrils . . . .
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“You are.” Phillip gently placed his hand on her back and rubbed small circles. “And they’ll get you.”
“I don’t understand. What’s changing? Why do you keep saying I’m like you? Who’ll get me?”
He was paranoid. Crazy. Unpredictable. Yet part of him seemed to know things, to understand, to want to help. How much of what he said was real? How much was just crap made up in his head?
“Different. Everything’s different. Except it’s not. And you . . .” He fell to the ground with Rose as she began vomiting. Phillip held her hair back and talked softly, the lunatic whispering, “It’s okay,” a couple times and touching her raw wrist before continuing, “I wish you never had to fall asleep again.”
8
A warm hand rested on Rose’s arm, and she knew she wasn’t alone. What she didn’t know was if this was real or another nightmare, and she was afraid to find out. Rose held still, keeping her eyes closed against the light filtering through her lids, and she took slow, even breaths.
If this was another nightmare, she didn’t want to upset it, didn’t want to be chased or tormented in another basement or tied to a wall or told she needed to draw or stop being weak. Rose didn’t want paint dumped over her head or scary faces that looked like her doctor and nurses to haunt her.
These things weren’t real, she knew this, but they felt real. Even her body ached as if she’d been beaten, the weight of her arms and legs lying on the bed too much a burden for her muscles.
“Oh, I didn’t expect to find you in here, sir,” Rose heard Nurse Judy whisper. “How’s she doing?”
The warm hand tightened around Rose’s wrist and held there for a moment. “No thrashing in the last four hours. Fever’s down. And her pulse is up. I believe she’s either awake and pretending not to be, or she’ll be up within minutes.”
Thrashing? Fever? Rose felt that stupid pulse increasing even now. This wasn’t a nightmare. Nothing in her sleep ever sounded so normal. Everything was crazy and dark and like she was on acid. Opening her eyes hurt. She had no idea how long they’d been closed. How long she lay here, dreaming, not dreaming, whatever was going on.
“Oh,” Nurse Judy squeaked, her voice full of hope. “She’s up.”
Rose blinked several times. The room was bright and almost too white, blindingly so, and everything looked and smelled clean. And for once that didn’t bother her. She turned her stiff neck to the right and found Dr. Underwood sitting beside her. His face was pale and his eyes were puffy, and his hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed in days. Even his lab coat was wrinkled, the black pen he normally clipped to the breast pocket missing. The most disheveled she’d ever seen him.
He met her eyes and grinned. “You have no idea how happy we are to see you awake.”
“What happened?” Sandpaper in her mouth and throat, Rose needed a drink. She saw a glass sitting on her rolling tray and tried to sit up but found she couldn’t move.
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” Dr. Underwood said, gently pressing his hand to her shoulder to hold her in place. “Not quite so fast. What do you need?”
“Water.”
Nodding, he turned and grabbed the glass from the tray and then handed it over, kindly supporting the bottom as Rose tipped the drink to her mouth. “We had to give you some hearty sedatives. You developed some sort of virus that interfered with your medications. I sensed it on Thursday, hence the call to Nurse Betty, however it doesn’t seem like we got to you in time.”
“Definitely not,” Nurse Judy added, sitting on the edge of the bed and making the mattress dip from her added weight. She placed her palm on Rose’s leg tucked beneath the blankets. “You gave us quite the scare, dear.”
“A virus?” Rose couldn’t remember feeling anything other than nausea, and Phillip had said that was a side effect of the medicine. And the only time she’d felt ill was after taking the pills. “What kind of virus?”
After replacing the glass on the tray, Dr. Underwood sat in a chair positioned next to the bed and took her hand. His touch was reassuring, almost fatherly, and she appreciated it more than she cared to admit, though it did nothing to clear the fog clouding her head. “The flu. Do you remember how agitated you were on Thursday, in my office? When you wouldn’t make eye contact or answer my questions freely, I knew something was askew. Your coloration gave away your impending illness, so I called in medications to thwart the virus, but we didn’t catch it in time. The fever burned off your anti-psychotics. You’ve been restrained for three days.”
Nerves on fire, she clutched his hand, afraid of losing herself, afraid she already had. “Three days? I’ve been in this bed for three days?”
All the sleep . . . it explained the excessive nightmares. It explained so much. Rose really was crazy. Dr. Underwood truly wanted to help her. He’d stayed here with her while she was sick, worried over her. How could she not have seen? How could she have always thought she was normal? Rose wanted her mother and father. She wanted home. A hug. She needed something, someone, to be here while she cried. Tears streamed down her face, and she covered it with her hands. She didn’t want to look eith
er of them in the eyes. “I don’t understand. I never felt like I was crazy. What’s wrong with me? I want to go home.”
“Give us a minute, would you, Judy?” Dr. Underwood asked, his voice low and quiet.
“Yes, sir. I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.” The nurse gave Rose a long, pitiful look, then ducked out, but what she really wanted was for the woman to scoop her up and run away with her. She wanted Nurse Judy to take her home and lie to her and pretend everything would be all right.
The door clicked closed behind her, and then Rose felt the dip in her bed, indicating Dr. Underwood had sat down beside her legs. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, sending a jolt of panic through her each time his thumb momentarily left her skin. “I believe you’ll be able to go home soon, but first we have to find a method of treatment for you that gets you back to being you.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” she asked, dragging the scratchy white blankets across her cheeks as if she could scrub away the crazy. “Now you’re telling me nothing is working. Do I ever really get to go home? Or am I just stuck here? Forever? Crazy and getting worse and stuck here?”
Dr. Underwood shook his head. “That’s not at all what I’m telling you. I’ve seen improvements. You yourself told me you felt the inclination to draw but didn’t have the materials. That’s an improvement.”
Rose wanted to throw up. “My parents didn’t put me in here for you to get me drawing again. They’d prefer I never draw again.”
He returned her hand to the bed and sat pensive for a moment, his eyes drifting to the ceiling, and the loss of his support nearly sent Rose over the edge. She gasped for breath, to suck in enough air to keep her alive.
“Is that what you believe?” he asked, helping her sit up so she could put her head between her legs, but she didn’t need it, not now with him holding on again. The solidity of his hand pressed against her back was the only thing that could keep her grounded in reality.
“How could I not think that? My mother raised me to believe I’m a carbon copy of her best friend who wound up in here. Her best friend the artist. Her best friend with bad friends. Her best friend who this place is named after.”
Dr. Underwood jolted with awareness and quickly turned back to Rose with a wild, hungry look in his big brown eyes. “Heather Shepperd? Your mother’s best friend was Heather Shepperd?”
“The one and only. Her best friend who, a week after they released her from this place, killed herself,” Rose added for his benefit, to force him to see the same connections her mother had. If he understood her mother’s fears, maybe he’d reconsider his diagnosis of Rose’s mental state—or at least where she needed to live to receive treatment. “How could my mother compare me to her best friend all my life and then put me in the very place she went to die?”
“You’re not going to die,” he said, redness flooding his cheeks and neck. Something had upset him. Did the thought of her dying make him angry? His response gave Rose hope that Phillip was wrong. “I won’t allow it, as my parents before me wouldn’t allow it. When we took over this facility, we made a vow never to abandon patients the way Heather Shepperd had been abandoned.”
“Which is why my parents chose this place, because they knew you wouldn’t let me go unless I was ready.” Which may be never.
“Good to know residents of the area take my vow to protect patients seriously.” Dr. Underwood took a deep breath and smoothed out his expression, his color returning to normal. “Your parents don’t want you to give up art, not from what I’ve ascertained from them anyway.” He watched her for a moment, then said, “Tell me something, Rose; why are you here?”
Part of her wanted to blurt out one answer, but this other part that seemed in control of everything—probably the crazy part—didn’t want to admit to anything. She wasn’t at fault for how her parents reacted to the picture Megan and Josh took. Rose couldn’t be blamed for the World’s Worst Prank. And she wouldn’t accept the blame. She just wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even accept fault for running away. Living with Megan was the freest Rose had ever felt, even if she couldn’t draw. “Because I ran away from home, probably, because my friends sent my parents a stupid picture that they took way too seriously, because—”
Dr. Underwood held up his hand. “That’s enough. You’re clearly not ready to admit the truth to yourself. You’re afraid, Rose, very, very afraid, and I want to fix that. When you overcome your fears, you’ll be ready to go home.”
The word home sent a thrill of longing through her. “And how am I supposed to do that?”
A smile curled up one side of his face. “That’s what I’m here for, to cure your fear, amongst other things. I do have several hundred other patients and inmates to concern myself with.”
“Inmates?”
He chuckled. “Yes, inmates. Though they’re in a separate part of this facility. Don’t worry about that.”
Oh sure, surrounded by murderous lunatics, no, nothing to worry over, Rose thought, swallowing down a new fear.
Standing, Dr. Underwood grabbed Rose’s chart from the rolling table and put on a back-to-business expression. “I’m sure you’d like to get out of that bed, showered, and up on your feet, am I correct?”
“Yes.” Just the mention of a shower made Rose realize how grimy she felt—and smelled. Even her clothes felt uncomfortable and bunched up in all the wrong places.
“Good.” He turned the page. “Just a few questions for you then. Most of these you’ve answered before, but now that you’ve been on medications for a week, I’d like to see if you have different responses.”
“A week? I’ve been here a week? Does that mean people can come and visit me?”
“Not today.” Dr. Underwood kept his eyes on the file. “Though, I have a friend of yours on the schedule for just after our meeting tomorrow.”
Maybe Josh would visit. Maybe he’d kiss her or hug her or tell her how much he missed her. Maybe he wouldn’t care that she had messy hair and bad clothes and probably bad breath. Maybe he’d tell her she was beautiful anyway. “Who?”
“Megan Barnes.”
“Anyone else?” Rose asked, a little deflated, thinking back to the last time she saw her parents. How she hadn’t said goodbye. She ran away from them, left them sitting in their chairs in the doctor’s office. Rose was good at that, running away, leaving people behind.
“Your parents aren’t on the schedule for any specific time, though they did wish to come for a visit. We’ll see how everything goes.” He looked up at her then. “May I ask you my questions now?”
“Sorry.” She smiled nervously, and he returned it with a full-wattage smile of his own, warming her insides with the ease of their relationship. “Go on.”
“Thank you for the permission. Now, do you have any phobias?”
“No,” Rose replied, looking at her torn up fingernails.
“Do you see things that aren’t really there?”
Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “How would I know?”
“Yes or no?”
Shrugging, she said, “I guess no.”
“Have you made any friends since being here?”
“Friends?” Her mind wandered to Phillip, and she wondered what he was doing, what he must have thought about her disappearance. He probably muttered under his breath and whispered on Crazy Repeat mode about how she left him too. She should probably stay away from him from now on. His words were poison and made her question Dr. Underwood and the institute when he wanted nothing but to help. Phillip couldn’t be called a friend, but he was someone she spoke with. “Not really a friend, but Phillip and I have been talking a little bit.”
“Phillip?” Dr. Underwood looked up at her sharply, a pen resting against his chin.
“God. I keep doing that. He goes by MacGregor, or Greg, I guess. Something about not liking his first name.”
Scribbling more in her file, Dr. Underwood said, “Uh huh. How often are you and . . . ?”
“Greg.”
“Yes, how often are you and Greg having conversations?”
“I wouldn’t call them conversations, exactly. I usually ask a lot of questions, and he usually rambles and raves and mumbles. He’s kind of scary. But nice. If that makes any sense.”
“What do you talk about?”
Rose opened her mouth to answer and then snapped it closed. The last thing she wanted to do was get Phillip in trouble for raving about the doctor. But if she told the truth, and he thought Phillip needed more medications or therapy, she’d be helping someone in a way she never had before. Still, when she looked up at Dr. Underwood, she found herself unable to speak the truth. “Nothing much. Just about how we’d like to go home.” Not a lie. “And how the medications make us feel.” Also not a lie. She smiled at how easy it was to oversimplify the truth.
“And when did you and Phillip first come in contact?”
“In contact?” She settled her hands in her lap over the blanket, twirling her thumbs around each other. “Well, I saw him the first day I was here, when I ran from your office like the idiot I am.”
“You’re far from an idiot, Rose.”
“Thanks. But that was the first time I saw him.”
“Okay,” he said, jotting down her answers or his assessment or whatever it was that doctors do in charts. “One last question: Do you and Phillip ever talk with other patients or nurses while together, or are you two separating yourselves?”
The question made Rose’s heart race. What was Dr. Underwood trying to say? Did he know what Phillip said about him? Did the doctor not trust Phillip? Was isolation a part of his illness? “No. Though, we don’t try to be anti-social. It just happens.”
“Fair enough.” Dr. Underwood made his way to the door and stood half inside, half outside with his hand on the metal frame. “Don’t worry about following any schedules. Feel free to do whatever you’re comfortable with for the next couple hours. If you hurry through the shower, you can still catch dinner. But if you need more time, just let Judy know and she’ll bring you something to eat in here.”