by Krystal Wade
Over and over he repeated himself, rocking back and forth. Occasionally he’d stop and glance Rose’s way, flinching. Once, he stopped and the neckline of his shirt pulled away from his collarbone, giving her a view of a cut, exactly where it had been in her nightmare last night. The same color, shape, size. Could it be . . . ?
No. Why would they do that?
Rose shook the idea—Dr. Underwood would never—tried to laugh it off, but in all the time she’d been here, Phillip had never counted to more than one or three. And today he kept going up in numbers until he reached ten, his voice cracking, strained.
“Phillip?”
He cringed. “Couldn’t save her. Couldn’t stop them. She’s like me. They’ll hurt her.”
“Greg? MacGregor?” She had to get through to him, to break through his trance and get him talking about something else, anything else. Already Rose felt as if he was just as afraid as she was, his nervous rocking and counting mirroring how she felt inside. What if the things she dreamed were real? What if someone had really punched her in the gut and stomped on her back? Who could she tell? The better question was who would believe her? Heat flooded her cheeks. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to. “I’m really not sure which of your names I like best. Why don’t you go by Phillip?”
He cringed again.
“You don’t have to tell me why. None of my business.” Just tell me something. Say something. Be here. “Phillip is such a nice name.”
When he didn’t respond, she got up and grabbed a tray of food, noticing her back hurt exactly where she’d been stepped on, and her abs protested in the same place she’d been punched. There had to be an explanation for this, something other than people attacking her at night. Rose took a bite of runny scrambled eggs, then another and another. She went back to the food line for more. Starving. Famished. But why?
“My dad’s name,” Phillip said, pushing away his bowl.
Rose was grateful for him talking but remembered what he’d said about his dad, about how he didn’t want anything do with Phillip after his mom . . . after she left. She felt terrible her relief came at Phillip’s expense. His name was a constant reminder of everything he’d lost. Yet part of Rose wanted to yell, But Phillip is your name too, and you aren’t him. But she didn’t. She sat in silence, the image of the hot iron playing on a loop in her thoughts, the screams. Oh God, the screams.
Pressing her palms against her ears and closing her eyes, she tried to shut out the memories, but they just kept coming. And the clock above the food line tick-tocked. And Rose rocked back and forth.
Tick tock.
Back and forth.
Phillip screaming.
Tick tock.
Back and forth.
Phillip screaming.
“Makes it worse,” Phillip whispered.
“What?” Rose asked, peeking through her lashes at him.
“Pretending.”
If she didn’t ask now, she knew she never would. She’d lose her courage and stay happily trapped in denial. “Did something happen to you last night? Something . . . Was there a branding iron . . . Were you screaming? Was I? Was it all to get me to draw?”
Phillip jumped up from the table and dropped his bowl in the bin on his way out. All the lunatics stopped their moaning or muttering or chattering to check out what caused all the noise. What made someone knock their chair on the floor. But all they found was Rose, shrugging.
Hell no. She wasn’t going to just sit here and feel crazy right along with them. Rose followed him out, picking up his chair and quietly placing her plate in the bin. She spotted Phillip near the central staircases, waiting for her, watching her, and then he trotted down toward the outdoors.
She made sure not to run, not to draw attention to herself, and took her time to catch up to him, heart racing.
“Miss Rose,” Mr. Gordon said, crossing his arms over his chest. He kept his eyes on her, ignoring Phillip, like Mr. Gordon knew of the two patients she’d be the most likely to run. “Two minutes early for outdoor time today. I like your enthusiasm, possibly, but we’re expecting bad weather today.”
A low rumble rattled the metal grates over the doors’ windows, driving in his point.
Phillip lowered his head and stalked off, leaving Rose to run after him. After she chased him up and down the halls and around the corridors for at least half an hour, he stopped in the middle of Hall A, turned on his heel, and said, “Stop following me. They’ll hurt you. You’re like me.” Then he added, lower, almost so quiet even Rose couldn’t be sure she understood what he said, “Stop taking your meds.”
10
Phillip evaded Rose the rest of the morning, ducking out of rooms as she entered or counting his bruises when she cornered him. Rose wasn’t very good at breaking through to people. That would be better left to Megan or Josh. They always seemed to get through to Rose, tearing through her concentration and dedication to art and convincing her to go to parties, to push back on her mother, to sneak off to New York.
“Come on, Rose,” Josh had begged, kneeling before her on the concrete outside of school one day. “One long weekend. Your mom will never know.”
“Are you nuts? Of course she’ll know!” Rose ripped her hand out of his and stalked off toward her car in the parking lot.
“Not if you get your dad in on it, tell him you’re visiting art museums or colleges, planning for the future.” Josh jumped to his feet and ran after her. When he caught up, he grabbed Rose by the waist and held her against her car, his eyes pleading, leaning in close enough for Rose to feel his breath whisper across her lips. “You, me, a weekend alone.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hardly alone. Megs will be there.”
A fact that drove Rose nuts. They couldn’t tell Megan about their relationship for fear it would hurt her feelings or make her feel like a third wheel. So essentially that’s what they had made her, a third wheel, because Rose and Josh always wanted to be alone and never could be.
He leaned in, kissed her, and then pulled away all too fast, leaving Rose gasping and almost wishing the school day would never end. Since Megan had already graduated, Rose and Josh could be free here, open.
“Nah,” he said, “We’ll figure it out. She hates the art museums, and we both know she has zero plans to leave Gatlinburg for college. We’ll use them as an excuse to escape her, and she’ll probably find some party to hit up while she waits for us to get back.”
The idea sent a thrill through Rose. “I have enough for a plane ticket.”
“That’s the spirit.” Josh kissed her harder this time, longer.
And they took that trip.
And they hid from Megan.
And Mom did hate Rose for it, refused to speak to her or look at her for days, even turned against Dad for keeping the secret. His defense held truth, that Rose and her friends went and visited art museums and colleges which would help provide her with goals for the future, but what he didn’t know was that she’d only made it to one museum and spent the rest of the trip recovering from a horrid hangover from a college party. Mom didn’t care for the excuse, though. She said they broke her trust, that all she wanted was for her daughter to grow up and be happy and responsible and live a nice life.
Funny how she thought that in order for Rose to achieve that she had to give up what she loved the most: art, friends, even the stupid mistakes typically made by youth.
Yet, some part of Rose longed for that mother, to be held by her, comforted with little lies about how everything was going to be okay. But Rose knew her mother couldn’t help now, not with this. She’d never understand. She was the one who put Rose here, after all.
What Rose needed was her friends. She surely wasn’t making enough impact on Phillip.
“Miss Rose,” Nurse Judy called.
Rose stopped chewing on the skin around her thumbnail and tore her eyes from the cartoons playing in a loop on the TV. Nurse Judy stood under the wide, arched entryway of the room, hands
propped on her wide hips, and with a start, Rose realized she wasn’t alone. The stringy-haired moaner in the wheelchair rocked back and forth next to her. A man wearing scrubs stained yellow from yesterday’s lunch—or worse, his own urine—played invisible drums on the other side of the room. Two women who usually fought over the remote instead fought over what was going to happen to the cat and mouse giving chase to each other on the show as they sat around the TV with their legs crisscrossed.
What was Rose doing here? How long had she been here?
“Miss Rose,” Judy said again, standing over Rose now with a Stern Nurse look on her face. Rose didn’t like seeing Nurse Judy this way. She was kind and honest and open, and Rose hated that she’d disappointed the woman.
“Sorry.” She flew out of her chair, ready to get away from the common area—and the other crazies. Accepting that she had a problem was one thing. Admitting that she was anything like these other people was totally different.
“Dr. Underwood has been waiting for you.” Judy led Rose down the hall, back toward her wing, toward nicer floors and cleaner people and the smell of antiseptic instead of sweat and piss. “Word of advice for you, dear: Don’t make that man wait again. Okay?”
Did Judy know about the staff messing with the patients’ heads late at night? Did she think upsetting the doctor would give the creeps more reason to attack? No way he knew. Dr. Underwood was gentle, father-like, and he wanted to help. Rose knew he did. Stern Nurse on the other hand . . . Maybe to curb nightshift boredom she and Thomas and Martin liked to play games with the patients? That made the most sense.
“Did you hear me?” Nurse Judy grabbed Rose by the arm and leaned in closer to her ear. “I mean it. You cannot make him wait or you’ll delay your therapy.”
Rose nodded, though she couldn’t quite explain where all that time got off to, so there was no way she could promise not to do it again. She couldn’t even explain how she wound up in Hall D in the first place. Maybe she should take Phillip’s advice and avoid meds for a few days, pretend to swallow them and then find a place to spit them out, but then she’d be taking his advice again. And she’d already decided against that, at least before she’d seen the cut on his chest.
“Good. Now go on in.” Judy ushered Rose into the doctor’s office, then closed the door and left her standing in the entry, staring at Dr. Underwood’s shiny, lacquered desk.
He wrote in a file, not bothering to look up—as usual—rubbing the polished purple stone in his left hand—not usual for this point in their meeting.
“Morning.”
No response.
Rose wondered if she should clear her throat, knock something off his desk, say morning again but louder, or turn and leave. No, she knew better than to leave without permission. She sat down, exaggerating all her movements: plopping into the chair like she weighed two hundred pounds, crossing her legs and bumping her foot against his desk in the process, breathing heavily. But he kept writing, and the clock kept ticking.
Tick, tock, tick.
Scribble.
Tock.
Scribble.
Tick.
She wanted to press her hands over her ears and scream to drown out that sound. “Dr. Underwood?”
He dropped his golden pen but kept rubbing the purple stone, pinning her to the seat, shocked. His eyes were narrowed to slits, full of vehemence, rage, anger. He watched Rose as she squirmed in her seat for several long moments—tick, tock, tick, tock—all stiff movements and shoulders padded with tension. After three minutes and fifty eight seconds of Rose feeling like she wanted to hug him and beg his forgiveness, he spoke, “Do you have an explanation for your tardiness?”
“I have no idea what happened. One minute I was looking for Phillip, and the next thing I know Nurse Judy is coming to get me. I’m sorry.” And he had no idea just how sorry she was. Sorry she was here. Sorry she was losing it. Sorry she thought his employees were torturing her and other patients at night and that he might have to fire them.
His entire demeanor changed. The shoulder pads deflated. The scowl morphed into a smile. He put the stone on the corner of his desk, adjusting it until the little black line running down the center ran parallel with the edge of the wood. Dr. Underwood picked up his pen again and began writing. “How long have you been losing time?”
Rocking her leg back and forth, Rose tried to remember if this had ever happened to her before. She knew it had, not like this, but it had. “Two days. No, three.”
Definitely not early last week. Just Wednesday and Thursday and today. Three.
“I see. So, are you counting the few days you were ill? Or did something like this happen before?”
“No. I think it started last Wednesday.”
More writing. “And you said you were looking for Phillip. Are you two forming a relationship?”
Rose snorted. “Not exactly. He’s a little difficult to approach.”
“Uh-huh.” Scribble, tick, scribble. Little dust motes floated through the beams of light filtering through his office window, their drifting stiff and harsh, like they were flowing to the beat of the clock.
Rose shook her head. That was nuts.
“What do you think makes him difficult to approach?”
“The fact he shuts down when I come near . . . Or he starts mumbling about how we’re alike or counting bruises. What’s wrong with him?”
“He says you’re alike?” Dr. Underwood lifted his gaze from her file and met Rose’s eyes, his face blank, unreadable. “Does he elaborate?”
Shaking her head, Rose said, “No. I’m guessing since we sleep in the same wing, he thinks we’re the same. Speaking of sleeping, Dr. Underwood, I’ve been having some really bad nightmares. Or what I thought were nightmares, until I saw Phillip today.”
“You’re positive you wish to discuss this?” he asked as though he didn’t believe she would, as if he expected her to shut down like she had every other time he’d asked her about her dreams.
“Yes. I have to.”
“This is excellent progress, Rose.” Dr. Underwood dropped the pen and came around the desk. Taking a seat in the small wooden chair beside her, he picked up her hand and held her so tenderly, reassuringly, that she knew she’d be able to go through with this. “Please, begin when you’re ready.”
“It’s just . . . the dreams are so real, and I’m usually being tortured.”
“Tortured?”
Nodding, Rose felt the words rushing to get out of her, to share this with someone, anyone, to feel some kind of help was on the way, relief. “Yes, and they’re so real that I can’t tell they’re not. And it’s like the only thing I can do to stop being tortured is to draw.”
Dr. Underwood squeezed her fingers, and his smile was real and just as calming. “Sounds like an anxiety dream, one brought about by your subconscious. Maybe it’s your body’s way of telling you you’ve been torturing it, and it’s trying to get back at you.” He released her hand and approached one of the bookshelves at the back of the room, scanning along the spines with one finger until he landed on a book right in the center. But he didn’t pull that one out, just let his finger reside there for a moment, and then he knelt and pulled a book from the shelf below. “There’s this theory that the content of dreams is driven by unconscious wish fulfillment. In your case, that makes perfect sense, considering your issues with art. But what I’m struggling to understand is what this has to do with your friend Phillip.”
Telling him about how people tortured Phillip in the dream to get her to draw, that the real live Phillip walked around with injuries just like the ones he had in the dream . . . not a good idea. Right? The doctor would think she saw things that didn’t exist. And telling him how Phillip reacted today, that he wanted her to stop her medicines . . . .
No. Not a good idea at all.
Rose had to allow the issue to drop. If she forgot about the dreams and Phillip and everything else, he might not appear in the nightmares anymore. He didn’t
seem to want to talk anyway, so ignoring him wouldn’t be too difficult. Besides, if the doctor didn’t know why someone else would show up, then he’d only prolong her stay here while trying to figure that out, and she didn’t want to become like that man in the bowels of the building while the doctor unraveled another layer of All Things Rose Briar.
“What has your friend told you about himself? Has he told you why he’s here? Is he also an artist?”
She rocked her leg and stared at the wall while he awaited a response, but Rose didn’t plan on answering. She shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. No matter how good it felt to get the nightmares off her chest, Rose should have kept quiet.
“Okay. I didn’t think we’d have this issue today, but since we have . . .” Dr. Underwood carried a book to his desk and opened a drawer behind him. He withdrew a package of charcoals and a pad of paper. “Might I remind you about our deal?”
Rose leaned forward to inspect the quality of the items, to see if he’d really bought everything she’d put on her list, right down to the brands. He had, and she wanted to grab the supplies and run and pretend she’d never had a block in her imagination so she could draw and be happy and get into art school, but he returned everything to the drawer before she could even stand.
“I’ve held up my end.”
Taking slow breaths, Rose tried to regain control of her flailing leg and her fluttering heart. If she told him about Phillip in the nightmares, maybe Dr. Underwood wouldn’t keep her here longer. Maybe he’d understand the meds were too much, that she needed less. “Last night, I wasn’t the only one hurt. Phillip was there, tied to a chair, and unless I drew something, this cloaked figure planned to brand him with a hot iron.”
The screams. God, the screams. Rose wiped her sweaty palms on her pants and willed her hands to stay put, to not cover her ears as if he were in the room screaming right this instant.