Asleep

by Krystal Wade

  Megan. Megan was pregnant with his baby.

  The girl who never wanted to leave Tennessee with the boy who couldn’t wait to escape.

  He was more like Rose than Megan, and now they were going to have a baby together.

  “You okay?” Phillip asked, his hands clasped on the table, far away from Rose. The distance between them made her wonder if he’d picked up on her unease around him. Of course he had. He was made up in her head!

  Rose shredded the letter and kept crying.

  “I think you’ve made your point. The paper didn’t do anything wrong.” Phillip chuckled nervously, and she hated it. Hated that the carefree part of him was hurting because of her. The way she was acting. Whether in her head or not, Phillip was her only friend now.

  She couldn’t push him away.

  “My friend is pregnant. The guy I thought was my boyfriend was also hers.”

  “He sounds like a real winner,” Phillip said, scooting his chair around the table to be closer to Rose. He didn’t say it in a way that made her feel dumb. Phillip spoke as if he couldn’t wait to get free and beat the shit out of Josh. “And not worth your tears.”

  “Thanks,” she said, hoping he never got anywhere near Josh, not after what Phillip did to that kid at school. A sob lodged in Rose’s throat. Phillip never beat up any kid, because he didn’t exist.

  “I mean it.” Phillip snatched the shredded paper and tossed the pieces into the bin near the TV. “You’re strong. Beautiful. And you’re honest. The guy’s a dick, giving the rest of us a bad name.”

  “The next two are from him.” Rose handed the envelopes to Phillip and was amazed when they didn’t fall to the table. How did all this imaginary stuff work? “Will you open them?”

  Nodding, he lifted the flap of the first letter, then pulled out the paper. “Dick confirmed.”

  Phillip threw it away without giving her a chance to read it.

  “What did it say?”

  He lifted an eyebrow, challenging Rose, as if asking Do you really want to know?

  “Just spit it out.” Whatever Josh said, Rose didn’t really care, but not reading his letter for herself would eat her alive.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll paraphrase.” Phillip stood, held an imaginary letter in front of him, and said, “Dearest Rose, I’m a douchebag and want nothing more than to continue doing douchebagery things with you and your friend. I’m hoping you know nothing about the truth, and you’ll continue to hide your head in the sand when you get out, because then we can sneak out and do even more rotten things together.”

  Rose’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment. She looked around but didn’t see anyone watching. Not even Gracie and Paul looked up from their game.

  Grabbing Phillip’s arm, Rose dragged him back to his seat. He stared at her hand like he might cry.

  “What’s wrong?” Rose asked.

  He ran his fingertips along the delicate bones in her hand. “That’s the first time you’ve touched me since you came out of Underwood’s office. I thought he’d gotten to you. I thought I’d lost you.” Phillip swiped a tear from her cheek, staring with an intensity that took her breath away. He needed Rose just as much as she needed him, and yet here she was questioning her own sanity. He deserved to know what happened today. The truth.

  “The investigators couldn’t find any record of you at the institute.”

  His eyes widened with panic. “You talked about me?”

  “I tried to tell them, to ask for help.”

  “But he was in there.” Phillip jumped to his feet and paced beside the table. “He expected you to talk. What happened?”

  “He turned everything against me, made me seem nuts, which I am, but more nuts than that.” Rose played with the flap of the other envelope from Josh, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “But the investigators said they’d be back. They’d make surprise visits and check on me. Then he told them and me that you were a figment of my imagination.”

  Phillip sat back down almost as quickly as he’d stood. He took her hand and squeezed. “Is this imagined?”

  “I don’t know.” Rose withdrew her hand. “They said I’ve been here six months. I didn’t know that.”

  “Time is an illusion. It’s easily lost in a place like this, on the drugs they feed us.” Phillip cupped her cheek and leaned in close enough to kiss her, close enough for his breaths to caress her lips. “But me? Please, don’t let me go.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone talk to you?”

  His nostrils flared and his face reddened as he glared at an orderly across the room. “I don’t know. They haven’t for a long time.”

  “None of the patients do either.”

  “Rose, I’m real.”

  Not quite sure of anything, Rose nodded. “I want to believe you. I do. More than anything. My head is just so messed up.”

  “I know.” Phillip took the envelope she’d been playing with and opened the second letter from Josh. “Want me to read it?”

  “Sure.”

  Phillip didn’t make baskets or paraphrase or do anything other than stare at whatever Josh sent, caught up in the words. Rose couldn’t imagine him writing something so captivating that he’d earn someone’s attention for longer than a millisecond. “What is it?”

  “Not a letter.” He handed her a newspaper clipping from twenty years ago. The headline read: Medical Student Vows to Change the Face of Institutions. Josh had written a note to Rose in the margins: Found this on microfiche while doing my senior research project. Guess your doctor is famous. Small-time famous at least.

  Frederick Underwood, a recent graduate from Vanderbilt University, enters his first year of graduate school in the fall, and he’s already caught the attention of leaders in the mental health community. Not only did he achieve perfect scores throughout his college career, growing up he spent most of his time in an institution where his adoptive parents put him to work. “I gained immense knowledge of how the underlying roots of the patients’ problems were being overlooked. Not intentionally, mind you, merely in the way our science was not yet advanced enough to help.”

  Underwood claims he’s interested in studying basic human emotions and how to make people more aware of them. He believes somewhere in these most primal instincts is the answer to many of the problems ailing patients at institutions all over the world.

  “I’ve already lost someone to mental illness. I never got to know her, to look up to her, or be taught by her. But through this work, I hope somehow I’ll make her proud.”

  Underwood hopes his research will lead him to cures for some of the most heinous mental disorders. And leaders are lining up to offer him a position on their staff prior to his graduation.

  “I appreciate all the support I’ve received from the medical community, to date, however I’ve had to decline several positions. I plan to pick up where my parents left off, at the Smoky Mountains Insane Asylum. I do plan on changing the name, something in honor of my lost loved one.”

  She passed the clipping back to Phillip. “Did you read it all?”

  He nodded. “Lost loved one?”

  “Yeah, guess we know he’s related to Heather Shepperd. And we already knew he wanted to cure fear. But who was she to him?” Rose couldn’t remember her mother ever mentioning a brother. But that didn’t mean one didn’t exist. Dr. Underwood was so much younger, though. Maybe Mrs. Briar didn’t know about him because she’d already lost contact with Heather at that point. “So they’re related. He doesn’t want anyone else to end up like her, and what? We’re his test subjects?”

  A man cleared his throat from the entryway. Rose didn’t have to turn around to know it was Dr. Underwood. He definitely hadn’t cured her fear. It kept a tight grip on her.

  “Miss Briar, when you’ve finished opening all your mail, please come and see me in my office,” he said, then he was gone and she could breathe again.

  “What’s in the last one?” Phillip leaned in closer to get a better view.

&n
bsp; “Something from the art school I wanted to go to.” Rose had wanted to attend summer classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts to earn a little experience in the art world before she went off to receive a degree from a regular university to placate her mother. This was Rose’s dream, and she had no idea why it was in her hands.

  “Did you apply?” Phillip whispered, glancing back at the door.

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t remember applying for the internship, but lately not remembering didn’t mean a thing. Everyone knew Rose wanted it. Ms. Jeffries, Rose’s former art teacher, her parents, Megan and Josh, even Dr. Underwood. On the hospital admissions forms, Rose had to list things currently going on in life, her fears. The number one being she’d never become the artist she wanted to be; he’d even brought it up on more than one occasion. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think Dr. Underwood must have sent them something.” Heart thundering, Rose opened the envelope and read the letter to herself. They thanked her for sending the Polaroid of her drawing and wanted to see more before accepting her to their summer program. They asked for another drawing, something that inspires on an eleven by seventeen canvas, returned within the week in the included self-addressed and stamped envelope. “Would he do this?”

  “He’s been different with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nicer, cautious.” Phillip glanced over his shoulder again. “Protective. So, yeah, I think he’d apply for you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It is.” Rose shoved the papers at Phillip and then chewed the skin around her thumb.

  “And you don’t remember applying?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “No.”

  “Would any of your friends or family have sent in a picture of your work?”

  “My dad, maybe, but only if he wanted my mom to leave him, and Heaven forbid they disagree long enough for that to happen.” The skin around her nail burned from her chewing it raw and red. She sighed and folded her hands in her lap, the way she always did in Underwood’s office with the picture Heather drew looming overhead. “Had to be Underwood. The article, his family relation, the name of this place. He’s doing for me what no one ever did for her. I don’t know whether I should love him or hate him.”

  “Hate. Definitely hate.”

  “We’re not that sick, though.” Talking to imaginary people aside. “Why choose us for this cure?”

  Phillip pondered over that for a minute, glaring still at the orderly on the opposite side of the room. “To him, everyone is sick. Emotions are an illness. As for us . . . Whatever relation Heather was to him, you’ve got a close family connection, art, the suicide thing.”

  “And your mom committed suicide. So he sees you the way he sees himself?”

  “Did Heather have a kid?”

  Rose shook her head. “My mother never mentioned it. And Heather died really young.”

  The orderly stepped away from the wall and made her way toward the table. Phillip tensed. “You should go. You can’t keep him waiting.”

  “I don’t want to. I just want to know why he’s doing this. If everyone is sick, then I’ll never be cured. I’ll never get out of here. What’s the point in sending in the requested piece when I’m stuck?”

  “You’re getting out of here,” Phillip said as the orderly hauled Rose up by the arm.

  “I believe you were called to Dr. Underwood’s office,” the woman grumbled, turning Rose toward the door and pushing her forward. “Go!”

  Phillip scrambled out of his seat and caught up while Rose whispered, “How do you know? How do you know either one of us will ever walk outside that gate again, Phillip? We don’t deserve this, any of it!”

  They stopped just short of Hall A, and Phillip’s eyes didn’t waver. “Things are different since you’ve been here. He’s been different. He’s changed his methods, some of his timing, the way he acts. He watches you constantly yet gives you space to roam. He’s given you gifts. But if he is the one who sent in a picture of your work to a program you want to attend, that’s . . . something he’s never done for me. I think you’re right and he sees you as Heather; he’s obsessed. Word of advice?” Phillip said, hand on Underwood’s door.

  “Yes?”

  “Find out who she was to him and use it. Be Heather.”

  21

  Doctor Underwood spent the first ten minutes of the session ignoring Rose, wearing a path from the window to the door, to the desk, to the bookshelf. He never quite settled, even while rubbing that damned stone.

  The doctor muttered things Rose couldn’t make out from where she sat, hands between her thighs like always. She glanced up at the picture behind his desk. Had her mother recognized it? Did she know Dr. Underwood had a connection to her best friend from childhood? Did she know him from their past?

  If so, maybe he was the reason why she put Rose in here so fast. Maybe he’d convinced her mother that Rose would end up just like Heather if not treated soon.

  Maybe.

  Rose would ask if only her mother would make a connection. If only her mother would write or visit. Nurse Judy had defended Mrs. Briar when Rose brought her mother up today, saying she was only trying to do the right thing where her daughter was concerned and that the right thing wasn’t always black and white.

  “Rose,” Dr. Underwood said, finally, kneeling next to her and looking up with those big brown eyes that used to seem so caring. “We have a real problem here. Do you understand that?”

  Understanding there were problems wasn’t an issue. Knowing which he spoke of was. Rose didn’t know how to answer, so she opted to remain silent, sealing her lips in a straight line, something she was used to.

  “You’re still not willing to talk.” He moved around the desk and took a seat in his chair. His hair was a mess. Instead of resting in neat layers ending at his ears, his locks looked tangled, like he’d run his fingers through so many times the strands didn’t know which way they were supposed to lay. “So I’ll talk for you. You’ve admitted to discontinuing your medication to the investigators who were here today. You’re seeing someone who doesn’t exist. You’re still not drawing. You’ve admitted to one singular issue between you and your mother, but missed a whole laundry list of other issues you have.”

  Because she didn’t have a laundry list of issues. Rose wasn’t insane. She may have acted irrationally, skipped her prescribed depression medications from time to time—which almost always, always, led to trouble—but she wasn’t insane, and she wasn’t suicidal. And she wanted to yell all that at the doctor, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.

  “Still not speaking.” Dr. Underwood flipped open her chart and began writing. “So I see we’re reverting back to our old ways.”

  Of course. Anything she did he would use against her. Anything.

  “All right. Where have I gone wrong with you, Rose? You were making such fantastic progress.”

  This went on for another thirty minutes, the doctor pressing Rose with stupid questions she refused to answer. Why’d you stop the medicine, Rose? Why don’t you trust me, Rose? Why do you talk to Phillip and no one else, Rose? Why? Why? Why?

  He sounded just like her mother, except her mother wasn’t hauling her off to a chamber of nightmares every night. Mrs. Briar was looking out for Rose, trying to guide her away from bad people and the actions that come along with them, even if she lost sight of her daughter too often and saw her as someone else. But Dr. Underwood? He served his own purpose. Rose knew that now. She could tell the difference between the two, and she wished she could prove it somehow, to someone other than the psycho in charge of her life.

  “We’ll begin injections of your medicines today. They’ll help you open up to me once again, erase the friend your mind made for you, and get you on the road to healing.”

  The doorknob cracked open at the back of the office, and Dr. Underwood glanced up and then quickly back to Rose.

  “You really keep trying to te
ll her I’m not real,” Phillip said, stepping into the office with his hands fisted at his sides like he was ready and willing to fight. Like he was facing that bully in the schoolyard and ready to go all the way this time. “But I’m right here.”

  “Unless you have something to say for yourself, Rose,” Dr. Underwood went on like Phillip wasn’t there. But Rose saw him look up when the door opened. She saw him quickly look back at her, as if he didn’t want her to tell he’d noticed. He reached over and pressed a red button on his phone. “Well? Do you?”

  Rose refused to answer, to make a move.

  Phillip crossed the floor and stood by the desk. “I know I’m real. She knows I’m real. Maybe you’re the crazy one.”

  “Yes, Dr. Underwood?” Nurse Vicki said through the phone’s intercom.

  “I need a two milligram shot of Ketalar, please. I’ll also need you to begin administering an additional two milligrams of Diazepam to Miss Briar every morning before she wakes, or have Nurse Judy take care of it, but please mark it in her dosage chart.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The green accountant lamp flew off the table and landed in a pile of broken glass and bent metal on the rug. Phillip stood there, the cord in hand, an evil smile on his face. Rose liked where he was going with this. He could yell, and he could destroy, and if Dr. Underwood didn’t respond, maybe Phillip wasn’t real. But if Dr. Underwood did respond? Like the way he glanced up when the door opened, then maybe he was just a very good actor.

  “I really don’t wish to do this to you, Rose,” Dr. Underwood said, his hands clasped on his desk. “I wish we could work through this without the need for heavy sedatives.”

  “They aren’t sedatives, are they?” Phillip tucked his arm behind the books and knocked them all to the floor. “What is Ketalar? We’ve seen the charts. I bet an honest doctor would tell us that’s some illegal drug, right? That’s why you hide the files.” He repeated this action for every row on every shelf in the doctor’s office.

  Still Underwood didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

  Rose wished Phillip would punch the man. How would he deny that? But then she’d probably never again see Phillip. Maybe he knew that too, and that’s why he hadn’t touched the doctor yet.