Under My Rules

by Rhonda Bowen

  “You don’t know that,” Khai snapped. “You can’t know that. She’s been gone for two days. Do you know what the odds are for a missing person after two days?”

  “Hey, it hasn’t been a full two days yet,” Kristoffe said. “She spoke to her friend yesterday, right? You told me that.”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t see her.

  “But as far as you know, she was okay as of yesterday.”

  Khai sunk to the ground. He rested his back against the side of the car. He closed his eyes, covering his face with his hand. Kristoffe was wrong. Portia wasn’t okay yesterday, or the day before when he had last seen her. She hadn’t been okay for a while.

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone.” His voice cracked with the words that had been eating him up all evening. “When I saw her on Tuesday night, she was a wreck. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

  “Khai, I know you’re not going to like this, but I have to say it. You can’t fix everything. You can’t fix Portia’s life for her, no matter how much you may want to. You can’t save her. Only God can, and you have to trust Him to do it.”

  Kristoffe was right. Khai didn’t want to hear that. But at the moment, he had no argument for it, because it was the truth. He couldn’t save Portia. If what Derek said was right, then Portia may have been spiraling days before she even dropped off the map. Skipping meals, purging. God knows what else, and none of them had seen it. Not her mother, her best friend or even her own twin. They had known her most of her life, seen her at her worst and they missed it. Khai had known her less than a year. Why did he think he could have done better?

  “I can’t lose her, Kristoffe. I can’t.”

  The voice that said the words didn’t sound like his. But he knew it had to be, because the words were a direct echo of his heart.

  He heard his brother sigh. “What can I do?”

  Khai pressed the fingers of his free hand against the center of his forehead as if trying to touch the pounding headache that plagued him for the past two hours.

  “Can you...can you pray?”

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  “Of course, Mandy and I have been praying since—”

  “No,” Khai cut his brother off. “Can you pray, now? With me. I need...I need to hear it.”

  Kristoffe needed no further prompting.

  “Our Father, the One who knows and sees everything. You know why we are here. We come to You because we know You have all the answers. You know where Portia is at this moment. We pray that You reach out and wrap her in Your protection. She is Your child and she calls You father. Hold her in Your arms of love and safety. Let no weapon prosper against her. Loose her from the chains of illness and distress that may be binding her and give her freedom in You.

  “And I pray that you be with her family and loved ones as they search for her now. Give them wisdom to know what to do, give them hope to fuel their search for her, and give them the peace of knowing that You have it all under control. I pray that especially for my brother, and I pray that even through this Khai may learn to trust in You. We thank You and praise You for what You have already done and will do, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.”

  As his brother’s prayer ended that familiar feeling of restlessness swept over Khai. He stood and paced.

  “Thanks. I gotta go.”

  He barely heard his brother’s response to stay in touch before he ended the call.

  Something strange was happening in him. Something he didn’t understand.

  He leaned his hands against the top of the car and took in a few deep breaths, trying to calm the shaking inside him.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” he closed his eyes. “God, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to trust You like my brother and Portia do. But I need You to prove to me now that You can hear me. Maybe it’s wrong for me to ask like this but I have nowhere else to go. I love her. She says I shouldn’t, that we can’t. And maybe she’s right, because she loves You more. But if she loves You that much You have to help her. You have to save her.”

  His fingers curled and uncurled from fists. “Please save her. And I...I promise, I’ll come to You willingly.”

  Khai felt the promise tangibly as if he had written it on paper and signed his name to it. He recognized it for what it was. He had just put his free will on the table. He had put his issues with Trent on the table. He had put his future on the table and offered it up to a God he had been playing tag with for a long time.

  But he was serious. This prayer was for Portia, but it wasn’t just about her. It was about all the prayers in the past he felt like God hadn’t answered. Prayers for his niece not to die. Prayers for him to not end up in prison. Prayers for his parents not to get divorced. Sporadic prayers born from moments of desperation, which it seemed had all been unheard. Prayers that forced him to see life as something he had to manage on his own. But if God answered this prayer for him, just this once, then maybe, maybe Khai could trust Him with everything else.

  And he really hoped the man in the sky came through.

  Because he was getting extremely tired of desperate.

  Chapter 22

  “Can I get my things now? Specifically my phone?”

  Portia tried to even out her tone to make the request, but she could hear the annoyance in her own voice.

  “Yes, as soon as your doctor approves outside contact.” The afro wearing plump woman in aqua scrubs enunciated each word slowly as she checked Portia’s blood pressure and her IV.

  “And has Dr. Craig given any indication when he might show up?”

  “And spoil the fun of making you squirm impatiently? Now why would I do that?”

  Both Portia and the nurse looked up at the doorway where a wiry graying man in Levi jeans and Timberland boots leaned against the door.

  “Thank God,” Portia muttered. Her eyes snapped to the nurse who had uttered the same exact words at the same time.

  “Really, Trisha?”

  “Honestly, Portia. I was hoping to never see you again,” the woman plopped a hand on her hip. “Mostly because you’re a pain in my behind.”

  Portia smiled. “I love you too, Trisha. And if it’s worth anything, I was hoping to never see you again either.”

  Trisha bit back a smile and continued to check Portia’s levels. The women had a lot of history together. Trisha was the same nurse that had been a part of Portia’s care team years earlier at this hospital. Though she was sad to find herself back here, she was glad a familiar face waited to greet her when she arrived.

  “I see you’re in a much better mood,” Dr. Craig walked in and took the chair beside Portia’s hospital bed.

  “Yeah,” Trisha snorted. “Two days on a food tube and IV will do that for you. Especially when you haven’t eaten in a week.”

  Portia’s eyes dropped to her lap. She stared at her hands. What could she say? Nothing. They were right.

  “She’s okay for us to have a session?” Dr. Craig looked at the nurse.

  Trisha nodded. “Yeah, she’s good.” She squeezed Portia’s hand. “Try not to give the man a hard time. He’s two months from retirement. I’ll catch you later.”

  “...with my phone,” Portia called after her. When Trisha disappeared through the door she turned to the doctor. “Why can’t I have my cellphone?”

  “You know the rules, Portia,” the doctor leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “No outside communication for the first two days.”

  “But I checked myself in. I requested you to come—”

  “Only after you collapsed on the side of the road and had to be taken to the hospital.” He frowned. “They couldn’t even figure out who you were until you came to. Why didn’t you have ID on you?”

  Portia shrugged. “I went for a run.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I am glad you had them call me. I wish you’d called earlier. Like seven days ago.”

  Portia nodded. She wished she had called to
o. Maybe then things would not have reached this point, but she thought she had it under control. The skipping meals had started a week earlier. The nausea in her office after seeing Casey had set off the purging. It was all downhill from there.

  “It was just...I never thought it would come to this.”

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  Portia closed her eyes, the memories of the past few weeks flowing over her. “It was just too much.”

  “What was too much?”

  “All of it,” Portia lifted her hands limply. “The constant fighting with Derek over Solid, worrying that we won’t have enough money to offer and we might lose the money we already put into it, everything with Khai and then she shows up.”

  “She who?”

  Portia sighed. “Casey. Douglas’s other daughter.”

  The doctor leaned back and tried to look relaxed, but Portia caught the slight jump of the vein at his temple.

  “Tell me about that.”

  “I can’t have her in my life, Craig.”

  He stared at her but said nothing. She rolled her eyes. He was going to shrink her. She might as well get into it. She knew she wouldn’t see her phone or the outside of the hospital walls until she spilled her guts.

  “I still hate him. And by default, her. And I hate the fact that he could love her but couldn’t love me.”

  There. She said it out loud. Her constant private thought since that day almost sixteen years ago when she first laid eyes on Casey. Casey couldn’t have been more than seven then. Still small enough for Douglas to lift her into his arms and carry her around like the prize she was to him. The prize Portia had never been.

  “Are these the thoughts you have when you see her?”

  “These are the thoughts I have all the time,” Portia scowled. “They just get harder to ignore when I have anything to do with her, which is why I don’t have anything to do with her.

  Her psychiatrist said nothing, just gave her that probing look that annoyed the life out of her.

  “What do you expect me to do? I know this is not her fault. I am not that haywire. I don’t even really hate her. But how can I look at her, knowing he chose her and not feel…feel...”

  Could she say it?

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Feel like I’m not good enough.”

  The words hung in the air of the hospital room, louder than the beep of the machines monitoring her heart rate or even the distant sounds outside. They hung heavy, just as they had hung heavy in her life for so long.

  She tried to ignore them. Tried to defeat them by being the best at everything she did - running Solid, organizing her home, staying in shape, being the perfect Christian. She did her best, always. But the words were always there, taunting her. The picture of Douglas with Casey was always playing on the reel in her mind, reminding her that she had been weighed and found wanting.

  “How do you determine the value of your product at Solid, Portia?”

  Portia wrinkled her nose at her doctor’s sudden change of topic, seeing it for the distraction it was. Having been his patient for the better part of four years, she’d become accustomed to his bag of tricks.

  He continued, “When you price, do you just pick a number out of the air?”

  She indulged him. “No, of course not. We look at the market for our product, look at what people have paid in the past, look at what similar products are going for then work with an analysts to come up with a range.”

  “So basically, you have a whole bunch of people give their opinion to decide how much your product is worth?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Craig raised an eyebrow. “You’re frowning.”

  Portia bit her lip. “Yeah. Because sometimes the price we end up with is not what I think it should be. I mean, Derek, me, all the crew, we know the work that goes into every shoe. The time and research it takes to design a shoe and make sure it’s comfortable, functional and stylish. We take into account the needs of different consumers. We scour the market to make sure what we put out isn’t already out there. I mean, you see a shoe on a shelf in the store, but you don’t know that it can take a year to get it from design to shelf.” She shrugged. “But people think they should pay whatever for it.”

  Craig nodded. “So the value you place on it as the creator is often different from the value others place on it? Often higher.”

  “Of course,” Portia rolled her eyes. “It’s our shoes. Each one is special to us. Valuable to us. But why are we talking about shoes, Craig?”

  He smiled. “We aren’t talking about shoes, Portia.”

  She stared at him a long moment before it finally sunk in.

  When he did speak again, it was because she couldn’t.

  “Your value is set by your Creator, Portia,” his eyes met hers kindly. “Not by other people. Not by the New York Stock Exchange or the Dow Jones. Not by the financial analysts at your bank. Not by the men you date. Not by your parents. Not even by you. Your value is set by the One who created you. The One who thought you were so valuable that He sent His son to die for you.”

  She didn’t even bother to swipe at the tears that rolled down her face. Instead, she looked everywhere. At the blank walls ahead of her. Out the darkened window. At the thin plastic tube running from her arm to the IV bag. Everywhere, except at the man sitting next to her, speaking a truth she had yet to embrace.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat before releasing a few words. “I know.”

  “I know you do,” Craig nodded. “You know it in the general way we say it at church or in testimonies. But do you know it personally? Do you know that Jesus came to this world and died for Portia Jasmine Wynters, knowing everything she would be from her first breath to her last? Do you know that your life matters to Him every day, every hour, every moment? Do you know that you are crowned with glory and honor?”

  Did she know? Because if she knew, if she accepted that, she would have to reexamine everything in her life, from her continuous quest to schedule herself into perfection to the hundreds of barriers she placed on herself to keep things in control. She would have to let go of her quest to earn God’s love and finally accept that she already had it. There was nothing she could do to make Him love her less and nothing she needed for Him to love her more. Nothing could change how precious she was to Him.

  But accepting that would mean change. A lot of change.

  She sucked in a deep breath, shaking her head a little. “You’re right. I should have called you. If it happens again, I will.”

  “If or when?”

  Her head snapped around as she glared at him. “So now you don’t believe in me?”

  “God could ask you the same thing.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Portia, you know that your anorexia is not the problem. It’s just the manifestation of a deeper problem.”

  “Which is the stress I am under.”

  “People deal with stress in many ways. They exercise. They take a vacation. They shop. They eat chocolate. You obsess over your intake and your weight. Why?”

  She laid her head back and closed her eyes, knowing the answer but not wanting to admit it.

  “Because of my self-image.”

  “Your distorted self-image,” he said gently. “But, Portia, the only way you are going to be able to embrace the right picture of yourself is if you look through the eyes of the One who created you and focus on that. Not on what other people are saying, not on situations in your life, not on your own self-assessment. Only on what He sees in you. Because that picture, that image of a beautiful, capable, valuable woman, loved and cherished by the Creator of the Universe, that picture never changes.”

  Beautiful, capable, valuable. Loved and cherished by the Creator of the universe.

  She was still thinking about those words later as she lay in bed trying to fall asleep. It was weird being back here on this floor, the mental health ward. The itchy feel of the hospital gown. The stiffne
ss of the mattress. The cold sterility of the room. The eerie quietness of the ward at night. She knew she should sleep, but her body wasn’t cooperating, and she didn’t want any more medications. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to go back to her apartment, and her Christmas tree, and weekly dinner with her mother and brother and the routine she knew.

  But the routine was broken. It was holding her in place, but it wasn’t helping her deal with the challenges she faced. And not dealing with the challenges was what caused the stress that led to the relapse in the first place.

  Something needed to change.

  She picked up the phone Trisha had brought in earlier and messaged her brother and mother, telling them she was okay. When she finally turned the phone on, there’d been over fifty text and voice messages. She knew they were worried and was sorry for putting them through that stress. Tomorrow, she would let them know where she was. They would rush down immediately and she would never have a moment’s peace. Tonight, she just wanted to be on her own.

  Outside her double paned window, the night was bright with stars. The rays from the moon flooded the courtyard below, joining with the Christmas lights on the trees to wash the open space in soft light. It would be nice to go for a walk. Maybe she could talk Trisha into it.

  The heavy metal and wood door made no sound as she cracked it open and glanced out. The hallway was empty. The sound of voices drifted to her from one end of the corridor. She slowly headed towards the front office where the ward was closed off from visitors by a buzzer operated steel door. The door to the nurses’ station was open, however, and she could see into the waiting area. Trisha argued with someone from behind the glass. A familiar someone.

  “Come on. Can I just see her for five minutes? Just so I know she’s okay.”

  Trisha pursed her lips. “It’s after visiting hours. And even if it wasn’t, you are not on the list of family.”

  “But I am family. I’m a friend who’s like family. Oh look...just got a text from her brother Derek telling me she’s okay. See? Like family.”

  Trisha folded her arms. “Nice try. The answer is still no.”