“You think it’s funny?” He cut the boy off mid-convulsion.
He turned, still laughing. “Uh, yeah, I mean did you see her?” He broke off in another fit of laughter. The rest of the table, having noticed the black aura pulsing around Rafe, was smart enough not to join their friend.
“She could have died,” Rafe growled through his teeth.
The boy rolled his eyes. “But she didn’t. Whatever, man. What’s it to you anyway? She your girlfriend or something?” The last part was said with a mocking curl of his lips. “Bet you didn’t know she was an expert at the chicken dance.”
His fist flew into the boy’s mouth before either of them could see it coming. The gruesome crunch echoed like cannon fire through the cafeteria, bringing the entire place to a screeching halt. The boy went flying over his chair and landed in a heap across the aisle. He howled as he clutched his bloody mouth.
Rafe bared his teeth. “Next time I hear you talking about her, I’ll break your jaw, understand me?”
Without waiting for anyone to come to their senses and get a teacher, he turned on his heels and stormed from the cafeteria. He didn’t stop until he was in his car and driving like a maniac to the hospital.
Chapter Thirteen
Ana
“Hit her head…”
“No reason…”
“Psychotic break…”
The buzzing was faint. The voices muffled as if spoken from the end of a very deep barrel. The smell of antiseptic, pine cleaner and muggy sickness poured through the recesses of Ana’s dream, rippling the image of … what? What had she been dreaming? She vaguely recalled violet flowers and maybe … Rafe? She couldn’t be sure. It was all gone now and she surfaced through an ocean of milk.
In the distance, the voices were broken by the steady bleep, bleep, bleep of machines and the low, mechanic wheeze of voices over an intercom. The low hum of people in motion, walking, talking, pushing carts and shouting orders consumed her all at once as she was thrown from one plane of existence into another. Bright lights glowered down at her from a fluorescent bulb overhead. Ana groaned as the sharp spikes of light stabbed her sensitive eyes, drawing tears. She struggled to turn her head, only to feel as if her skull had been punctured by a spike. She cried out without thinking.
“Ana?” Her mom’s face appeared almost instantly above her, gray eyes wide and wet with tears. “Richard!”
Dad appeared at her mother’s side, ashen-faced. “Baby?”
Ana winced as their voices joined the marching band trampling around inside her skull.
“Don’t try to talk.” Dad placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I’m going to get the doctor. Just lie still.” He was gone before she could question him.
Ana tried to turn her head, to follow his retreat, but the effort had shards of pain slicing down the back of her skull and down her spine in ribbons of fire. She laid perfectly still, stomach revolting.
“It’s going to be okay,” Mom said, taking Ana’s fingers in her cold, clammy ones, careful not to dislodge the IV piercing the back of her hand.
“Wha … wha…” God, why couldn’t she talk?
“It’s okay!” her mom said again, squeezing her fingers tight and looking on the verge of crying. “It’s okay.”
Stop saying that! she wanted to scream. She closed her eyes instead, willing herself not to throw up.
“Ana?” The voice was unfamiliar, male, gruff, but gentle, the kind of voice that was usually really good at delivering bad news.
Swallowing hard, Ana opened her eyes and blinked up at the man looming over her.
Well into his sixties, the man had a bald spot that gleamed under the lights and eyes that were tired, but still managed to smile somehow. They looked down at her now through the square glasses perched on his hooked nose.
“I’m Dr. Hibbitt. Do you know where you are?”
Maybe it was the situation. Maybe it was her mother’s anxious face, her father’s terrified lip nibbling or the doctor’s solemn frown, but she had an overpowering urge to say, Disneyland? Where else could she be that smelled of death and sickness? Where the main choice of attire consisted of a paper gown?
“Hosp … Hosp … p…”
Dr. Hibbitt put his hand up, stopping her stuttering. “Okay.”
“What’s wrong?” her father demanded at once.
The doctor ignored him. “Ana, do you know how old you are? Who these people are?”
She had to slick her lips, had to swallow the anxiety clawing up the back of her throat. “Seventeen?” Right? She wanted to ask. But the relief on everyone’s face was answer enough. A little more confident, she continued, “Mom and Dad.”
The doctor beamed. “Excellent! Now do you remember what happened?”
This took a little more effort. She had to squeeze her eyes closed and really focus. She remembered the rain, missing her bus, catching a ride with Rafe … something about Algebra?
“Just tell us what you remember,” the doctor said soothingly.
Again, she wet her lips, baffled by how dry they were. “School,” she whispered in a raspy voice. “It was raining. The bus…” She scrunched her brow, pushing hard against the barrier holding her back from the rest. “Did I have Algebra today?”
“Did you?” the doctor asked quietly.
The heels of her hands were like ice against her burning temples as she squeezed her head between them. “I think so … maybe…”
Dr. Hibbitt hummed, moving to the foot of her bed. He unlatched the clipboard from its sleeve and quickly jotted something down. Then he came back around to her side and went through the motions of checking her temperature and blood pressure.
“What happened?” she asked when no one offered her the answer willingly.
“You had an accident,” the doctor said evenly. “Do you remember hitting your head?”
“My head?” Ana raised a hand and touched the top of her head, smoothing it back until she felt where the heat was coming off her skin. The skin was puckered and she could feel the coarse lines of the stitches.
“It’s not too bad,” the doctor assured her. “Your mother refused to let us shave your head so we did our best. Only five stitches. I think you got off lucky.”
Lucky? She had stitches in her head. Somehow lucky wasn’t the word she would have used.
“What happened?”
Images flashed of her sitting in Chemistry, of holding Rafe’s jacket…
“Do you remember something?” the doctor asked.
Ana shook her head slowly, more in disbelief rather than denial. “I was in Chemistry … right?”
“You tell me.”
Frustration had her teeth grinding. “I don’t know! I…”
Vinny. No! Not Vinny … someone … the boy … the boy … what boy? Blond … a cape?
“Demon!” The word blurted from her lips before she could stop it and with it, like a trigger, everything slammed into her all at once, forcing her back into the lumpy mattress. Images of drooping flesh, oozing blood, eyes … black, unseeing eyes, windows into hell, leering back at her. The machines around her began to scream, violent cries of panic. “Demon! There was a demon—”
“Ana!”
“No! Listen to me, please! There was a demon in—”
“Ana, you need to calm down!”
She slapped away the hand the doctor placed on her arm. “Wait! There was—”
She fought off the hands that grabbed her and held her. The machines around her bleeped wildly. Voices rose, a tempestuous crescendo of commotion. “I saw it! It was—”
The doctor was shouting for something, his hands scaly on her arms. Then her parents were gone and she was surrounded by distorted faces and hurtful hands that grabbed, pinched and pushed.
“Wait—”
Then, very slowly the world melted into black as the drugs injected through her IV took claim of her.
Dr. Hibbitt promised her no restraints or needles if she remembered to ke
ep calm. He took the seat beside her, clipboard in hand. Her parents huddled in the doorway, holding each other, but he must have told them to stay back, because neither made an effort to move any closer.
“Hello, Ana,” he said in his calming voice. “Do you remember me?”
Ana looked at him, eyebrow raised. “I’m crazy, not stupid.”
Nothing reflected on his face to her comment. “Do you believe you’re crazy?”
“I saw … I thought I saw a demon, what do you think?”
Dr. Hibbitt peeled off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and Ana wondered how long his shift had been. His face looked even more haggard than it had been the last time she’d seen him and he was still wearing the same mint green shirt. She instantly felt bad for her lip, but then she remembered he was the one who instructed the nurses to knock her out.
“I think,” he began slowly, “that you’re dealing with a lot right now. Moving away from the place you’ve lived your whole life, leaving your friends behind and starting over … it’s a lot for anyone to deal with.”
So we’re working the stress angle again, Ana thought.
He replaced his glasses and peered down the length of his nose at her. “Your father tells me you haven’t been sleeping. Is there a reason for that?”
Yeah, because something behind my walls likes to keep me awake. “I’m just not tired,” she lied, twisting a piece of loose thread from the sheets around her finger.
Dr. Hibbitt nodded slowly. “Is eating an issue?”
She shook her head. “I like food.”
He nodded. “Do you often find yourself restless? Stressed?”
Ana considered that, then jerked a shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
He scratched her response on his clipboard. “What about school? Do you fear not fitting in?”
Again, her shoulder made an involuntary twitch. “I guess. Maybe. I mean at first, but…”
His head bobbed in understanding nods while he tapped his pen on the page in a way that sent little fingers of dread creeping up Ana’s spine.
“Could … could you not do that?” she whispered, pointing.
He adjusted his glasses higher on his nose and peered down at his pen and clipboard as if he’d forgotten all about them. “Does noise bother you?”
Good going! She cleared her throat. “It’s distracting,” she said, thinking that was a good answer.
His thin lips drew into a small smile. “I apologize.” The tapping ceased. “Are you distracted easily?”
“No more than anyone else, I think,” she said.
He must have been satisfied by her response, because he said, “Your parents inform me that you have made some friends since you arrived.” He folded his long fingers over his notes and observed her enquiringly. “Clearly making friends hasn’t been a problem for you?”
Ana nodded, not sure what kind of answer he wanted for that, because, although he placed everything he said as a question, it was impossible to determine if they actually required one.
“I guess not.”
“What about your friends from back home? Do you still keep in contact?”
Ana shook her head. “We’re kind of going our own ways.”
He made a note of that. “What about boys? Did you have a boyfriend back home?”
Ana shook her head. “No.”
His eyes were intense when they rose up and pinned her. “And now? Is there a boy?”
Did he honestly believe she was seeing monsters because of some boy?
“I didn’t do this for attention,” she said hotly, temper snaking up the back of her neck. “I wouldn’t.”
Dr. Hibbitt put his palm up. “No one is saying that, Ana. I am merely trying to help you.” Then tell me why this is happening to me! “Is there a boy?” he asked again calmly.
It took some effort not to fist her fingers or keep from shouting. “No.”
“Do you ever get … unhappy thoughts?”
Ana stared, certain he was joking. “What?”
He set his pen down and spread his hands open, palms up. “When you’re alone, do you ever think everything is just too much to bear? Like you want to give up—?”
“No!” she said at once, outraged by the question. “Yeah, my life sucks right now, but I would never—”
He smiled thinly again. “I apologize if these questions seem … callous, but they have to be asked. You understand.” It wasn’t a question for once.
“No,” she said quieter, because she did understand, even if she didn’t like it.
He nodded and wrote this down. He stayed that way for several minutes, head down, pen-wielding hand zipping across the page. Ana couldn’t make out a word he wrote. Everything looked like chicken scratches and she wondered if they taught that special brand of inscription in college.
Finally, he sat up, adjusted his glasses and peered at Ana. “As far as I can tell, the only problem you seem to be having is falling asleep.” And that little demon problem, but Ana kept that to herself. “I don’t think we have really anything to be overly concerned about.” He rose to his feet and faced her parents. “Usually in a case like this, I would prescribe antidepressants, but I’m confident Ana isn’t depressed. I will however, prescribe her a mild sedative to help her rest at night. In the meantime, I’d like to keep her overnight, just for observation. She can head home tomorrow.”
Her parents thanked him as he left, then they were both at her side, taking her hand, pushing back hairs from her face.
“How are you?” Mom asked, searching Ana’s face like the answer was there somewhere. Her fingers were strips of ice around Ana’s.
“Confused,” Ana admitted. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“We know, baby.” Her father kissed her brow.
“But we’re going to find out,” Mom said, using her and-nothing-will-stop-me tone. “I’ll make some calls and we’ll find a good center—”
Her grip on her mother’s hand tightened. “You can’t institutionalize me!”
“Maybe not an institution,” her father said, looking at her mother. “A doctor perhaps? Someone she can talk to.”
“Like a shrink?” Her mother looked dubious, like the word was foreign.
Her father shrugged, still staring her mother. “It couldn’t hurt.”
Her mother rolled her eyes, face no longer filled with concern, but tight with determination. “Well, I simply don’t care what it is or how it’s done! I will not settle for anything less than a full, logical explanation.”
The conversation was pinned for later discussion when a nurse poked her head in. She smiled politely at them.
“Dr. Hibbitt said you needed a little something to help you sleep.” She stepped into the room, a sharp syringe in hand.
Ana watched as her IV was tampered with, the clear liquid already dripping from the bag mixing with the new substance coursing through the clear tube into her vein. For a maddening second, she considered tearing it out before the sedative could take effect, but the idea of sleeping, of actually closing her eyes and falling into a dreamless, restful sleep was too powerful to resist and Ana couldn’t suck the stuff in fast enough.
“How long?” her mother asked the nurse.
The woman shrugged, making her tightly screwed curls bounce around her cherub face. “Ten-fifteen minutes, roughly.”
Her parents turned to each other as the nurse hurried from the room. “One of us should stay,” her mother murmured, wringing her fingers.
“I can.”
Her mom shook her head. “You have work in the morning.”
Her father blinked. “This is a little more important—”
“I’m all right,” Ana interrupted. “You should both go home. I’m going to probably be out all night.” One can hope, she added to herself. “They’ll call you if anything happens.”
“I’ll stay,” her mother said as if Ana hadn’t spoken. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll call the office and cancel my
flight.”
The flight was news to Ana and her eyes widened. “Are you going out of town?”
Mom gave her a fleeting glance. “Just for a few days, but I can reschedule.”
“We should both stay,” her father decided.
“Guys!” Ana shouted, beginning to feel the room sway. Her parent’s faces blurred and the air was heavy, like inhaling tasteless syrup. She shook her head and the world rocked with her. Nauseated, she squeezed her eyes closed. “I’m fine!” her voice slurred. “Go home. I mean it!” Wow these drugs are quick! Fifteen minutes my foot!
The last thing Ana saw before she sunk into a decadent cloud of sleep was her parents still arguing over who got to stay and who should go to work in the morning. Ana left them to it, letting herself float into the warm arms of the first real sleep she’d had since moving to Chipawaha Creek.
The nurse must not have given her enough or the doctor hadn’t wanted her to oversleep because Ana woke with a start to a dimly lit room and a kind of silence that belonged in a funeral home. The stench of pine cleaner was even more overpowering than before, wafting into her freezing room with an abundance that made her stomach wretch. She blinked her eyes and shifted onto her back, careful not to disturb the lump on her head. At the foot of the bed, the clock on the wall announced the time as three in the morning, if the blackness outside the window was any indication.
“No way!” Fumbling and groping along the railings, she found the little button to signal the nurse. She pushed it. Maybe they’d give her another dose, two if it only lasted a handful of hours at a time.
Thirteen minutes passed, she knew because she watched the clock. She peered at the open doorway, into the nearly pitch black hallway. Why was it so dark?
Gingerly, Ana pushed away the itchy sheets. She swung her legs over the lip of the bed and reached for her IV rod. Her head swooned. Everything doubled for a second before righting again. She sure hoped that was just a side effect of the drugs and not brain damage.
Taking a deep breath, she slipped off the bed and hissed when her feet touched the sheet of ice that was the floor. Couldn’t they leave her socks? Where were her clothes anyway? She’d look for them later, she decided, making her way carefully to the door.
Betraying Innocence Page 12