by A. E. Murphy
He’s right. I hate him for it.
Snatching the pen from his hand, I stomp past him towards the common area and say, “Fine, I will… but not today.”
“If not today, when?”
Instead of answering him I respond by humming a tune in my head as I walk away.
The lyrics don’t become lyrics so much as they are a scream I send out through my pen and onto paper.
I’m stepping into the world again,
From the safety of my nest,
Into an inferno of freezing pain,
To everybody who knows best.
My life is always scrutinised, it has been since I placed,
My fingers on those piano keys, which my blood defaced.
The crimson sacrifice I made, to wash away my pain.
I was running from the life I made, you’ll say I was insane.
You’ll question me, you always do,
You don’t know me, I don’t know you,
If you did, you’d see my soul,
The fight I’m fighting, to keep it whole.
Yes!
I flaked out,
Yes!
I lied.
Yes!
I couldn’t reach out,
Yes!
I cried.
You yell at me; it’s never bad enough to free the suffering heart,
With a blade from wrist to me, I watched my frail flesh part.
Hurt is water, we are earth, the vessel to its ever-changing pace,
Battering us, wearing us down, our heart growing a cavernous space.
Fragile walls that crumble ash, losing pieces of us all.
Just one more hit will tear them down, naivety’s wretched call.
Yes!
I could have been stronger.
Yes!
I could have changed the tide
Yes!
I could have waited longer.
Yes!
I chose suicide
No you don’t get it,
It’s laughable.
You only think you do.
If you for a moment just stopped and tried on my fucking shoe.
I won’t say the words I know you really want to hear.
All you need to know is that I’m forever battling fear.
And that’s okay, we all are too, it’s just mine got thicker than I could take,
But since that fateful day I died, I’ve been wide awake.
I remember love and how it feels, all warm and fuzzy inside.
He tried to take it from me, and almost won with suicide.
No! It means no.
Don’t think, don’t speak, don’t do,
No means no, means no, means no.
I’m stronger than before you.
My skin is thick, my heart is ready, my body has changed pain’s course.
No longer does my heart wear down, from guilt, shame and remorse.
It wasn’t my fault. I’m not to blame.
I don’t know why I didn’t say it loud.
I just have to move on from the shame of the blame,
And make my daughter proud.
Yes!
It hurts, it always will
Yes!
I’m free of his grasp and hold
Yes!
The hardest part is done
YES!
I’m past it now, I’ve won.
It’s the quickest poem I’ve ever written and the hardest. Now I just need to work harder to mean it.
“Writing letters?” Joy suddenly appears in front of me, across the table.
I crane my neck from side to side, stretching the ache from it after being hunched over the small table, writing my soul in verses.
“No.” I quickly fold the sheet of paper and stuff it in the pocket of my floral-patterned dressing gown. One of my favourite things about this place is that I can stay in my dressing gown all day and nobody says a thing. Well, so long as I have some form of clothing beneath it anyway. “What are you doing here? I asked the nurse and she said it’s your day off.”
“Moral support, though it looks as though you chose an alternative decision to the one you were set on.” There’s no judgment in her words; she’s just stating a fact.
I smile weakly at my friend. “I didn’t make the decision. My body did when it decided to get pregnant four months ago and not let me know about it.”
Her gorgeous lips that I envy so badly form the shape of an O. “Seriously?”
I nod, “Though I’m relieved because it’s not Thatcher’s…”
She scowls at the sound of his name and I love that she has my back like that. “But you’re still sad because…”
“I’m not ready to be a mother!” I hiss, cupping my hand around my mouth.
Sure, I talk to the other patients in here, but mostly we leave each other be. All of us are simply too deep in our own messes, or at least that’s the excuse I use everyday when avoiding them. It’s just too much. Every time one of them confesses their woes in group, I just feel like I’m weak. Their shit is bad, so bad… Like David who is sitting in the corner, looking out of the window, his eyes red rimmed from constantly crying… his wife, the step-mother to his two-year-old child, did irreparable damage to the poor babe. All I know is he’s still in hospital on life support and David just doesn’t have the strength to unplug him. So, he chose to try and unplug himself instead.
He doesn’t talk much. He’s been here longer than me.
Sofia is laughing with the nurse at the station.
Laughing.
I don’t know how she finds the strength. She lost her entire family in a terrorist attack in London two months ago. She put a bullet in her head so she could go the same way as they did. Fate had plans other than death that day.
And here I am… raped, abused, but not without family or love.
I had support. I had the option to talk. I had the option to send him down. I had the option to be an adult about it all. I chose death. I have to live with that fact, these scars and the hatred and pity I’ll see in the eyes of the ones who love me.
“Are you going to call him at last?” She asks and her earlier words give me a brilliant idea. “What’s that look for?”
“I’m going to write him a letter.”
“A letter?” She looks confused. “Wouldn’t it be better to speak to him.”
“No, because,” I scribble on the corner of the paper, watching the black ink taint the fresh white surface, “he’s really good at convincing me of stuff.”
She laughs, understanding my hidden meaning.
“Plus, what if he decides I’m not fit to be a mother?”
Her laugh vanishes. “He’d be an idiot to decide that.”
“He’s a powerful, handsome man with a supportive family. They’d win.”
“They aren’t fighting you to win.”
“Yet,” I point out. “I don’t know them from Adam. What I do know is that Lockhart has repeatedly used blackmail to get what he wants.”
“Until he fell in love with you and changed.”
“I sound like a desperate abuse victim.”
She takes my hand over the table, her dark skin making my tan vanish in an instant. “That’s because you are one.” Smiling, she explains, “He never hurt you and wasn’t it you who said that by the end you were hurling abuse at him constantly and he still stayed and tried? Wasn’t it you that said the fact he forced you to stay was wrong, but it was also the best thing that happened to you until Thatcher?”
I grumble a yes.
“Then take Thatcher out of the equation and decide whether or not you want to be with him, whether or not he’s worth fighting for, whether or not you can trust him.”
“You’re so worldly and smart,” I snap aggressively but quickly shoot her a playful smile and add, “Where’ve you been all my life?”
“Waiting for you.” There’s a twinkle in her eye that vanishes before I can register its meaning. “Now… how are we going to
start this letter?”
“Dear Mr Lockhart…” I jest and put my pen to paper. “I’m pregnant. Yours Faithfully, except when I’m drunk and in hot tubs, Cerise Branch.”
“Drunk and in hot tubs?”
I smack her hand. “Oh like you haven’t Googled the shit out of me.”
She laughs her arse off for the longest time and for a short while I let go and join her.
You’ve dyed your hair,” I announce so loudly everybody in the room looks our way.
I give David a smile when he chuckles. It’s the second time I’ve heard him laugh this week. It makes me happy and brings me so much joy. Not the nurse Joy, but the synonym for happy, joy.
“I have.” Geoffrey grins, looking a lot younger now, but I have to admit, his grey speckled hair did give him that handsome aged look that only men seem to get.
“Finally getting yourself a life outside of this place?” I joke, hitting him on the arm with my notebook.
“It’s about time one of us did,” he retorts.
I pretend to wet my finger and when it touches his arm I make a sizzling sound with my tongue. “Damn, I need some aloe for that burn, Doc.”
Chuckling, he gives me a gentle push away from him. “I have things to do.”
“Who is she?” I ask, following him like a child, my hands tucked into the pockets of my jacket. “Or he… if you swing that way?”
“Cerise,” he warns, but I see his amusement in the crinkle of his eyes.
“Oh come on!” I whine playfully, following him outside, onto the gorgeous cobblestone winding path that leads from the common area to the greenhouse. I went in there once until a bee chased me out. “You spend all day every day…”
“Except Sundays.”
“Except Sundays, prying into the deepest parts of our humanity…”
“Song name,” he jokes, yanking my notebook from me.
I wrestle it back off him and hit him with it again. “Is she pretty?”
He sighs but the corner of his lips twitch with amusement. “She’s beautiful.”
This makes me smile more. “Oooh! Tell me more. Is she young? Is she old? Is she a doctor like you?”
“That’s all you’re getting from me,” he states, pushing open the door to the greenhouse and holding it open for me to step through. “You’ve been writing a lot lately. Anything interesting?”
“Just poetry and song lyrics. The norm.”
“That’s good. It’s good you’ve found an outlet.”
I nod my agreement. “How do you always manage to turn the conversation onto me?”
“Because it’s my job to.” He smiles warmly and gently strokes the head of a rose. “The last of the season, I’m surprised it lived this long.”
“Is gardening your thing?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. I just like the smell and the quiet. Nobody comes here.”
“I wonder why,” I remark sarcastically, looking around the barren greenhouse where few flowers bloom with life.
“Smart arse,” He mumbles, yanking on my braid which makes me laugh.
I gasp when he takes the final rose from the bush and cuts the stem.
“Ouch,” he hisses when he grips it and accidentally nicks himself on a thorn.
I wince and take his hand in mine to assess the damage. A small bead of blood gathers on the very tip. You’d think after what I’d done to myself blood wouldn’t bother me, but for some bizarre reason it sends a wave of sadness through me and shame.
Taking a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, I quickly wipe the blood away and announce, “Well unless it turns into sepsis, I’m sure you’ll live.”
He rolls his eyes and flexes his hand. “For a moment there I thought you were going to run.”
“I almost did… the blood,” I admit and shudder dramatically. I find him so easy to talk to. “It made me feel guilty.”
“We call that a trigger.”
I take the rose from him after pulling myself up onto the side beside the plant pot and, with his permission, I shave the thorns off with a nail file type tool. He moves around me, watering the dying flowers and plants that are getting ready to sleep for the winter.
I start singing after I smell the rose and then hold it up to my mouth like a microphone. It’s been a while since I sang. It feels like forever but it’s likely been longer. The notes come easily, easier than they ever have because it’s been so long since I let go. My voice sounds good, relaxed and well rested. I enjoy it but I don’t want to push it so I quieten, ready to stop.
When I finish, I clear my throat, embarrassed when he starts clapping and cheering.
“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand to help me down. “I’ll escort you back.”
I grin up at him. “Sorry for crashing on your quiet time.”
“It was the best break I’ve had all week. Don’t ever think you’re imposing.”
He escorts me back across to the building and it’s not until I’m back in my room that I realise he never took the rose from me. So I inhale its sweet scent one more time and place it on my windowsill with my notebook. I’ll press it into the pages when it starts to lose its life, forever immortalising it and remembering the path I took to good health and happiness.
“Have I had any mail at all?” I feel as disappointed as I sound. “And you definitely sent that letter last week?”
She looks a little insulted when she responds, “Of course, Cerise. I promised I would. I put it in the pile with all the mail myself.”
“It’s not instant messaging, Cerise,” Geoffrey states, frowning at the file in front of him as he ticks boxes and reads the text. “It’ll take time to get there and return.”
I huff and tap my foot on the floor. “I’m getting really restless.”
“Go and play chess with David,” the nurse I offended a moment ago with my lack of faith chuckles. Her name is Poppy. She’s brilliant, one of my favourites. I have so much respect for her. “He needs the company.”
“Or…” Geoffrey puts in. “You can come with me on an errand.”
“Errand?” Both I and the nurse ask at the same time.
The curious, narrowed eye look she gives him does not go unnoticed.
“The staff lounge needs more milk and we’re running low on chocolate, thanks to greedy over here.” He nods to me and I stick my tongue out at him. I have no regrets.
“I’m not sure that’s wise. She’s still…”
Geoffrey gives Poppy a look that silences her immediately. “Poppy, how I work with my patients is up to me.”
“Yes, Doctor Foreman,” she mutters, looking embarrassed. “I just meant because of the cameras and such that have been camping outside.”
“They know I’m here?”
Geoffrey shoots her with another look and she busies herself as he guides me away with a hand between my shoulder blades. “There will likely always be someone out there until you leave. You know this. We’re prepared for this.” He stops us both and turns me to face him, his eyes holding such warmth and kindness that my insecurities momentarily vanish. “It’s just to the shop, which is just around the corner. You can do this. We’ll be in my car. It’ll be fine. Okay?”
My nerves have my hands shaking but he’s right; we are prepared for this. I have to face it eventually.
I nod a little too quickly. “It’d be nice to get out of here.”
“And get more chocolate,” he adds, grinning, then nods his head towards the door. “Go get out of that bloody dressing gown. You look like a mental patient.”
I laugh loudly at that. “I am one.”
When he leads me out of the private building and through the main hall that I vaguely remember coming through when admitted, I keep my eyes on the floor just in case anybody decides to look at me funny.
“Chin up, Cerise,” he whispers, gripping my bicep gently. “I’ve got you.”
I don’t look around but I take a deep breath and absorb the warmth from his calming e
nergy. “I can do this.”
“You can.”
We exit the main building. He signs us both out and I stick to his side like Velcro to felt. “You’ve got this, girl.” The transgender woman behind the desk grins and I definitely remember him. I mean her. Darn it. I promised myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Bloody hell.
“Thanks,” I mumble and Geoffrey leads me to the entrance doors. We still have to cut across to the carpark but the thought of stepping through those doors is… it’s intense. I’m almost ready to have a panic attack but he takes my bicep in his hand again and I find the strength to do it.
The cold air fills my lungs. It’s as though the air on this side of the building is different to the other, more private side.
I see the gates in the distance but make a game of trying to guess Geoffrey’s car.
“Mercedes?” I question, seeing a TT in the distance.
He shakes his head, smiling secretively.
“BMW?”
Again, he shakes his head. “Omg!” I place my fingers to my lips and start giggling when he presses his keys and his sleek black car lights ping on and off. “How did I not guess that you drive a Bentley? You look like just the type of person to drive a Bentley.”
“Are you saying I’m an old man?”
“Anybody over thirty in my eyes is old.” I wink at him and wait for him to open my car door.
I play with all of the buttons and admire the cream leather interior as he rounds the car.
“Are you always this nosy?” He chuckles, snatching the magazine from my hand that I found stuffed under my seat.