That stupid, little, baldheaded prick was what I thought, but I didn’t say it as I stared at my shrink. For days we had been at this, and the only good thing was Nurse Hatchet didn’t make me wear the restraints on my arms. She put me in a room that had nothing sharp in it, but at least I wasn’t confined. That shit made my head swim.
There was no defending myself if something were to happen. I would have been at their mercy and stuck. I avoided getting stuck at all costs. It was a little ironic here, though, because each time I got up to check to see if the door was locked, it was, but from the outside. It did little to help my anxiety. While it used to comfort me to check the doors, in here, it only added to my unease.
Today, this asshole decided to get into the nitty-gritty of my time at the Petersons’.
I tried hard to keep my answers simple. I tried hard not to let everything hang out.
He looked over at me from his desk. “Tell me how you feel.”
I sat in a chair across from him as he played with the corner of his glasses. I thought for sure he would take them off at any moment and put one end in his mouth like those corny TV shows, but he didn’t.
“I want to know what is going on in that head of yours. I want to know what it felt like when you saw Drew kiss the other woman or when the child ran up in his arms.”
My insides turned to ice and my throat began to close, suffocating me. I had blocked as much of that moment out of my head as I could, just trying to get myself out of here and putting all my strength into that. I didn’t want to think of it right then, but he didn’t stop.
He just kept pushing.
“How did you feel when the three of them went into the house?”
Nope. I wasn’t doing it. Instead, I gripped the chair, holding on for dear life, using it to keep me firmly planted in the room.
“How did seeing Drew take off with his family and leave you behind, yet again, feel?”
The way he said family hit me in the gut. The knife already lodged inside twisted its serrated blades, shredding me to the depths of my core. There was no going back from that one. Nope. Nothing.
My heart constricted at the thought of Drew playing with his son out on that big front lawn while his woman sat watching, smiles on all three of their faces. The deepest recesses of my soul came to the surface, and I couldn’t push them back.
Tears streaked my cheeks as I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my body, trying to hold myself together. I had been focusing so hard on getting out of here that the vault I had all these emotions in was left unguarded and sprang open. The swirling tornado sucked me into its depths, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“This what you want, doc?” I pointed to the tears dripping down my face. “Because this is how I feel.” I got up from the chair, needing space, and began pacing behind the chair. My thumb went to my mouth as I began chewing on it as I moved. “I’m alone. Desperately, unequivocally alone. I have no one in this world.” I stopped momentarily and stared him in the eye. “Do you even know what that’s like?” I didn’t wait for him to answer as I turned away and continued answering for him. “Of course you don’t with all those family pictures behind you. Did you ever think someone coming in to see you had no one, and I mean no one, on this planet to turn to? No. You probably grew up in a house where people actually gave a shit about you. You probably didn’t have to scrounge for food or result to eating dog food because there was nothing left for you after your parents ate their dinner. You probably did shit like play games or whatever it is parents are supposed to do with their kids. Me? None of that. I didn’t even know what a game was until my first foster home, and they looked at me like I was a freak when I didn’t know what Go Fish was.”
I sucked in deep breaths and carried on. “Nope. You didn’t have to do any of that. You didn’t have to spread your legs to keep the only person on the planet who gave a shit about you from having to go through the same pain. You haven’t watched that same person die in front of you, the life fading from the eyes of the one you loved.” By this point, my words were so jumbled with sobs I didn’t know if he was understanding, but I really didn’t care. It was coming out without any way to stop it.
“You didn’t have to live on the streets, surviving by opening your legs again just to get food or protection. It was all I had to offer anyone.” I swiped at my nose, wiping the snot-covered tears on my hospital-issued pants. “You didn’t have to pick yourself up from that, get two jobs, work your ass off, get your own place—hell, even make a new friend. But I wasn’t living.
“The only thing I was living in was fear: fear that my father would find me; fear that Mr. Peterson would find me; fear that my mother would find me and give me back to my father; hell, even fear that Mrs. Peterson would see me out and drag me back so she could get back the money I lost her when I left, since I wasn’t her paycheck each month anymore.”
The doctor had a brown, ratty couch in the corner of his office, and I needed more space. I sat with my back to him, resting on the arm of the couch. I curled myself into the smallest ball I could make myself, wishing I had one of those superpowers you see in the movies so I could just disappear. Forever. No such luck. A small ball was the best I could do.
“Then Andi wanted me to get closure. She’s the one who started all of this. She wanted me to go to Drew’s gravesite and tell him bye. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. It would be telling him good-bye all over again, and I couldn’t do it. But her words played in my head for weeks, only to find out he’s alive, happy, a father, a husband or boyfriend.”
I began rocking back and forth, unable to stop the tears or my words. “So how I feel is I’m in a big, black void of thick, sticky tar. I’ve always been in it, unable to get above the surface as it keeps pulling me in. But seeing Drew, knowing he’s alive and didn’t come to look for me, didn’t bother to even think of me … I’m under it so far now I can’t breathe. I’m ready to end all of this.
“I don’t want to be in this world anymore. I don’t want this pain and ache to take me over, and I don’t need you or anyone else telling me how fucked in the head I am. I know it. I live it. And you need to know, doc, nothing you do is going to pull me out of it.”
I sat there, rocking back and forth, wanting everything to stop, wanting it all to go away. It didn’t. It just kept getting louder and louder in my head.
No one wants you. You think you can survive out there now? You have nothing. You are nothing.
“In other words, you’ve fallen about as far as a human being can go,” he said, not moving from his desk.
His words echoed around me, colliding with the ones playing in my head.
I was in the pits of Hell. There was no light. No hope. I didn’t even care. It all came to me in a rush. It didn’t matter if I ever got out of this hospital. It was only postponing the inevitable. I would end it as soon as I stepped out of those doors. Keeping me here was just prolonging the hurt. It was its own kind of torture that I had no control over.
Nurse Hatchet said I could get out if I listened and did what they said, but did it really matter? None of it did. I was stuck in the tar of my life, and it wasn’t ever going to loosen its hold and let me up for air.
The doc came over to the couch, and I jumped away from him, afraid he might touch me.
He halted, not coming too close. “Tomorrow, we begin to rebuild. For now, I’m going to call Nurse Bennett to come and get you.”
If I had been thinking clearly at the time, I would have learned my nurse’s real name instead of calling her Hatchet, but my emotions were all over the place, and everything in my head was a jumbled, scrambled mess, so it escaped me.
He left my side to punch some buttons on his phone while I just sat there, my forehead resting on my knees, allowing my tears to coat everything, drowning into nothingness.
***
That night, Nurse Hatchet granted me sedation, and I welcomed the blackness.
***
I haven’t talked to Wrestler McMann for days. I sat in his office while he tried, but I ignored him. There was no point, no point in anything. The black film around me was too thick to see above.
The doctor prescribed me sleeping pills, but I refused to take them. If I did sleep, it was because I passed out from crying or staring into lost nothingness. In those instances, I only slept an hour here and there, never any more. I hated to admit it, but I missed not having Andi to call and talk to or come and lay with me. I missed her making me feel a tiny bit happy, even for brief moments in this pitiful existence.
That was purely selfish, and it was weird how I would hate her one moment then miss her so much the next. It was something else that I kept from Nurse Hatchet and the doc: the up and down waves that my mind was taking me on. I kept them to myself and let them eat at my soul.
Nurse Hatchet opened the door to my room, and my head swung to it. Rarely anyone came to my room, and when someone did, it was for one of three reasons: one, to bring me food; two, to give me meds, which I gave into; or three, to take me to the doctor. This helped me relax just a touch. I didn’t have the constant worry for the first time in my life that the Petersons or my parents would barge in and take me away.
“Time for your session,” she told me, walking in and clasping her hands in front of her. She never felt any fear, or she was at least damn good at not showing it if she did. “You need to tell him everything.”
I sighed yet didn’t answer. I wasn’t going there. He had gotten enough out of me; he wasn’t getting any more.
She reached for my hand and cupped it in her grip. I tried to get away but couldn’t, which made the panic start to bubble.
“Let go,” I croaked out, having it get caught in my throat.
She stroked the top of my hand. “Calm.”
This was gentle, comforting in a way. I stayed tense, though didn’t pull away.
I took some deep breaths before she began. “Child, you need to talk and get better. Living inside your head does no one any good.”
I wanted to say, Living at all isn’t good for me, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Doc can help if you let him. You can go out and become the woman you were intended to be.”
I scoffed loudly and rolled my eyes. I wasn’t intended to be anyone in this world. I wasn’t intended to live a life that many only took for granted. No, the life I was intended to live was the one I wanted to escape.
“Young lady, don’t you roll those eyes at me.”
I halted because the way she said it wasn’t bitchy or condescending like I had heard it a million times from my foster families. No, this was caring yet assertive.
Unease slithered along my skin. No one cared about me. It wasn’t something anyone did. She couldn’t, either. I wasn’t worth her time.
“You are a bright woman and deserve to be happy.”
I stared at her, finally finding words. “Happy? What is that?”
Nurse Hatchet straightened, her eyes widening at the first words I had spoken to her in several days.
“You see, Nurse Hatchet, women like me don’t get to be happy. Women like me don’t have hope or prayers, because that’s all a bunch of bullshit that people throw at you to make you feel better. Women like me are nothing. We are vapor, a puff of smoke. We mean absolutely zero to this world. Women like me would have been better off never being born.”
I sucked in a breath as a tear fell from Nurse Hatchet’s eye, her lip trembling as another tear followed. Of all the shit I had said to her over the time I had been here, never once had I seen her cry. Ever. I banked on her never crying, counted on it, relied on it. She was fucking it up! She couldn’t have feelings for this. No!
“Stop it!” I barked loudly, ripping myself away from her and pasting myself to the wall farthest from her.
While she looked down at her feet, I could tell she was taking deep breaths from the rise and fall of her chest.
“You don’t get to feel sorry for me!” I screamed at her. She couldn’t. If she did, she needed to go behind that mask and not let me see it. She was strong, assertive, and for some strange reason, I needed that.
She swiped her face with her hands, took a few more moments, and then turned to me. “Get your ass moving. You’re gonna be late.”
At that, I felt my spine lose a bit of its starch. There was my nurse. That was what I needed.
***
A knock came to the door, and I jolted as it slowly opened looking from the doctor to it. A man, tall since he had to duck to come through the doorway, entered, and I stilled. He was lean yet fit if his muscular arms were anything to go by. He had tattoos up one of his arms, the hair on his head was cut super short on the sides, and the top was barely there, as well. He had a nasty scar down his chin to his throat that had to have gotten there with some serious pain involved. However, it was his chocolate brown eyes that stared at me coldly, unyielding, that seized the air from my lungs.
I gripped the arms on my chair so tightly I knew there would be imprints on my hands when I released, but something had to ground me as the floor beneath me began to spin.
What was this man doing here? Why was he here?
A nurse, who wasn’t Nurse Hatchet, stepped in behind the man, a bored look flitting across her face.
“What’s this now?” the man’s voice rumbled through the room. Something in it reverberated around the space, bouncing like a million of those balls that go a mile a minute. He was mad, angry … hell, pissed.
He kept opening and closing his hands, making them into tight fists then flexing his fingers. Each movement demonstrated the strength in his arms.
“Lynx,” the doctor greeted like he had known him for years.
What kind of name was Lynx, and why in the hell was he greeting him?
The man said nothing, merely stared at me sitting in the chair, his eyes cold and hostile.
My first instinct was to run and hide, get as far away from this man as physically possible, but I stayed rooted to the spot.
Movement to my side made me jump and turn. The doctor pulled one of the chairs from the far wall over to the side of his desk. It was a good distance from me, but way too close. And I just knew who would be sitting in that chair before he spoke.
Wrestler McMann gestured to the chair. “Please have a seat.”
“What’s going on here?” I demanded in a panic, thinking of all the ways I could get the hell out of this room fast. I didn’t know what this man was capable of, but from the coldness in his eyes, I was sure it was anything. I wasn’t afraid of dying; it was all the other shit that came before it that I didn’t want to endure.
“What she said,” Lynx said to the doctor, stepping forward and crossing his arms over his chest, making him look really wide and even more intimidating.
The nurse shut the door, and stood with her back pressed into it. Everything in this scenario was wrong, and I didn’t like it one bit.
The doctor touched the side of his mouth with a finger. “It seems you two have a lot in common.”
I looked to the man standing beside me, seeing absolutely nothing that we could have in common.
He didn’t look at me, simply focused on the doctor. It gave me a moment to see his profile.
The scar looked worse close up, and the angle of his nose told me he had been in a fight … or twelve. Since he was still alive, he must have won.
“And that would be?” Lynx asked the question that almost slipped from my lips, but I was thankful I held it in.
“You both have PTSD.”
The doctor went over post-traumatic stress disorder, over and over when he didn’t have to. I was fucked in the head, not stupid. Basically, the shit of my life gave me stress that my brain couldn’t handle, and my actions were a result of that. See? Simple explanation, not that long, drawn-out bullshit I heard him drone on about for days. He also went over depression and anxiety with me. I admitted they fit.
Even if Lynx had PTSD, there was no way in hell he had the same kind as me. From his demeanor, stance, and the fact that power radiated off him like sun waves beaming, no one messed with this man. No one. He couldn’t possibly have anything in his head like I did.
“So?” Lynx asked while I sat there, dumbfounded, my brain needing to catch up and get its shit together. I had checked out for so long it was more difficult than I hoped.
Doc pointed to me. “So, we’re all going to sit and try to have a conversation.”
I said nothing.
“I think you two are a good fit.”
“No,” I whispered, pulling my legs into my body and wrapping my arms around them.
As my body began to tremble, I yelled at it to stop, but I had zero control over it.
Lynx could overpower me in a heartbeat. I had no weapon to protect me from what he could do to me. Mr. Baldman and Nurse Creep wouldn’t be able to fend off this man. Andi took my gun, which would have been the only way I could survive anything with this man. No.
“No,” I said a little louder. “I can’t.”
I felt Lynx’s eyes on me, the impenetrable stare looking down on me like I was a freak. No. No. No!
Please make this stop. Please make this stop, I kept chanting over and over as the grip on my legs got tighter and tighter.
Boot steps began and stopped as a large, resounding sigh came from Lynx. I looked up through my eyelashes to see his gaze on me. He sat in the chair next to the desk, facing me, his arms still crossed, but now his long legs were, too, at the ankle.
“Shit, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he said as I looked at his face.
The coldness was still there, but there was something in his eyes that was a tad bit lighter. I didn’t believe him, though. I definitely didn’t trust him. No way. Not going to happen. Never.
I said nothing, just burrowed in a tighter ball.
“Lynx, this is Reign. Reign, Lynx,” the doctor introduced.
I raised my head, not looking at the man in the chair, but something sparked in me that I needed to keep alert. I hadn’t been alert in more days than I realized, yet something inside my head clicked, and I took in everything right down to the pencil the doctor had in his fingertips, wiggling back and forth, hitting the desk every so often. I also took in Lynx’s breathing. It was calm and steady. No anger, just resolve. I still said nothing.
“Lynx, you start. Tell Reign about yourself.” What he said surprised me. Why would this man want to tell a stranger anything about what was going on in his head? It wasn’t like I went around shouting to the rooftops about all my issues to everyone. I kept that locked up tight, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” Lynx responded, the pissed-off attitude not lessening a bit. “I’m not talking about shit in front of someone I don’t fucking know. Are you out of your mind?”
A small part of me, back in the recesses behind all the pain, fear, and anger, wanted to actually chuckle. That realization slapped me in the face, and I locked it down, giving my head a slight shake.
Wrestler McMann answered, “I think it would be good for you to talk about your experiences with Reign.”
“Don’t tell me she’s been to war, because I know you’ll be flat-out lyin’.”
War? Oh, shit, he was a guy from the military. There was no way his issues had anything to do with mine.
“If I told this scared, little rabbit all the shit I’ve seen, she’d be crying in her Wheaties,” he mocked, causing a fire to blaze in my stomach, one I thought had burned out, never to be lit again. I didn’t know where it came from, and I sure as hell didn’t know why, but it was nice and toasty warm. And I clung to it.
I sucked in deeply, and my lip curled. How fucking dare he? How. Dare. He?
“Fuck you, asshole,” I clipped as Lynx turned to me in surprise. I didn’t think that was possible, but whatever. The doc turned to me, too, but I didn’t pay him any attention. “You have no fucking idea. Don’t sit there on your holier than thou throne and do the I-can’t-say-shit-because-of-her-feeble-mind bullshit. You can stick that up your ass right now.”
Lynx’s eye twitched. It was the first bit of actual expression I had seen, but as soon as it was there, it left.
“All right, little girl,” he started condescendingly, only spiking the heat inside me. “Where do you want me to start? Where everyone in my battalion was killed in an ambush but me, or when I held my best friend’s body in my arms with his head hanging on by only his spine?”
The thought sickened me, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen or been dealt with my own kind of hell.
I sat up and felt the blood pump in my veins for the first moment in a really long time. I let the warmth flow through my body, waking me up from a really long sleep.
I fired back, “How about watching a woman get gang raped by four guys who used broken bottles on every hole in her body then beat her within an inch of her life before leaving her for dead? Or how about the little twelve-year-old boy who was selling dope and came up short to his supplier? I watched him get a bullet to the brain. Or what about the guy who didn’t pay the trick he was using? The pimp strung him up by his dick and balls to a tree, fucked him in the ass with a broomstick, beat him with the stick, and then left him there. Don’t know if he lived or died.” I shrugged. “So don’t try to be big, macho, I’ve-been-through-hell man to me. That shit doesn’t work. I’ve seen things that would make you wince.” The entire time I stared at him, not flinching once, only seeing the slight tick in his jaw that gave any indication that he was listening to me. He stayed silent through it all.
“Seems we didn’t even touch the surface during our discussions, Reign,” the doc said. He wasn’t wrong. He didn’t need to know everything I had seen or done on the streets. That shit was buried. At least, I had thought it was until stupid military man had to open his big, fat mouth.
“Were you that woman?” Lynx asked.
My brows pulled together in confusion. He thought I was talking about me?
I answered flatly, “No.”
I did open the door to this, so I had to suck some of it up and go with it.
His eyes bore into me like he was trying to read if I was telling the truth or lying. I really didn’t give a damn if he believed me or not.
I turned back to the doc. “Can I leave now?” I wanted the safety of my small room. It wasn’t much, but it was better than being here.
“We have thirty more minutes, Reign,” he so kindly reminded me.
Even though I felt anger at that, it was good to feel something other than sad and alone. It might not have been the best emotion, but it was something.
“I don’t want to talk to him anymore.”
“Him is right fucking here. You can address me.”
I glared as he spoke. It was so damn strange that one minute, I feared him, yet now I just wanted to brush him off like a tick.
“Whatever,” I bit off, crossed my arms over my chest, and looked up at the ceiling, not that whatever was up there would help me. My hell just kept getting better and better.
“Lynx,” the doc prompted.
“Fucking hell.” He sighed and rubbed his hands over his bald head. “I get out of here soon, anyway.”
I perked up at this new information. I needed that: to get out so I could be done with all of this. I couldn’t go through another dog and pony show like this again.
“Army out of high school. Did damn well. Went to war, saw fucked up shit, and now I’m home.”
Well, at least he wasn’t in the sharing mood, either, since I really didn’t give a shit.
“There’s a lot more to it than that, Lynx,” the doc chastised.
He shrugged. “That’s the fucking gist of it. Not really much more.”
Wrestler McMann pressed, “What about now? Why are you here?”
Why did I suddenly want and feel the need to know? Why did I care? I wished my head would stop with all the ups and downs; it was making everything ten times worse.
“Because I’ve been on edge since I became a civilian again. Loud noises, cars backfiring, fucking fireworks—all of it fucks with my head and puts me back into fighting mode. Got into a lot of fights and been arrested a couple of times. Came home the other night to my girl in bed with another guy. I beat the shit out of him, got my gun out, and shot a few rounds just to scare the fucker. I never got the diagnosis of PTSD off me, so that’s what they say I have again, and I was put in here for seven days. I’m on day four, so I’m out soon.”
Well, that sucked for him, but he seemed to be handling everything just fine. He probably had a mom and dad to go home to. Sure, he had gotten the shit end with the chick, but he would find someone else. I still didn’t see how this could help me. If anything, it just drove the wedge between me and the rest of the world deeper.
Doc’s eyes didn’t leave Lynx. “You want to tell her anything else?”
“I didn’t want to tell her anything in the first place. Why the fuck I wanna tell her more?”
“Fair enough. Reign,” Dr. McMann called out.
I didn’t move my head, just my eyes to him.
“You want to say anything?”
I looked at the clock. “Time’s up.”
He checked his watch, disappointment flittering across his face. He must have had high hopes.
“We meet again tomorrow in the morning and the afternoon.”
I gripped the chair. “I’m not talking. Get it through that fucking head of yours. If you and Rambo wanna talk, fine, but leave me out of it.” I rose from the chair and turned to the nurse by the door. “Take me to my room,” I demanded.
She looked behind me and must have gotten the okay sign because she escorted me back to my room.
***
I lay in bed, Drew’s dead eyes staring back at me. Then, in a flash, his happy ones came along with visions of his wife and kid. Every memory I had of Drew got tangled with the new ones tainting my old ones. I wished I could get the old back, but for a woman like me, wishes never came true.