I thanked Dr. Fletcher and exited the office smiling, relieved that, yet again, she hadn’t treated me like I was losing it.
My smile immediately dropped however when, instead of the orderly that had escorted me there, it was Brad waiting for me in the hallway.
“Hello, Miss Bloom,” he cooed, beaming down at me.
I wanted to ignore him, but I knew from past experience that if I didn’t respond he would keep talking. There was something about his overly cheerful voice that grated on my nerves.
“Um, hi,” I answered quietly, glancing from one end of the hallway to the other.
Of course, we were alone. The only patients I’d ever seen escorted by more than one orderly were the ones with black wristbands, the ones that gave off feelings of violence and rage—East Ward patients. I looked back at the closed door to Dr. Fletcher’s office, debating whether I should go back in. I could pretend I’d forgotten something I wanted to talk to her about. Maybe if I took long enough, Brad would leave and some other orderly, one that didn’t make my skin crawl, would replace him.
I tensed when Brad settled his hand between my shoulder blades and prompted me to start walking. Giving up on my idea of hiding in Dr. Fletcher’s office, I jerked forward to put distance between us. I sighed quietly in relief when his hand fell away and tried to ignore the soft, knowing chuckle that sounded behind me.
I hated being touched by him even more than the sound of his voice. There wasn’t anything overtly threatening or alarming about him. As a matter of fact, I’d never seen him anything but happy. But, that sixth sense I had told me he wasn’t to be trusted. The same sense that pulled me toward Pretty Giant, Mysterious Man Bun, and Sexy Schizo, that told me they were safe, was screaming now. Even under the haze of drugs, I knew there was something wrong with Brad.
I hated having him at my back, but I forced myself not to run, knowing he would chase me, as we made our way to the gym for exercise therapy, but it was a struggle. I could feel his eyes on me like bugs on the back of my neck.
When we were within sight of the door I put on a little more speed, anxious to be away from him. I didn’t stop at the doorway, but immediately walked deeper into the room and toward the other patients there, hoping to disappear into the crowd. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Brad hovering in the doorway, staring at me with a cocked head and an inquisitive expression. He narrowed his eyes and pulled a cell phone from his pocket before turning away and leaving.
I relaxed slightly once he was gone and paused to scan the room. Spinning in a circle, I searched the faces of the people around me, looking for Emmett. I was anxious to see him. I knew, logically, that my sudden desperation didn’t make sense. I’d only met the man once and only interacted for maybe half an hour. It wasn’t reasonable to become attached to a stranger so quickly. It wasn’t rational to feel such an intense need to see him. But I did.
That manic feeling began to intensify. I was distantly aware that I was muttering to myself as I continued hunting for his playful smile or his alluringly disheveled blonde hair towering above everyone else.
“Where is he? Need to find him, have to find him, need to see him.”
There!
I thought I caught a glimpse of him by the far wall. But before I could start toward him, a whisper came from beside me.
“Don’t do that.”
I spun around, my eyes wide with surprise. Snow Angel Sarah was standing there, looking down at me with a frown.
“What? Don’t do what?” I asked sharply.
The thought that she could read my mind briefly flickered through my thoughts, but I knew that was the drug-induced paranoia talking. Just because I had visions—or used to have visions before coming here—didn’t necessarily mean there were people out there that could read minds.
“Don’t talk to yourself,” she clarified. Leaning down so we were almost nose to nose, she whispered, “They’ll think you’re crazy.”
I pulled my head back to put some distance between us and eyed her skeptically.
“We’re in an insane asylum. They already think we’re crazy,” I responded, keeping my tone gentle just in case she hadn’t realized that.
She nodded, then shook her head no and waved her hands between us as if to erase what I’d said.
“Yes, but not crazy crazy. They think we’re regular crazy. Like Crazy Lite. Not like ‘I stabbed the janitor because he stole my unicorn slippers out of my locker even though he said he didn’t, but I know he did’ kind of crazy. Get it?”
“That was… alarmingly specific,” I said, laughing nervously and taking a small step back as I peeked at the waistband of her sweatpants for any suspiciously knife-shaped bulges.
“Hmm? Oh. Ha ha. No, not me of course. I’m here for your run-of-the-mill depression. James is the stabby one with the stolen slippers and an intense suspicion of janitors.”
“James The Pencil Stabber?”
“Yeah! You’ve met him? He’s actually super nice but, ya know, don’t bring up unicorns. Or janitors. Or fences, obviously,” she said cheerfully.
“Obviously,” I agreed, nodding my head as if that made perfect sense.
“So, what are you in for?” she asked, staring at me a little too closely.
“I, uh… had just a small… moment and threw a chair through a café window. And scratched a guy.”
“Oh, that’s not bad at all! I was sad and didn’t get out of bed for a couple weeks. Not a big deal, but you couldn’t tell my mom that,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “I swear, you stop showering for just a little while and people think you’ve gone off the deep end! But I feel much better now. I think I’ll even be getting out soon!”
“That’s nice.”
I liked Sarah. She seemed friendly and, as she put it, Crazy Lite, but I still wanted to find Emmett. When I glanced at where I thought I’d seen him, he was gone. Twisting around, I searched the room again, but he was nowhere to be found.
The orderly blew on his whistle and signalled for us to grab a tumble mat.
“Come on, it’s time for yoga,” Sarah gushed, pulling on the sleeve of my hoodie. “Yoga is my favorite activity in this place!”
I turned to gape at her. She couldn’t be serious.
Okay, maybe she’s not Crazy Lite after all.
Anyone whose favorite activity included Exorcist impersonations, eerily accurate animal sounds, and ass cracks couldn’t be totally sane.
* * *
After exercise therapy, it was time for my session with Dr. Ferrer. With the exception of having to constantly block the poisonous emotions bleeding from East Ward, those sessions were my least favorite thing about being here. I always felt like she was picking me apart, like she was coldly looking for any excuse she could find to follow through on her threat to keep me here past my sentence. The fact that she held all the power over me, that she could keep me locked in here for as long as she pleased, was terrifying.
As I followed the female orderly down the hallway, I tried to finger-comb my hair into some semblance of order. We weren’t allowed to have hair ties or even rubber bands in this place so it was a sweaty, tangled mess from gym. The reflection in the window I’d passed showed me I looked a little too much like I belonged here. There was a haze to my large, grey-blue eyes, my skin was even paler than usual, and my full lips had lost their healthy pink color. I looked like a ghost.
I tried to put that image out of my mind when we arrived at the door to Dr. Ferrer’s office.
Think sane thoughts, think sane thoughts…
The orderly knocked. When a muffled come in sounded from inside, she opened the door so I could reluctantly enter.
“Hello, Miss Bloom,” Dr. Ferrer greeted flatly, unnerving me with the echoed words of Brad The Creeper.
“Hi.”
I made my way to the couch and settled into the stiff leather cushions while Ferrer finished scribbling in a file. After a couple of minutes, she closed it, picked up another that I assumed was mine, and made her way over to sit in the chair by the couch.
She stared at me silently, for long enough that I began to fidget, before speaking.
“I see in your file that Dr. Fletcher made some concerning notes. Do you usually make a habit of assigning people odd nicknames? Do you feel like that distances them from you? Have you always had trouble with interpersonal socialization?” she asked, watching me closely with her cold blue eyes.
She’d asked the questions in a measured, near monotonous tone, but I felt like she’d fired them at me like bullets seeking a target.
“I… yes, but no. I mean, I can socialize. I’ve never been much of a people person, but I can act normally around them,” I stuttered.
“Act normally?” she pressed, raising her perfectly arched dark brows as she wrote something in my file. “So you don’t feel like you are normal, but that you have to pretend. I see.”
“What? No, no I didn’t mean that. I’m… normal. Really. Perfectly normal.” I tried to cover up my telling pause with a nervous laugh.
“So you believe assaulting an innocent bystander in a café and violently throwing a chair through a window is normal?” she challenged.
I didn’t know if it was my imagination or the medicine making me feel paranoid, but I thought I heard something smug and predatory in her tone. She was twisting my words, making it seem like I was saying something I didn’t want to say.
It was worse that she was right.
I didn’t feel normal, because I wasn’t normal. I did have trouble with interpersonal socialization, as she put it. Maybe she was right. Maybe I did give people odd nicknames to distance myself from them. I hadn’t really picked apart the reason behind my quirk of appointing funny names to people, but I guess I’d thought it was a way to make them seem more approachable, not so distant and unreachable. But maybe I was wrong.
Those self-doubts made it hard to remain calm and deny her accusations. I wanted to get away from her. I wanted to convince her I wasn’t crazy. I wanted to admit that I was as far from normal as a person could get. But all I did was sit there and frown down at my hands.
“No, throwing a chair and hurting someone isn’t normal,” I admitted quietly. “I was just really tired and stressed. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“So how can I trust you not to hurt someone again the next time you’re tired and stressed? Hmm?”
“I… I just wouldn’t. Really, I feel much better now. I wouldn’t do that again, I promise.”
“Mmm,” she hummed, giving me a skeptical look before writing in my file again.
I would give up my dinner rolls for a week to know what she was putting in there.
Standing, she made her way back over to her desk and pressed a button on the phone there, calling for an orderly to come collect me. I sighed softly, half in relief that I’d be leaving her office soon, and half in distress. That hadn’t gone at all like I’d hoped. I tried so hard to say what I thought she wanted to hear, to only say the right things, but she picked them apart and warped them anyway.
I’d messed up. Again.