Putting on the necklace had been a terrible idea. I’d been sitting in my room, staring between the phone and the pouch. I couldn’t decide if I was going to call Taeren again or not. After our encounter at the train station I’d been more curious than ever about who he was. Someone had yelled my name, but it wasn’t him. Even though we’d barely spoken I knew his voice. I would know his voice anywhere. The man who yelled my name was older; there was something familiar about him but I couldn’t place it.
It felt like the Bloodstone was calling to me. I knew it was crazy, and I knew what Doctor Larkin would say about that notion, but there was no denying the connection I felt with that necklace. The moment I let the smooth metal back rest against my chest, the earth shook. Not metaphorically.
Pictures fell from the walls, sirens went off, and people were screaming. According to the news, the earthquake originated in Central Park. We lived miles from there in a suburb north of the city. If the quake had wrought that much destruction in my home, I could only imagine what it had done to the area immediately surrounding the park.
I couldn’t tell Paula that I thought the earthquake was somehow connected to the amulet. She was already watching me like she expected me to have a mental breakdown at any moment. I also couldn’t let her see that I’d begun wearing the necklace in the privacy of my own room. I had to see if it would cause another earthquake.
Instead, I started having strange dreams. These were nothing like the dreams that brought Riona to life; these were full of death and decay. The landscape was definitely the world I’d created, but everything was wrong. It was dying.
The vibrant green flora had disintegrated to nothing, the once brilliant sky was palest yellow with no stars in sight. Worse than all that was the presence of the dead and dying amongst those who still clung to life. They were suffocating. It was as though their world was collapsing in on them, like the air had been siphoned from their lungs. The once beautiful world I’d longed to live in seemed to be coming to a gruesome end.
My book had also taken a darker turn. I was inspired by the death and destruction I witnessed in my dreams. Lisa was equal parts intrigued and disturbed by the apocalyptic twist I’d added to the story. I had the princess stranded on Earth and Taeren chasing after her when the world began to crumble. The scenes I wrote about Riona were gut-wrenching. It was raw and terrifying and Lisa wanted more.
I felt myself falling into a dark state of mind. I had no will to do anything but sleep and write. My dreams fueled my words, and my words felt like the only real thing in my life. Paula tried to convince me to come out of my room but I wasn’t interested in appeasing her. I hadn’t bathed in days. I stopped taking the medication I’d relied on for years. I hardly ate anything. My devolving mental state should have been alarming to me after everything I’d dealt with, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
The nightmarish creatures I saw in my dreams started to flit about in the corner of my vision. They weren’t really there. Paula didn’t seem to notice them, but I did. Shrouded black creatures that never set foot on the ground reached for me when I wasn’t looking. I barricaded my door. If there was no way for them to get in, they couldn’t steal my amulet. If I was all alone, no one would be able to kill me.
The earthquakes had become more frequent. My mind was so clouded that I couldn’t be certain if the shaking was real or just a residual effect of the powerful necklace I wore. I quit answering my emails, my phone, my door. Paula and Lisa both spoke to me through the barricade. They were worried about me. It broke my heart to hear them so upset, but I couldn’t let them in. I couldn’t trust that they were acting of their own volition.
I was sleeping fitfully one morning when a bang shook me awake. Another bang sent my barricade tumbling to the ground. The bedroom door flew open. In a moment of betrayal, Paula and Lisa stood behind Doctor Larkin and two sturdy men dressed in crisp white. I screamed and scurried under the bed for shelter.
“Delia, honey, this is for the best. We need to get you well again,” Paula said through tears that clung to her cheeks.
“I’m fine. Go away. Get out of my room!” My scream sounded like a wounded animal.
“Delia, I need you to relax. These men are going to help me hold you steady while I administer a tranquilizer. We’re taking you back to the hospital until you’re better again.”
“No!” I tried desperately to become smaller so they couldn’t reach me under the bed.
It was no use. Strong hands gripped my legs and pulled. I was in the open. I kicked and punched at the men holding me down. Soon, my arms were secured to my sides as one of the men straddled my midsection. The other man held my calves as my muscles screamed for release. I felt a sharp prick on the side of my neck. The last thing I saw before it all went dark was Doctor Larkin leaning over me.
I woke from a strange nightmare. Everything was choppy and pieced together in a random order. None of it made sense. I remembered seeing the Sideon from my story in my room, but that didn’t make any sense. I tried to roll over to get more comfortable in bed. I couldn’t move.
Opening my eyes, I blinked against the harsh overhead light. Fluorescent. I tried to reach my hand up to grip my pounding head but found that I couldn’t move. My arms and legs were both strapped to the metal sides of a hospital bed.
“Hello?” I called out, hoping Paula would appear to reassure me.
There was no response. I listened carefully, hoping to hear a sliver of conversation, the hum of the air conditioner, something, anything. There was no sound to be heard. I’d spent enough time in the hospital that I knew what that meant. I carefully lifted my head to get a better look at the room; white padded walls surrounded me.
It hadn’t been a dream. I was back in the hospital. I was in solitary confinement. No one could hear me, and I wouldn’t hear anything at all as long as I was in that room.
The door opened. Finally, someone was coming to let me out of my prison cell. I must have fallen asleep because the room was dark and the narrow window near the ceiling let in just enough light to tell me the moon was high in the sky. Someone quietly approached my bedside.
“Delia?” It was Paula. Part of me was relieved to hear her voice, but a stronger part was angry with her.
“Go away.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry. You aren’t well. I was hoping you’d be able to turn it around on your own, but you just got worse.”
Paula removed the restraints that held me to the bed. Apparently, they were no longer worried that I would hurt myself or someone else. I rolled my wrists and pointed my toes to stretch my feet. I sat up in bed and watched Paula set up a food tray. There was no clock in the room, so I had no idea if this was an appropriate time to be eating the pancakes that smelled so good, but I was going to anyway. My nurse deftly cut the pancakes into bite size pieces then wiped off the knife and slid it in her pocket.
“Here, you need to eat. Taking yourself off your medication messed with your appetite. You haven’t eaten more than a few bites in nearly a week.” She slid the tray table over the side of my bed.
I could tell from her folded arms and popped hip that she wasn’t going to move until I’d eaten something. I took a few tentative bites, added more syrup and practically devoured the rest. She handed me a cup of milk and two pills.
“I’m glad you ate. You can’t take these without food, and this milk will help coat your stomach. This medicine can cause a pretty intense stomachache.”
I popped the pills in my mouth and took a long drink from the Styrofoam cup. My body seemed to fight me as I swallowed the medicine; like it knew what I was doing and rejected the decision. After gagging a few times and downing the entire contents of the cup, I finally swallowed them. Paula seemed satisfied with what I ate as she took the tray away and sat on the bed to face me.
“Delia, why didn’t you tell me you stopped taking your medicine?”
I shrugged. “I don’t even remember stopping. I just remember the nightmares.”
She reached up and stroked my cheek but I pulled away. “Honey, you’re going to get better again and we’ll go back home. I’m so sorry.”
“When do I get out of solitary?” I ignored her request for forgiveness.
“Dr. Larkin will be in shortly. He thinks you need to be in here until the medicine builds up enough that you won’t have another break from reality.”
I sighed deeply. “Just go. I’m tired.”
I could practically hear Paula’s body slump as she moved toward the exit. I almost called out to her, but I wasn’t ready to forgive her yet. It wasn’t exactly her fault that I’d landed back in the psych ward, but she wasn’t an innocent bystander either. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of what had happened in the past few months was real. Had I imagined seeing Taeren? Was the amulet part of my delusions? I couldn’t rely on my memory at all.
A single tear slid down my temple, tracing the curve of my cheek bone and pooling in my ear. Maybe I wasn’t as well as we’d hoped.
They finally let me out of solitary. According to Paula, I’d been in the hospital for a week. There were still earthquakes. They were happening more and more frequently and still no explanation for them. I felt better, I felt like me again, but Doctor Larkin didn’t feel comfortable letting me out so quickly. I was going to spend at least three months in the hospital.
This time, I wasn’t housed in the ward for children. My fellow patients seemed dangerous and unpredictable instead of childlike and imaginative. I tried to spend as much time as possible in my room. The adult ward didn’t have private rooms. My roommate never slept. Instead, she sat in her bed scratching the walls or whispering to herself about government spies. After two nights I was practically begging to be put back in solitary confinement.
Paula insisted that I go outside every day. I knew what she was doing, she didn’t want me to lose hope that I’d ever get out. She wanted me to focus on what was on the outside of those walls rather than what life was like inside them. Of course, I’d forgiven her. I knew that she’d done the right thing, and she’d done it out of love. I was reminded of that every time I caught her staring at me from the window. She didn’t work in the adult ward, so she wasn’t my nurse; she was a concerned parent checking on their crazy child hoping against hope they’d be able to live a normal life.
I didn’t want to let her down, so I threw myself into every therapy suggested by Doctor Larkin. Every therapy, that is, except for ECT. I remembered how blurry that made everything in my life and I wasn’t about to go through that again. I was certain that given time to be on my medication and away from stress, I would be able to return to my life seamlessly. If I consented to ECT, I didn’t know how much of me would be left.
Nearly a month had passed when I finally got the nerve to ask Paula about the events that led up to my psychotic break. I’d wanted to ask her a million times, but every time I got the nerve to ask, I lost it before the words came out. Paula loved me, and she would tell me the truth, even if it was hard to handle. I just didn’t know if I was ready to face the possibility that much of what I remembered since my book signing was in my head.
“Hey kiddo, do you want to go for ice cream today?”
I smiled at the memory of the many trips we took for ice cream before I was released the first time. “I wonder if that same guy still works there.”
Paula chuckled. “I doubt it. He wasn’t very good at his job.”
“Paula? Can you answer some questions that have been bugging me?”
She hesitated for a moment. “As long as it doesn’t counteract your therapy.”
“I know the doctor says the stress of my release party is what started this whole thing, but, I’m wondering if some of the things I remember are real or if they were just in my head.”
Paula nodded. “That’s natural. I think I already know what you’re going to ask, but go ahead.”
“Did I meet a man at the signing who called himself Taeren and gave me a replica of the Bloodstone from my story? Did a jeweler tell us that while the necklace was authentic, he couldn’t identify the stone or the metal? Did you see that man from the release party and a group of others who called out my name before we got on the subway? Am I the only one who feels the earthquakes?”
Everything tumbled out at once. I’m not even sure I paused long enough between each question to give Paula’s brain time to register them. She blinked a few times, clearly trying to sort through everything I’d asked before giving me any answers.
“I’m sure this won’t be in order, but I’ll do my best. Yes. The man is real, though we don’t know who he is. The amulet is also real as is your memory of the jeweler. I’ve seen your mysterious admirer, so he is not a figment of your imagination.
“And the earthquakes?”
She touched my hand, I was certain I was about to be told there were no earthquakes. That everyone had only spoken to me about them because they felt bad for the crazy person.
“The earthquakes are real. No one can figure out why they’re happening, but they are. In fact, the mayor has ordered an evacuation of many of the downtown buildings. A number of them have collapsed. People are dying.”
It seemed as though things had gotten more serious than I thought. I couldn’t help but wonder if everything was connected. None of these weird things started happening until Taeren came into my life. No, I couldn’t entertain that line of thinking. He wasn’t Taeren. He was a man who happened to look like him and liked to pretend he was a fictional character. Paula was probably right about him being an admirer. The stranger must have thought pretending to be the hero of my story would somehow gain my favor.
I wondered what he would think if he knew one conversation with him had landed me back in a straitjacket. I shook my head. There were still answers I needed.
“I started wearing the Bloodstone. What happened to it when I was brought here?”
Paula bit her lip. “I put it away at the house. It’s safe, but I don’t want you to mess with it until I’m sure you’re better.”
“Of course.” My heart rate slowed just knowing it was safe. I couldn’t explain my attachment to the useless bauble, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it being destroyed.