Beautiful Nightmares (The Asylum Trilogy) (10 page)

Chapter Twenty

~Before~

I wake up screaming.

My eyes fly open and I blink several times as they adjust to the bright light shining into them. Sitting up, I glance around the room and observe my surroundings.

There are machines to my left.

Wires fastened to my chest.

The walls are white.

The floor too.

My bed has shiny, metal rails.

A hospital.

I’m in the hospital.

I try to move to the side but the second I do, a gut-wrenching pain rips through my abdomen and I find myself crying out and gasping for air. I hug my stomach, convinced that that might help ease the pain, but it doesn’t. Instead, it makes it worse.

Then my door flies open. There’s a nurse rushing toward me. Her mousy, brown hair is tucked beneath her white cap, her pallor is pale, but she has kind wide-set brown eyes. I twist my torso to move again and another pain stabs at my gut. Gritting my teeth, I inhale and exhale slowly trying to push through it.

The nurse places her small yet gentle hands on my shoulders and guide me into a lying down position. “Don’t move around too much,” she instructs me. “You’ve been out for some time now. We weren’t sure if you were going to wake up.” I like the sound of her voice. It is warm and comforting and reminds me a lot of Mommy’s.

“Out?” My throat is dry and the word comes out with rasp.

“Yes,” she says as she tucks the white sheet around my legs. “You were in a coma.”

“For how long?” I can’t hide the confusion in my voice. I’m scared. And I feel lost. I feel like a child who scampered away from their parent in the middle of a crowded department store.

“Months.” She turns to the machines then examines the wires connected to my chest. “You suffered severe head trauma.”

I clench my jaw, feeling that intense burning pain coming on again. It is crippling and I find myself wincing, gasping for air, and forcing out, “From what?”

She wears a soft expression and my eyes flit over her white dress in search of a name tag. I don’t see one. “Just relax,” she says in a comforting way as she turns toward the door. “I’ll get you something for the pain.”

But I am still so very, very confused. “What happened?” I’m desperate for answers. “Please,” I beg.

“We’re not going to worry about that right now.” There’s finality in her soft voice. “You just rest. I’ll get you some medicine and we’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

With that, she exits my room, leaving me alone to drown in my thoughts.

~ ~ ~

I find myself calling a man’s name in my sleep.

It’s so familiar, the way it rolls off my tongue and I feel like I’ve said it thousands of times before.

There are times where I think that the quiet solitude of darkness can be a comfort. It can cover you like a newly knitted quilt, swaddling you in a cocoon of serenity. It can banish the dark thoughts in your mind.

Make you feel safe.

Make you feel warm.

Now is not one of those times.

I wake with the soft caress of slumber still clouding my mind. The land of dreams beckons, threatening to pull me back into its’ realm. It’s like an annoying voice lingering in the darkened portions of my brain, a haunting echo that I can’t let go of. My eyes snap open. I refuse to let sleep consume me anymore.

My room is midnight black, minus the shimmering stars, and I squint, trying to get a clear picture of my surroundings. The opaque black is thick and overpowering, like a cement barrier of smog and it doesn’t matter how much time I give my eyes to adjust. I still can’t see a damn thing.

I think I knew him before.

I think that we were involved.

I think the feelings I have that revolved around him were strong because I think of him often.

I dream of him often.

And I can imagine why I would have these recollections if it involved someone I didn’t know.

I whisper his name into the darkness, “Elijah.” Fanning my fingers out across the sheets to lace my fingers through
his. “Elijah are you awake?”

Silence.

I glide my fingers further along the soft cushioned mattress and shiver when the cold from the sheets seeps through my skin. “Elijah?”

Sometimes I feel like he’s with me, lying next to me and I can’t understand why it feels so familiar.

Still no answer.

Panic begins to work its way through my body.

My heart thunders in my chest.

My pulse races.

Sweat trickles down my temples.

With force and quick reflexes, I rip my sheets from the bed and scream. “Elijah! Elijah, where are you?” My fingers once again brush across the cold, bare spot next to me and my screams escalate to shrieks. “Elijah! Elijah, where are you? Where did you go?”

The door to my room flings open. It lets out a loud bang as it crashes into the wall. A soft light filters into the room and all I see is white. White walls. White floors. White sheets. A young woman dressed from head to toe in a cotton periwinkle ensemble rushes toward me. All of her blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a bun.

“Where is he?” I cry choking on a sob stuck in my throat. “Where is my Elijah?”

“Hush, now.” The young woman has a slick yet soothing voice. “You don’t need to worry about such things, Adelaide. You need your rest.” She eases me back into a lying down position and smoothes my hair back away from my face.

“Just tell me where he went,” I plead. “Please.”

“Can’t you please tell me where he went?” I ask a hint of hopefulness in my voice.

“No,” she says flatly, pulling the sheets up over my chest.

“Why not?” I don’t understand this cruelty. This woman has to know where he is. She just has to. And how could she keep his whereabouts from me? Can’t she see his absence is tearing me apart?

“Because I don’t know.”

She’s lying. I know she’s lying. “He didn’t leave word?”

“No Adelaide. He did not.”

Now I know she’s embellishing the truth. My Elijah would never go somewhere without leaving word. “I don’t understand,” I mumble.

“Adelaide.” The woman’s voice is stern. “Stop worrying and rest.” She puts her back to me and walks to the door.

I slink down into my sheets as she pulls the door closed. I wait for sleep to come, but it doesn’t so I listen to the soft blend of voices coming from right outside my door.

“I can’t do this anymore.” It’s the woman who was in my room. Her voice has taken on an emotional tone. “I can’t be her nurse anymore. Every time I hear her call his name it breaks my heart.”

“You can’t just quit being a nurse to the patients you’ve been assigned to,” another woman with a deeper voice chimes in. “You were warned not to get attached to the patients during clinicals.”

“Well, I can’t help it okay!” my nurse snaps. “Her life has been so tragic. So sad and brutal. A person has to have ice in their veins to not feel for someone who has been through so much. One of these days, I’m going to tell her the truth.”

“You can’t!” nurse two cries out. “Have you lost your mind? You know what will happen if you do! We’ve been warned! We can’t tell her anything!”

“I don’t care.”

“If you value your job at all, you will.”

There’s a brief moment of silence.

My nurse speaks up. “So let them fire me then. Let them fire me for wanting to not keep one patient in the dark.”

“It’s not a good idea, Maggie.”

“I disagree, Rhea. That poor woman has suffered long enough. I’ve listened to her cries. Comforted her when she’s had nightmares about her past. Watched her hopeful eyes while she watches the visitors come and go and watched her sink into a deep depression when he never shows up.”

“Maggie, you can’t.”

“I can and I will. Someone needs to tell her, Rhea. Someone needs to tell her that her Elijah never comes and isn’t here because he’s dead.”

Chapter Twenty One

~After~

Weeks pass.

Weeks pass, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt emptier than I have lately.

I feel like a shell of a person.

A waste of space.

All of my days have passed by so quickly that my time is starting to feel like a blur. And on another note, I no longer care. I have days where I wonder if this is normal. Or common for that much. I have days where I can be in a room surrounded by people and feel so alone. Then I wonder if that feeling will ever go away.

Probably not.

I guess that’s what happens when you find out that everything you’ve ever believed in has been a lie.

Dr. Swell hasn’t even noticed that my file is missing. And if she has, she hasn’t mentioned anything during our sessions. I don’t think she cares anyway.

During the day, I seem to feel okay. But it’s not until night, when I’m lying in my dark cell, alone with my thoughts that my mind really starts to wander. And when I think about Elijah, and my daughter that’s when the pain starts searing through me. That’s when my limbs start twitching. And when my heart starts pounding. That’s when I usually wind up sobbing so hard that I’m gasping for air, unable to control myself.

I’ve been telling myself for the last week that dying would be easier than living in hell on earth.

I can remember a time in my life when the only thing I ever wanted was the Grim Reaper’s kiss. I can remember a time where I would have gladly tilted my head to the side just to feel his icy breath on my neck.

I feel that way again now.

I always used to think that dying was too easy.

Too quick.

Too cowardly.

I always used to think that living was the greatest triumph of a person’s life because if you can make it through life without becoming damaged then you’ve succeeded. I didn’t have a shot in hell at attempting a beautiful life.

My mother died.

My father was an abusive drunk who hung himself in prison. I could have sworn I saw him once after the fact, but I was wrong.

I practically raised myself.

I thought that Damien was the only good thing I ever had, but apparently that was a lie too.
It stated in my file that he was a part of me and I know it’s true. He told me so himself.

He really was the best kind of illusion after all.

And Elijah…

Thinking of Dr. Watson committing suicide makes me sick to my stomach. Reading his obituary made me want to curl up into a ball and cry harder than I’ve ever cried before. And on top of that, we had a daughter together. She was taken from me. And a gnawing worry feeds on my brain because I don’t know whether she’s dead or alive.

I feel so conflicted.

And sad.

I have nothing.

I have nothing, but twisted thoughts, a screwed up past and no purpose for my future. I’ll never get out of Oak Hill and there’s no light at the end of my tunnel.

I close my eyes and let out a sigh that seeps despair and feel like ending my life is my only option.

I’m sitting on my bed while I rip pieces of my sheet apart. I knot them together and it doesn’t take me very long. I stare at the long, braided piece of sheet, stretched out along my cot and cover it with my thin blanket.

I tell myself that tonight will be the night.

Tonight I will be free.

Tonight, I will leave the Oak Hill institution once and for all.