Illusions Complete Series (81 page)

I got out of the car. “Nick, I need help with Ryan. He’s not coherent right now.”

Nick’s face was indiscernible. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed or impressed.

Maybe he was a combination of both.

Nick opened the passenger door and stood Ryan up, putting his arm around him and Ryan’s arm around his shoulder. Ryan could barely walk, but Nick managed to get him into the house and into a lower-level bedroom that was being outfitted with a hospital bed by two men. The hospital bed was set up in record time, and Nick laid Ryan down on it.

Nick looked at me. “I don’t even know what to say to you right now. I don’t know yet if I want to kill you or kiss you. What I do know is that I need to figure out what is going on with these workers, and find out who does what.”

At that, Nick left and summoned the leader of the home health worker team. “George, get everybody together here in the foyer. I need to get a handle on who everybody is and what their function is. Also, I’d imagine that I’m gonna need at least two workers to move in here for the time being. They can stay in the guest cottage with Sheila out back behind the pool.”

As everybody started streaming into the massive foyer, I hung back and sat with Ryan. This was a gorgeous room, with brand-new cherry hardwood floors and a huge stained glass window that streamed primary colors. There were orchids everywhere in this room, which was my favorite flower and Ryan’s as well. The walls were a relaxing shade of faux finish yellow, and the room was attached to a massive bathroom with marble countertops and brass fixtures. There was an enormous plasma screen that was mounted on the wall, and there was soft music playing through some surround-sound speakers. All in all, this was a peaceful room, so much better for Ryan’s recovery then the sterile white hospital room with the tiny bathroom and old-school television that was mounted on the ceiling.

I climbed into bed with Ryan, as there was more than enough room for two, and put my head on his chest. He didn’t react, but I could hear his heart pounding, and it was soothing to me.

After a few minutes, I fell asleep.

Chapter Twelve

I woke up several hours later. There was a young nurse who was standing by the bed, taking Ryan’s vital signs. There were various machines that were brought into the room while I was unconscious, and I recognized that these were the same machines as those that were in the hospital.

I looked at Ryan’s face. It seemed that he was becoming more coherent, for he looked at me and his eyes showed recognition. He still looked dreamy, but not quite as catatonic as he was before.

“Ryan,” I said softly. “Are you there?”

He nodded imperceptibly. “The Pooh Bear. Did you get him?”

Crap. The Pooh Bear
. I didn’t even see Pooh in Ryan’s room when I hustled him out of there. “Oh, no, honey, I didn’t get him. I didn’t see him when I got you out of the hospital. I’m so sorry.” I wondered if I could call somebody to get that bear and bring him home to be with Ryan. It obviously meant so much to him.

He said nothing more, turning his face away from mine. I could see tears forming in the corner of his eyes.

At that, I silently got out of the bed and went into the bathroom to make a phone call to the hospital. When the attendant answered the phone, I asked if there was a Pooh Bear in the lost and found. The attendant went to look, then came back and confirmed that there was a Pooh Bear there. Then I called Daniel and asked him to pick up Pooh and bring him to Nick’s house. He readily agreed.

“Good news, honey. Pooh is coming home to be with you.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at me blankly. “Um, Iris, I’m pretty tired right now. I need my rest. I was wondering if you could give me some space for a little while.”

I nodded. It was peculiar that he didn’t even question how he got out of the hospital, or tell me how he managed to get out of his hospital bed in the first place to ransack his room. Last I knew he couldn’t walk. But yet he suddenly got up to go berserk in his room. I was starting to want answers from him, but I didn’t push.

“Honey,” I said, “do you want Max and Brut in here to keep you company? I could put their beds next to yours if you like.”

Ryan half-smiled at this suggestion. “Yes, that would be great, Iris. Please bring them in.”

At that, I walked to the door and whistled for the dogs. They came bounding in, and started nudging Ryan while they whined and tried to lick his face. He smiled wanly, then looked at me with his now-familiar blank expression. “Thank you, Iris. And thank you for giving me my space. Be sure to check on me in a couple of hours, ok?”

I only nodded, then silently left, shutting the door behind me.

Chapter Thirteen

Ryan

I was shutting out the most important person in my life, and I really didn’t know why.

I only knew that I really didn’t want to be around her anymore.

But it wasn’t just her. I didn’t want to be around anybody anymore. Yet, there I was, in the house with not just her, but also Nick and Dalilah. Inevitably Alexis was going to join the party, because she was going to need a place to stay after she got out of her own treatment center.

This scenario was exactly what I didn’t want. I loved Iris for doing this, though. Her heart certainly was in the right place, even if her brain necessarily wasn’t. It
was
bullshit that Dr. Hahn chose to drug me up past the point of coherence. But, then again, I probably deserved it. I pretty much went ape shit in that hospital room. It was a reaction from the self-loathing that began the moment I started spinning into my negative thoughts about the actions I had taken during my life.

And I just couldn’t seem to stop those dark thoughts from crowding my headspace. It wasn’t just Nick that I treated like crap during my college days. It was also Natalie and all the random women who shared my bed. I don’t think that I even remember most of their first names, let alone their last ones.

I’m not sure if I knew their names then.

I only knew that getting women was something that was never a problem for me. I’d roll into a bar, find the hottest girl there and, before I knew it, we were making out on the dance floor. An hour or so later, it was back to her place or to a hotel, where we’d fuck and I’d make an excuse to hightail it out of there immediately afterwards. It was always a game for me. I couldn’t care less about any of those women.

As for Natalie, she was always a great friend. I’d call her in the middle of the night, booty call her, and she always let me come over. We’d screw, I’d crash, then leave the next morning while she was still sawing logs. Then she’d invite me over to watch movies or something, and I always found an excuse not to. Because I never wanted anything from her. I never wanted anything from any of the women I bedded.

To tell the absolute truth, I really never wanted anything from Alexis either, although she was always the most steady girl in my life during this period. Which wasn’t saying much, considering we were broken up far more than we were together. Alexis was my drug buddy more than anything else. Sid and Nancy she called us, and that’s who we were. Completely destructive for one another. But, we were mutually destructive, so it worked for us. Symbiotically destroying each other, like two parasites devouring each other alive. To think that I always thought that I was in love with her. Now, I know that it was never love, but more like a kind of obsession that both of us had for one another.

Now, since I was obsessed with examining my past, I was feeling the need to examine the using of women thing as well. I still needed to get to the bottom of who I was and why I was the way that I was. All those years of therapy really hadn’t helped me do this. The therapy helped me overcome trauma about the abuse from my father and from losing my mother at such a young age. Recently it had helped me move past the trauma from the sex parties and Rochelle, and it had also helped cement the fact that I had forgiven my father for putting me through everything that he had.

But all my years of therapy hasn’t really touched upon the shame I felt for how I treated the people in my life for so many years. Nick was the only one I physically abused, and, I’m ashamed to say, mentally abused as well. But the women were also victims of my narcissism. And I needed to come to terms with that.

And I was obsessing about Rachael Smyth. I needed to find a way to make amends for what I did to her. Find some kind of closure and peace about that.

So, I was obsessing about Rachael, when I really should’ve been obsessing about my wife, because she thought that I attempted suicide, when it wasn’t that at all. When I broke the mirror in the bathroom, I accidentally put both of my arms on the counter, and the shards of glass cut into my wrists. I was bleeding pretty badly – I guess I really didn’t know what I was doing, because I was in such a blind rage about my life. I didn’t even realize that the mirror shards were cutting deep into my skin.

Then, the next thing I knew, I was being injected with something and I don’t remember much after that.

Now, Iris thought that I was suicidal again. She no doubt was angry with me for wanting to kill myself, when she and Dalilah were in my life. But I just didn’t have the energy to talk to her about what was going on with me.

Chapter Fourteen

Iris

I just left Ryan’s room, and I ran into Nick, who was standing just outside the room, wanting to go in to talk to Ryan.

“Ryan wants to be alone right now,” I said to Nick.

Nick just nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “Sure, sure. But he shouldn’t be alone too much. So, I’m going to make him join us for dinner. He obviously isn’t having too much trouble using his legs if he was able to ransack the hospital room like he did.”

“Yeah, about that. Is that something that he used to do?”

“No, never. He never was a property damage kind of guy. Aside from kicking the living shit out of me that one time, and just generally being a pain in the ass junkie, there was always a part of him that was very polite and respectful. I know, it seems weird, but he always seemed to have two distinct sides to him. So, no, he would never have been disrespectful enough to destroy property back then.”

“Wonder what made him do it this time?”

“Dunno. I’m sure we’ll find out in time.”

I certainly hoped so. I didn’t want to examine my feelings about this new turn of events. Ryan was treating me like a stranger, not the love of his life. I tried not to take that personally, how weird he was acting just now. Calling me Iris, instead of his usual nicknames for me, and generally acting like I was somebody whom he barely knew. The one good thing was that he was seemingly desperate to get the Pooh Bear back. Considering that he was not that fond of Pooh – I was the one who was crazy about the bear – I presumed that there was still a part of him that was very much in love with me. The bear somehow represented those feelings.

At least I hoped that was the case. Maybe he just wanted the bear back because it was soft and fun to cuddle with. Kinda like how he used to feel about me.

I had been replaced by a bear.

∞

That evening, Ryan refused to join us for dinner. Sheila had made a beautiful roast chicken with all the trimmings. She seemed to be an amazing cook. I was salivating as she brought the bird to the table. I had talked to Ryan earlier in the evening about coming to dinner, and he was non-committal about it.

“I don’t know, Iris. I really don’t want to be around a lot of people right now.”

By “a lot of people” he meant “anybody,” I was finding out. He didn’t even want Dalilah to come and visit him in his room. “She doesn’t need to see me like this. It might traumatize her,” he said.

“But honey, she’s desperate to see you. She’s been talking about you all day. She even made a beautiful little watercolor painting just for you.” And by watercolor painting, I didn’t mean rudimentary dogs and stick people. She had painted a little cottage in the woods, with purple exterior walls and a real thatched roof. There was a light that shone through the window. It wasn’t Thomas Kinkaid, but, considering her age, it was very good. It resembled a painting that an older child would paint, perhaps a five-year-old painting in kindergarten.

“I know, honey, but I don’t have the energy to see her. And she might be haunted by the sight of her dad with his wrists bandaged up for the rest of her life. You have no idea how that sort of thing affects a child.” Then he looked out the window with a faraway expression. “It happened to my mom, you know. She cut herself on a window that she broke when she got into a fight with my dad. It was extremely scary for me. I think that I was permanently scarred by seeing her bandaged up like that.”

Fair enough.
“Ok, then, I won’t force you to see her. I can bring food into your room, though. You need to eat. I don’t think that you’ve eaten all day.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Listen, just like you forced me to eat when I was attacked by Rochelle, I need to do the same for you. Now, Sheila has made a wonderfully juicy roasted chicken with new potatoes and green beans. She seems to be an amazing cook. I need for you eat.”

“I’m not hungry, goddammit, now leave me the fuck alone!” Ryan’s eyes got wide and a little vein was popping out of his forehead.

I had never, ever seen him get this angry. Well, maybe that one time when he threw me out of his house when I first started living with him, but that was over something that was kinda major. This fury was coming over roasted chicken. And the anger came on so suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Ok, ok, ok. I’ll just go and eat dinner and I’ll be back to see you afterwards.”

“Don’t bother,” he said with a hard-edged tone. Then he softened some. “I mean, I’m really, really tired. These painkillers are doing a number on me. I’ll be ok, just see me in the morning, ok?”

I nodded my head. It was going to be very difficult to know how to treat him. One thing was for sure, he was going to need to see his therapist, soon. He was spiraling, and I had no idea how to reach him.