Straightjacket (11 page)

“Come on.” One of the Bouncers waited at the door for him. “And don’t try anything or you’ll be right back here.” The attendant grabbed him violently by the arm.

“Easy,” Caleb snapped, trying to rip his arm out of the hand, but the attendant held on even tighter.

“What did I tell you? Behave yourself.” He pushed Caleb out, down the hallway, and with the swipe of an ID badge, the double doors to the ward opened for them. They waited at the elevator, and when the doors slid open, an elderly woman stood inside. She had a sweet smile on her face in anticipation of another passenger, but when she saw his face and, shortly after, the attendant’s hand on his arm, her smile evaporated and she moved cautiously to the side.

The doors slid closed as the attendant pressed the button. Caleb sensed that the woman’s eyes were on him. Although he stayed focused on the numbers over the door, he could see that she had shifted her purse to her other shoulder, away from him. So he was a dangerous freak. Part of him wanted to show her just what she expected. Maybe he could start howling or shake his tongue wildly at her. That would freak her out. But no, he wanted to maintain some dignity, so he just kept staring at the numbers. When the doors opened, he put out his hand, motioning for her to exit first. She gave him a startled smile and moved outside without turning back. The attendant jerked him forward and to the left.

“Can you stop with the shoving? I’m coming.”

“Shut up.” The attendant yanked him even harder. When they came to an exam room, he pushed him inside.

“Go sit on the bed. And
don’t move
.”

Caleb did as he was told, but not before curling his lip up at him in disgust. The Bouncer positioned himself outside the room with his massive back pressed up against the window.

Caleb caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He blinked a couple of times, not believing the reflection was his own. He knew his eye was swollen, but the skin around it had bloated to massive proportions. Dried blood was smeared under his nose and on his cheek. A bruise had already formed on one side of his jaw.

Not wanting to look at himself anymore, he started searching for something to read. There were no magazines, only pamphlets on heart disease and hepatitis vaccines. There was a large poster, a diagram of the human body, to his left. It showed all the muscles with each of them labeled. His eyes started at the feet and moved upward. It looked like a man. The red tissue stretched over a bony frame as the figure flexed his arms, stomach, and back. The man was hairless, skinless, sightless—and repulsive. The doctors saw that when they looked at him: just a collection of bones and muscles and body parts. A name for everything. And if his body and brain didn’t match up to their diagrams, it was their job to fix him. He couldn’t stand to think of it.

Still sitting on the bed, he stretched out his arms. Out in the hallway everything started moving fast. A doctor seemed to bolt into the room, followed by a nurse in green scrubs. He didn’t want to be bothered with listening to them. He felt them touch him, tug on him, but he ignored it and instead tried to focus on what he knew would happen next.

“What were you thinking?” Samuel said.

Although his arms remained stretched out in front of him, the tension dissolved and peacefulness settled over him. In an instant he found himself in the blazing bright room without walls.

“Shut up.” Although Caleb was annoyed with Samuel’s tone, he had made the loneliness go away and brought him closer to home.

“Caleb, what did you think you were doing?”

This time Samuel hadn’t come with the golf club.

“What do you mean? That guy was gonna kill her.”

“You didn’t just protect her. The way you pounded that guy—you were trying to kill
him
. I warned you. I warned you not to get so wrapped up in this.” Samuel paused, trying to gain some control. “You’re not doing your job.”

“Really?” Caleb barked. “It’s not like you gave me a handbook on how to do this. I’m doing the best I can.”

“No, you’re not. You’re blinding yourself.” Samuel shook his head. “You’re in love with her, you idiot.”

“I’m not talking to you about this.”

“Caleb, you can’t see clearly anymore. You’re not yourself.”

“Of course I’m not myself! They lock me up, they treat me like I’m nothing. No—no, that’s just part of the time. The rest of the time, they treat me like—like a disease. They don’t care what else I am. I’m an illness that needs to be cured or a pest that makes their job suck.”

Samuel was firm. “You’re using her to cope with what’s happening to you. You need to take a step back from her.”

“I can’t do that. It’s too late.”

“You have to. Everything’s messed up and you need to fix it.”

“Easy for you to say, sitting up there without a care in the world.”

Samuel ignored him. “You’re going to have to do something to separate yourself from her without jeopardizing some of the progress she’s made. You fix this and then come home.”

Samuel vanished. The brightness disappeared and the walls of the small examining room took its place. The skinless man without eyes came back into view, and it gave him an idea. He would pretend he was still in a stupor so he wouldn’t have to deal with being shoved around and told what to do. In a few minutes an attendant came in, lifted him up, and placed him in a wheelchair. The man pushed Caleb’s arms down and placed them on his lap. They felt uncomfortable like that, but he wouldn’t dare move them and give away his secret. He was wheeled into his room and laid down on his bed. When he heard the attendant leave, he sat up and looked at the clock glowing in the darkness. It was 11:03 p.m. He tried to twist and stretch out his back, but winced when he felt pain in his side. He’d forgotten he’d been hurt.

The pain made it take longer than usual to strip down to his boxers. Eventually he got back into bed, hoping to get some sleep. It was difficult to find a comfortable position, his bruised ribs sending him a shooting pain with even the slightest shift of his body. Even so, he wasn’t tired and lay there with his eyes wide open, staring at the glowing numbers on his clock. He couldn’t stop thinking about Samuel and what he’d said. He
was
lonely and miserable and hated this place. Anna was the only person who could see past the disease they’d labeled him with and see him for who he was.

Samuel was right.

He’d fallen in love with her.

He couldn’t explain to himself how it had happened so quickly or why; he just knew that he felt it, and he didn’t want that feeling to stop. Samuel told him he was just supposed to walk away from her.

That wasn’t an option.

Chapter Ten

“Oh, God!”

Anna’s eyelids popped open. She blinked a few times. Squinting, she was able to focus on her mother and father standing at the foot of the bed.

“Anna—oh, look at you!”

Her mother’s high heels clicked against the floor as she walked around to the head of the bed.

“Your face!” She went to touch Anna’s bruised cheek.

“No, Mom.” She slapped her mother’s hand away and tried to boost herself up to a sitting position so she’d be ready to defend herself more easily. But she couldn’t manage with only one arm. Her other arm was pressed against her body in a sling. She fumbled for the controls to the hospital bed on the nightstand and the bed hummed until she sat upright.

“Look at you!” her mother repeated, and then turned to her husband. “Walter, look at her!”

“Yes, I see,” he answered flatly, settling into a seat in the corner.

“I can’t believe this would happen, and at a place like this…” The hysteria was flowing freely now.

Anna rolled her eyes.

“What, I’m not supposed to be upset about this? You’re lying there with half of your face black and blue and a broken collarbone!”

“I know, Mom.”

“What I want to know is, what did you do?”

“What do you mean, what did
I
do?
I
didn’t do anything.”

“Well, people don’t just get attacked for no reason.” She turned to her husband, who was flipping through a week-old issue of
People
that had been abandoned on top of the radiator.

“Here, they do.” Anna realized she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her irritation.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Right. I just decided to pick a fight with a guy three times my size.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her mother smoothed her hair back and made sure it was all tucked into her perfect chignon. “You must have done something to provoke him. When Dr. Blackwell called me, he didn’t tell me the details. I want to know what happened right now.”

“I’m telling you, I was sitting there minding my own business when this psycho guy came over and started yelling. Then he attacked me.”

Her mother formed her cruel smile, the corners of her lips curving downward. “Well, maybe the reason had to do with that boy you were talking to,” she said, annunciating every word to ensure that Anna understood without question. She threw them like she was chucking grenades.

For the first time since she was startled awake, Anna remembered Caleb. Since yesterday, all she could think about was if he was okay. But then her temper ignited as she looked at her mother’s smug face, and she felt her entire body burning with rage.

“He had nothing to do with it! You don’t even know what happened!”

“Anna, keep your voice down. Don’t you talk to me like that,” her mother hissed. She turned toward her husband, who was still sitting in the corner, although he’d stopped reading to look up when he heard Anna’s shouting. “Walter, don’t you have anything to say about this?”

He shot up from the chair and walked over to Anna, leaning over her as she sank down into the bed.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” he said slowly, and raised his hand over her head, slapping the air a few inches above her as a threat. Anna flinched and scrambled to the other side of the bed, grabbing the covers with the hand of her uninjured arm and pulling them up in front of her. Her hospital gown slipped down and exposed one of her shoulders. “If I hear you speak to her like that again, that bruise on your cheek won’t be the only one you’ll have to worry about.” He lowered his hand slowly and stepped back a few inches. Anna stayed on the far side of the bed. The only sound in the room was Anna’s rapid, uneven breaths as she tried to tug her hospital gown back up over her shoulder.

“I don’t know what you did to provoke that fight,” her mother picked up once again, “but we didn’t send you here to find a boyfriend. You need to be spending your time getting all those crazy thoughts out of your head, not finding ways to get into trouble.” Anna was no longer looking at her mother. She was staring down at the bed. The blanket that had been lodged under the mattress hospital-corner-style was hanging out, its corner brushing against the floor.

“Do you understand?”

Anna didn’t answer.

“I’m not kidding here. You disobey me and you’ll find yourself in another facility, and one that’s not quite as luxurious as this one. I’m not paying an arm and a leg for you to act like this.”

“Whatever,” Anna whispered. She wanted to jump up out of the bed and run out of the room, run out of the hospital, run anywhere to get away from her mother and father. If given the chance, she’d leave that room with just the hospital gown she was wearing. But it was impossible. She’d never get away from them, from their power over her. When she was little, she’d get through the really tough times by thinking that someday they’d be punished by whatever power the universe held. She’d felt guilty for thinking it, telling herself how bad she was for wanting something so selfish and revengeful. But today she’d had the same thoughts and didn’t feel the guilt quite so deeply.

“May I come in?” Dr. Blackwell asked as he poked his head through a narrow opening in the doorway.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Anna’s mother answered, motioning him with her manicured hand to enter.

Anna moved herself carefully so that she sat upright against her pillow. She was so accustomed to putting on the appearance of normality that she moved to where she should be on the bed without thinking about it.

“Doctor, thanks for stopping by,” Anna’s father said. He walked over and shook his hand.

“How is everyone doing?” Dr. Blackwell asked, focusing on Anna.

Before she could say anything, her father answered.

“Oh, surviving.”

Anna’s mother shot an aggravated look toward him. She despised hearing him answer that way, making people think he was miserable. It was all about appearances, after all, and that kind of comment was at odds with the one she was trying to create. She’d be scolding him in private later on.

“And, you, Anna? How are you feeling?”

Anna didn’t feel nearly as warm toward Dr. Blackwell as she had a few days ago. He’d betrayed her by telling her parents about Caleb.

“I’m fine.” She offered nothing else. Instead she concentrated on her feet, which formed two small bumps underneath the blanket at the foot of the bed.

“I think she’s doing much better, thank you, Doctor,” her mother added. She had smothered her voice in sweetness. “We appreciate you calling us so quickly when everything happened.” She looked disapprovingly in Anna’s direction.

“Yes, yes.” He sat down at the foot of the bed so that his eyes were level with Anna’s.

“Anna, I know this must have been traumatic for you, but I want you to know that we’ve dealt with the patient who attacked you. Believe me, you’re safe here, and I’m confident that something like this won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” her mother said, her words overlapping the tail end of the doctor’s remarks. “My husband and I have made it clear to Anna that we do not approve of her behavior, and if she continues to act like this there will be consequences.” She let out a confident sigh as she finished.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dr. Blackwell said.

“She must have done something to provoke the other patient.”

“No, this wasn’t Anna’s fault. The man who attacked her is dealing with some serious issues, none of which had anything to do with Anna. She was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.”