Surprised, the cop stepped back, speaking into his walkie again. He was desperate. Terrified.
So was I.
Emma knelt next to me, hands over her ears. Her purse lay forgotten on the ground. “Kaylee!” she shouted, but made no sound I could hear. She reached for her phone.
And as she dialed, color suddenly drained from the world, like The Wizard of Oz in reverse. Emma went gray. The cops went gray. The shoppers went gray. And suddenly everyone stood in a swirling, twisting colorless fog.
I sat in the fog.
Still screaming, I waved my hands near the ground, trying to feel. Real fog was cold and damp, but this was…insubstantial. I couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t stir it. But I could see it. I could see things in it.
On my left, something twisted. Writhed. Something too thick and vertical to be serpentine. It twisted somehow through a shelf of towels, without ever touching the shoppers pressed against them, as far from me as they could get without leaving the department.
Apparently I was enough of a freak show to justify the pain of listening to me.
On my right, something scuttled through the mist on the ground, where it was thickest. It scurried toward me, and I leaped to my feet and dragged Emma away. The cops jumped back, startled all over again.
Emma pulled free of my grip, her eyes wide in terror. And that’s when I shut down. I couldn’t take anymore, but I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t stop the shrieking, or the pain, or the stares, or the fog, or the eerie movement. And worst of all, I couldn’t stop the certainty that that child—that poor little boy in the wheelchair—was going to die.
Soon.
Dimly I realized I’d closed my eyes. Tried to block it all out.
I reached out blindly, desperate to get out of the fog I couldn’t feel. Could no longer see. My hands brushed something soft and high. Something I no longer had the word for. I scrambled up on it, crawling over mounds of material.
I curled into a ball, clutching something plush to my chest with one hand. Running my fingers over it again and again. Clinging to the only physical reality that still existed for me.
Hurt. I hurt. My neck hurt.
My fingers were wet. Sticky.
Something grabbed my arm. Held me down.
I thrashed. I screamed. I hurt.
Sharp pain bit into my leg, then fire exploded beneath my skin. I blinked, and a familiar face came into focus over me, gray in the fog. Aunt Val. Emma stood behind my aunt, face streaked with mascara-stained tears. Aunt Val said something I couldn’t hear. And suddenly my eyes were heavy.
New panic flooded me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t make my eyes open. And still my vocal chords strained. The world was closing in on me, dark and narrow, with no sound but the harsh wail that still poured from my abused throat.
A new darkness. Pure. No more gray.
And still I screamed…
My dreams were a jumble of violent chaos. Thrashing limbs. Bruising grips. Churning shadows. And through it all was that never-ending screech, now a hoarse echo of its former strength, but no less painful.
Light shone through my closed eyelids; my world was a red blur. The air felt wrong. Too cold. It smelled wrong. Too clean.
My eyes flew open, but I had to blink several times to make them focus. My tongue was so dry it felt like sandpaper against my lips. My mouth tasted funny, and every muscle in my body ached.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. They were tied to something. My pulse raced. I kicked, but my legs were bound too.
No! Heart pounding, I pulled on my arms and legs, then jerked them left to right, but couldn’t move more than a few inches in any direction. I was strapped to the bed by my wrists and ankles, and I couldn’t sit up. Couldn’t turn over. Couldn’t prop myself up on my elbows. Couldn’t even scratch my own nose.
“Help!” I cried, but my voice was only a hoarse croak. No vowels or consonants involved. Blinking again, I rolled my head to first one side, then the other, trying to get my bearings.
The room was claustrophobically small. Empty, other than me, the camera mounted in one corner, and the high, hard mattress beneath me. The walls were sterile, white cinder block. There were no windows in my line of sight, and I couldn’t see the floor. But the decor and the antiseptic smell were dead giveaways.
A hospital. I was strapped to a hospital bed. All alone.
It was like one of Emma’s video games, where the character wakes up in a strange room with no memory of how he got there. Except, in real life, there was no chest in the corner holding the key to my chains and survival advice written on parchment.
Hopefully there were also no video-game monsters waiting to eat me the moment I got loose, because even if someone had left me a gun, I wouldn’t have known how to use it.
But my objective was clear: Get out. Go home.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done without the use of my hands.
My pulse swooshed in my ears, a hollow echo of real fear. That overpowering need to scream was gone, but a different kind of panic had settled into its place. What if there was a fire? Or a tornado? Or more screaming? Would anyone come get me, or would they leave me here to die? I would be easy prey for those shadow things, or a natural disaster, or any random psycho who wandered past.
I had to get off the bed. Out of these stupid…bed cuffs.
“Please…” I begged the camera, frustrated by my own weak whisper. I swallowed thickly, then tried again. “Please let me out.” My words were clearer that time, if no louder. “Please…”
No response. My pulse spiked, pumping adrenaline through me. What if they were all dead, and the last person on earth was strapped to a bed? Was this how civilization would end? With leather straps and padded handcuffs?
Get a grip, Kaylee.
The reality was probably much less far-fetched, but just as scary: I was trapped. Helpless, and exposed, and vulnerable. And suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make my heart stop racing. If I didn’t get out soon, I was going to start screaming again—from normal terror this time, but the result would be the same. They’d shoot me up again, and the cycle would repeat ad nauseam. I’d be in this bed for the rest of my life, cowering from shadows.
So what if there were no windows and the overhead bulbs bathed the room in light? Eventually there would be shadows, and they would come for me. I was sure of that.
“Please!” I shouted, almost giddy to hear my voice coming back. “Let me—”
The door opened seconds before I would have started fighting my bindings in earnest. “Hi, Kaylee, how are you feeling?”
I strained to lift my head and put a face to the smooth, masculine voice. He was tall and thin, but looked strong. Bad skin, good hair. “Like a frog about to be dissected,” I said, as he unbuckled my left arm.
I liked him already.
“Fortunately for you, I was never very good with a scalpel.” His smile was nice, and his brown eyes were kind. His name tag read: Paul Conners, Mental Health Technician.
Mental health? My stomach tried to twist itself in knots. “Where am I?”
Paul carefully unbuckled my other wrist. “You’re at Lakeside Mental Health Center, attached to Arlington Memorial.”
Lakeside. The psych ward. Shit.
“Um, no. I can’t be here. Somebody made a mistake.” Panic poured into my bloodstream fast enough to make my skin tingle. “I need to talk to my aunt. Or my uncle. He’ll fix this.” Uncle Brendon had a way of straightening things out without pissing people off—a skill I’d always envied.
Paul smiled again and helped me sit up. “After you get settled in, you’re welcome to call them.”
But I didn’t want to settle in.
My own sock feet caught my attention from the end of the bed. “Where are my shoes?”
“They’re in your room. We had to take them off to unlace them. For everyone’s safety, we don’t allow shoestrings, belts, drawstrings, or robe t
ies.”
My shoestrings were dangerous? Fighting back tears, I leaned forward to free my right leg.
“Careful. You might be a little stiff and shaky at first,” he said, already working on my left ankle. “You were out for quite a while.”
My heart thumped painfully. “How long?”
“Oh, just over fifteen hours.”
What? I sat up and felt my eyes glaze over in horror. “You left me strapped to a bed for fifteen hours? Isn’t there some kind of law about that?”
“Lots of them. And we follow every single one. Need help getting down?”
“I got it,” I snapped. I knew my anger was misdirected, but I couldn’t help it. I’d lost fifteen hours of my life to a needle and four-point restraints. I wasn’t capable of friendly at the moment. “Why was I buckled in?”
I slid carefully off the bed, then leaned against it while my head spun. The dingy vinyl tile was cold through my socks.
“You arrived on a stretcher, screaming and thrashing though under heavy sedation. Even after you lost your voice, you kept flailing around, like you were fighting something in your dreams.”
The blood drained from my head so fast I got dizzy again. “I was?” No wonder I hurt all over; I’d been fighting my restraints for hours. In my sleep. If chemical comas even qualified as sleep.
Paul nodded solemnly and stepped back to give me space when I stood. “Yeah, and that started again a couple of hours ago, so they had to buckle you back up to keep you on the bed.”
“I was screaming again?” My stomach had become a bottomless pit of horror, swirling slowly, threatening to swallow me like a black hole. What the hell was wrong with me?
“No, thrashing. You went still about half an hour ago. I was on my way to unbuckle you when you woke up.”
“What did they give me?” I reached for the wall when a fresh wave of dizziness rolled over me.
“The usual mix. Ativan, Haldol, and Benadryl to counter the side effects of the Haldol.”
No wonder I’d slept so long. I had no idea what the first two drugs were, but Benadryl alone was enough to knock me out for most of the night during allergy season. It was a miracle I’d woken up at all. “What if I’d been allergic to any of that?” I demanded, crossing my arms over the T-shirt I’d worn to the mall. So far, waking up in my own clothes was the closest thing I’d found to a bright side.
“Then we’d be having this conversation in the E.R., instead of the restraint room.”
The restraint room? I was vaguely disturbed by the fact that they had a name for it.
Paul pulled open the door. “After you.”
I steeled my spine and stepped into the bright hallway, unsure what to expect. People walking around in straitjackets, mumbling to themselves? Nurses in white uniforms with starched hats? But the hall was empty and quiet.
Paul stepped past me, and I followed him to the last door on the left, which he pushed open for me.
I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide how badly they were shaking, then made myself cross the threshold.
Another white room, not much bigger than the first one. The bed was a mattress set in a heavy wooden frame, too narrow and too low. Draped with a plain white blanket. Empty, open shelves were bolted to the wall in place of a dresser, and there was one long, high window. No closet.
My stringless shoes lay at the end of the bed. They were the only things I recognized in the entire room. Everything else was foreign. Cold. Scary.
“So…I’ve been committed?” My voice shook. I couldn’t help it.
“You’ve been hospitalized,” Paul said from the doorway.
“What’s the difference?” I stood at the end of the bed, unwilling to sit. To get comfortable.
“This is temporary.”
“How temporary?”
“That’s up to you and your doctor.” He gave me a sympathetic smile, then backed into the hall. “One of the nurses will be by in a minute to get you settled in. Hang in there, Kaylee.”
I could only nod. A second later, Paul was gone. I was alone. Again.
From outside the room came the steady rattle-clank of a cart being pushed down the hall. Shoes squeaked on the floor. And somewhere nearby, someone cried in great, dramatic sobs. I stared at my feet, unwilling to touch anything for fear that it would make the whole thing sink in. Make it real.
Am I crazy?
I was still standing there like an idiot when the door opened, and a woman in pale pink scrubs came in carrying a clipboard and pen. Her name tag read: Nancy Briggs, R.N.
“Hi, Kaylee, how are you feeling?” Her smile was wide and friendly, but felt somehow…measured. As if she knew just how much to give. How to appear friendly without welcoming actual conversation.
I missed Paul already.
“Confused and homesick.” I gripped the edge of the shelf with one hand, willing it to dissolve beneath my touch. To fade into the bad dream I’d surely wake up from any minute.
“Well, let’s see if we can’t fix at least the first part of that.” The nurse’s smile grew bigger, but no warmer. “There’s a phone in the hall. Someone’s on it right now, but when it’s free, you’re welcome to use it. Local numbers, legal guardians only. Tell someone at the front desk who you want to call, and we’ll connect you.”
Numb, I could only blink. This wasn’t a hospital, it was a prison.
I patted my pocket, feeling for my phone. It was gone. Fresh panic exploded in my chest and I shoved my hand into my other pocket. Aunt Val’s credit card was gone. She’d kill me if I lost it! “Where’s my stuff?” I demanded, trying to stop the tears that blurred my vision. “I had a phone, and some lip gloss, and a twenty-dollar bill. And my aunt’s credit card.”
Nurse Nancy’s smile thawed a bit then, either because of my tears or the fear they no doubt magnified. “We keep all personal items locked up until you’re discharged. Everything’s there except the credit card. Your aunt took it when she left last night.”
“Aunt Val was here?” I used my bare hands to wipe my eyes, but they filled again instantly. If she was here, why didn’t she take me home?
“She rode in the ambulance with you.”
Ambulance. Discharged. Locked up. Those words played over and over in my head, a litany of fear and confusion. “What time is it?”
“Eleven-thirty. They’ll bring lunch in about half an hour. You can eat in the common area, down the hall and to the left. Breakfast is at seven. Dinner’s at six.” She reached to her left with the hand holding her pen and pushed open a door I hadn’t noticed, revealing a tall, white industrial toilet and a shower stall. “You can shower whenever you like. Just come to the nurse’s station first for your hygiene kit.”
“Hygiene kit?” My eyes went wide as my insides went numb. This isn’t real. It can’t be.
“We hand out soap and shampoo as needed. If you want to shave, you’ll have to be monitored by a staff member.” I blinked, uncomprehending, but she continued. “There’s a group session about anger management at nine, one about coping with depression at eleven, and one at two this afternoon about symptoms of mental illness. That’s a good one to start with.”
She smiled patiently, like she expected to be thanked for passing out information, but I just stared at the empty shelf. Her entire briefing was irrelevant to me. I’d be out very soon, surely, and the only group I was interested in was the group of my own family members who could make that happen.
“The boys’ rooms are in the opposite wing, on the other side of the common area. Girls are not allowed on that wing, and vice versa. Visitation is every night from seven to nine. Lights out at ten-thirty. Someone will check on you every fifteen minutes when you’re out of sight of the nurses’ station.” She paused again, and I made myself look up to meet her detached gaze. “Do you have any more questions?”
My eyes watered again, and I didn’t bother to wipe them. “Why am I here?”
“That’s a question for your doctor.” She glanced brief
ly at her clipboard. “Dr. Nelson. He makes rounds after lunch, Monday through Friday. So you’ll see him tomorrow.” She hesitated, and this time set the clipboard on the shelf bolted to the cinder-block wall. “How’s your neck? You didn’t need stitches, but they did clean out the wounds…”
Wounds? My right hand flew to my neck, and I flinched at how tender the skin there was. And how…rough. My heart thumping, I rushed into the bathroom. The small, reflective aluminum mirror over the sink showed that what little mascara I’d worn the day before was now smeared beneath both of my eyes. My skin was pale, my long hair hopelessly knotted.
I tilted my chin up and angled my body toward the overhead light. My gasp echoed in the small room. My neck was a tangle of blood-crusted scratches.
And suddenly I remembered pain at my neck. Wet, sticky fingers.
My right hand shook as I held it up to the light. Dark crust still clung to my cuticles. Blood. I’d done this to myself, trying to make the screaming stop.
No wonder they thought I was crazy.
Maybe they were right.
The nurse had said I wasn’t allowed to close my door, but I closed it while I showered, and again when I got out of the bathroom, because she’d left it open after one of the fifteen-minute checkups.
Were they afraid I was going to kill myself? If so, it’d have to be a pretty creative suicide. The only things not nailed to the floor or the wall were the towel on a shelf over the toilet and the tiny bar of hand soap on the sink. In the end, my pride won out over vanity and I washed both my body and hair with hand soap, rather than go begging for basic hygiene supplies from people I’d never met.
After my shower, I found a clean set of purple scrubs folded on the bed, but I’d have to go without underwear until someone brought me some clean clothes. Nurse Nancy had said Aunt Val was supposed to bring them, but when and if my aunt showed up, she was not leaving without me.
Clean and dressed—if not exactly to my satisfaction—I stared at the door for a solid three minutes before working up the nerve to open it. I’d missed both dinner and breakfast, so I was starving, but less than eager to mingle. Finally, after two false starts, I shoved still-wet hair back from my face and pulled the door open.