“DAD!”
“In the meantime, I’ll take you to the academy and I’ll pick you up—"
“You’re being insane!”
He stops short, jerking as he looks me dead in the eye. “I’m the one who’s insane? Me? I am?”
“I just misjudged the situation. I cut harder than I should have—”
He grabs hold of the thin sheet that’s covering me, exposing my legs. “How long have you been cutting yourself?” he demands. “How long?” His quick gaze travels up my bare thighs, scanning my skin.
“What the hell are you doing?” I try to rip the sheet out of his hand and cover myself again, but there’s no way he’s letting go.
“I’m not stupid. You think this is my first time dealing with this? Before this stupid stunt, you haven’t had any other marks on your arms. That leaves your thighs.”
“I don’t cut my thighs!”
“I can see that. What about your stomach? Lift the gown, Presley.”
Ice sluices through my veins, at the same time a blisteringly hot spike of shame colors my cheeks. I grab the hospital gown, bunching it firmly in my hands, pulling it down.
“You’re not going to lift it?” Dad’s breathing so hard, he looks like he’s just run a four-minute mile.
I shake my head.
“All right. Fine. I don’t wanna do this, Pres, but if you can’t be honest with me—” He lunges forward and grabs the gown, and a high-pitched screaming sound starts going off in my head. I wrestle, writhing on the bed, refusing to let go of the gown no matter how hard he pulls.
“Show me, Pres,” my father grits out. “Just st—just stop fighting me and show me what you’ve done!”
“MR. WITTON!”
Dad stops. His hands fall away, releasing me, but the screaming sound in my head doesn’t end. It continues, climbing higher, becoming more frantic…until I realize that the sound isn’t in my head. It’s coming out of my mouth, and my throat is so raw that I can taste blood.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, Presley. Take a breath for me, there’s a good girl. It’s all right. Come on, now. Shh.”
I open my eyes, and the psychiatrist from earlier, Dr. Raine, is standing over me. She slowly strokes a hand down my arm, her contact light as a feather, but it shocks me out of my blind panic. Abruptly, I stop screaming.
“Good girl. It’s okay, don’t worry. Everything’s okay.” Dr. Raine turns on Dad like a feral wolf. “I have no idea what the hell you were just doing, sir, but your daughter is in an extremely fragile state. The very last thing she needs right now is someone manhandling her.”
Dad’s eyes are full of tears. He takes a step back, lifting one hand toward me, as if he wants to stroke my other arm, to reassure and comfort me, too. But he lets the hand fall. “I’m sorry.” His voice is a shattered, broken thing. “I didn’t mean to. I just…I just need to know what’s happening. I don’t know what to do.”
“Go upstairs and wait for me in my office, please. Room two-oh-three.” Dr. Raine’s eyes are still full of anger but there’s a pitying edge to her tone now, too. She feels bad for him. She understands his confusion. I do, too. I have no idea why I reacted that way just now. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him forcing me to show him my stomach, and…
A fat tear streaks down Dad’s face. “Okay. I—I’m sorry, sweetheart. Um. I—” He doesn’t know what to say. Dad, who always knows exactly what to say, is speechless. Without uttering another word, he backs out of the room and disappears.
Dr. Raine squeezes my shoulder lightly. “I think it’s probably a good idea if we give you another sedative, Presley. Just give me a minute and I can call on one of the nur—”
“No! No more sedatives.” I can finally feel my mind returning to itself properly. The world doesn’t look quite so hazy anymore, and while the haziness blotted out the terror from last night, I won’t let myself languish in the darkness anymore. It’s frightening, to feel my own mind so fragmented and fractured and not be able to do anything about it. “Please. No.” I swallow thickly. “No more sedatives. I’m fine. I will be fine. I just need a moment.”
The doctor, who smells of coffee and cinnamon, gives me a tight-lipped half-smile. “Okay. If you’re sure. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Presley. If you feel like all of this is too much right now, it’s okay to accept a little help. Be that from me, or from something that’ll relax you a little longer while we’re trying to work all of this out, okay?”
I nod woodenly, to give her the impression that I’m thinking about it. That I’ll take her up on her offer if things get to be too much. I don’t need her help, though, and I do not need her drugs. I only need to forget.
12
PAX
* * *
I cross Mountain Lakes with Meredith’s black box tucked into my backpack like a ticking time bomb. Its sharp corners dig into my back as I jog up the stairs toward the entrance, and I can hear something rattling around in there. A childish satisfaction makes me smirk as I bypass the front desk and head straight for the elevators. I hope it was some rare work of art. A Faberge egg or some shit. Some priceless heirloom that she wanted to hand down to me as part of my inheritance. I hope that, whatever it is, it’s in so many pieces now that it’s worthless and my mother gets to see just how much her parting gesture means to me.
Back in New York, Meredith’s donated so much money to so many different hospitals that there are wards named after her across the city. Research labs. Entire wings of clinics and care centers all dedicated to the name Davis. She could walk into any single one of them and receive world class care. She’d be treated like a goddamn rock star, for fuck’s sake. But no. She’s come here, to this tiny, ghetto ass facility halfway up a mountain, where they can barely care for the most emergent cases successfully, and all so she can terrorize me.
What the hell is wrong with the woman?
I’ve had the misfortune of spending quite a bit of time in this place over the past year. I know where the private patient rooms are, and I know Meredith won’t be staying in any of them. The view from her window clearly showed Cosgroves, which means the room she’s in is west facing. Second floor. I hit the stairwell, head down, passing a nurse carrying a clipboard, and she doesn’t say a word.
It doesn’t take long to find my mother. Her voice, deep and soft, resonant as a cat’s purr, carries extraordinarily well in open spaces. In close quarters such as these, it’s impossible to confuse her with anybody else.
“It’s quite all right. I know you’ll remember for next time. Just one cube of ice, in a chilled glass, with double filtered water.”
Christ. She’s using that tone.
I go to enter the room on the left, at the end of a very unimpressive hallway that smells like bleach, but a young nurse with flushed cheeks stumbles through the open door. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. I suspect her blonde, neat pigtail braids are the reason why my mother was talking to her like she was an imbecile; Meredith can’t stand grown women who style their hair like children. The nurse’s eyes double in size when she sees me. “Oh, no. No, no, no, I’m sorry. You can’t go in there.”