The biggest difference of all is that I’m here, and Jude is not.
It’s hard to sleep without my husband. In all the years that we’ve been married, we’ve never been apart. We always sleep curled up together, our limbs intertwined. No matter how little we’re able to see each other during the day, we always wear each other like a second skin in the night.
I wonder if he’s struggling with this as much as I am.
I’ll ask him on Saturday.
God, I don’t get to see him until Saturday?
What day is it now?
With a start, amid my rambling thoughts, I realize I don’t know.
I don’t know what fucking day it is.
How long have I been in here?
One day?
Two days?
Three?
Four?
The walls close in on me, getting tighter and tighter, until I squeeze my eyes shut so that I don’t have to see them. The only way to survive this is to just plow right through it. I’ll do what they want me to do, and I’ll breathe, and I’ll talk to them, and I’ll remember, and I’ll get better.
I count, whispering, the monotony lulling me into sleep.
One one thousand.
Two one thousand.
Three one thousand.
The last number I remember is one hundred before I drift into the abyss of sleep.
“Cunt.”
The hissing whisper wakes me, and my eyes open wide, and I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping. Minutes? Hours?
At first, I think I’m dreaming, but then I see the outline of a girl...a woman...in the chair next to my bed.
It’s dark, so I can’t see her face, but her nail polish glints in the moonlight. It’s chipped around the edges. She chews her nails, and she seems so so familiar.
“Who are you?” I ask, a pit forming in the base of my stomach.
“Your worst nightmare.”
I sit straight up in bed, trying like hell to adjust my eyes to the dark, and in that one split second, she’s gone.
I scramble out of bed, turn on the lights, and the nurses find me moments later crawling on my hands and knees, searching beneath my bed.
“What are you looking for?” they ask curiously as they help me up.
“There was a girl in here...” I tell them, and they look at each other strangely because we’re definitely alone now.
“What did she look like?” one asks me as I crawl back into bed.
“I couldn’t see her,” I have to admit. “It was too dark. And her face...it seemed blurry.”
“Maybe you were dreaming,” one suggests.
“I wasn’t,” I insist. “I wasn’t alone.”
But they don’t listen. They turn off my light, and maybe I really am crazy.
I’m on edge for the rest of the night, watching and waiting for someone to appear, but they never do. My muscles are tight and coiled, ready to lunge out of bed again.
But I don’t need to.
She doesn’t come back.
I’ve got to relax. I’ve got to breathe.
I count my breaths until I finally fall asleep again.
The last breath I remember is number five hundred and four.
At my session in the morning, Dr. Phillips stares at me.
“Who did you think was in your room last night?” he asks me curiously. “Did you think it was the same person who was with you when you attempted suicide?”
He stares at me, waiting, and I recognize the look on his face. I’m sure I’ve had it on my own with my own patients at times.
He’s humoring me.
“There was someone there,” I insist. “It was a woman.”
“Did she speak to you again? Was she the one who told you to hurt yourself?”
I exhale, then exhale again.
“I’m not schizophrenic,” I tell him firmly. “I’m not hearing voices that aren’t there. No one told me to hurt myself.”
“But you said you don’t remember doing it in the first place,” he reminds me. “So how can you be sure?”
I’m silent. He knows I’m not sure about anything.
“There was a woman in my room last night,” I tell him again, and my words are firm.
He pauses. “Everyone was accounted for at that hour, though,” he points out. “There couldn’t have been anyone, Corinne.”
I stare at the wall again.
“I want to change your medication,” he tells me. “Maybe try clozapine.”
My head snaps up. “That’s an antipsychotic.”
Dr. Phillips nods carefully, his expression cloaked. “Yes. It’s just a precaution for the time being, Corinne. Your memories are affecting your cognitive function.”
“No,” I speak out, and then I pause.
Can he possibly be right?
The girl was so real, right next to my bed.
Was she truly not there?
“I...” My voice trails off.
“It’s just for a while, Corinne. We’ll get a handle on this.”
“Am I going to lose my career?” I ask suddenly, because who will want a crazy doctor?
Dr. Phillips smiles. “Our goal is to return you to your regular life unscathed, Dr. Cabot. Let’s just focus on the matter at hand, shall we?”
I’m unsettled and disturbed, because I worked so hard for my life, for my career. All of those sleepless nights in med school...they can’t have been for nothing. The blood, the sweat, the tears. The student loans, the headaches, the time. All of it.
“Let’s return to All Hallows Lane,” Dr. Phillips instructs. “Close your eyes. Tell me what you see.”
I sigh and stare into space, because I don’t want to relive that night. Every time we do, a piece of my soul breaks off and falls into an abyss. I’ll never get those pieces back again.
“Your father had been having an affair with Melanie Gibson,” the doctor reminds me, as if I’d forgotten. “How long had it been going on?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’d just found out that day.”
“And you didn’t tell your mother?”
“No. I didn’t know what to say. And I didn’t have time, anyway.”
He’d killed Melanie and her husband before I could decide what to do.
“Did you like Melanie?”
“Yeah. She was always nice to me.”
“What was she doing when you arrived at the house?”
“She was washing dishes. She’d been filling up her candy bucket for trick-or-treaters. Her hands were wet. She was wiping them on a towel when she turned around to greet me.”
“She and your dad didn’t usually see each other in front of you kids, right?”
“No, never.” I shake my head.
“So, what changed that night?”
“I can’t remember. I was just there to babysit.”
God, it’s so frustrating.
My hands clench and unclench, and Dr. Phillips eyes them.
“Calm down, Corinne. It’s okay. You’re safe here.”
“I know that,” I snap. “I just... I can’t remember.”
The memories from that night, the black-edged snippets of time, whirl and twirl around me, and the more they swirl, the more breathless I become. I try to grasp them, to pull them to me, so I can finally look at them, but I can’t.
The memories distort, come into focus for just a second, then distort again. Mud. Scuffed leather. Frayed laces.
“I see shoes,” I say, breathless, a whisper. “Black shoes.”
“Your father’s?” Dr. Phillips asks, but I shake my head.
“No. His were brown.” A feeling comes over me that I can’t describe, terrifying and all-consuming. Something foreboding. I’m covered in sweat and the ceiling is caving in on me and my heart pounds and I suck and suck and suck for air, but it won’t come, and I panic panic panic...
When I open my eyes again, the psychiatrist is drawing something into a needle, flicking out the air bubbles and walking toward me.
“No.” I shirk away, the needle long and glinting. “I’m fine. I don’t need that.”
I try to scramble away, but a nurse is suddenly here, and where did she come from?
I struggle, but they hold me down, and there’s a sharp prick, then the entire world goes black.
5
Twelve days until Halloween
Corinne
“Hey, little sis,” I answer my phone midmorning, taking another gulp of coffee out of my favorite mug, the one that says This might be vodka.
Jackie takes a breath and then launches into a tirade about her husband, her kids, her maxed-out credit card and her sucky boss.