Eluding Nirvana (The Dark Evoke Series Book 2) (30 page)

I hung my head while
relics of tears I didn’t know existed, seeped from my eyes. Was that really what happened? How come I don’t remember any of this? For God sake what is wrong with me? My God, Liam, I am so, so sorry.

“Mr. DeLaney, we all deal with grief in our own personal ways. Obviously, this is Kady’
s way, and denial plays a big part in the eventual form of acceptance. Considering she has suffered…umm…unstable moments, I think it would be best, not only for her own safety, but for the individuals who she groups with, if we take her in short term for assessment. We can begin a course and observe her reactions with medication that will help relieve the tension and stable her a little. Does that sound okay with you?”

I sat in that ball, my knees pulled up against my body wanting to protest with every remaining bit of strength and perseverance that I had. Nonetheless, the voice of justification a
nd denial told me that I had no right. It told me that this has gone too far, and that Liam was right: I did need help. Next time it could be worse.

“Yes, please, do whatever needs to be done to make her better. I’m just sorry I didn’t notice the warning signs sooner. All of this could have been avoided.”

“Mr. DeLaney, you can’t post blame on yourself, you’re getting her the help she needs now. That’s the important thing. Do you want to press charges?”

Charges? Oh, God…oh, God…

“No, that’s not necessary,” he muttered, and I found myself releasing the breath I had stored in my lungs at the mere noting of that question.

Lost in oblivion with the fiery
overlay plastered to my left hand, I was pulled from my ball in the corner of the living room, and escorted out of the house, down the steps, to the sidewalk.

“Can I just say goodbye to h
er?” Liam asked the male shrink who must have nodded, because I was soon swallowed up in Liam’s arms, his mouth an inch from the hollow on my ear. My body shuddered at the absence of concern in his voice, which was only to be replaced with haughtiness and a somewhat scathing tone, “There’s no point in demanding that you’re not crazy. They won’t listen. All the crazy people say that they’re not.”

Feeling dead,
his arms fell from around my mentally fragile body before I was folded in the car. The seatbelt was drawn across my body by the shrink while I remained motionless, totally inert, just focusing on the grating of flesh, as we pulled away from the sidewalk.

I’m not crazy…I’m not crazy…I’m not crazy…my mantra was repeated after every tree we
passed along the tree lined streets.

Eventu
ally, I sank back into the seat and rested my head against the window to my right as we journeyed to Pinewood Institute.

Wh
o was I kidding, Liam was right: all the crazy people say that they’re not.

Days in Pinewood Institute were like reading the instructions of a shampoo bottle. Lather…rinse…repeat.
Although, this was more of a: wake up. Have your pills. Have your breakfast. Sit in the dayroom. Wait for your appointment. Get summoned by the orderlies for your appointment. Talk to the shrink or in my case, sit and stare into oblivion, it’s easier that way. Nothing can be misconstrued. Words can’t get put into your mouth, and at least you remember not saying a word. Go back to the dayroom. Have your food. Take your pills. Go to bed, and repeat.

The first two days I was less than compliant. I never needed to take medication in my life, not for mental illness anyway. Mental illness…those words are like a
n ugly brand, a brand that divides you from the world of people. It makes you feel alien. Yet, you can walk down the street and bump into someone; you don’t know whether they’ve had a breakdown, suffered depression, acute anxiety, bipolar…delusions. I sniggered to myself, delusional…if I was on the street now and bumped into someone, I think my entire day would consist of questioning if it actually happened.

Was Liam right? Was I
in fact delusional? A fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact…he said I attacked him. He said I was the one who cut him.

For the days
in which I was a patient of Pinewood, I fixated on how I felt and the events that occurred which led to that dreadful confrontation. Everything was like a dream. I was in a dream, a nightmare––a trancelike state. I remembered back to when I was seven. I had a dream where I was running, running so fast my feet would barely touch the floor, and before I knew it, I was jumping like The Incredible Hulk all over the place. When I woke the following morning, I attempted it. Because sometimes, to realize that it was only an act of a dream, you need cold, hard evidence.

Maybe the same thing happened with Lia
m and me. Maybe I did attack him but dreamed I didn’t. I had to take the three inch laceration on his palm as my cold, hard evidence.

I
did
attack him.

I
was
delusional.

Despite the fact I loathed being kept prisoner
by four stark white walls and the black and white checkered tiling beneath my feet, and only the sounds of mumbling and the occasional obscenity being shouted out, I was thankful to Liam for one thing: he sought the help I obviously needed, but couldn’t appreciate that I needed. It could’ve been so much worse. Liam could’ve been in the hospital, and I could have been in jail with a criminal record for assault…or even worse.

Si
tting in stark white pajamas, I gazed out the window of the dayroom, silently studying a flower swaying in the breeze. Because of the strictness of daily routines, the days were vague and indistinct as they blurred into one, and I was heedless of the significance of the day…until I peeked up at the clock above the dayroom entranceway, ‘THUR’ displayed above the clock face.

I turned back to the window.
The only evidence of the spring breeze was the movement of the single flower amongst the fresh, plump grass shoots of the garden.

Tears threatened, burning the bridge of my nose and my right hand unconsciously came to meet my left as it rested on the windowpane. Mining my nails into the
skin, I pulled so tightly, so ferociously, I swore I felt a familiar warm liquid oozing from the indentations beneath them. A part of me hoped I did.

Only two thoughts
brought me comfort in my state of despair. That breeze was my Nan’s spirit. She was watching over me, keeping me company, helping me tap into a hidden strength, and not leaving me alone in the scary surroundings like Liam had. And the fact that Walker had requested to see me.

I thought I was dreaming when the orderly approached me that morning, the sound of the soles of her flat shoes squealing and sticking to the polished flooring. I tore my melancholic stare from the window as she knelt in front of me and asked if I was feeling up to having a visitor. When the name Walker slipped from her mouth as a whisper, for the first time in eight days of being locked up, I felt hope. I felt an unfamiliar smile steal across my face and as I nodded my answer, she disappeared back to where she came, leaving behind a sliver of faith which I had long ago forgotten.

Eight days I had been locked up there. Eight days without a visitor. Eight days to attempt to see sense. Eight days to hit reality with a bang and accept what I had done and somehow, allow the professionals to get me better. Even if it did mean that I was dosed up to the eyeballs with anti-depressants and tranquilizers.

“Kady,” the woman in white scrubs was standing over my shoulder as I slowly and cautiously craned my head around to face her.
“It’s time to go down to the visitors’ room.” The warm and friendly smile she displayed helped me find a little energy of what I had left, to rear up from the seat and follow in her wake.

She
steered me through the echoing corridor. It seemed as though those black cameras were stationed at every corner of the institute, always keeping an eye on you. The way they sometimes shifted angles and the grating noise as they did so, did nothing for my paranoia. Still, I was glad to escape the ramblings along with sudden cursing and shouting from the other patients.

Patients? It felt as though we were inmates…

My fingers found and toyed with a loose thread dangling from the bottom of my pajama top, as I stepped into the small, white painted room and took the seat next to the window. The breeze had picked up some, sending tulips bowing as though they were worshipping each grass shoot they were sitting amongst.

“Hey.
” I jolted at the sensation of a hand on my shoulder, the legs of the chair grated under protest. “It’s okay,” the familiar voice told me, as I redirected my rapt attention from the garden beyond the window, to the man skirting my body and taking a seat in front of me. He offered a wistful grin, his brown hair as sexy and disheveled as always, yet his attire was immaculate. A crisp white shirt tucked neatly into navy suit pants. “How are you feeling, darlin’?”

I merely stared at him, unsure of what to say, what to do. I couldn’t open my mouth because if I did, my dam was going to break. Walker gazed at me with a bountiful compassion that I knew damn well I didn’t deserve. I was the one undeserving.

Hanging my head low, I felt the wrinkles of stretching skin gathering when I pulled my eyebrows in and downward. I swept my tongue over my parched lips and sniffled. “I went for him, Walker,” I finally admitted, sorrow and regret mixed with overt perplexity encased my tone, as I pulled my head back and met his caring gaze.

Seeing his broad shoulders sagging and his face tumbling on his outbreath was another kick in my gut. “Kady,” he shifted to the very edge of the seat, my knees caught between his thighs. He took my hands in his warm, calloused possession.

“I attacked him, and I can’t even remember it.”

Although the walls were thick, you could hear each and every tortured soul. Night
after night the screams were my lullaby. And I knew this was going to be a big confrontation, hearing the screams, the banging and smashing from down the hall, in the room that only a few moments ago, I was in.

“Oh my God,” the woman
gasped; still I held my head low.

The next thing I know, I saw Walker in my peripheral vision looking up at the door behind me.
“It’s okay, we’ll be fine,” he said.

Strengthening sounds of commotion vibrated through the room as the door opened, and soon faded to a
degree which was easier to disregard if you were familiar with such things.

“
Kady, listen to me,” now we were alone, his voice was somewhat pressing. “You did not attack him. Do you understand me? You did
not
attack him.”

Flailing my head in a fraught attempt to shake his words from my mind, I muttered ‘no’ over and over.
Eight days I’d had to realize and acknowledge the verity of my actions. I had just come to accept it––acceptance is the first step of getting better––and now Walker was making me question myself all over again. I couldn’t allow him to do that.

“
You didn’t attack him, Kady. You’re not that sort of person; you don’t have a combative bone in your body.”

“How do you know, Walker? People live n
ext-door to rapists and child abductors, but they always say the same thing, ‘We never realized, it’s come as such a shock, he/she was such a lovely person’.”

His features turned sturdier with his resolve. “No, Kady, that’s enough. You didn’t do what he’s made out you’ve done.”

Faintly shaking my head, my overthrown words were unfettered as a whisper. “Then why would he say it?”

He breathed a troubling, vexing sigh.
“I don’t know, but we’re working on it––”

“We? Whose we
?”

He smiled, one that sent shivers up my spine as I witness
ed the degree of his determination. “Let’s just say, the FBI has nothing on me and Laurie at the moment.”

The flower bowed down into the grass once more as the breeze intensified for all but a second. “Today was the funeral,” I muttered, the vision before me awash with a painful, burning accumulation of warm droplets of grief over glassy eyes. I heard the
snarl emitted from Walker’s throat, one that screamed knowledge and clarity. Still, I found myself lost in the visual of the dancing flower, and in the barrenness of my own dark mind. “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye and now I never will.”

Craning my head to Walker as he answered me with silence, I silently cursed the tear which had escaped and was being pursued by
countless more. “He deleted my voicemail, Walker. The one from my mom and everything else after that is a complete blur.”

His
minty breath collided with my face. Leaving my hands on my lap he halted himself from chewing on his chewing gum while his gentle, tender touch rose to my face. My tears were dried by his thumbs before he pulled my head closer to him, until our brows were resting against one another. “Please don’t cry, darlin’,” he whispered. I swore I heard him sniffle before he repeated his plea. “Please don’t cry.”

When he finally drew his head from me, my b
row felt cold and bare, Walker’s hands were still framing my face. The look in his eyes as he searched mine…that look was teeming with anger and fortitude, like a parent who was about to lift a car off their child. “I need you to listen to me, Kady. Do you remember the night you stayed with me on your birthday?”