Through Glass (The Glass Series Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter Thirty

As I feel my life fade away,

The pain is unbearable

It’s morning. Apparently I fell asleep on the couch. I wince, realizing my neck is a bit sore. I glance around the apartment. I can’t remember whether or not Oliver spent the night. My mind is playing tricks on me and lately it feels as though every day is blended together into one big mess. I have no concept of time. I wonder if it’s because I am overworking myself with two jobs and dating Oliver.

I remember last night—I called the police. No one ever showed up. The man with the tattoo had been following me and I was scared. I look down, and the knife is still in my hand. I drop it to the floor when I notice blood.

Whose blood is this?

I stand slowly, checking myself for wounds. My pant leg is also soaked in blood, but it’s not mine. I’m not hurt.

“Oliver?” I call out. I hear nothing.

I don’t remember how I got to the couch. The last thing I can recall is sitting on the floor by the door. I was alone in the apartment,
I think.

There are droplets of blood leading to the bathroom. I walk slowly, and call out again. “Oliver? Are you in here?”

The bathroom door is open an inch, and I slowly slide it open the rest of the way. There’s blood on the side of the bathtub. I pause, taking a breath and trying to calm myself before I slide the shower curtain over.

It’s a horrible sight. At the bottom of the porcelain tub, my cat lay lifeless and bloody—a pile of limp, black fur. He’s been stabbed, violently. Repeatedly. He’s barely recognizable. Sobbing, I stumble backwards and trip over a laundry basket. My head cracks on the corner of the vanity and everything goes black.

I’m not out for long. When I come to, Frederick is trying to help me stand, with both of his arms under my armpits. I pull away from him and begin kicking.

“Did you kill my cat?” I scream. “Did you kill him? Tell me!”

“No, Lauren, I did not kill your cat,” he says, calmly. “Your cat isn’t dead.”

“Look at him! He’s dead!” I yell.

“That’s not your cat, Lauren. Where are we now?” he asks.

“What?”

“Which room are we in?”

“What the hell? My bathroom. What are you doing here? Get away from me. I’ll call the cops. I swear I will.” I push him but he isn’t moving away.

“We are not in your bathroom, Lauren. This is a hospital.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember? I am Doctor Frederick Christiansen. We met yesterday,” he says, softly.

“You killed my cat!”

“You didn’t have a cat, Lauren. You never had a cat.”

“Seriously, fuck you.” I pull away from him.

“Lauren, look at me,” he says, calmly.

“You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat. You killed my cat.” I am rocking back and forth now on my bed in the white room, with my arms wrapped around myself. The room is spinning.

I’m sitting on the floor of my entrance, clutching a knife. I stand, feeling wobbly. My legs carry me over to the hallway where I fall to my knees.

“I’ve been sleeping with Oliver, and I’m pregnant,” I whimper.

NyQuil walks up to me, rubbing his face on my leg.

“I’m pregnant,” I cry.

The cat does nothing but groom himself. I hang my head down and stare at the floor. Then I reach forward and grab the cat by his neck. He lets out a howl as I bury my knife so far into his chest that it comes out through his back. And again. I am pinning him down to the floor and violently piercing his body with the knife. It seems like hours, but only a few minutes later, I collapse to the ground. I lay beside his broken body, breathing heavily. I am exhausted and worn. Reluctantly, I pick him up in my arms, almost cradling him as I carry him to the bath tub. I drop his body into the empty tub from about three feet up. It makes a “thump” noise and blood splatters off of him onto the surrounding white walls.

I turn off the light and make my way to the couch, where I fall into the soft, beige cushions and breakdown.

Chapter Thirty-One

I awake from what seemed like

A chemical-induced day dream

“Lauren, it’s time to wake up.”

I moan and mumble words that even I don’t comprehend, and I roll over towards the wall.

“Lauren? Wake up.”

“Go away,” I groan, this time slightly louder and more coherent.

“It’s moving day, remember?” Such a soft voice. I can tell it’s Shay. “We’re moving you to the other facility today. We talked about this.”

“No,” I call out, still refusing to look at her.

“Unfortunately you don’t have a choice, Lauren. You need to get out of bed now, or I’ll have to sedate you again and I really don’t want to do that if I don’t have to. Do you understand?”

I’m not going anywhere.

I’m not going.

I’m not.

“No.”

“Okay, let’s get you up,” Shay says. Her hands are on my arm, pulling me in her direction. I pull and fall back onto the bed. I clutch my pillow with all of my strength. She tries again, this time her hands are hooked onto my shoulders and she pulls me back. I begin to thrash. I kick my legs as hard as I can, and she releases her grip. She’s at the other side of the room and I notice she’s talking to him.

“Oliver,” I whisper.

“Hi, Lauren. I’m just here to make sure everything goes okay with your transfer? You’re going to be much happier at the new facility, I promise,” he says confidently.

I’m not so sure.

“Will you come visit me at my new apartment? We can share a bottle of wine,” I plead. At this point, Shay is holding onto both my arms from behind me, leading me out of the room.

“I will come visit you in about a week to see how your treatment is coming along, okay? Does that sound fair?” Oliver asks.

“A whole week? That’s a lot of time. A week is so long. A week? Really? Couldn’t you come see me sooner? Oliver?” My voice trails off as I am whisked by him. I’m feeling light headed.

Frederick watches curiously from the window on the door across from my room as I am pulled down the hallway.

We are outside on pavement, and I stop moving my feet. Two workers are dragging me, one at each arm, and my back is arched so that I can look back at the building. Oliver is watching through a window as they help me onto a bus.

“I’m glad that’s over,” Oliver says, still peering out the window. Frederick nods.

“I will take good care of her, Oli. You know that. We are going to switch up her medication until we find something that works for her. We’ll do some group therapy sessions, some one on one. We’ll get the new female doctor in if she feels more comfortable opening up to someone of the same gender. You did all you could for her. She’s delusional. Her hallucinations are out of control. We couldn’t keep her here, with her feelings for you. It just wasn’t working. You’ve been trying to do this for years to no avail, Oliver. It just wasn’t going to work. Sometimes you need to let go and understand that they are beyond your help.”

“I get that. That’s why I called you. Thanks, Frederick. You know I appreciate it,” Oliver says. He glances out the window again and the bus is gone.

Chapter Thirty-Two

You missed your chance, and now it’s gone

You’ll miss me when you hear this song

“She’s gone.” Oliver takes a couple steps into the entrance of his house and then stops to read the mail.

“That’s a good thing, Oliver. She’s going to get the help she needs. What other cases are you working on? You still seem stressed out,” Tara asks calmly. She walks up to Oliver and puts her arms around his waist from behind, leaning her head onto his back and feeling his warmth. He turns and slides an arm around her shoulders. He pulls her close and holds her, burying his nose in her hair—smelling it.

“A man named Chase. I’m going to be focusing on him. He needs a lot of work. We don’t even know what his real name is—Chase is just a name we gave him. He hasn’t spoken a word since he’s been at the facility. He was brought in after he beat another man into a coma, and the victim still might not make it, at which point he’ll be charged with murder instead of assault with a deadly weapon. I need to get him to say something, and I don’t know how to,” Oliver sighs. “Maybe I’m just really not cut out for this job. It just doesn’t seem like it’s meant for me anymore, Tar. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m pulling shit out of my ass, trying to make things work. I’m bullshitting my way through everything and it just doesn’t seem right anymore.”

“Don’t say that, Oliver. You’re an excellent psychiatrist. It just gets to be a lot to handle sometimes. I know it does. I knew it would be like this when we first got married. It’s putting stress on our marriage but it’s nothing that we, as a couple, cannot handle. We are much better than this. I just hate when you come home exhausted and angry. I wish I could make you feel better and I really don’t know how to. I want to help you. I want you to come home and spend time with me and our family, instead of hitting a bottle and heading straight to bed. I miss you. We miss you,” Tara pleads. She hugs him again, hiding her face on his chest.

“I love you, Tara, more than anything else in this world,” Oliver sighs.

“I love you too.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oliver turns to open it and recognizes Shay’s outline through the frosted windows.

“Oliver, I’m sorry to show up here but they’re having a very hard time with Lauren. I’m heading to their facility now, and I figured I’d stop by to see if you wanted to come out with me. Perhaps if she sees someone familiar, it’ll help her settle in. I know you said you’d check up on her next week, but we really need to be out there now,” she explains.

Oliver glances at Tara, who nods urgently. He kisses her forehead.

“Thank you for understanding, Tara,” he whispers.

And with that, he’s gone. They’re in the car, driving fast. The last phone call Shay received was the night shift nurse holding Lauren back from smashing her face against the floor.

“I knew this would happen, Shay. I knew she’d have a breakdown. She’s going to shut down completely and no one will be able to get through to her,” Oliver mumbles, shaking his head.

“She just needs a lot of work, Oliver. We are going to do this right. We’ll head over there tonight, spend some time with her initially so she gets used to the transfer. We can find one day shift nurse that she seems to have a connection with, like she did me, and then we can slowly introduce her to the rest of the staff.”

“I hope you’re right, Shay. The last thing I want to see happen is for us to lose her completely.”

“We won’t lose her, Oliver,” Shay assures him.

They’ are silent for almost an hour before they arrive at the facility. Oliver urgently jogs into the building after Shay.

“This way,” Shay points down a hallway. They can hear the screams already.

“Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver!” Lauren is screaming his name at the top of her lungs.

“Oh god, Shay,” Oliver whispers, stopping dead in his tracks.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to, Oliver. You can just walk away now,” Shay says softly, touching his arm.

“No, I can’t walk away now. I’m too far into this.” He nods at the guard standing by the door, who lets them into the room. Lauren is being held down on her bed, clawing at her face. She has bloody scratch marks down both cheeks.

“Frederick, let her go,” Oliver demands. “Why hasn’t she been sedated?”

“I am trying to have a conversation with her, Doctor Fallon. I can’t adjust her medication if I need to keep her sedated the entire time. I appreciate you coming out. It’s best if we try to get through to her, instead of putting her out again.”

“I agree, Doctor Christiansen.” Oliver nods. “Lauren, may we talk to you for a couple minutes?”

Lauren says nothing but she grunts and breathes heavily. Her finger nails are bloody.

“Lauren, we don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Oliver adds.

She looks up, making eye contact with Oliver for a second. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, now, rocking back and forth, feeling her face and looking at the blood on her own hands.

“Lauren, you’re hurt. We need to get that cleaned up or it’ll get infected,” Shay says. She leaves the room to get a first aid kit.

“Lauren, I don’t know what to do anymore. How should I help you?” Oliver asks, as though he’s pleading for an answer. He is. He hates to see her hurting and can’t take much more of this. He’s never been so emotionally involved in a case before.

Frederick has backed off and is sitting at the other side of the room.

“You need to spend the night here, Lauren. Do you understand? If you promise to be good for Doctor Christiansen, I will come back to visit you in the morning. Does that sound okay?”

“Yes,” Lauren squeaks. This might be her only chance to continue seeing Oliver. The portion of her mind that is still able to make rational decisions is telling her that she needs to do as they say, otherwise she’ll never be allowed to see him again—and that would kill her.

“I’m going to leave now, Lauren. I have to go write up some paperwork. You know that. But I’ll be back, okay? In the meantime, if you need anything you could ask Doctor Christiansen. He’s not a bad person,” Oliver explains.

Lauren nods.
The notebook. He has to go write in the notebook. Always the notebook. That’s what he’s going to do.

Lauren hides her head in her mattress.

“Go,” she mumbles, but the word is muffled.

Oliver is gone.