“I…” Sweat started to coat my back, and the room began to spin. Everyone is staring. I began to feel trapped, and the only thing that did was push me into the not-so-distant feeling of being back in that psych ward, locked in a room lacking any color, with random people coming up behind me to jab me with a needle or bear hug me until I stopped trying to claw my way out of there. “I…I…”
I was swept away with shock as my tray clamored to the floor, the apple rolling away with my conscious ability to stay present. My name was shouted as my cardigan sleeve was pulled from my arm swiftly, whirling me around until it was half hanging off my body. I blinked my eyes quickly with the speed of a hummingbird, and the girl who’d pulled my sleeve suddenly looked like Barry from the psych ward, and I was taken back to a place that made my throat raw from screaming.
I have to get out. I have to get out. I have to get out.
My knees were wet from resting my teary face along them, and if I darted my tongue out, I bet I would taste salt. The bandages on my arms were ripped off, and the stitches were poking out like little needles when I ran my fingers against them. If I were truly suicidal, I could have just ripped them out and allowed myself to bleed like I had just a few short days ago, but I wasn’t suicidal, and I didn’t want to bleed.
What I wanted was to get out of this place.
“Journey, we need you to tell us the truth. We need you to tell us why you tried to hurt yourself.”
I wasn’t sure how many different ways I could say the words, “Someone did this to me,” until they fully understood. The problem was that they did understand what I was saying. I was speaking English coherently. They just didn’t believe me.
“You won’t get better if you don’t tell us.”
“I want to leave,” I said, looking up at the man with too-tiny glasses on the end of his nose.
“You can’t leave.”
I laughed sarcastically, feeling the sadness turn to anger like the flip of a switch. “So, what? You’re just going to keep me here until I say that I tried to kill myself? I didn’t do it. Someone came up behind me and did it.”
“And who would do that?”
I jumped to my feet, the room swaying like a boat over a choppy ocean. My stomach rolled, and nausea hit me like a wave. I hadn’t eaten in days, and mixed with the medicine they kept giving me to sleep, I wasn’t sure what direction was up and what was down. “I don’t know! I kept to myself. No one even knew I was out there that night except—”
“Except who, Journey?”
It couldn't have been Cade. He wouldn’t have done this to me.
“Was there a voice that told you to do it?”
“What?” I screeched. “Like a voice from my head? No! I didn’t do this to myself!”
The man rubbed a hand over the tired lines along his face and sighed. “We will try again later. Get some rest. I can see that you’re becoming agitated.”
I scoffed, wanting to cross my arms in the worst way. “That would have nothing to do with the medication you’re giving me, though, right? What happens when you give these tiny pills to people who don’tneed them? Probably messes with their mood a little, right?”
The man stood up and ignored me. Hope crashed and fell like the tiny plastic cup with my pill in it earlier as I threw it across the room. I’d never been a violent person. I’d never even been someone to speak loudly. But he was right. I was agitated.
Someone had tried to kill me, and somehow, I was stuck in a psych ward without a single person coming for me. Not even Sister Mary.
My gaze stayed on the dull, scratchy floor of my new home until I heard the opening of the door and slow shuffling of leather loafers. It was as if I had gotten a push from a ghost as I barreled through the skinny man and landed in the hallway. My drab, gray gown was pulled backward, and I whirled around, my unbrushed hair flying into my eyes as I yelled out. Arms went around my waist next as I fought and cried out, my arms becoming bloody from the jerking of stitches.
“Journey, calm down!”
“No! Don’t touch me! Let me leave! I don’t belong here!”
“Goddamnit!”
A scream rushed out of my mouth as my fingers clenched down on two strong forearms. Confusion sliced away at the fogginess in my brain when I saw the shiny, freshly waxed black-and-white-tiled floor below me.
“Breathe, baby. Just breathe.”
I gasped at the oxygen filling my lungs, and my head automatically leaned into the warm breath at my ear. Comfort filled me momentarily as emotion stung the backs of my eyes. Chills broke like a waterfall over my one bare arm, and I tightened my entire body when I thought back to a few seconds ago when Aubrey was standing in front of me and my tray fell to the floor.
What the hell just happened?
My entire body was shaking, like I was at the center of an earthquake. I trembled when Cade dropped my legs and spun me around quickly, hoisting me up against the hard wall of the hallway. We were tucked around the corner of the dining hall, and the hallway was quiet. Too quiet. It should have given me some solace or at least some space to calm the erratic winding of my brain, but it didn’t.