Page 39 of Fractured

Sobering, I turned my phone off. It would be too easy to sit here and message Kenzo for hours, thriving under the normal attention from a man to a woman he liked.

As always, Sophia greeted me with a huge, beaming smile as she held out a pen for me to sign the log. For once, I actually returned an almost genuine smile to her.

“Hey! It’s been a pretty decent week here at the hospital. I think you’ll have a great day with Lauren.” She leaned an elbow on the counter, then lowered her voice. “Say, you look amazing. Gone on any hot dates lately?” Wiggling her eyebrows, her grin turned salacious.

“Just having a good week myself.” I left it vague. The front receptionist of the psych ward where my mother was kept just wasn’t who I wanted to spill all the details of my love life to, no matter how interested or nice she was.

“I bet it’s a man.” She laughed. “It always is.” Handing me a badge, she pointed toward the waiting area where I always stood. “Rhett will be here in just a minute to get you.”

Nodding, I moved over to that worn bit of carpet while clipping the badge to my shirt. Barely a minute had passed when Rhett came through the double doors.

“Lilith,” he said and turned sideways for me to slip past him. I relaxed a little more since he was my orderly today. More times than I could count, he’d been the one to escort me back over the years, and somewhere along the way, I’d added him to my routine. There was comfort in that.

“Rhett.” I returned and waited for him to lead the way.

Today, we walked right by the residential wing, through the commons area, until we reached the door for the courtyard. It was a gorgeous day, and through the windows, I could see a myriad of patients dotting the grass. Some were walking stiltedly in a circle. Others were talking to people that were there, then there was Lauren.

Even from here, I could pick her out of the crowd within a few seconds. She had a bright yellow blanket spread out over the grass and a book turned face down in her lap as she tilted her face up to the sun.

If you cut everything else out of the courtyard and then zeroed in on her, people might describe her as picturesque, at peace, or maybe even beautiful in a timeless way. A sudden chill slid down my spine. That scared me, because I knew what really lurked beneath the surface, and on days where you couldn’t see it in the tilt of her jaw or the wild glint in her eye, those were the most dangerous.

Now I was thinking I didn’t want to see her at all. I took two steps back, but Rhett caught my arm. It was strange, he’d never touched me before.

“Are you okay?”

I shuddered and shook out my hands. “Fine. I just had a weird thought cross my mind. I’m fine.”

He moved his lips to one side as he looked too deep into my eyes, but he let go of my arm. “I’ll be by the door. When you want back inside and you’re ready to leave, just hit the doorbell right here.” He opened the courtyard door and pointed to a little weathered and yellowed rectangular button about eye level on the wall.

I knew it was there. I’d used it before, but it was part of the routine and it made me feel safer when he pointed it out.

I stepped out into the sunlight, the grass crunching slightly under my feet. No soft plush grass for this place. Not that I’d ever expect lawn care to be high on the priority list for Bright Path.

The moaning sounds along with the incoherent speech assaulted my ears as I walked through the courtyard. I hated when the patients were all out like this. It raised my blood pressure and increased my flight instinct. Although I almost never fled, it was just a feeling in my gut I couldn’t dispel until I was free of this place.

I reached the blanket and sat down quietly, waiting to take my cue from Lauren. Immediately, she looked at me and gave me a sweet smile.

“Lilith. I’ve missed you.”

Yes, today was going to be bad, because she was on her medicine and whatever she told me would be the truth. At least as far as she knew it to be. That meant I’d have to take her far more seriously than when she was catatonic or half out of her mind in delusions.

“Hi, Mom.” I reverted back from using her name. In this state, it would be counterproductive to what I was trying to get from her.

“You look well. Have you been ok?” She reached over and patted my arm. These encounters were so foreign to me, because very few times in her life had she ever consistently been on medication. It was always a struggle when I was growing up. She said they changed who she was, prevented her from enjoying life. And once she was here, she slipped the medicine in the trash any chance she got.

“I have.” I crossed my legs, barely taking up the corner of the blanket and plucking a blade of grass to smooth between my fingers. There was too much intelligence in her eyes today. I didn’t like it.

“What brings you by today? Missing your mother?” A little dark humor curled over the edges of her words, but I didn’t smile or laugh like she thought I would.

“Just thinking about things.” I tossed the blade and picked another. “You remember why they made you come here?”

Her smile fell, replaced with a flat expression as her eyes sparked. The air instantly cooled ten degrees in her anger. “Of course I remember. Why are you bringing this up?” No longer was she serene and happy.

“Because it’s come up a lot for me lately, and I never tried to find out what happened.”

She laughed bitterly. “And you want to know now. Why? I can’t change what happened. It’s a good thing they locked me up in this place. No reason to hash it out.”

That was too close to my own views. I blinked rapidly to clear my thoughts. “Actually, there is. I realized there were things that don’t make sense. Things not reported in the articles.”

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