Page 10 of Bleed for Me

Swallowing thickly, I nodded and made my way inside. White tables littered the unexpectedly large room. A projector took up the front of the room with chairs stacked in front of it. Behindthat area were the tables—or maybe the appropriate term would bein front of itinstead since I was standing near the entrance.

My chest tightened as I glanced around the room, noting all of the unfamiliar faces. Some of them appeared normal, but that couldn’t be entirely true.

An older woman stood near the front with a long jean skirt brushing against her ankles. Her dark, graying hair was clipped back as she roamed her gaze over the rambunctious patients talking amongst each other. When her eyes found mine from across the room, a warm smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Quiet, Quiet!” Her voice rang out over the masses.

It took a few moments, but after a while, the room fell silent. The only person who was still standing was me, and realizing rather quickly that I didn’t want the extra attention, I moved to one of the large rectangular tables and slipped down into a seat beside a girl with blue, pink, yellow, and brown hair. Quite a fashion statement right there.

The sound of a male grumbling something along with a thumping sound captured my attention, making my ears perk up involuntarily. I looked around the room, my eyes landing on the source. A guy sitting at the table in front of me was talking lowly to himself and smacking his palm against the side of his head. He seemed clearly distraught and like he was in the middle of an episode.

My hands gripped the edge of the table, my throat tightening on instinct. What was wrong with him? My mind whirled with different possibilities as I sifted through my memory trying to differentiate between all the things I’d learned in my studies thus far. A number of different diagnoses could trigger something like that, so it wasn’t very helpful.

“Hey,” the girl with rainbow-colored hair said from beside me. It took a moment for me to realize that those words were directed at me.

“Hi.”

A kind smile graced her lips followed by a sympathetic expression. “My name’s Cheyanne. What’s yours?”

A laugh almost tumbled out of me. Not because I found it funny, but because it became abundantly clear that she was trying to calm me down. It was written all over her face and in the way her brown eyes kept bouncing from me to the guy who was having an episode a few seats away.

“Rosalie.”

“When did you get here?” she continued, maintaining eye contact like she’d done this a few times before.

Regardless, I was kind of thankful for her right now. The tension in my chest eased and my shoulders relaxed a fraction. It was difficult being here, surrounded by these people when I knew in my heart that I wasn’t crazy. This was all so overwhelming.

“Last night. It’s been—the transition has been…” I paused, a crease forming between my eyebrows.

She nodded despite my inability to form a full sentence. “I know what you mean. It’s always difficult when you first get here. Did you at least sleep well?”

“Not really.”

I’d stayed up most of the night tossing and turning, plagued by nightmares of the events that had taken place at my family home. It was always the same one. Daisy’s throat getting slashed and her coming back to tell me that it was my fault and to ask me why I’d let it happen. A chill swept down my spine and a sharp pain registered within my mind.

Glancing down, I realized that my nails were biting into the skin of my palms. Shaking my hands out beneath the table, I released a sigh.

“I didn’t either for the first few weeks. I kept throwing up and couldn’t keep anything down. It was horrible. It does get better, though.”

Somehow, I seriously doubted that.

The older lady at the front of the room started talking again, cutting off anything else Cheyanne could have said. “Since I see some new faces in here, we’re going to go around the room introducing ourselves before we get started. We’ll start at the left of the room and go right. I want you to mention your name, what you’ve been diagnosed with, your age, and what happened to get you placed into Brookhaven in the first place. I’ll start us off.” Her gaze swept over the room one last time before she continued. “My name is Ms. Octavia. I used to be a patient here, I’m fifty-six years old, diagnosed with severe clinical depression and anxiety. My depression was so bad that I’d go weeks without showering, I’d self-harm as a way of coping, and it was difficult for me to get out of bed.”

Surprise registered through me. She’d managed to overcome her illness and turned it into something good. That meant there was hope for me yet.

The large table to my left sat in an L shape, conjoined with ours. In front of me was a circular table that contained four patients. She encouraged one of the patients to start—the one at the far end of the table to my left. He had bright, platinum-colored hair that appeared white in shade, leading me to believe it wasn’t natural, but if that was the case, his roots should have already been peeking through and they weren’t. I was momentarily stunned by how attractive he was. Before I could think on that more, his smooth voice carried throughout the room.

“My name is Seven. I’m twenty-two years old, diagnosed with auto-hemophagia, AKA auto vampirism.” His lips twitched in amusement as if he found the term of his diagnosis funny. “And bipolar disorder. When I was eighteen, I had this girlfriend. She agreed to do blood play, knowing it fascinated me and was a huge kink of mine. Things got out of hand, and I accidentally killed her.”

My lips parted in disbelief. We were just now learning about the more complex diagnostics in class, but I’d already known about auto-vampirism. Typically, the person with the mental illness had anemia and it brought forth a thirst for blood. Sometimes, the person wasn’t anemic at all, but simply just enjoyed the taste of it so much that they truly believed they were vampires. Pair that with bipolar disorder and it was a recipe for disaster.

Ms. Octavia thanked him for sharing and motioned for the dark-headed guy to go next. He was just as attractive as Seven with dark brown, shaggy hair and piercing blue eyes. His golden complexion contrasted against Seven’s pale one, especially with them being side by side.

“My name is Archer. I’m twenty years old, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, OCD, and depression.” He blew out a breath before continuing. “I had a crush on this girl who had just started going to our school. I was too afraid to talk to her since she hung out with a group of people at all times during school hours. So, I followed her one day. She had to cut through the woods to get to the neighborhood on the other side, but when she saw me, she freaked out. When she started screaming, I placed my hand over her mouth and backed her against the nearest tree. But then…shebitme. Out of retaliation, I slipped my hands around her throat and squeezed. I hadn’t intended on her dying, but…she did.”

One of the patients at the circular table in front of me started giggling and clapping her hands excitedly with a crazed look in her eyes as she bounced up and down in her seat.

“Ding dong, the bitch is dead,” the patient sang followed by maniacal laughter that sent my pulse thundering.

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