Page 8 of Speak

Yes, like Poe, I’m quite taken with the Raven perched upon my sofa like a bad omen. Her case has been an intriguing one, to say the least. Admitted to Lorne Wood Mental Institution, a sister hospital to the prestigious and very private Lorne Wood Hospital (funded by and for the elite) by her mother and stepfather after violent fits and outbursts. She’s made a lot of progress over the last four years.

Hardly any fits. Hardly any nightmares or sleepwalking.

At first, I thought it was just an act, this silence of hers. But when I would pull up the camera feed to her room to see if she ever cried out in the middle of the night after a night terror, she never did. Even in the worst of the nightmares, her screams were silent. Thenshe’d wake, mouth wide open and where it seems she was panting, still, no noise. Even during fights at Lorne Wood, when she was struck by other patients, no sound. Only silent, premeditated retaliation.

She is…incredible.

The alarm goes off, signaling our time is done. Our last meeting ever. My heart plummets to know I won’t be seeing her again under these circumstances,forcedand court-ordered circumstances. I’ll still always have the camera planted in her room after she earned bi-weekly home visits so I could keep an eye on her even when she’s not with me.

She stands quickly, both of us heading for the door. Before I can open it for her, I let her walk ahead of me, watching her plush ass straining in her high-waisted skinny jeans, sad she’s not wearing her usual little skirt to our Friday morning appointments. The scent of berries and cinnamon from her perfume and some citrus in her hair, she turns and gives me her beautiful smile, telling me goodbye. It was nice knowing me.

I give her a curt nod and a blush tints the tops of her cheeks. I could probably convince her parents to give her one more year of therapy, after all, they can afford me. I make a mental note to call them after my last client of the day, their son, Axel. The one who’s so easy to extract information about my little bird from.

He barges in after her and takes a seat, elbow on either knee, hands hanging between them.

“Axel.” I greet, taking my seat behind my desk.

“Hey, Doc. She say anything?”

“I can’t discuss my patients with you, Axel, you know this.”

He hangs his head, dark blonde hair falling forward. He’s changed a lot since I started seeing them, so has she. But he’s broader, brawnier. “I know. I was just hoping she at least said goodbye to you. Whispered it, or something.”

She did, in her own way. But I don’t tell him that.

Axel was pretty upset after the entire ordeal. Guilt ate him up inside, he had felt responsible for leaving her alone to go chase some college pussy. College pussy that ended up vomiting on him during a party while they kissed. I told him from the very beginning that neither of them knew something like that was going to happen.Especially on a campus as safe as Rayne-Moore, where the only real crime that ever happened there prior to Raven’s attempted murder was a case of girls gone missing back in the seventies.

I roam my grey eyes over him, taking in his relaxed henley, jeans and Sperry’s, looking too much like the troubled twenty-four-year-old he is. Troubled as in, the tragedy that struck his sister affected him gravely as well. Overall, he still looks pretty put together. He’d transferred to Hartford and left his entire football career behind to be closer to her. He has never once complained about leaving Rayne-Moore behind, seemingly more than content to be away from the campus.

“Has she spoken to you?” I ask, letting my gaze settle on his.

He shakes his head and looks up at me. “This morning, on my way here, I texted her Happy Birthday, that I couldn’t wait to bring her home today after our last session. Bubbles popped up. Like she was going to respond. I got so excited… and thennothing. It’s been years, Doc. We were so close, you know? I know I was an annoying kid, but she never made me feel like it. I just… God, I can’t believe I’m saying this but, I just want to hear her tease me again. Hear her laugh. God, when she found something really funny, likereallyfucking funny, she had this… annoying laugh that bubbled out of her and she would throw her head back and keep going until she couldn’t breathe.” His eyes twinkle at the memory and he’s grinning so wide. “It was contagious.”

“Do you realize you talk about her in past tense? As if she’s dead?” This is something that irks me, the way they still mourn who she used to be as if something like being left for dead doesn’t traumatize a person. Like they rather mourn her than to adapt and live inhernew normal to makethemselvesfeel more comfortable. They’ve often chosen to just… leave her behind. As if Raven isn’t worthy or beautiful enough to at least be a little shadow trailing after them.

I don’t want Raven normal. I quite enjoy her will, her tenacity and her silent rebellion.

“I do?”

I nod. “Have you ever tried telling her these things?”

He looks confused. “No, I… when I try, she just looks up at me with those big doe eyes of hers and… and I forget everything.” Thatpart I can understand. “I just remember her looking at me like that from the hospital bed and I freeze.” He sniffles. “She had this infection in her leg and her stab wound. Thankfully they didn’t stab anywhere important.”

I know. I saw her medical files when they brought her into my care after attacking a nurse that had touched her wrist, still sore after having been bound tightly and they deemed her a violent patient. Raven’s medical files declared she had lacerations on her wrists and neck from being restrained, a stab wound to the abdomen, a broken leg, head trauma, a skull fracture. I didn’t understand it. Her vocal chords were fine. They even checked her vagina for possible trauma, they found her hymen still intact.

That drove me fucking wild. I usually don’t care for virgins, but knowing she was untouched after an attack so brutal, made it feel as though she was meant just for me. Brought here, just for me. Raven was and is, to all intents and purposes, my very first patient fresh out of residency.

My favorite patient.

“But she looked solittlein that hospital bed. Like when we were kids and a bad thunderstorm rolled through and she’d beg me to come sleep with her. She’s a month older than me. She was fearless until a lightning storm rolled though. Said there was someone in her room and she could only see them when the lightning would strike.” He pauses. “That was whenIwould protect her. Me. There was a storm rolling through that night, you know, after the football game. I chased pussy, instead of protecting her in more ways than one. In the only one that mattered.”

“I believe it’s time you stop mourning your sister, Mister Monroe. She’s alive and well, and I think it would do you both good, if you stopped referring to her like she’s dead.”

He nods at me and stands. “You’re right. I’m going back to Hartford tomorrow, and I promised her we’d get ice cream on our way home. Who knows, maybe one day she’ll text me back.”

“Have a good weekend, Mister Monroe.”

“You too, Doctor Archer.”

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