Page 26 of Needing to Fall
This time, I jumped and shot my eyes his way.
“Better.” He let out a heaved breath. “How many people have come and gone from your life?”
I should have thought about what he was thinking and where he was going, but I just answered, “More than I can count.”
“She knew you had baggage because, babe, just from looking at you, I could tell.”
I wanted to glare and give him a goodfuck youyet didn’t.
“Again, you need to talk to her and get this shit out. If you get this off your chest, it’ll be better for the both of you.”
Where in the hell did this man come from? Seriously.
I hated it, but he was right. Andi had proved she was my somebody to me time and time again. She gave a shit, more than a shit. She treated me in a way I hadn’t seen in my time on this planet. Sure, Drew had, but Andi was different. I didn’t know how; I just knew it was.
I swiped my face with both my hands, feeling the wetness and wiping it on the green scrubs I wore today. The big, black hole that was always around me started to diminish just a bit. The cyclone moved down to a hurricane, and my heart squeezed.
I couldn’t stay pissed at Andi. I just couldn’t. No matter what happened to me in this life, I couldn’t shit on her. She had never shit on me, never given up on me, and more importantly, she was my somebody.
“So what do you plan on doing?” the doctor asked.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with anything. I felt like I was in a sea of sharks: one wrong move and I would be eaten. But the weird thing was I didn’t know if I wanted to be eaten alive yet. For the first instance in a really long time, the voices inside weren’t as strong. The more they quieted, the more I wasn’t sure that ending my life was the way to go.
“I don’t know.” My voice was quiet as I set my feet back on the floor and clasped my hands together in my lap. “I really don’t know,” I repeated with no less feeling.
“I actually believe you,” the doctor said. “Time’s up.”
“Where’s Lynx?” was the first question I asked as I stepped over the threshold into the doctor’s office.
Normally, Lynx made it to the office before me, but it wasn’t just that. It was the vibe in the room. The safety that surrounded this space like a shroud wasn’t there. Poof. Vanished.
I had begun to feel remarkably comfortable in this room, but today, there wasn’t any of that. I could almost taste the difference in the air yet couldn’t put a name to it. The energy was off, putting me on edge to the point my palms began sweating and my heart rate picked up rapidly. Maybe I was making more of this than it was, right?
Wrestler McMann leaned against the front of his desk, his short, stubby legs crossed at the ankles and arms loosely at his sides. He didn’t seem sure of himself or sure about me. Which? I couldn’t tell. The unease chilled my body and my first instinct was to escape, but Nurse Hatchet was by the door, almost like a guard.
She didn’t seem off the entire time we had walked here. She never gave any inkling to something being wrong, but as I looked at her, she had almost a fighter’s stance, like she was waiting for me to come at her.
“What’s going on?” I asked the two, looking between them. I wasn’t sure who to focus on. At this point, both of them were making me nervous.
Wrestler McMann stepped forward and said, “Andi is here.”
My knees nearly gave out. I didn’t know how I kept them locked, but I somehow did. I wrapped my arms around my body as the coldness swept through. It did nothing to keep the heat inside me.
She was here. I had lost track of the days I had been locked up, but I knew it was a few weeks. It had to have been from all the talks with the doctor and the time before.
For most of those weeks, I had hated her, was so damn angry I couldn’t see straight. Then, others, I missed her so much I ached down to my bones. Now, she was here.
I had just told Lynx and the doc about this yesterday. And now …BAM. He was either preparing me for it, or he had set this up. My guess was the latter.
“You need to face Andi,” Wrestler McMann stated when I kept quiet. “You’ve made great progress, but your time is coming to an end here.” Those words snapped my focus, because I needed out of here, like, yesterday. “But don’tactlike you think I want to see. That’s why your nurse is here and will stay throughout the duration. We will make that determination.”
A test, one I was more than likely going to fail. Perfect. My time here just kept getting better and better.
My head began to swim like water going fast into a drain, sucking down in a deep swirl. I closed my eyes, trying to stop myself from sinking, but I was still going. Around and around and around, I spun, trying to grasp anything to hold on to. Nothing was there. My breathing picked up, and I found it harder and harder to control.
Was I pissed? Did I miss her? Could I forgive her? What if she hated me for what I had said? What if she couldn’t forgive me for what I was going to do when she was taking care of me?
A hand came to my shoulder, and I flinched away from it, flying across the room to the far wall and slapping my back to the hard surface. Wrestler McMann’s special I-am-a-wonderful-doctor plaques shook from the impact, rattling in my ear.
