Page 11 of Web of Lies
Upset? I'm not upset. I'm a little irritated but I'm not upset. Not yet. “I am not a child, Adrian. I don't want to be forced to wake up if I'm not ready.”
“She's only trying to help, babe,” he tells me. “You need to take your medicine early in the day so it has time to help.”
“It's mostly vitamins,” I argue. “It doesn't matter what time I take them. And that isn't the point. I don't enjoy being shoved and pushed and ordered to do things.”
“Who is pushing you?”
I look at Anne when I answer. “Anne was pushing me this morning, and jerking the blankets away from me. My eyes weren't even open.”
“I was only nudging her to get her attention,” Anne insists. “I called her name several times and she didn't wake up.”
“You see, babe? Just a little misunderstanding. Now be a good girl and calm down. Take your medicine and eat your breakfast. I'll be home early this afternoon.”
“No, Adrian,” I snap. “It wasn't a misunderstanding. She pushed me.”
He sighs into the phone. “Listen, babe. I don't have time for this right now. I have a meeting with a potential client and I can't be late. Just get up and take the medicine and let Anne help you until I get home.” He ends the call before I have time to say anything else, leaving me glaring at the phone and the woman holding it.
“You see, Mrs. Nash?” Anne asks in a honeyed voice. “Just a little misunderstanding.” She puts her phone into her pocket and smiles as she bends forward to grab the corner of the blanket and yanks it out of my hands. “Now, are you going to get up on your own or do you need me to help you?”
The look in her eyes says very clearly that I don't want her to help me.
Adrian doesn't come home early and when I ask Anne if he texted her to let her know when he would be home she just looked at me with a funny expression and told me that he wouldn't be home early.
I don't think I'm hallucinating. Do people who hallucinate know they're hallucinating? I have no idea. All I know is that I hate feeling like this. Nothing helps and I'm having a hard time discerning which things are actually happening and which things aren't.
And I miss my Dad.
I miss the life I had before I lost him.
Things come to another head a week or so later. Anne didn't call my name. I know without any hint of doubt that she didn't. I'm in the throes of an insomnia cycle and I've been awake for days. That doesn't mean I'm so addled that I don't know when people call my name. She didn't. She just barged in here and yanked the blankets off of me. I haven't even had time to block the light streaming into the room before she jerks the blinds open and comes back to push and pull at my shoulders. I feel like my instant irritation is understandable, but she's acting like I've attacked her.
“Mrs. Nash! Please!” She glances at the top of the window and back toward the door and hallway. “I'm only trying to help you get up out of bed.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you looking around like that? You have to give me time before you start pulling on me and shoving me around.”
She pulls out her phone and raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to get up on your own, or do I need to call Mr. Nash while he's at work?”
“What you need to do,Anne, is get out of my room and leave me alone until I'm ready to get up on my own. You're supposed to be here to help me, not treat me the way you do.”
She glances back at the window and I turn my head to look at it too. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Nash. There's no reason for you to be combative. Iamhere to help you. That's all I'm trying to do.”
An unexpected wave of dizziness and lethargy crashes into me and I press my palm against my forehead to try to offset the sensation of simultaneously spinning and falling. “Where is my phone?”
“Mr. Nash put it away someplace where it wouldn't bother you. You asked him to.”
I look at her for a long moment. I did no such thing, but I've already learned that there's no point in trying to prove it. “Then help me downstairs and to the neighbor's house. I need to call an ambulance.”
“Mr. Nash--”
“Mr. Nash isn't here. I am. You say you're supposed to be here to help me, so help me. I need to go to the hospital.”
She backs away from me, looking again at the window. “I'm calling Mr. Nash.”
“I need you to call a doctor, Anne! Now!”
I'm getting up out of this bed and I will leave this house if I have to crawl the whole way. I am not going to stay here another day and allow myself to be treated this way. There is something wrong with me and it is obvious that neither Adrian nor Anne are willing to help me. I'll crawl down the stairs and out the door and then next door. I roll over the side of the bed and try to stand up, but my equilibrium is too off and I fall back to my hands and knees. Whatever has been wrong with me is getting worse and no one will help me, not even my husband. Why? I don't understand.
