Total pages in book: 260
Estimated words: 245483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1227(@200wpm)___ 982(@250wpm)___ 818(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 245483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1227(@200wpm)___ 982(@250wpm)___ 818(@300wpm)
My shoulders are squared as I sit on the bed though. My back’s against the hard cinder block wall. It doesn’t slip by me that John’s back is to the drywall, and he’s the one who’s forced to stare at the block wall. The same fucking stone that tortured my vision for four straight months.
“Do you feel comfortable?” John asks as he leans forward and puts his hands between his knees. I try to keep my eyes from moving to the blinking red light, but I fail.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I could be more comfortable,” I tell him and then look back to his steely gaze, “but I’ll be fine.”
“You seem…” his brow furrows and he leans back with an uncomfortable expression. “Better today,” he concludes, finally settling on the words he wants.
“I’m more certain of what I need to do,” I look into the swirls of gray clouds as I tell him and bring my knees up to my chest. It’s an odd behavior I’ve seen patients do, but I like it when they do it. It makes them vulnerable, which inherently means they’re not defensive.
My eyes drift back to the red light, and I wonder who's really running this session. It needs to be me.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask John although it’s a rhetorical question.
He nods his head once, not breaking my gaze and says, “Jay said you had something to tell me.” My blood turns cold and I swallow the unforgiving lump in my throat, lowering my head to the comforter. I pull it up tighter around me, not wanting to address what John’s said at all. So, I don’t.
I pick at a loose thread. It’s a habit because for so long, all I had was a blanket to pick at. This one is thicker, higher quality and clean, but it’s a blanket nonetheless.
The thin thread slips between my fleshy fingertips before sliding past my nails as I start my story. “This story is about a girl named Marie.” Just saying her name makes my heart squeeze in my chest.
Her face flashes before my eyes. Beautiful green eyes that were so clear and so pure, I felt she could see to the very depths of my soul. Her skin was pale and her hair was always combed just so. She kept it perfectly straight as though she were put together, but she wasn’t in the least.
“Marie?” John asks me, and then crosses his ankle over his knee. The movement makes me look up as the memory of her voice echoes in my ears. “Doctor Everly.”
I nod my head, hating how real her voice sounds.
It takes me a moment before I’m able to speak. “She had a very abusive father. Her mother fled in the middle of the night when she was only six and left her there.”
The pain is nearly consuming as I talk about her in the past tense, but that’s where Marie will always be. Never again to be here with me.
“He hurt her?” John asks, and it disrupts my thoughts. I part my lips to exhale and answer his question. “Badly.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” John says with true sympathy. “You knew her well?”
My hair brushes my cheeks as I nod and say, “I was her shrink.”
“For almost ten years he systematically abused her in every way possible.”
“That’s horrible,” John says although his voice is absent. I feel the need to look up, to look into his eyes to see what he’s thinking, but I can’t. All I can picture is how Marie looked the last time I saw her. I knew she wasn’t well, but they wouldn’t let me go to her. They wouldn’t let me keep her from leaving. She left me, and I knew it was the last time I’d see her.
“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper and let the warm tears slide down my cheeks. “I begged her, the last time I saw her, I begged her to take her medication but she didn’t believe it would work.”
Marie never had a chance. The moment she was saved from her father, the true beast destroyed her. Her memory.
The home she was in was temporary, and they didn’t care for her. They just wanted a check. The city bus brought her there, and the program paid for it and her medication but she was always alone. The burden was left on her shoulders, except for the small moments I had with her.
“She’d gotten worse the last time I saw her. She started hurting herself.” My breathing is ragged and I lean my head against the wall, closing my eyes and willing the images to go away.
“She needed more help than I could give her.” There wasn’t a phone call I didn’t make. Marie became my priority, but I had no rights to her. I had no legal way to protect her or to take her like I so desperately wanted to.