[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
She remembered a feeling like she was floating. Minutes, hours, days, years, eternities, she couldn’t tell. But when she came back, she was empty. Something was missing, but she didn’t know what. There were voices around her, soft hands and touches on her body and she tried to move, but it was hard, so hard. The longer she waited, the more aware she became. Someone was crying beside her in long, shuddering wails and it scared her to her very core. Their hands shook as they clutched hers and she wanted to tell them to stop it, but she couldn’t make a sound. It was almost like she was swimming, sometimes going deeper, deeper, yet deeper still until she couldn’t hear anything anymore, other times lurking just below the surface, but never quite able to emerge.

Their voices were usually soft and subdued, sometimes they cried, sometimes they were silently holding her hand. She felt their loving touches and their reassuring hands, but there was one thing she didn’t feel. And it made her feel empty, so, so empty.

They were relieved when she finally did manage to wake up. She remembered the tears in her sister’s eyes, the solemn, but grateful expression in her mother’s. She saw the relieved smile on her father’s face and felt her brother grasp her hand. She felt like a child again as her family carefully hugged her one by one, giving her words of relief and encouragement. And for a long, long moment, Leighanne remembered nothing.

But then she looked at herself and the memories came flooding back. How she’d lain helpless on the kitchen floor, bleeding everywhere while clutching her belly in a useless attempt to stop the bleeding. She vaguely remembered a moment where Nick had come in, how he’d sobbed above her and pressed down on the cut where Brian’s knife had...

Brian’s knife?

No.

No, it couldn’t be.

He couldn’t have.

He would never.

And Leighanne screamed in horror when the empty feeling deep inside her slowly began to make sense. “No, please, no,” she moaned, because it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. It was all a nightmare, surely. She’d heard about the strange dreams that pregnant women could have, and this was surely all just that. She was barely aware of her family’s hands and voices that tried to calm her. “Please,” she begged them, with tears streaming down her cheeks, “Please, no.”

“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart,” her mother said, but Leighanne heard the deep sadness in her voice and her heart broke in a million pieces.

“My baby,” she whispered, her eyes still begging her mother to tell her what she wanted to hear. That her baby was alright, that everything was just a dream; that Brian was asleep next to her, that none of it had ever happened.

But her mother’s face crumbled into a mask of sorrow, “He’s-”

“No,” Leighanne said, shaking her head wildly, “No, don’t say it.”

“He’s so small,” her mother said in a smothered voice and Leighanne’s eyes widened.

“He’s alive?” Leighanne didn’t allow the wave of disbelief and relief to crash down on her yet.

“Only just,” her mothered whispered, “they don’t know if he’s gonna make it, but he’s a little fighter, Leigh, he’s been holding on for three days already.”

“Oh my God,” Leighanne sobbed.

And then the whole story came. About how the knife had barely missed the infant and how the blood-supply to the boy had been cut off instead. How the surgery had repaired the severe internal bleedings while also functioning as an emergency delivery at the same time. How the little boy had been hardly larger than the doctor’s hand and how he hadn’t cried at all. How his little head had turned blue and how they’d rushed him to the neonatal ICU and how he had been there ever since. How most doctors were skeptical about his chances because after all, Leighanne had been just over 27 weeks.

And Leighanne heard all this in a state of disbelief, and tried not to notice how her mother carefully avoided mentioning her daughter’s husband even once. Because it was beyond horrifying to even attempt to think about it. And as far as Leighanne was concerned right now, that knife that she remembered so vividly going inside her, had just come out of nowhere.

But after a few hours, it began to drive her insane. She wasn’t allowed to get out of bed and the thought of her son supposedly lying somewhere alone; fighting for his life was crushing all other thoughts from her mind. His condition remained critical and Leighanne couldn’t bear the possibility of losing him without having seen him even once.

So the next day she demanded, high and low, to be taken to him. And the nurses relented eventually, because presumably, they had a heart. And now she was here. And she’d never seen a human being so small. She watched, mesmerized by the rapid motion of his small chest going up and down with the fast hisses of the respirator. The small infant was packed with warm blankets and wires and tubes and monitors everywhere. But he was hers; and she was his. And she didn’t think she could ever move away from this spot and leave him to fight on his own again. Not even when her whole body started to ache and her belly was screaming for the morphine they’d been pumping into her. Her belly, where by all means, the little boy lying in the incubator should still be, and would be, if it hadn’t been for...

A stab of anger coursed through her body, but just as quick as it had come, it went away. And the worry grew. Her gloved hands stroked the tender baby skin softly, trying to make the small boy absorb some of her strength, to help him in any way possible. The baby with the few strands of blond hair squirmed a little and Leighanne released a repressed sob. His bones, lungs, organs and brain were quite underdeveloped, but he reacted to her touch, which was more than she could have hoped for. And he was hers, and she was his.

And when she was inevitably brought back to her room, she finally started to wonder. Surprisingly, her first thoughts went to Bonnie. She wondered if the dog was alright, if anything had happened to her or if she’d been able to find her way back home. Then she wondered where Nick had gone after he’d brought her to the hospital. Her mother assured her that he’d been questioned by police right after they’d arrived and that they would be in here to question her when she’d be a bit better. Leighanne felt the uneasiness in her stomach grow. Mom said that they’d want to know where he’d go, which meant that they hadn’t found him yet. And considering the extensive damage that he had not only put her through, but himself as well, she didn’t hold much hope.

And when they did come a day later, she told them everything she knew. She told them about the medication he’d been supposed to take. She told them that he hadn’t been himself for weeks. She told them that she should have had him hospitalized the moment he’d started showing signs of psychosis. She told them that it wasn’t his fault. She told them that they needed to find him very soon, because she was afraid of what he was going to do in this state.

Their faces looked grim when she finished. The fat one cautiously told her that if what she said was true, than it would be unlikely to find him alive after five days. And Leighanne nodded slowly, realization not yet dawning on her completely.

And then his parents showed up, and they looked absolutely devastated. His father barely said a word and his mother seemed to exist in a permanent state of disbelief. Because surely, this wasn’t the way they’d raised him to be. They’d raised him a good man, a caring, loving individual that valued family above anything else and would sooner die for them than hurt them. And Leighanne nodded silently, her own tears overflowing as his mother broke down on her bed. It wasn’t their fault, not even a little.

But she couldn’t say anything.

And when Nick came in with Doctor Phillips, Leighanne let go of the rage she didn’t know was inside her. Because how could the psychiatrist not see that there was something seriously wrong with Brian? Why hadn’t she put a stop to it while she still could? The only thing she ever seemed to do was prescribe more medication, which in turn, Brian would refuse to take, so what was the damn use?

Mellory had listened to her tirade calmly and proceeded to tell her that this was a most tragic situation, but that there wasn’t really that much that she could have done to stop it. And Leighanne knew she was right, but refused to believe it. Because if it wasn’t the psychiatrist’s fault, then whose was it? And Phillips had leaned closer, demanding her to tell her everything. Because this severe kind of psychosis was a major relapse and Leighanne realized that Brian never said anything, not even to his own doctor.

And at the end, Mellory only said one word, “Thomas.”

Leighanne nodded, resigned. “Yeah.”

“It’s eating him alive.”

“You knew about that?”

“He told me he saw Thomas Fenn, a hallucination, clearly, which is why I stepped over to antipsychosis medication in the first place. I never realized it had gotten this severe. He told me Thomas never said anything out of the ordinary. I assumed it was harmless for the time being. It would have stayed harmless if he hadn’t had such a severe allergic reaction to the initial medication and we wouldn’t have had to switch over to the other one. The alternative works, but the dose is quite high, which, you’ve realized, he wasn’t taking.”

“He said they made him feel weird, like he wasn’t himself when he took them.”

“So eventually, he stopped taking them altogether.”

Leighanne nodded, silent tears streaming down her face. “Do you think Thomas-”

“Yes, yes I do,” Doctor Phillips sighed sadly.

Leighanne felt her insides crumbling to dust at the thought of Thomas tormenting Brian to the point where he’d pick up a knife to- “If I hadn’t walked in on him, would he have-”

“It’s- it’s not unlikely.”

Nick, who had been following the conversation quietly, but intently up to this point, let out a smothered sound. “He wouldn’t,” he stated stubbornly.

“Not in a normal state, no,” Mellory admitted quietly, “But some cases of PTSD get more and more severe with time, and Brian lost control somewhere halfway.”

“I shoulda done something,” Nick squeezed out. “We shoulda brought him back to the hospital first thing.”

“It’s too late for should haves, I’m afraid,” Phillips’ smile was sympathetic. “If they find him alive, that’s probably where he’ll end up.”

“Will you still work with him?” Leighanne tried to ignore the if in the psychiatrist sentence. “Does he still have a chance?”

“Let’s hope so.”

Actions