Chapter Fifty-Eight
Declan
CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.
“Help!” I cry out. “Somebody help me.”
CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.
I try to use my arms to flag for assistance, but through the dizziness and fog, I can’t see what’s restricting my movement.
"Please help me!" I scream once more.
"Now, now, Mr. Roberts," a friendly voice says, and whomever it belongs to gently rubs my forehead. "I need you to settle down. Can you do that for me?"
I try to focus on the kind woman speaking, but the world is reduced to mere shades. "Who are you?" I ask. "Where am I? What happened?"
"Just calm down, Mr. Roberts," she continues, still rubbing my head. "Everything is okay. You just had a little—well," she pauses. "I'll let the doctor tell you about all that."
"Doctor!" I yell. "What doctor? No! I don't want to see that man again. I beg you, no. He's a lunatic!" The thought of a needle stabbing my eye sends me into a quick set of convulsions.
"Sir, Mr. Roberts, please, you need to calm down." The woman withdraws her hand and her tone sharpens. "I have to get the doctor. He'll know what to do."
CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.
I strain to shake myself free, desperate to cut loose and flee from that madman, even though I can't see a damn thing. I'd rather dash headfirst into a woodchipper than spend another minute under the care of Dr. Emmanuel Campos.
"Is there a problem here, Mr. Roberts?" a man with a thick foreign accent asks.
"Who's there?" I snap. "What's happening to me? Why can’t I see?"
"I am Dr. Rajib, Mr. Roberts," he says, his words slightly hard to understand. I hear the brief rustling of pages and click of a pen. "There's no need to fuss. The restraints are for your own protection."
Restraints? What restraints? Is that why I can't move? Question after question assails my mind.
CLINK. CLINK.
"It says here, Mr. Roberts." The heavy accent continues. "That you tried to commit suicide by parking your vehicle in front of a train."
"That's a lie!" I exclaim, trying once more to jerk myself free in vain.
CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.
"My car stalled, and now I'm here." I feel something warm and running sliding down my arms from my wrists.
“Please, Mr. Roberts,” he says. “You’re tearing your skin against the handcuffs. It’s only going to make this worse for you.”
He goes on to insinuate that my car stalling right in the middle of the tracks is awfully coincidental, and that this fact isn’t the only unusual detail about my current situation.
When I arrived, having just returned from five minutes among the dead, I started ranting about a missing woman, whom I believed to be dead but who had appeared on the tracks just as I stopped my car.
Later, when the police officers followed the ambulance and subsequently cuffed me to the bed, I began shouting obscenities and raving about an evil doctor and his insane predatory sidekick.
Nothing coming out of my mouth made any sense.
"Sons of bitches!" I scream again, rocking what I suppose is a hospital bed back and forth, hoping to break free when it ultimately topples over and crashes to the floor.
While I struggle to breathe under the weight of the motorized bed that’s pressing me into the floor, Dr. Rajib urgently calls for a team of orderlies.
A blur of fast-paced white and blue rushes in beside me, acting without further instruction.
The help quickly grabs the corners of the bed and tips it up, allowing air to flow back into my lungs, burning like ice.
With me still touching the ground and the bed propped up slightly above my body, a police officer steps in, and as Dr. Rajib administers an injection, he explains what he is about to do.
"Mr. Roberts," he says, "I’m going to sedate you. Then the officer will free you from your restraints. These men will escort you to the psych ward on the other end of the building, which is where you will be when you wake up. I’m sorry to do this to you, Mr. Roberts. But until you’re stable, and until we’re better able to assess the situation, we must admit you for your own good. "
My mind tells me to fight, but I can barely move, still struggling for air. The scorching of oxygen blocks the pain of the needle in my neck. Again, my world goes black.