Chapter 12 The Phoenix
Chapter twelve
The Phoenix
The only thing that was different this morning was that instead of Shemar conducting his routine in silence, he let me know that I had a phone call waiting for me in the hallway.
After his routine was complete, I grabbed a hair tie from my nightstand and wound my hair up in a messy bun before making my way into the hallway.
Shemar was working his way down the ward, slowly pulling his cart with the monitor as he went, the only sound in the silence coming from the low squeak of the cart's wheels.
One of the phones hanging from the wall had been left off the receiver and was sitting on the bottom of the box that housed it.
I worried for a moment, scratching at the bandage on my arm, if something was wrong with Riley.
My sister was the only one I knew who would be awake this early and would need to call me.
None of my friends at the vet clinic would have the number to reach me here.
I stopped picking at the tape on my bandage to lift the receiver and hold it to my ear, taking a deep breath to steady my worries about Riley before speaking.
“Hello.”
“Are you ready to get the stick out of your ass and discuss our little misunderstanding? Or are you going to keep crying wolf with this overused pity party act?
My blood turned to ice, freezing me in place, leaving me unable to control myself.
He was banned. He was supposed to be banned.
Daxton had promised me that he had been banned from the hospital.
Even though I felt fear from hearing his voice, I tried to tell myself that he wasn’t here.
He couldn’t touch me right now. My hand still found its way around my neck to where I could still feel his belt, tightening against my skin, trying to drain the life out of me, trying to kill me.
It wasn’t there. It wasn’t real. It was in my head. It wasn’t real!
“Raelynn, are you going to speak to me? When are you going to understand I was only trying to help you? You’ve wanted to end your life before, you’ve felt worthless your entire life, you know what you really want in the end.
” His words burrowed under my skin like scarab beetles, taking hold in my mind until tears started forming, threatening to spill while he wove his vicious web through my brain.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I found a strength I didn’t know I possessed to try and overcome his influence, “attempted murder doesn’t exactly make me want to be sociable with psychopaths. Go back to sucking on your mother’s tit and leave me alone.”
“Raelynn,” the sound of my name and how he said it, like scolding a small child.
My name was venom from his tongue, in an attempt to weaken me.
“No one is going to believe you after seeing everything you’ve already done to yourself.
It’s not normal. I want to put this in our past and work towards a future. ”
“There is no future with you,” I could feel my voice quivering as my conviction threatened to waiver, and reminded myself I had the safety of distance on my side, “you’ve been cheating on me for years. Go bother one of the other girls, I’m done.”
“If you don’t give us a chance, I’m not going to have a choice but to finish what I started. You’re bringing it upon yourself.”
I slammed the receiver down, ending the phone call, my hands still shaking, not just from hearing his voice but from everything he had to say.
The problem was he wasn’t wrong. At one point in my life, I had thought it was better to end it all.
If it hadn’t been for the promise I had made to Michelle, I would have died long before my parents had.
His voice made me sick to my stomach. Not just metaphorical, but a physical embodiment of the fear I felt.
Craig was my worst nightmare personified, a demon with the ability to walk in the daylight.
I ran back to my room and opened the bathroom door only to find myself face down in the toilet.
Contents from dinner last night spewed from my mouth as I retched uncontrollably into the basin.
I had never considered myself to be a weak person in the past, so the fact that he had this effect on me made me feel small and want to curl into an impenetrable ball.
The walls wouldn’t stop spinning as I flushed the toilet, riding the room from the smell of fresh vomit.
My entire body shook while trying to hold down the dry heaving that was threatening to bring another wave of sickness.
I tried to stand at the sink, hands gripping tightly enough to the ceramic that my knuckles were white from the force.
My reflection made me hate myself. Weakness was all I could see.
Red puffy cheeks from crying, bile still wet on the corner of my lips, shoulders trembling beyond my control.
He was in my head, telling me my fragility would win.
Telling me that weak-minded people always give in at the end.
It would be better off if I just ended it, ended the torment.
He had always said my battle wasn’t one worth winning; strong people were soldiers called upon to fight.
Not weak people who couldn’t battle their own demons.
Fighting what had been put in my head over the years was mentally draining.
I fought with my reflection, going back and forth on whose will was stronger in this moment.
The voice in my head that didn’t belong to me, or the one I was trying to gain from the moment I broke up with him.
My voice wasn’t strong yet, though it tried its best to overpower his; it wasn’t loud enough to drown out his influence.
If I had been at home, unsupervised and alone, I probably would have given in to the desire to regain control by cutting myself until I felt the sweet release from something completely under my supremacy.
But I wasn’t at home. I was surrounded by people with demons just like myself.
Breakfast wasn’t for another hour, judging by the clock that hung high on the wall in my room.
It was still early yet, with no guarantee that anyone else was awake, but it didn’t hurt to try.
She said that if ever I needed a friend, she would listen.
As uncomfortable as it made me, I was willing to put it to the test to try and rid myself of the downward spiral my mind was intent on taking me.
Not bothering to put on the slipper socks with rubber bottoms, I made my way to Kendi’s room barefoot.
It was against policy, but since we weren’t supposed to line up any time soon, I was hoping any nurses doing the rounds wouldn’t notice my lack of footwear.
Her door was cracked open. Whether it was because she preferred it that way or if it was left that way by the nurses, it was hard to tell.
When they did their rounds every quarter of an hour, if the door was closed, they had to knock, no matter what time it was.
I learned to leave mine cracked simply to prevent the knocking when I was asleep.
As gently as I could, I knocked, slowly opening the door as quietly as I could, relieved to see her light was on and she was sitting up on a neatly made bed with a book on her lap.
“Good morning, and here I thought I was the only one who woke up this early by choice,” she greeted in her usual cheerful voice. When she caught a glimpse of my face, her tone immediately changed. “What’s wrong, Rae?”
Words failed me as she got up and made her way over to me, concern etched all over her face. She didn’t wait for me to answer as she embraced me in the doorway. Her goddess braids were loose and tickled my cheek as she hugged me tight, rubbing my back against my dry sobs.
“Shhhh, it’s okay Rae,” She had no idea what I was upset about. She just comforted me in the same way Michelle would have — without judgment or the pressing need to know what was bothering me.
We stood like that for a while, my tears taking a few moments to slow down, while the voices in my head battled it out.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the light from her room, willing my own mind not to betray me with what he wanted.
He wasn’t in control of me anymore, but the guilt that I carried for ever letting him take that power from me was something I wasn’t sure would ever go away.
How could I have given over those pieces of myself so carelessly to the point that I lost myself in the process?
“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked, letting go of me as I started to regain my composure.
I nodded as she led me to sit down on her bed with her.
More personal items decorated the empty spaces of her room from where she had been at the clinic much longer than I had been.
Pictures were taped to her wall of what I assumed was her family.
Photographs of art were placed right alongside them.
“Are those paintings you’ve done?” I asked as I sat cross-legged on her bed, facing her.
“Some, my parents sent me pictures of those and a few of my favorite pieces by my favorite artists to brighten the room. They bring me a new one every visitation.” She said, admiring all the photos she had beside her bed.
“They’re beautiful,” I said, fiddling with the tape on my bandage again.
“What happened this morning, Rae?” She gently asked.
“My ex-boyfriend called.” Nausea threatened to overtake me again just from thinking about his voice over the phone.
“I thought they had banned him?” A look of shock appeared on her face.
“They did, at least from visiting me, I’m not sure if phone calls are screened or not before they come in here.” My eyes were overly dry and itchy from crying so much as I tried to process everything he said, yet I was unable to produce any more tears to make them comfortable.
“What did he want?”
“He wanted to work out our future,” I said with a scoff, the notion even more ridiculous when I said it out loud.
She laughed, a colder laugh than I had heard from her during our time together. “He’s kidding, right?”
I shook my head, “No, he said if I don’t give him a chance, then he’s going to finish what he started.”
She sat frozen for a minute, processing what I had said, the reality taking a moment to fully sink in.
“So he threatened to finish killing you?”
“More or less.”
“Did you tell any of the nurses?”
“Not yet. No one believed me that he tried to kill me before; I doubt anyone will take me seriously this time.”
“That doesn’t mean we won't try. Is there anyone who believes you? Someone who isn’t a patient, maybe?”
“My therapist seems to think I’m telling the truth, but he could just be saying that to get me to open up to him.”
She shook her head, her braids swaying with the movement. “I doubt your therapist would lie to you. It would make their job a bit counterproductive, don't you think?”
“I guess you have a point,” I sighed, relenting to her logic. Kendi’s ability to remain level-headed when I felt like the world was imploding around me was remarkable.
“When is your next session with him?”
“Tomorrow after breakfast—according to my schedule.”
“I don’t think this should wait until tomorrow. We can see if one of the nurses can reach out to him. Even if you can just speak to him on the phone, it might be better than nothing. You said he was the one who had your ex banned when he showed up before, correct? ”
“Yes, Daxton was in the visitors’ area when I had a full-blown panic attack,” my face heated remembering the incident, the humiliation of it.
“What’s the matter?” She asked, noticing my flaming scarlet cheeks.
“It was humiliating. Have you seen my therapist?”
“Which one is he again? I’ve seen a lot of them, but to be honest, I rarely pay attention unless it’s someone I’ve met in one of the sessions before.”
“My therapist would be hard to forget. He looks like he stepped out of a Greek God romance novel. And he saw the whole mortifying ordeal.”
She laughed lightly, obviously amused by the matter. “I know who you’re talking about. He’s definitely one of a kind around here. I’ve seen him with Brandon before. I think he’s his therapist as well.”
“Well, now you understand my humiliation. Why couldn’t an ugly therapist bear witness to it?”
“I’m sure it will be fine, Rae. You’ve already had one session with him so far, right?”
“Yeah, we had our first one yesterday.”
“And how did it go?”
“It went fine. He’s a little too intent on wanting to figure me out, but overall, I think it was okay.” Using the phrase “a little” when describing him was putting it mildly at best.
“Then I think your best bet is to continue opening up with him. Talk to him about it this morning. He’s already had him banned, so he must believe you on some level; otherwise, why put in the extra effort?
If he believed your psycho ex over you, he’d probably be pushing some type of mediation instead of banning him from visiting you.
” She gently rubbed my left arm as I took in her words.
She was being reasonable with her suggestions, and deep inside, I knew it made sense.
Kendi was only offering them to be helpful, not to make me uncomfortable by accepting help.
“I will,” I said, feeling slightly better after talking with her.
Kendi made it easy to feel accepted, even though I didn’t confess my thoughts that I felt Craig was right on some level, not wanting to burden her with all my self-deprecating internal struggle.
That she was willing to help shoulder some of the weight was more than helpful; it wasn’t right to put everything on her.
Until breakfast, we spent time discussing her artwork in her photos. I didn’t know much about the art industry or any of the slang terms she used, but I enjoyed learning about her passion. The way her words flowed when she spoke about each piece was enchanting.
When it was a few minutes until it was time for us to line up at our doors for the headcount, I went back to my room to get my socks to walk around in and to wash my face off from the dried tears.
The cold water offered sharp relief from the depression I could feel on the outskirts, trying to force its way in.