Chapter 22 The Phoenix
Chapter twenty-two
The Phoenix
I was completely and totally one hundred percent fucked.
Last night with Daxton confirmed that I deserved to be in a mental institution.
The biggest problem was that I couldn’t bring myself to regret a single thing.
My face was still flushed from our encounter when I met up with Kendi at dinner.
The walk down from his office was heavy with the fog of lust still surrounding us both.
I could still feel his mouth on me as I tried to concentrate on eating my dinner, ignoring my lingering arousal on my inner thighs.
Never in my life had I felt like someone saw me for who I really was and didn’t cower away from what I had to offer.
The way he had looked at me, almost through me and into everything beneath the surface, was intense in a way I couldn’t find the words to explain.
He didn’t just see me for my body, flawed as it was; he saw me for who I was and didn’t want to change me or control me. I wasn’t sure how to face that feeling.
Kendi could tell something was different, but she didn’t push, not in front of the rest of the group or the nurses. She was beginning to read me like a book after the short amount of time we had spent together.
I hadn’t fought her much as she asked what had happened. She was the yin to my yang and had done nothing to prove I couldn’t trust her. In fact, she had been encouraging my interactions with him made me even more confident that I could completely confide in her.
She had squealed like a teenage girl, wanting every detail and hanging on every word as we sat on her bed after dinner.
Not once did she scold me or tell me that it was ethically wrong; I had reprimanded myself enough.
Instead, she had encouraged me, reminding me that the stay was temporary and I was allowed to have something that made me happy, even if the way it had come about wasn’t normal.
“We aren’t normal, so we aren’t going to live normal lives,” she had said, taking the guilt off my shoulders and letting me enjoy myself for once.
Kendi had been attached to my hip most of the day today, and I to hers.
Neither of us had individual therapy today; we only had art therapy with Nadia and an educational seminar that expanded on what Jessica and Daxton had spoken with us about.
Support systems and how to find them. They provided us with pamphlets on local groups to fit a variety of addictions and behavioral problems.
It had been a fairly easy day, as long as I didn’t let myself overanalyze what had happened with Daxton.
Even Brandon seemed to be calmed down—almost to the point of seeming withdrawn.
Kendi had suspected they finally upped his medications to make him easier to manage, but I had my reservations about that theory.
He didn’t have that glazed-over distant look that most of the patients had when they were heavily medicated, though it didn’t definitively rule out the possibility.
He looked like the devil was lurking, waiting for the opportune moment to make his appearance. Thomas continued to shadow the pervert, so as long as he was still around, we didn’t have anything to worry about.
Kendi and I had settled into the lounge after dinner, both of us with the books we had started earlier in the week, while Thelma, Andrew, and Tyson started another movie. Thomas had escorted Brandon elsewhere after we left the cafeteria, and one bothered to ask where he was going.
We didn’t talk about Daxton around the others.
The clinic had enough rules about even the patients keeping in touch after they left the facility, and neither of us wanted to risk anyone else catching on to what happened.
Kendi and I had already secretly exchanged numbers, writing them down in the books we were leaving with, just in case they searched our belongings upon our discharge.
Our plans once we left this place were honestly none of their business. For all their talk about support systems and finding people who understood what you went through when you were locked away in a mental institution, you’d think they’d encourage these types of friendships.
About half an hour after the movie had started, Shemar came into the lounge to start handing out mail.
Since they had frequent visiting hours, no one staying in our wing usually got anything from the regular mail.
Tyson was the only one who received anything regularly, since his wife lived a bit further away and wasn’t able to visit as often.
This evening however, Shemar handed me a plain manila envelope. Placing my bookmark in my book to hold my place, I set it down between Kendi and me on the couch to accept the parcel from him.
“Thanks,” I muttered, slightly confused as to who would send me mail when Michelle was my only visitor. If she needed me between visits, she had the number to the phone in our hallway; snail mail wasn’t a typical form of communication for her.
“Were you expecting anything?” Kendi asked, placing her own book down when I shook my head.
“No, and there’s no return address,” I flipped the envelope over to show her the front. My name was scrawled across it in sloppy handwriting—one I didn’t recognize.
“Maybe your sister?” She guessed, equally as curious as myself.
“I doubt it,” I said, eyeing the envelope with hesitation. “Typically, she’s just brought me photos during her visits.”
“Well, we won't know till you open it,” she gestured for me to hurry up and open it.
Without another word, I tore open the top of the envelope, dumping its contents onto my lap. Photos landed face down against my legs, four in total. The same sloppy handwriting was scrawled across the backs of the photos. I didn’t pay attention to the words as I turned the pictures over.
My heart dropped to my stomach. The first photo was of the front of my house on a sunny morning, the leaves were a bright orange hanging from the tree in my front yard. Only my sister had her back turned to the camera, locking my front door as she left my house.
The second must have been taken a few seconds later, she had turned and was half-way down my walkway, almost to her car, wearing the same clothes as she had in the first.
In the third photo, she was wearing a different outfit. It must have been taken after work since she was dressed in athletic clothes, with Riley on his leash next to her. I recognized the houses around her as part of my neighborhood. Her back was to the camera yet again.
The fourth and final photo was the worst. A familiar hand was holding a knife in the forefront of the photo, in the background, oblivious to someone lurking on the other side of my fence, was my sister sitting on my back patio, Riley lying at her feet. The threat was obvious.
I could feel my dinner threatening a return, along with the panic that was starting to set in.
The hand in the last photograph was Craig’s, I was completely certain.
He had a scar that ran along the base of his thumb that he got when he was working on his truck.
I remembered because I had been there when it had happened.
The idiot had refused to go to urgent care to get stitches and had been lucky the wound hadn’t gotten infected due to the lack of treatment.
Kendi was hovering over my shoulder, her presence helping calm my nerves a little but not completely. She gently took the photographs from my shaking hands, flipping through them while I could feel tears starting to form in my eyes.
“Rae, isn't this your sister?” She asked, sliding them back into the envelope with care.
“Yeah, that’s her at my house, with Riley.” She slipped her hand over mine, reducing the amount of shaking racking through my body.
“Should we call the police?” She whispered, not wanting the others in the group to hear, for which I was thankful. It was bad enough seeing what he had sent without an audience being present.
“The police didn’t believe me when I tried to tell them I didn’t try to kill myself, I doubt they’ll believe me now,” I argued, not trusting that suggestion after the events from the past week.
“We need to tell someone, though, that last photo is an obvious threat.”
Only one name came to my mind, the only person in the world who would believe me other than my sister.
I needed to call her as well, but I wanted to make sure there was someone she could go to before I made her panic.
With it being past eight in the evening, I doubted he was still on the hospital campus.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, handing Kendi the envelope and leaving the lounge quietly.
After my second individual session with Daxton, he had given me his card that had his private office’s information on it, including his personal cell phone number.
He had told me he would rather be called at any time of the night if one of his clients needed him than read their obituary in the paper, because they felt like they had no one to turn to in their time of need.
It didn’t take me long to find it since it was right where I left it, tucked into the back of one of the books Michelle had brought me. I never thought I’d use it, but he insisted that he wanted to be there for me throughout this entire process. I was ready to put his claim to the test.
Before going back into the lounge, I stopped at one of the phones in the hallway that we were free to use at any time before lights out.
My fingers shook as I tried to hold the card steady enough to read the numbers as I dialed.
If anything happened to my sister, I didn’t know what I would do.
There was no time stamp on the photos that I saw, so I couldn’t even be sure when those photos were taken.
It took me two times to be able to dial the correct number given how badly my fingers trembled. Once I got the number right, he answered after the third ring.