Round Nineteen
OLLIE
“No! Stop.”
I shoot up in bed, confused as I glance around in the dark, but when Rose screams, I bound off the mattress and stumble to the floor.
My feet tangle in the blankets, tentacles refusing my release, and my elbows and knees sing when I slam to the hardwood.
Scrambling to my feet, I crash against my bedroom door and tear it wide open, straining the hinges under the strength of my pull.
Scooping up my trusty slugger, I skid into the hall.
It’s my job to save her. I brought her here, and so now it’s my job to keep her safe.
I race to her door and burst into the room that already smells of her, and though a part of me says to turn the lights on, to expose whoever has come for her, I decide against it.
Because my eyes are adjusted to the dark, and all the way across the room, I see her thrashing in her bed. Unharmed. Alone. Sobbing. Sleeping.
“Fuck.” I set the slugger down and press my palm to my thundering heart. Crossing the room, I do as I’ve done a thousand times since knowing her; I sit on the edge of her bed and lay my hand on her arm. “Rose. Hey. Wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
She explodes away from my touch, her eyes flinging wide and her back slamming to our shared wall.
And because I’m still here, still too near, she screams like her life depends on it.
“Don’t touch me!” She kicks out and slams her heel into my hip, flattening herself to the wall as tears torrent onto her cheeks. “Please don’t touch me!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t…” I skitter to my feet, my breath bursting from my lungs. “Rose, I’m sorry—”
“Please stop!” she cries. “Stop!”
“I’ve stopped.” I stand a full six feet from her bed in boxer shorts and socks, my hands raised between us. “Rose. I’m not touching you.”
“No more,” she weeps, hissing and squeezing herself into the corner of the bed. “I’m sorry! Okay? I won’t do that anymore.”
“Rose? You’re having a bad dream.” I want to scoop her up. To wipe the tears from her cheeks. I want to shake her awake and force her out of the nightmare where someone, some motherfucker, hurts her. “Rose!”
“Please stop.”
“Hey!” I shout so loud my voice turns hoarse. “Rose! Wake up. Right now.”
She sobs, chest wracking, heart aching, lung wrenching cries that hold her captive and trap her in her mental prison. “Please. I’m begging you.”
Unable to stay away, I stalk forward again, but for every step closer I come, her cries grow louder.
When I grab her arms, she fucking screams, kicking and wailing and howling for safety.
Still, I hold on and yank her away from the wall, shaking her until her teeth chatter and her scream turns to a whimper.
“It’s Ollie. It’s Doctor Darling, Rose. You’re safe. ”
She weeps, fresh fat tears scorching her cheeks and dribbling off the edge of her jaw.
“You just have to wake up, okay?” I crush her in a hug.
Even when she fights it. Even when her voice breaks and her cries remind me of those in the ER, not from a patient in pain, but from a grieving mother standing over her dead child, or a man forced to say goodbye to his beloved wife.
I press her against my chest and wrap my arm across her back, pinning her close even as her nails dig trenches in my side.
“It’s okay, Rose.” Tears burn the backs of my eyes, clogging my throat and sizzling on the way down.
But I bury my nose in her hair and ride this pain with her.
“You’re safe, Rose. It’s Ollie. You trust me, remember? You know me.”
She gasps and trembles, heaving for breath and whimpering when it’s all too hard.
I rock her in my arms, the bed frame croaking and groaning under our weight. “You’re asleep, Rose, but if you follow my voice and come back to me, you’ll see nothing can hurt you.”
“Ollie?”
“Yeah.” My breath explodes with relief. “It’s me.” I bury my lips in her honey-scented hair. “It’s Ollie. And you’re Rose.”
“Oh God.” She sobs. “Ollie.”
“You’re at my house,” I croon. “Not at the hospital anymore, but you’re still safe.
” I drag her onto my lap and crawl backwards on the bed, leaning against the wall, and when she curls her legs impossibly tight, I wrap my arm around those, too.
“You’re okay.” I rub her ribs. Her hip. Her thigh.
I rub all over and work on thawing her frozen skin.
“You’re completely and totally safe, Rose.
You’re with me, and I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you. ”
“I’m sorry.” She hooks her arm over my shoulder and weeps against my neck. “I’m so sorry, Ollie.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I blink-blink-blink and pray the emotion stinging the backs of my eyes will recede soon.
But when it only gets worse, I simply close them and breathe her in.
I hold her tight and rock until I could swear we’re the only people in the world.
We’re the only humans alive, and goddammit, it’s my duty to help her through the things that scare her.
“You just need to breathe.” I press my lips to her forehead and linger.
It’s not a kiss. It’s just comfort. For her.
For me. “If you promise to breathe, I promise to keep the monsters away.”
But how do I ensure I’ll continue to breathe? How can I find the strength to fight her foes if I can’t even get my lungs to work?
“You’re doing great,” I rasp. “You’re doing amazing.”
I had her for a few hours yesterday, after the hammer, before bed. She spoke of flowers and felt like herself. She lectured me on plant care and ate my lasagna with a thrilling, stunning smile. And for those hours, everything was fine.
It was better than fine. It was the closest thing to perfect I’ve experienced since the beautiful, terrified woman landed in my ER.
But now, she’s more timid than a feral kitten.
More shaky than she was when she first woke in the hospital.
She sits at my counter in sweatpants a couple of sizes too large and a hoodie that gives her no shape except that of a round blob.
She wears fluffy socks up to her calves, tucking her pants inside, and despite the hair products my sister bought for her—the elastics and creams, brushes and clips—she uses none of it.
She’s regressed to the scared woman I met two weeks ago, and though she sits bent over a Sudoku puzzle, gripping a pencil in her hand and abusing her poor bottom lip between her teeth, she watches me with the wariness of a caged animal.
But I think she thinks I don’t notice her vigilance.
“You tired this morning?” I keep my movements slow. My every step measured and considered. I take two bowls from the cabinet and carefully set both on the counter. I nab a pair of spoons and place them beside the bowls, then I open my pantry and take out half a dozen different boxes of cereal.
If she wants Cocoa Krispies, she can have Cocoa Krispies. If she prefers flakes, I have those too.
“Rose?” I press my hands to the counter and wait. “You tired?”
She forces her eyes down to the puzzle, her chin resting in her hand. But she shrugs.
“You wanna talk about what happened?”
She shakes her head and clamps her lips shut. But I notice the way her chest jumps. The way her breath hitches and knocks her around from the inside.
“Are you sure? Because in my experience, these things fester if we hold them in. We heal when we share the burden.”
“You’re not my doctor anymore.” She wipes her cheek, breathing through her mouth because her nose is stuffed full of the tears she won’t let fall. “It’s not your job to heal me anymore.”
“You’re gonna be stubborn then?” I open the box of Cocoa Krispies and fill the bowl until little chocolate crackles spill over the edge and fall onto the counter.
“I thought we were beyond the stiff formalities and prideful silences. Your subconscious kicked your ass last night… on your first night inside my home?” I set the Cocoa Krispies down and pick up the Frosted Flakes, filling the second bowl.
“I’m gonna take that personally unless you tell me otherwise. ”
“I had dreams while I was in the hospital.” She lifts her foot to the stool, squeezing her heel beside her butt. Then she sets her pencil down and wraps her arms around her leg instead. “I dreamed at least half the time I was in there.”
“Dreams, sure. But did you have nightmares?” I take the milk from the fridge and fill both bowls.
Snap, crackle, and pop.
“I wasn’t on shift every night while you were there, but on the nights I was, you didn’t have nightmares, and on the nights I wasn’t, there were no notes left in your files that indicated anything but a normal, restful sleep.
So…?” I set the milk down with a heavy thud—she jumps—and push both bowls forward.
“Take your pick, then tell me what your nightmare was about.”
“I don’t want to tell you.” She stares at my breakfast offerings, tears glittering in her eyes. “I’m not hungry.”
“The hell you aren’t.” I snatch up both spoons and stride around the counter.
But instead of sitting beside her, where she can avoid my eyes, I grab a stool and bring it to the end of the rectangle counter, plopping it onto the hardwood and planting my ass on top.
I sit adjacent, with my knees—my entire body—facing her.
“You’re only hurting yourself when you don’t eat. ”
“Can’t eat when I’m not hungry.”
“Can’t be strong if you never eat.” I drop the spoons into the bowls, one in each, then I select my choice, dig into the Cocoa Krispies, and scoop a heaped spoonful onto my tongue.
Putting the spoon back where it started, I pick up the other and scoop flakes.
“You eat when you’re happy. When you’re comfortable and confident and not scared.
” Swallowing my cereal, I bring the spoon closer to her lips.
“You had seconds last night, because my lasagna is fucking amazing. Like I told you, it would be. And then you had dessert, because I’m a man who knows a single course is not a meal.
It’s a snack.” I tap her lip and leave a droplet of creamy white milk behind.
“Eat. Because I’m terrified I made the wrong choice bringing you here. ”
Her breath hitches as her eyes swing across and lock with mine.
“If the courts had stepped in and assumed guardianship over you, then I wouldn’t have had a choice.
Doctor Mayfair would have taken custody of you and plopped you into that group home.
Maybe that would’ve been the right choice.
Maybe Mayfair could’ve made you feel safer last night when that shit was going down.
Maybe you wouldn’t have had nightmares in the first place, since you would’ve been in an environment not wildly different from the hospital.
It’s entirely possible putting you in a room in my home triggered your nightmare, Rose, and if you won’t talk about it, and you won’t eat, and you regress into this person who won’t even talk to me, then what else am I supposed to think except that I chose wrong? ”
A single, devastating tear trickles onto her cheek, searing a line over her pale flesh and down to dangle from her jaw. She lowers her eyes to my offered spoon, the overflowing Frosted Flakes, then she exhales a shuddering breath and hooks her hand around the bowl of Cocoa Krispies instead.
She picks up the spoon I’ve already eaten from and shakily brings it to her mouth. “He hurt you.”
Stunned, I rock back on my stool. “What?”
“In my dream.” She presses a trembling hand to her chest. “He stabbed you. Over and over and over again. I tried to stop it,” she whimpers. “But I couldn’t.”
“Who?” I become the ultimate hypocrite, setting my spoon down and ignoring my breakfast. “Who stabbed me, Rose?”
“Liam, I think.” She sniffles and stares down at the counter.
At the overflowing vase of flowers. At the lint on her hoodie.
She stares anywhere but at me. “Liam is my friend. He said you were my friend, too. But then the storm rolled in, and he started shouting at me. Then you had…” She shakes her head, an errant tear falling from her jaw and into her cereal.
“I don’t want to talk about it, because I thought Liam was my friend.
And I don’t want you to get hurt, especially not because of me.
” She drags shimmering, tear-filled eyes up and cuts me with her devastated gaze. “Maybe it’s not a dream at all.”
“Rose—”
“Maybe it was a premonition, and if that’s true, then I should have gone to The Wallflower.
You’ve spent the last two weeks trying to help me, but what if the only person truly at risk is you?
” Her breath hitches, bouncing painfully through her chest. Angry, she sets her spoon back in her bowl.
“I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt. ”
“I’m not in danger.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you don’t know what came before, remember?
You didn’t dream of the past, and you can’t predict the future.
And since I’m your best friend now, your only friend, at least until we get this mess figured out, your subconscious cruelly taunted you with the idea of losing me.
” I reach across the counter and lay my hand over hers.
“I’m not going anywhere, Rose, and I’m not in danger.
I just need your subconscious to calm the hell down and not attack my friend the way it did last night.
I need you to eat. And not freeze me out when something happens.
” I tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear, clearing it off her face, and, searching her eyes, I paste on the kindest, most convincing smile I can muster.
“Everything’s gonna be okay. Okay?” I lay my hand atop hers once more. “I promise.”