Chapter 24 Naomi
It feels strange to wake up. Like I’m in a bubble of cotton, all woozy. The first thing I notice is the bitter taste in the back of my throat, then there’s the utterly disgusting sensation of metal on my tongue. Like I just bit the inside of my mouth and blood seeped out, the copper tinge everywhere on my tastebuds, a thick coating that makes me want to retch as soon as it hits my senses.
Bile rises from my stomach, and I turn and try to hurl it out. Except, nothing comes. Maybe because there isn’t anything to throw up? I’ve hardly been eating lately, powering on the hot chocolate my father makes for me every night. During the day, it’s easier to grab a protein shake from the cooler that’s in one of the cars that follows us to every venue.
No wonder I’m feeling disorientated. I tried a juice cleanse once, and that’s how it made me feel. Too light, as if I might float away any minute, though my head felt heavy. Never again, I’d said. Guess I’d forgotten my own words.
The dry retching abates, and I take a few deep breaths to try and make the room stop spinning around me. Funny, there’s no strange odor in my nose today. It had smelled like a disinfectant’s chemical citrus, trying to cover the reek of something not at all palatable. Streets of New York sometimes smelled like that. Piss, I’d thought a few times. Why on Earth would my room smell like days-old pee?
I wince when I open my eyes. The room is bright. Much too bright. It blinds me for a few seconds, then I blink and try to conjure some saliva in my mouth to wash away the metallic tang.
The light won’t abate, though. I need to shield my eyes, but why isn’t my hand coming up? Something is tugging my palm back.
My eyelids flutter at the sight of the clear dressing on the back of my hand holding a butterfly thingie in place, a plastic tube running from it all the way up to…a pouch of clear liquid on a metal stand. An IV? Why would I have an IV in?
Images flood my mind. Someone squeezing my wrist too tight. One such butterfly apparatus being pushed onto the back of my right hand, the radiating pain from the grip holding my hand obliterated by the stinging prick of a needle being forced into my vein. A yelp escaping me, turning into a scream when a forceful thumb presses too hard on whatever is in my vein and a burning sensation runs up my arm as liquid gushes in through the IV. Then it’s dark, and I’m falling, and…
From afar, I can hear the rumble of low keening. Who is this person in so much pain and despair? The sound is breaking my heart.
Suddenly, hands press on my shoulders. Oh my God, they’re here again. The people who forced the IV in my hand. Why are they doing this?
“It’s okay,” a woman’s soft voice is saying.
“Stop. Please.”
These last words sound garbled, thick, as if the person speaking to them can’t articulate well. When I feel my jaw working, I realize I’m the person making these noises. Tears pearl at my eyes and fall unimpeded down my cheeks.
“It’s alright, piccola,” the woman says, tone gentle and light.
But panic is building inside me. Someone used to tell me the same thing…though they never sounded this attentive. How can this be all right? I don’t need medication. I don’t need an IV…
Memories continue to assail me. Rough hands and beefy arms grabbing me and squeezing me tight, not letting me escape. My legs going numb underneath me, and as I fall, crumpling onto the hard, cold floor, a woman glaring triumphantly at me, her white dress stark in my blurry vision, her hand up, the glint of metal winking malevolently at me as I close my eyes. It’s a needle at the end of a syringe. The woman was drugging me!
The low keening returns in my ears, getting stronger now.
I can’t be here. What are they doing to me?
My right hand goes to the adhesive, trying to rip it and the IV out. It’s tearing at my skin, and this hurts. It hurts so much. My eyes are getting blurry, vision clouded. They’re drugging me. Why?
I’m sobbing and mumbling now. When soft hands land on my shoulders again, I push them away. I catch a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye, which prompts me to focus. It looks like medical scrubs. I haven’t seen anyone wear this color lately; it’s always white. I hate the very idea of white now, because it wants to look pure and unthreatening, yet it is everything but.
“Val!” I hear someone call out.
My ears hitch onto that name, blipping out a barrage of rapid Italian in its wake.
Valentino. It’s a name I haven’t heard in so long, one I’ve been thinking about so much.
“Val,” I mumble, feeling utterly defeated as I recall him, his arms around me, his beautiful smile when he’s looking at me and I’m unaware then I lift my head to catch him watching me, his tensed features when he’s taking me, when he’s about to come and the sound of my name sings out of his lips on rushed air.
“Naomi!”
Strange how I can hear him now. “Val.”
“I’m here, gattina. I’m here.”
I’m being cradled to a strong, warm chest now. A whiff of sandalwood and cypress drifts to nose, and I inhale in the scent of him. It’s surely my imagination at work, but I’ll take whatever solace I can find in this moment. Valentino is my rock, my anchor, my one certainty in this world.
“Val,” I mumble again, though my voice hitches as I devolve into a flurry of sobs, my face pressed to the soft fabric of his sweater.
A strong arm is holding my back upright, a large hand caressing my hair. The movement is so soothing, I close my eyes and let myself be rocked. When the darkness comes this time, I gulp as another tear rolls down my cheek.
It’s over. It’s all over. I’ve lost him…
When I next come to, my mouth feels less coated in that disgusting metallic taste, which is a relief.
I blink my eyes open, grateful the bright glare is gone. A soft, golden light bathes the room—there’s a standing lamp lit up in the far corner. It looks like a bedroom, as I’m definitely in a plush bed and there are antique-looking armchairs in a small cluster near the lamp. And a fire is roaring quietly in the grate, too.
I don’t know this place, and I want to take a better look around. I press my hands flat on the soft sheets and push up, yelping when a searing pain on my left hand and arm make me collapse back onto the bed. Wincing against the lingering hurt, I stare to my left, gaze catching on the clear tube running to a bag filled with clear liquid…
IV. Hands forcing me down. Darkness taking over.
A scream tears itself from my lips, and I’m now thrashing around in the bed. Why can’t I reach the damn IV to pull it out? What am I doing here? What are they doing to me?
When strong hands clasp my upper arms, I fight back even more. I’m not letting those bastards take me under again. Who do they think they are?
“Naomi, stop! It’s me,” a man says.
Nice try. I can’t help but think it sounds like Valentino, but I’m not going to fall for this trap. I thrash even harder, throwing out my right arm and hitting a solid form, the back of my hand whacking the person’s head.
The man yelps from the blow. Good. I force my hand back to the holding the IV. Damn thing won’t budge.
Hands are grabbing my upper arms again. I snarl and I’m all ready to fight, but my bluster is now all in my head and none of it is in my muscles. The person ends up shaking me a bit as he clasps my arms and pins them to my sides.
“Look at me!” he commands.
I want to spit at him, but my mouth is too dry for that.
“Eyes on me, Naomi!”
These words… They snap at something inside me, and I blink, hard. It sounds like… I force my vision to clear, to focus as my body tenses in apprehension.
The room is rather dark, but slowly, a picture is emerging. A big, masculine shape. Unruly dark hair. Well-hewn features. Furrowed eyebrows. Worried eyes—I can’t see their color in this gloom, but I know these eyes. Then that full mouth set now in a tight line.
I swallow, hard. “Val?”
A sigh gusts out of him as his hold on my arms relaxes. “Yes, gattina. It’s me.”
“Val,” I repeat, incredulous. “What…what’s going on? Where are we?” Movement near the door catches my eye, and I recoil into myself when I see a woman standing there in blue scrubs. Before I can reason with myself, my legs are trashing away, tangling in the sheets. “No! I won’t let her do this to me! Please don’t let her hurt me!”
“No one’s going to hurt you. She’s here to help.”
“No!” I scream out. “They…they did things…”
Images are flooding me. Most of them don’t make sense, but I can still feel the dread, the outrage, the feeling of violation…
“Naomi,” Valentino calls out gently. “This is Renata. She’s with me.”
“No! I don’t—” The rest of my words end up garbled as I pull my knees to my chest, as if doing so could make me disappear.
“Marco!” Valentino calls.
When a man steps into the room, Val reaches out for me and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, letting his palm rest against my cheek. I burrow into his warmth, my only safety in this fraught moment.
“Look at him, Naomi. This is Marco, my best friend. Remember him? We used to play in the back yard all the time. Once, he climbed the tree near your window and the branch broke. It happened right in front of you, do you recall?”
I blink. “I…I ran to him, to see if he was okay.”
“Yes, you did. You reached him before me. Look at him. Do you recognize him?”
I squint at the man. Marco had been pretty, like he could join any boy band and be their leading man whether he knew how to sing or not because he had the attractive looks to lure all the girls. He’s a man now, but still cute in a devastatingly handsome way.
I turn to Valentino and nod, too spent to say anything. What the hell is going on?
Valentino caresses my cheekbone with his thumb. “The woman over there is Marco’s mamma. She’s a nurse, and she’s been looking after you.”
I tense as he says ‘nurse’ and try to recoil, but he won’t let me. Still, peering at her, I can see the striking resemblance between mother and son.
“She’s going to come over and take the IV out, okay?”
I gulp.
“Do you trust me, Naomi?” he asks, voice low in that tone I always found so alluring and compelling.
I nod.
“I need you to say it, cara.”
“Yes,” I force out.
He nods. “Good.”
My breath lodges into my throat when the woman, Renata, draws closer and sits on the edge of the bed. She retrieves a med kit from the bedside table, then her gentle hands are on the back of my left hand, a wet swab letting her peel away the clear adhesive tape without it tearing my skin. I wince when she dislodges the cannula in my vein and pulls it out. A drop of blood forms, and she quickly presses it with a gauze and Band-Aid to secure it in place.
“There, piccola,” she tells me with a wide smile.
I’m suddenly ashamed of the way I behaved with her earlier. In my defense, I didn’t know who she was, but still.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “For being rude before.”
She smiles even wider and rubs a hand on my forearm. “It’s alright, amore. Are you hungry?”
I don’t think I can stand the idea of food, but my stomach growls right then.
Renata laughs. “I’ll bring up some broth, si?”
“Please,” Valentino says as she leaves, Marco in tow.
Left alone with him, I’m suddenly reeling. It’s like I’m in a no man’s land, in some liminal space on the edges of two worlds I didn’t even know existed before.
“What…what happened?” I ask.
My heart is hammering away, yet with every second that passes, there’s a clarity seeping inside my every cell demanding to know what was going on. Aside from those debilitating flashes assailing me when I saw the IV, the last thing I recall is being at a rally in Essex County and feeling very off that day, not able to put my finger on what had me so out of sorts.
“You should eat something first.”
A nagging feeling sneaks in. I glance at my now IV-free hand. I can still feel the little tube inside my vein.
What if I’m imagining all this? What if—
“Are you real?” I ask.
I yelp when Valentino pinches my arm.
“What’d you do that for?”
He shrugs and smiles. “You felt it, right? So, you’re not dreaming.”
Outrage dies as I reckon, I can’t fault his reasoning. That pinch still smarts.
Renata comes in then with a tray holding a bowl of steaming liquid which she places on my lap. It smells divine, rich and invigorating. I pick up the spoon as she leaves, dip it into the deep brown liquid, but it’s a huge effort to bring it to my lips.
“Here,” Valentino says as he grasps the spoon from my grip. “Lay back.”
I’m too tired to ask what’s going on, so I lean back into the pillows he propped up and let him feed me spoonful after spoonful of soup.
I’d never thought him such a patient man. Driven, stubborn, earnest, yes. Caring, too, of course. But this, it’s on another level, and it breaks something in me just as it sweeps some other broken parts and makes them whole again.
I’ll bawl if I think of all this, so I focus on conserving what little energy I have left and eat. When the bowl is empty, Valentino gets up to place the tray on the coffee table in front of the fire. The food has given me sustenance, and I’m not feeling so weak anymore. Spent, yes, but I can face up to some things now. Starting with the truth.
“What happened, Val?”
He sighs as he comes back to the bed. I’m a little surprised when he presses his back to the headboard and scoots in next to me. His arm opens out, and I don’t need to think twice before slipping into it, his warm hand wrapping over my shoulder as he clasps me to him.
“What do you remember?” he asks.
Images flood my mind, and I gulp. “I…I don’t want to talk about that. Can we not talk about it?”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“Okay.” His chest heaves up and down with a heavy inhale and sigh. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come out with it.”
Dread is pooling inside my gut now. “Go on.”
He sneaks in another deep breath. “You were committed to a mental institution on a seventy-two-hour psych hold.”
I rear back with the shock and stare, wide-eyed, into his face. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know why. All I know was I needed to get you out.”
I frown. “And you did? You got me out?”
He nods.
I don’t recall any of this. I remember those blasted flashes from this godforsaken place I now know is a mental institution, which prompts me to shiver, but aside from feeling weird on the campaign trail lately, nothing’s really clocking.
Sudden insight fills me, and I balk, swallowing the contents that just made their way back up my throat. I sure didn’t commit myself, and Val said I was committed—meaning someone else did this to me. Someone… No! It can’t be! But…
Horror floods every inch of me, and the tears start flowing. Only one person could’ve done this. After what I told him had happened to me in the house, things changed. That’s what had been feeling off.
“My…my father?” I croak out.
Valentino’s jaw clenches, a small muscle ticking along one side, and he nods.
I blink. I’m not safe with my own father. Just like my mother. Everything I’ve learned about him since being with Valentino bombards my mind under a new light. Anya said he wouldn’t take my side when I told him Thad assaulted me.
“Why would he do this?” I ask.
“His career,” Val bites out.
I’m just a pawn to him. Just like my mother. He raped her when she was still so young, turned her head, married her for her money… Strange how I’d always known he’d married for money, yet it never dawned how nefarious that idea actually was. He doted on me, is still so much a philanthropist, I guess I blipped this out as a little girl and never let myself face the truth. He’s not a good man. Never was. And now, I’m convinced my mom didn’t have an accident—either he killed her, or she took her own life.
She hadn’t been safe with him, and neither am I.
“What am I going to do, Valentino?”
His nostrils flare. “There is something.”
He leaves the words hanging, and I frown. “Go on.”
“Your father was able to commit you because he’s your next of kin.”
As long as that’s the case, he’ll always have an advantage over me. “Can I change this?”
His tight jaw tenses even more, if that were possible.
“If you had a husband, he’d be your next of kin. It wouldn’t be your father anymore.”
Surprise floors me, and I pull away from him to sit up in the bed, on my knees, facing him.
“What…what are you saying?” I ask.
Valentino turns his intense eyes on me.
“You and me. We have to get married.”