3. Welcome to the American Dream
3
Welcome to the American Dream
Ever
The hospital had called every day, and I sat on the couch with my knees to my chest as the phone rang and rang into the cold apartment. They wanted to discuss next steps, and how to make me comfortable. Fuck them.
I wiped the tears from my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater and plucked the pill bottle from my table. “No use in running anymore,” I said as I threw back two Vicodin and washed it down with yesterday’s coffee. As a teen, I’d gravitated towards downers that could knock me into a two day coma. Benzos made my pain turn off for a while and silenced the racing thoughts that threatened to tear me in two.
For years I harmed myself, chasing razor blades in a quiet bathroom while convincing myself that this was the only way to feel real anymore. My body had become littered with scars, my upper thighs like tiger stripes and wrists showing much more of the damage that cruel high schoolers would taunt me for.
As an adult, I’d grown out of such habits and instead craved whatever could make the pain stop. The pain reminded me that I was alive, and I didn’t want to think about the impending end of such a feeling. In less than a year, there would be no more pain, and I should get used to the idea of nothingness — of not existing.
I let my head fall back against the worn futon, my skull knocking into the metal frame as low music drifted from the stereo in the kitchen. This had been my reality for months since disability said that I couldn’t work anymore – not if I wanted to keep my benefits and a roof over my head. It was a vicious cycle. If I worked, I could fill my days and keep my mind off my impending death, but then I wouldn’t have enough money to eat or live. So, instead, I was forced to rely on the state benefits that forced me to find solace in off-the-street painkillers.
Welcome to the American Dream.
I hadn’t slept in days. Every time I closed my eyes and welcomed the darkness all I could see were his eyes. Those black, soul-stealing eyes that saw through me like I was a ghost. Maybe I already was and this was my hell.
No, the stranger doctor had torn my psyche to pieces just from watching me tremble on the hospital sidewalk. He seemed like a man who had been a part of the chase, and a small part of me was excited about that. I was far more scared but also excited. Just like the pain, he reminded me of life. I was in a game of tug-a-war with wanting to live and wanting to let Death take me in his embrace and stop the battle. After all, it had been such a long battle.
I’d felt the cold hand of death more times than I care to admit, and I could honestly say that it felt akin to the chilled tiles of a dirty bathroom floor. Pressing back at you, wet with your sweat and piss as your body fought so hard to hang onto the life you were trying with all your might to end. Then the binding straps of hospital restraints would remind you that it didn’t work, and the fluorescent bulbs would buzz and hiss. Better luck next time.
I groaned and looked out the salt-coated windows of my second-story apartment to see the lights of the city flashing in the distance. Sirens could be heard on their way to the medical district, and shouts from the neighbors penetrated the paper-thin walls of the multi-family housing unit I could barely afford with my benefits. The doctors had told me that my immune system was compromised and that I should avoid dust and mold. That was easier said than done when living with water damage and a landlord who couldn’t give a shit.
Yes, this was hell.
My body slid down the futon as the pain started to drain from my body, and I pictured it like a black sludge that circled me and seeped into my surroundings. It didn’t go far, just hovering under the coffee table or staring at me from the corners of my room. It would come back to me when the painkillers ran out, and then it would latch itself onto my body again and threaten to pull me under.
Just as my eyes started to close again, my phone rang, and my heart lurched in my chest. I groaned, letting my hand flop onto the table until it found the screaming device and silenced it without looking at the caller. I settled back into the lopsided mattress, trying to stop my racing heart, but then the phone went off again.
I growled, picking it up and looking to see that it was an unknown caller. I silenced it, and let the call go through until it went to voicemail. After a minute, the caller had left a message. Clicking on the unknown number, I waited to hear what they had to say, expecting a call about my car’s extended warranty or loans, but what came out of the speaker was far more worrying.
The message was short. “Pick up your phone, little rabbit. I want to talk.” Then the message ended, and a shiver ran down my spine — the mystery man from the hospital.
Dr. Hawthorne.
How the fuck did he get my —
I sighed and closed my eyes. He was a doctor at the hospital, and I’d told him I was there for the cardiac center. It must have taken him days to go through all the files until he found mine, likely accompanied by my ID photo and contact information. I fidgeted, thinking about how it felt to be so close to him, cornered between the wolf and the hospital wall.
My phone started to ring again, and my fingers trembled above the screen. I knew that if I didn’t answer, he could just call again. Fuck, did he have my home address too? I picked it up and slowly brought it to my ear.
“Good girl,” his melodic voice came through the speaker. “I was worried you’d be too high to hear your phone ringing.”
My body stiffened, shame and indignation making me feel brave. “Medical records are supposed to be private,” I hissed at him. “You shouldn’t be contacting me.”
He hummed in agreement. “Maybe not, but don’t lie to yourself and say you’re disappointed I called. Have you taken any pills that aren’t prescribed to you tonight?”
My shoulders tensed. “No,” I said as the half-truth felt heavy on my tongue. I was, in fact, prescribed Vicodin, but I had run out of my own months ago, and the doctors had refused to fill it until we received the outcome of my AHC. I doubted they’d be refilling it now.
“You’re a bad liar, little rabbit. Are you taking painkillers? Sedatives?”
His voice was slow, and calm. He didn’t sound like he was trying to chastise me, but simply a doctor prodding his patient for necessary information. I could almost see his mouth forming the words, dark eyes coaxing the truth from me.
“Vicodin,” I admitted like a child who had been caught with chocolate on their face before dinner.
“How long ago? Hydrocodone can reduce your respiratory levels, not favorable for those who are already experiencing dizziness and prone to seizures.”
This time, I felt like I was being scolded, and there was a tinge of agitation in his earlier placid voice.
I sighed, my free hand rubbing over my eyes and I cleared my throat. “Ten minutes or so,” I said before my anxiety took the reins. “Why are you asking? You’re not my doctor and even if you were, all I’m doing is progressing the inevitable.”
“I told you to never stop running,” he reminded me after a long pause. When he spoke again, it was with a calm demeanor. “You have a history of depression, Ever. Should I be worried about you ending this before this gets interesting?”
The phone shook in my hand, silent tears falling again as I stared down at the mess of scars that covered my legs and wrists. “I don’t want to die anymore,” I said aloud. “For the first time in a decade, I want to live, and now my heart is killing me.”
“Why do you want to live, rabbit? Why now?”
My arm holding the phone dropped slightly as I looked around my shitty apartment and the life I had scraped together for myself. I’d spent most of my life pushing others away, falling into the pages of books while imagining a day my eyes didn’t open again. It wasn’t until my body started to choose for me that I realized I didn’t want it to end, not like this.
I picked the phone back up. “I want it to be my choice,” I said slowly. “It shouldn’t be up to a doctor to determine if I get to live or die.”
A wave of anger flooded my veins as I thought of the cold eyes that followed me around the hospital offices. It was easy to be overlooked when you’re depressed or an addict, your pain chalked up to poor decisions and substance abuse. That’s why it took so long to get a diagnosis, and why I fell harder into the drugs that they had prescribed me in the first place.
The mystery man was quiet for a while, taking in what I had said. Life had always been about making choices, and mine had always revolved around others making them for me. Taking them from me.
“And what would you choose, Ever? If you were asked to sign away the life you know in exchange for a new heart, would you? What would you give?”
What would I give? Anything. Everything.
“This is just a hypothetical,” I said with a shaky voice.
“Answer me anyway, rabbit. What would you give me for a new heart?”
A lump formed in my throat, and I tried to swallow past it as it grew and grew. What would I give him ? I don’t know him at all. He seemed dangerous, backing me into a corner at the hospital and picking me apart with his eyes. Now, he was stealing hospital records and calling me at home. Fuck, he definitely knew where I lived.
“Hypothetically,” I said very slowly as I worried my bottom lip. “I’d give anything for a second chance. A new life where the chase never ends,” I said with a sigh.
The doctor hummed low, and I could imagine his predatory smile on the other end of the phone. His dark eyes stared through my soul, tearing me apart. “I can give you that, Ever. I take care of what’s mine.”
I snarled. “I belong to no one, and I’m certainly not yours!”
“I’ll see you soon, Ever.”
Then the line went dead.
I stared down at my phone, confused and a little scared. Who was this man, and what did he intend for me? With access to my medical records, he already knew everything he needed to. I was an unstable, depressed and dying woman with no next of kin or emergency contacts. In fact, I had listed the name of a dead aunt with the phone number of the state library. My fingers dug into my thigh, terrible thoughts tumbling around in my head.
I was the perfect victim for a psychopath. No one would know I was missing for weeks, maybe months. My rent came out of my account automatically, and the disabilities office deposited it every month like clockwork. I never spoke to anyone, and I was quiet. In fact, I could have a seizure right now and die on the floor. They would only come looking for me when the body started to smell.
I laughed aloud to myself. “Oh, you’re losing it, Ever.”
My head lolled to the side as the pills started to really take hold of my body, and I let myself slide back down the futon until the ground stopped shaking. Until the sirens in the distance turned into a low hum, and my mind left my broken and sick body.
“Losing the chase.”
* * *
A few hours passed, my head tilted back as I counted the water stains on the ceiling. My eyes landed on the pill bottle, and I thought back to Hawthorne’s warning about mixing drugs with my current condition. Whenever my heartbeat would speed up, my vision would blur like my lungs were waiting for my other organs to just give up. Every nerve in my body would freeze as if to ask, Is this it? Are we finally done?
I didn’t want to be in this world anymore, even if just for the evening. I couldn’t stand feeling the phantom burn across my cheek or the shame of lying on the floor motionless with the sound of a belt buckle clanging in my childhood room haunted me — the bedroom that still had flowers on the walls and my biology homework on the desk. Maybe I needed to escape for awhile…
I snatched the bottle from the table and let my trembling hands loosen the cap, and thoughtlessly swallowed pill after pill. I just wanted to make my brain shut down, and stop punishing me for having been a trusting girl who just wanted to be loved as a child. I had welcomed the devil into my body in the shape of a troubled boy who attempted to teach me that any attention was good attention. His smile would loosen my lips and bra straps, just to be defiled and snarled at for not being enough. I was never enough. I refused to fall into another devil’s hands.
The edges of my vision started to fade, pulsing with the uneven rhythm of my broken fucking heart.
Bump, bump.
Bump.
Bump, bump, bump.
Bump.
My chest felt heavy, like an invisible hand was forcing me down onto the tattered mattress that I had imagined myself dying on more times than I could count. It was getting harder to breathe, and with all my strength I urged my lungs to inhale. But I was so tired, and so weak. I’d been fighting for so long just to keep my head above the water, and now it was sinking below the surface.
A dull pain radiated from the corner of my head, but it was so faint I could have imagined it. My neck felt wet and warm as a sharp tinge filled the air around me. Was that blood?
Bump.
Bump, bump.
Bump, bump, bump, bump, knock, knock, knock, knock.
God, was that my heart? I tried to lift my hand to my chest but it wouldn’t move. I couldn’t move anything as my eyes opened and closed against the dark room like the slow wings of a butterfly. Every time they would close, I would see Hawthorne. He reminded me of the night sky, endless and terrifying yet begging to be studied. Loved. Isn’t that why the stars hung in the sky? To be feared and adored?
Bump, bump.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
A far away crack vibrated the floor below me, and my eyes focused on the sky above. Midnight silk, swirling down on me and sucking me in.
“What have you done, little rabbit?”
Me?
I was being dragged, my heels catching on the rug as my chin hit my chest. I was so tired. The music had gone quiet long ago, and I thought this must be a dream. It was an odd, peaceful dream where Dr. Hawthorne’s eyes narrowed in anger. Why was he angry if this was my dream?
A finger ran across my lips, and I groaned. Maybe it was from his touch — maybe it was the all encompassing force of the galaxy trying to press the air from my lungs. When that finger pressed into the back of my throat, my body convulsed. Another hand firmly clasped under my jaw, directly the mess into the toilet while the other continued to coax the pills from my stomach. My wretched body twitched and curled in on itself, but I could breathe.
“Come on, Ever. Take a deep breath,” the voice commanded me.
I was slowly urging my lungs to work as the weight of the world dissipated, and my eyes blinked against the bright white light of my bathroom. The cold tile pressed back against me, hard and unyielding as it always had been.
“Whasgoingon?” I slurred as the sour taste of bile assaulted my mouth. I gagged against the bitterness and smell, my fingers wiping at my wet chin with disgust.
Strong hands lifted me up, and I was set down in my shower with my head backed against the tile. The sound of the faucet was like nails on a chalkboard, but it was nothing compared to the cold water that rained down on me like knives.
“F—Fu—Fuck!” I stuttered as I moved to get away from the cold assault, but those strong hands held me down. Finally my lungs started to work, and I took a long and deep gasp as my body shuddered.
“Good girl,” a man muttered. I continued to breathe, closing my eyes and trying to regain my consciousness. Remember who and where I was.
“You’re very lucky, Ever. You almost succeeded where you’d failed so many other times.” I winced, and opened one eye to see dark ones staring down at me. Dr. Hawthorne’s brows were lowered, jaw tense as he held onto my upper arm and cocked his head. “I would have been incredibly angry if you had succeeded.”
I was breathing deeper now, letting oxygen find its way back into my bloodstream and washing away the black spots and ringing in my ears. “At least the pain would be gone,” I mumbled under the cold spray.
His hand was suddenly clenching onto my jaw and yanking me around until I was face to face with the man who made me feel something other than pain for the first time. A psychotic, obsessive man who told me he wanted to possess me, and I liked it.
Hawthorne’s eyes were dark — furious.
“If this was some sort of cry for help, know that you won’t find padded rooms and rounded desk corners where I’d take you. You’ve threatened what’s mine, Ever, and I won’t let you take it from me because you’re too fucked right now to see that there is another way out of this mess.”
I winced and tried to tear my head away from his hold, but he held firm until my jaw ached. I whimpered, more terrified now as I thought about all the things this man could do to me. He was in my fucking apartment, for fucks sake.
“It’s pointless,” I spat as my hair stuck to the sides of my neck and face. The cold shower was draining away, and I wanted nothing more than to let it drown me. “I’ll be dead within a year anyway.”
He blinked. “You’re acting like a child, and it doesn’t suit you,” he snapped before standing up straight and pulling me with him. “Get undressed — your lips are turning blue.”
Hawthorne turned and switched the water from cold to hot before walking out of the bathroom, leaving me sopping wet and staring after him. He’d looked so darkly furious with me, and it was terrifying. If he hadn’t forced me to live, I would have sworn he was here to kill me.
When he returned to the bathroom, I was still fully dressed under the warm water with my face buried in the shower spray. My head felt like it was going to split open, and my throat was raw from Hawthorne, making me throw everything up.
He gave a low sigh, and I slit my eyes to see him setting down a pile of my clothes on the toilet lid. “You’ll have to get out of those clothes,” he said without looking at me. “Unless this is your usual routine?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, blinking through the hot stream of water. “How did you get in my apartment?”
He stood, turned away, then looked over his shoulder at me with a look of boredom. “I broke down the door — not that it was overly sturdy to begin with,” he said with a curled lip before pointing to my wrist. “Your AFib monitor went off.”
I looked down at my watch, thankfully seen as a medical necessity by the state of Massachusetts. It would send an alert to a chosen few contacts when my heartbeat was irregular, but I was confused —
“How did you know?” I didn’t have anyone but Dr. Warren set to receive that alert, and even then she would only see it if she was in the office. There was no one else who cared enough.
Hawthorne reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, showing a message alert that had been sent automatically from my watch. “I didn’t trust you,” he nearly growled. “Rightfully so, it seems.”
I bristled, my mind starting to come back to me as the drug-fueled haze on my brain faded into the steam of the bathroom. “How did you do that? How did you get here so fast from the hospital?”
He merely stared at me, and pointed again to the dry clothes. “Try not to kill yourself in the next five minutes. I’ll be waiting outside.” With that he was out of the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him.
“Who the fuck — ” I muttered before turning off the water and peeling the wet clothes off my body, rinsing and hurriedly dressing. Within a minute, I was ripping open the bathroom door and stomping into my living room in nothing but sleep shorts and a large T-shirt.
“Hey!” I nearly screeched when I saw him going through my kitchen cabinets.
He ignored me, closing my pantry and shaking his head. “You receive food stamps monthly, Ever. Do you use them?”
I stood with my mouth open, trying to ignore the way he looked at me as if I was a child who was incapable of caring for herself. “Get out!”
Theron turned on his heel, eyes dark as he gripped the edge of my kitchen counter and glared at me. “Someone who’s trying to keep you alive because you do a very poor job of it, little rabbit.”
“I never asked you to keep me alive,” I spit. “Calling my phone, appearing in my apartment. Seems more like stalking to me.”
Hawthorne rolled his eyes. “That’s your definition, but it’s moot. The fact is that you’re alive thanks to my diligent watch of your behavior and movements.”
This absolute fucking —
“Get out of my apartment,” I demanded with my hand outstretched towards the door. I didn’t even want to think about how the frame was shattered where the locks once were. He really had broken door my door!
Hawthorne’s face darkened, body wound tight like a predator ready to attack. He seemed completely annoyed but unaffected by my shouts. Instead, he moved across the small space towards me. My heart leaped into my chest, and when I tried to back away, I fell over the coffee table before his arm wrapped around my waist and held me against his chest.
“Get off of me!” I screamed, my fists bashing into his chest before spitting in his face. He wiped most of it away with the back of his hand, cleaning it from his mouth and chin.
Hathorne’s arms were like solid steel, corded muscle below a damp sweater that had likely gotten wet when he forced me into the shower. He wasted no time, wrapping his free hand around my damp and tangled hair until it was fisted tightly. His other hand wrapped around my jaw, forcing it open before he spit into my mouth with a wicked gleam in his eyes. I was frozen in shock.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish, rabbit.” He said with a smile.
I yelped as he pulled hard, exposing my neck to him as I shook in his hold. This man was going to fucking hurt me — he must be thinking about it. No one like him breaks down a door due to the kindness of his heart. He was crazed, dangerously connected to my private records and in my fucking home!
Hawthorne moved smoothly, head winding down like a snake as his nose glided over the skin of my exposed throat. “You have too much spit and spite to die now, little rabbit,” he purred before digging his fingers into my waist to the point of bruising. “I want to taste it.”
I gasped when his teeth sunk into the side of my throat, striking fast enough to leave me rigid with a mouth wide in an inaudible scream. His mouth closed around my beating pulse, sucking the skin into his mouth before pulling away and growling.
“Don’t stop fighting, Ever.”
I whimpered, unable to move my limbs as he pulled me back to my feet and left me wobbling and lightheaded. “What — ” I muttered as Hawthorne picked up his jacket, which I hadn’t noticed had been discarded near the door. I felt drugged again, my skin aflame where he’d bit me and a dull ache in the places he’d held me for dear life.
“I’ll send someone to fix the door,” he said absently, twisting the doorknob. “And Ever?”
I blinked at him, both of my hands coming to my neck to run over the minor marks he had left there. His mouth had been warm and sharp, like waking up from a deep sleep.
He smirked, eyes roaming over my skin. “I’ll see you soon.”
Hawthorne closed the door quietly behind him, though it didn’t shut all the way now that the frame was splintered. I cried out, tearing the watch from my wrist and tossing it into the corner, where I heard the screen crack against the radiator loudly. I didn’t want to be found, and I hated that he had somehow gained access to my emergency contact list.
“What the hell was that?” I muttered to myself, running my hands over my head and through my still-dripping curls. Suddenly drained, I sunk onto the futon. “This is insane, utterly insane,” I whispered, over and over, like repeating it would make it seem less true, as a black sleep swept up to claim me for the night.