Chapter 22 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
I never make it to the surface.
I’m shoved roughly back inside my body, blood and organs jammed into their flesh casing, but the fit is all wrong. My skin
feels strange, like it’s been pulled on incorrectly, catching on sharp corners. It’s as if my lips have been stretched over
bone instead of throat, my eyes seated over muscle instead of nerves.
I can’t see.
I make out only flaring lights and smears of movement. I feel my eyelids fluttering desperately, my head whipping back and
forth. I open my mouth but I can’t speak. My airways feel strangled, as if I’m drawing in oxygen through mesh. Sounds are
muted and tinny, voices carrying as if from miles away.
I try to scream.
The sound is guttural. My body torques as I fight for breath, growing lightheaded as the effort fails.
I try to lift my hand but my leg spasms, connecting painfully with something solid, the sound of glass shattering as if from afar.
I try to scream again but I have no mouth, my voice stuffed inside a throat with no outlet.
I can only make deep, mournful sounds of agony.
I crane my neck, my blind eyes tracking light and shadow as a low keening pushes through my chest.
Panic is cratering me.
I wrench myself, trying to sit upright, but there’s no sense to it; my head slams into something hard, pain exploding between
my ears and I whimper, seeing stars, as a faraway scream pierces the fog.
I’m trapped inside my body.
I cry out again, thrashing, but the sound is muffled and faint; it’s as if webbed flesh has grown over the opening of my mouth.
I feel hot tears burning skin, my nerves flaring too bright, the settings dialed in all wrong.
I don’t know what’s happening.
Pain and terror are suffocating me. I know I need to calm down but there’s a disconnect between my brain and sinew, a confusion
in communication. I can’t shut down, can’t grasp my own mind long enough to pull the plug. I hear my heart beating but feel
it in my teeth; I try to touch my face and this time my arm flings out, smashing into something that causes pain to flare,
white-hot, along my skin.
Blood.
I think I’m bleeding.
There’s a muted clatter, a rush of distant commotion, the vague impression of screaming, but the only sounds loud enough are
in my head. I make out the pitiful whine of my own broken, stifled sobs, my fears growing greater with every passing second.
I can’t find my fingers. I’m starting to feel faint from a lack of oxygen.
I jerk what I think is my head, then my limbs, the results uncertain. I’m hyperventilating. I try to reason with myself, to remember myself—but I can’t remember where I am or how I got here. I have no idea whether anyone can help me. I don’t know how to escape this prison of my own flesh—
Weight collides with me, hands everywhere, pushing me down. I scream badly. I smell leather, choking out sounds of terror
as I’m jerked around, the pull of harnesses tightening like bands across my body. Voices grow louder, sharper—
No, I try to say.
NO—
I’m wild, bleating like an animal; I try to free myself and something solid connects with my head so hard it separates time.
Sounds drag, stuttering, elongating screams as pain erupts inside me; lights flicker as if in slow motion, reverberations
trembling like the sluggish tempo of a song.
I slacken, my head spinning.
I think I’m choking on my own tongue, drowning as I fail to draw oxygen. I’m strapped down so tightly I can only spasm. I
gasp for air as I push my eyes wider, as if the effort might cure my blindness. The din around me grows louder and louder,
voices merging into a body of distorted sound.
I try again to scream; it sounds like a sob.
My chest is caving in. I can’t feel my legs. Weight on me again, hands and hands and I cry out, choked, my head thrashing
back and forth, light shattering into sparks, hands and hands on my arms and legs, on my throat, the tug of harnesses—
Rosabelle?
The sound of my name reaches me as if through space, separating from the mass of unintelligible noises, and I realize it’s been spoken into my ear.
I stiffen.
Warmth near my face, heaviness, closeness. Hands on my body as if through plastic. My heart thunders inside me.
Rosabelle?
The voice is warped, waterlogged, but my body reacts to the sound automatically, responding to sense memory. A measure of
tension leaves my body on instinct, clouds of panic slowly clearing, allowing room for comprehension.
I blink carefully, still blind.
In the stillness I can suddenly distinguish resonance—alarms blaring; straps coming undone; footsteps pounding; the clatter
of metal, the pitch of his voice—
Rosabelle, can you hear me?
I make a sound deep in my throat; a whimper, begging. Help, I want to say. Help me—
Hands on my face, heavy. My eyelids flutter.
Rosabelle?
Mouth near my ear.
Hands and hands, in my hair, on my cheek.
It’s me, he says. It’s just me. I’m not going to leave you. I’m right here.
James.
You need to relax, okay?
Hands softly searching. Whispers in my ear.
Rosabelle? Do you trust me?
I make another desperate sound.
You can let go, he says. You’re safe.
James.
Like a parachute pulled, something inside of me releases.
A terrifying, breathtaking relief overtakes me, the feeling so powerful it unhooks me from within myself. My sharper edges
retract, allowing me to sink deeper into my own flesh, blood and muscle slotting better into skin, mouth retracting from bone,
my airways opening. It’s as if someone’s driven a knife into my throat and torn open my windpipe.
A cry rips from my chest.
I draw a violent, shuddering breath, oxygen rushing to my head, surging through my blood—
Rosabelle.
Stay with me.
My hearing is beginning to improve, ears settling over auditory canals as a roar of sound overwhelms me: the incessant shriek
of a monitor, the retreat of shouting voices, the diminishing sounds of footfalls, the piercing din of silence. My eyes release,
sliding over more nerve than muscle, and I can make out shapes and forms now, flashes of color. I blink steadily, my heart
rate slowing. I search for his face and find only sensation.
I’m flooded with awareness of him.
One of his hands is still on my cheek, the other bracing my neck, his mouth so close to my skin. I feel his warm breath in
my hair and I tremble as I stabilize, searching for my limbs, flexing my fingers. My heart nearly gives out when I realize
I can feel my legs again.
“You’re okay,” he whispers, and I can really hear him now, his lips grazing the shell of my ear. “You’re going to be okay.”
I blink again and again, trying to focus. My eyesight is still damaged. I make out the blurred outline of a monitor beside
my bed, its steady beeps reflecting my heart rate out loud.
I lick my chapped lips, my head spinning.
James runs his thumb across the curve of my cheek and I tense, gasping as if he’s lit a match against my skin.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says quietly. “You’re all right. Just breathe.”
I blink. The effort drains me.
Fatigue drives me deep inside myself. Residual tension dissipates, unhinging the rest of me, and I seat back into my body
with a nearly audible latch.
Breath leaves my lungs in a rush.
For a long moment, I can’t move; I’m paralyzed with relief; my bones like bricks. James is bent over me, no longer touching,
but close. I’m physically aware of him now; he seems fully realized; and his proximity is making me feverish. Heat has ravaged
my chest, fogged my thoughts. My skin feels raw and sensitive, overly responsive. The ineffable scent of him is overwhelming.
I want it injected into my veins. I want to draw him inside of me.
I don’t know where these thoughts are coming from.
I feel out of my head; unstable; and I realize, dimly, that my senses flared back to life too quickly. I’m feeling too much
at once. I’m being burned alive by sensation.
I’ve lost my shields.
I can’t seem to move my mouth. I desperately want to say his name out loud.
I can’t see clearly. I want to run my hands down his skin, taste the heat of him, press my lips to his throat.
I don’t trust my mind. I want to get his attention.
I want him to look at me. I think I might be dreaming.
It’s an extraordinary feat even to lift my arm.
I manage to animate a little, my blurry hand visibly shaking as I draw my fingers down what I think is his shoulder.
His T-shirt is warm.
The cotton is soft.
The muscular curve of his bicep is both solid and yielding and it’s disorienting to touch him. To be the one to touch him.
I am a blur; unformed. I feel drunk. I haven’t initiated physical contact with anyone but Clara in over a decade.
The heart monitor reflects this.
When my fingers leave the border of his sleeve and accidentally graze his skin, the shock of connection is nearly violent.
James looks up sharply, bedsheets rustling as he shifts his weight. He meets my gaze and I can make out the blur of his eyes,
the suggestion of his mouth, and I nearly lose myself again. I nearly touch him again.
“You’re back,” he breathes.
I blink at him.
My mind has gone soft. My eyes are still defective, still struggling to refine images, find edges.
Light leaks smear the subtleties, smudging color, rendering details like an impressionist painting.
I search his surrealist features, details coming in and out of focus: his dark eyelashes; the dizzying blue of his irises; the hard line of his jaw.
I might be sinking softly into the ground.
I can’t find my borders. I’m so aware of him I think I might scream.
He stills as I study him, his eyes tightening. “You okay?” he whispers.
You okay?
I flinch; the blow batters my chest.
You okay?
You okay?
My body panics out loud, the monitor beeping frantically all around us.
Where’d they take your sister?
The asylum, right?
I hear voices, a rush of footfalls, but the world winnows as I stare slowly up, into his eyes.
But, like, how do we get there?
I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m desperate to get closer to him. My heart is racing. I’m faint and restless and aching.
Can you trust me?
Rosabelle, do you trust me?
I’m alive with a chaos I don’t understand. I want to press my cheek to his chest and feel him breathe. I want to climb into
his body and live there, inside of him.
If you trust me, we can fix this together. If you trust me, everything is simple—
In the lens flare of my imperfect vision, his irises are bluer, his edges blurred, all of him blasted with light.
All right, sleepyhead. Let’s get this over with.
“Rosabelle?”
I’m with you, Rosabelle. Are you with me?
I’ve been watched by infinite eyes all my life, but no one has ever looked at me and made me feel safe.
No one but him.
If you do manage to kill me and make it out of here, I thought you might want to give this to your sister—
Something is happening to me. Something is breaking inside of me. It occurs to me, as my body begins to shake, that this damage
might be irreparable.
I already told you. I pay attention.
The monitor grows only angrier, alarms triggering, and only then do I see the disembodied mass of people, bodies crowding
the room.
I’m here. I’m with you. You’re safe—
A stake of fear drives straight through my chest.
“Rosabelle?” James says desperately. “Are you okay?”
No, I want to scream.
NO—
I understand then that I would kill for him without question. I would die for him without hesitation.
He lives, or no one lives.
I will protect him with my life.
“No,” I whisper.
What’s left of my frozen heart shatters.