6. Six
There isn’t a whole lot to be done when you’re waiting for a nearly dead girl to become… less nearly dead. Mostly, I’ve been checking on her. Or thinking about checking on her. Or trying not to think about checking in on her again.
It’s a cycle. And one I’ve been very diligent about keeping since sleep isn’t really a thing I’ve been able to rely on lately.
Every time I try to close my eyes I’m hit with a barrage of gruesome images. All surrounding Mads. Madeline.
No matter how badly I wanted to, I didn’t stop her from going into the evaluation room. I didn’t stop them from siccing rabid animals on her when she had absolutely no defense or means of survival apart from her apparent superhuman ability to take whatever is thrown her way.
I didn’t know about the wolves, didn’t even consider it to be a possibility that she would be attacked like this, but every time I think about what happened in there, what I allowed to happen, my stomach churns.
The memory of her face takes over my mind. Her brown eyes alight with that vicious anger. The fire in her eyes seemed alive, like it had been building within her every day she had been held captive. She focused that fire entirely on me, at my well-intentioned but useless placations. She was right to be angry, I was sitting there, telling her it would be fine when I had no clue. No fucking clue what she was feeling when I told her what I knew.
I knew what she would be facing, and I knew what she had been put through before. Maybe not the same exact circumstances, but something similar. I didn’t know everything that was going to happen, but I knew enough.
Enough that I wasn’t surprised about her reaction to my base level courtesies. Not only had she been tortured for most of her life, but she was also shut away and kept from any real human connection. Away from kindness, from people who cared about the person that she was, rather than the potential profit she represented.
As soon as I saw her, I knew I needed to save her, regardless of how true the rumors had been. I looked into those suspicious and guarded eyes and wanted nothing more than to throw her over my shoulder and run from the building.
But I am a coward.
I let her go. I watched wide-eyed as she walked out of the examination room, taking with her a piece of my sanity. A piece of courage I wish I could say I had. I was just as much a party to her torment than any of the other people in that fucking facility.
I sent word to Dane as soon as she left, told him to fuck his plans and come now. But it still wasn’t enough, I should have done more.
“Tuck!” Ray’s hand waves in front of my face. “Dude!”
“Sorry,” I mutter, pulling my attention back to the cards in my hand. Three nights of God-awful sleep have left me in no position to be playing anything. I can’t even be sure what we’re playing.
“Don’t worry about it, your hand was shit anyways.”
I glare at him, but I don’t have any quick remarks for a response, so I just drop my cards onto the coffee table between us. I let them splay out, in the same way my body desperately wants to. The couch that has served as my bed feels so uncharacteristically comfortable below me, promising that I’ll finally be able to escape the thoughts that haunt me, and I’ll be able to get even a moment of rest.
“You gotta get some sleep. You’re of no use to us right now.”
“What the hell am I supposed to be doing to be of use, asshole?” Suddenly I’m fully alert, and I’m pissed. “I’ve checked on her a dozen times already. There’s literally nothing to do!”
Ray puts his hands up in surrender, but the hint of a smile is pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Look, if you’re not going to sleep, go out and help Dane chop wood or something. Your moping is bumming me out.”
I don’t say anything, but I grab my jacket off the cushions and stomp out of the room, slamming the door behind me.
The thoughts follow me outside. What will she think of us? Will she hate all of us for this, or will she see this as a rescue and a path to whatever life she truly wants to live?
The misty, early morning air wakes me up slightly, and I take a greedy inhale through my nose. The smell of the woods around our house brings to mind calmer days, days where I wasn’t tearing my hair out waiting for Mads to wake up.
Dane is about forty feet from the house chopping wood, and he doesn’t look at me as I approach him. The crunch of the gravel beneath my feet draws his attention to me and he stops his work to wipe his face with the end of his dirt-stained shirt.
He shoves the ax into me as soon as I reach him. His chest heaves with exertion and a bead of sweat drips down the side of his face. I think he’s as shook up about this whole thing as I am, but he would never admit to it. He’s been distant for the past few days, obsessing over the files I was able to squirrel away. When he’s not sitting in front of those files, he’s planning and revising and rehearsing this mission he’s devised for her.
Every time I see him, he looks worse. His dark blonde hair growing more and more unruly, making the gray growing in at his temples even more visible. The facial hair he’s usually so diligent about shaving away has also grown in. It”s a scruffy smattering making him look somehow less approachable than normal.
I stop studying him, stop trying to figure out what’s going on inside of his mind and I lose myself in the rhythmic and brutal pace of chopping wood. The exertion settles me in a way that I haven’t been able to feel since I first saw her in person.
I’m not sure how long has passed between the two of us but the wood pile grows, and the logs left to chop have all but disappeared. A glimmer of pride settles in my chest when I see how much work we’ve done, how much I’ve done to be useful in this small way.
The silence between us is torn in half with the sound of a gunshot and a scream coming from the open window of my bedroom.
Mads.
I’m running before I have a chance to consider it, and Dane’s right alongside me.