19. Olly
NINETEEN
OLLY
It’d been just over two weeks—or three?—since I arrived on the unit, and a weekend since my initial visit with Dr. Bell, my teacher and torturer from my childhood days with The Organization.
Though I had to say, I was feeling far less fuzzy than last week.
I could either be found in the common room reading on one of the leather couches or at a table in the communal kitchen drawing away.
Now that my hands don’t shake quite as badly from my medication, I could only determine that either Dr. Bell had decided to scale back some of the drugs, or that my body was adapting.
It was usually the latter when adjusting to new meds.
The clothes that I had were enough to go four days between doing laundry, and I was grateful to whoever had donated these maternity tops and large, stretchy pants to the nearby thrift shop.
I even had another package of unopened underwear, a new bra, socks—shoes were to follow tomorrow—a new set of earbuds, and the promised borrowed Kindle to amuse myself with now that I felt my brain waking up again.
I hated being trapped in the fog of drugs, especially if they were unnecessary.
Though Dr. Bell would be logging the outcomes of each one in her experiments on my psychic abilities, I presumed, at least for now, I had started to feel human again.
This afternoon, I was going to see her again for one of our therapy sessions.
I couldn’t remember exactly if we’d done that when I was a child, but we probably did, since Dr. Bell loved to crack things open and see how they worked inside.
I remember thinking that as a kid, too, but back then, I thought it meant literally, which just upped her creep factor and made me terrified of her.
I didn’t feel exactly terror now around her, but to say there was a definite deep unease which was unnerving at best would be accurate.
The main thing I was truly curious about, in a way that evoked dread, was if Dr. Bell was trying to work up some kind of experiment on Bea.
Surely, they didn’t get a chance very often to study a pregnant psychic who actually made it almost five months into term and was showing no signs of having complications...
yet. Then I also couldn’t discount the possibility that Dr. Bell was either trying to increase my psychic powers or do away with them.
Both options filled me with trepidation, as I had been this way my whole life, even as a baby who could make her teddy bear float around in her crib.
That was another thing—ever since that visit from the fat, serene manatee, I had been able to access more memories, or things from the past would just pop into my mind.
Like, of course I had made my toys fly around because when I was younger, I had telekinesis.
I didn’t know at what age that had left me, but it was weird to try to sit and sift through the past, when I was always being pressed to see the future.
I generally despised these powers, but to lose them now would be like cutting off my arms and legs.
I’d had a taste of that under Dr. Bell’s treatment when I first arrived.
I had come to accept that they were a part of me, and it would take a lot of resilience and grit to adjust to life permanently without them.
This afternoon, I was in the kitchen at one of the wooden tables with my sketchpad and markers, just brushing up some work for Dr. Bell like an obedient little Asset.
My drawing for her wasn’t a secret, and I was more comfortable at the table I had essentially claimed as my own, or one of the common room couches, than I was in my room, drawing.
I pretty much carried the sketchpad and markers in a cloth tote bag wherever I went so that I could draw my visions as quickly as possible.
Sometimes that wasn’t possible, like when I was in the shower, but they were always so burned into my brain that it wasn’t difficult to recall them until it was on the page.
Once it was, it was like it disappeared from my mind, leaving the picture behind as the only proof my visions existed.
And thank goodness that I had the outlet I did, and didn’t have to hold all of these visions in my mind at once.
I think I would legitimately go insane if I had to.
My drawing today had me confused and frightened.
I don’t draw the past. I have never drawn the past. That wasn’t how my visions worked.
But then why was there a car accident in my most recent pictures?
A car that looked suspiciously like mine, and my parents’ at that.
This wasn’t going to be some tragic repeat of the past to create symmetry in the present, was it?
I closed my sketchpad and put my markers away into my tote bag, feeling nauseated just thinking about it.
Someone of significance to me was going to be in that pancake of a car.
I just didn’t know who, or when. Fuck, maybe it would even be me, and a chill ran down my spine when I remembered that it couldn’t be me because a recent art session showed me what I think was my death, on the pavement beside the garden at night after being hit with some kind of weapon, eight months gone with Bea.
At three o’clock on the dot, The Organization spy opened my door without knocking, and looked at me like she was taking a stray cat to the vet.
What I had spent all weekend being frightened of was now here—my first therapy session with Dr. Bell.
I clutched the tote bearing the sketchbook and markers to me like they were a lifeline as I followed the spy to the psychiatrist’s office, and I knocked on her door, hopefully forcefully, so my first impression today wasn’t of weakness.
My childhood memories were still largely lost in my inner ocean, but bits and pieces had been coming back to the surface, like the creatures that guarded them wanted me to know enough to protect myself.
I remembered enough now to know Dr. Bell did not tolerate displays of weakness.
I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what the old bitch wanted from me, but my intuition was telling me it was my baby.
See, on the surface, Dr. Bell was just yet another person who wanted me to spill my guts to them, or examine my head searching for a breakthrough that I or anyone else hadn’t already searched for.
This was the kind of person who moved in the shadows, and her motives could be hidden under other motives.
Nothing was really off the table with her when it came to dreaming up experiments for “her children.”
“Come in, Olly,” she called out from inside, and I opened the door and slowly but surely made my way to the cushioned chair across from where Dr. Bell sat at her desk, smoking a pipe.
I immediately recalled Edward Evans, and smelling pipe tobacco at his place despite no evidence of an ashtray or a visible pipe, and it struck a chord with me.
I wrapped my arms around myself mostly for comfort but also to hide my shaking hands.
Now, it scared the holy hell out of me because what if I was smelling the residuals of a recent visit from Dr. Bell?
What if she knew where I lived, and was involved in Clark’s disappearance?
I mean, I didn’t have direct proof that Edward was involved with The Organization, but since when did things in my life go sideways that weren’t interconnected?
And no matter what Edward or anyone else had said, I believed in Clark.
I believed he was real, not a ghost, not a hallucination, and would find me. Eventually.
“Would you like a drink, Olly?” Dr. Bell asked, motioning to the mini fridge in her office. I didn’t want to owe her anything or provide an opportunity to be drugged again, so I said, as politely and demurely as possible,
“No, thank you, Dr. Bell.” Demure? That was the route I was going with? Well, okay then.
“Olly, I don’t want to overwhelm you or cause you undue stress during our sessions.
What I would most like to do is fill in the gaps of what I don’t know about your life between your catastrophic accident and then this suicide attempt at sea.
Do you know how lucky you are that you are still pregnant?
And with a child as curious and aware as Beatrice? ”
I kept taking deep breaths, seeing red when she said my daughter’s name, but pulling out the Academy Award-level performance that was going to get me through these sessions intact. I wasn’t kidding when I thought earlier that she could turn my brain to pudding.
“I feel lucky every day that I wake up, and my mind and body are still here, but more than that, I’m grateful for my baby.
I don’t believe I was attempting suicide.
I thought I was somewhere else, and the water was fairly warm, even far out.
But to be completely honest, I remember very little from the whole ordeal.
I’m very grateful for those fisherfolk who found me. ”
“And are you grateful for being placed here, Olly? Or do you resent being brought back into your family?” The Organization as my family?
Was she in need of psych meds? Still, I maintained my composure and shields and rolled with it while she very carefully held her golden pen above a fancy portfolio where she was making notes, and it reminded me very much of the one Robert had presented me with on the day of my promotion, which seemed a hundred years ago.
“This is the only family that’s wanted to claim me from the time I was a baby until now, when I’m almost thirty. I’ve learned better than to bite the hand that feeds me.”
“Excellent,” she replied, jotting something down quickly. “So, before we move on to your artistry, what kind of plan do you want to make to get rid of that wall in your head?”