22. Olly
TWENTY-TWO
OLLY
The piece of paper had been torn from my sketchpad with such force that part of the image was ripped off in a corner.
It didn’t matter, however. Most of the page was red, anyway, with the figure drawn in stark black.
The image made me nauseated, and I hated every second of how Dr. Bell was waving it around in front of my face.
I wanted to grab it, crumple it, toss it in the bin, and try to light it on fire.
The Organization had so wanted me to be pyrokinetic like little Paula when I was a child.
They pushed and pushed me at it. I could only imagine what Dr. Bell’s reaction would be if I just spontaneously manifested the ability now.
“So this is what your plan is?” she spat out.
“I know you’ve been making one. I just didn’t realize you were quite so intent on killing me as part of it.
Explain yourself, Olive, because you are on thin fucking ice.
” I tried not to fidget in my chair as she slammed the picture down on the desk in front of me.
The image was gruesome, and not just because it was of Dr. Bell.
It would be horrible no matter who the victim was.
It showed a body on this very desk, with the right type of hair and body to be recognizable as her.
And she was covered in red slash marks, her face not filled in but the rest of her...
let’s just say you could see intestines.
Panicked, I glanced around and grabbed the nearest rubbish bin and threw up everything I had eaten that day, heaving until nothing was left.
“Put it in the hall. It smells absolutely disgusting. Like you and your warped idea of a prank.” I picked up the trash and placed it just outside her door, where no one would trip on it.
“This isn’t a prank, Doctor,” I said. “I wouldn’t do something like that.
And the picture doesn’t show you as dead, just having lost a lot of blood.
I don’t have access to any kind of weapon in here that could do such a thing, psychic or otherwise.
I honestly think this is beyond me. I don’t like hurting people, even if they are psychopaths who killed my family and are blocking communication with my brother. ”
I just had to tack on that ending. I put my left arm on my tummy and braced for impact.
If I showed her I couldn’t even keep from running my mouth, how was she supposed to believe I wasn’t her attacker?
Did she at least believe me when I said I didn’t see death in the picture?
She also looked genuinely taken aback when I talked about communications with my brother.
I thought she knew about Thomas and my talks with him.
But based on that quizzical facial expression, which was hard to just slap on if she was being manipulative, I didn’t think she was aware of my communications with Thomas.
So I just told her one of my last secrets. Fantastic.
There was silence in the room as snow fell outside.
It wasn’t a comfortable silence, but rather, the kind that made you want to fill it with just about anything.
The problem was, I’d already said too much.
I was going to let her lead the way on this.
That was when I remembered that I hadn’t told her the rest of my secrets.
I still had my inner ocean, a place which was a secret between Bea and myself.
I swear, I couldn’t have helped it if I’d tried. I smiled. Just for a moment, but the damage was done.
Dr. Bell’s fist hit the desk, hard, causing me to jump and that smile to slide straight off my face.
“Restraints. Back on the intravenous medication. Feeding tube. Catheter and bedpan. We gave you too much freedom in here, and look where it’s going to get me, hmm?
” She was so angry she practically frothed at the mouth.
As a matter of fact, I was so frightened at that moment I blurted out the only thing I thought could stop her.
“If I’m in restraints, I can’t draw more pictures. I can’t possibly draw one that shows who hurts you. And it won’t be me, I just know it won’t.”
“You say that now, Miss McLeod, but anyone can become a killer if they are pushed far enough.” She seemed to chew on that thought for a moment before splitting her face with a smile of her own, like she had me all figured out.
“You’re so afraid of the restraints, you’d say anything at this point.
Now, Nurses Elizabeth and Lily will escort you to your new room.
You will not fight them because you like them and don’t want to harm them.
I will be dropping by this afternoon to see how my revised medication plan is treating you.
” She ended her speech on a victorious note, and I heard in my mind the malicious old scarab’s voice saying, “Checkmate.”
I felt my eyebrows raise and my lips tremble.
“But Dr. Bell, what about my baby? Whatever you do to me, you do to her. I’ve had little prenatal care as it is.
Please don’t make her pay for my very unwise drawing.
I only thought you would view the drawing favorably because if we worked it out together, we might be able to figure out who the attacker is.
You take me away now, and I can’t help you. ”
Dr. Bell whipped out her trademark villain laugh, sending shivers down my spine, and asked a question I couldn’t answer quickly enough to satisfy her. “Why would you want to help me?”
“Because you know what it’s like to be different. Because if I could break through your shields, I think somewhere down deep we would find a beating heart instead of a hardened lump of sand.”
Silence. I mean, dead silence, to the point where I could hear Sylvia crying on the hallway telephone.
Dr. Bell gave me a look filled with fire and brimstone.
“You’ll get checked out by the OB-GYN, and then into the restraints you go.
” Spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke, and as I numbly nodded, wondering if a speech about The Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be timely and could change her mind.
I decided that the likely answer was a resounding no.
A few things changed that morning, owing to Dr. Bell’s need to monologue and inform me that I was going into restraints.
Accompanied by an Organization nurse—presumably for the safety of the ultrasound technician—I heard my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time, got confirmation that I was, in fact, twenty-five weeks along, with a due date right around the second week of May.
I got a printout of a picture of her tiny body and broke down crying.
I told the technician that I really needed to speak with the OB-GYN in private, that I was concerned about my baby, but I saw looks being tossed back and forth between the technician and The Organization lackey.
Finally, the technician said that the nurse from my unit would have to stay, but I definitely could speak with the doctor.
After about fifteen minutes of waiting, the door opened and the doctor, a jovial-looking man in his sixties, stepped inside.
He had white hair and a white mustache, and rather reminded me of Colonel Sanders, to be honest. I should have known what would happen next, but I simply couldn’t help it and blurted it out anyway.
“Look, it’s very important that you talk to Dr. Patience Bell and ask her what drugs she has me on.
I don’t know if my baby is safe with months or weeks of exposure to goddess only knows what.
And she said she was changing some of them again today because I’m going into restraints.
Restraints, Doctor. That can’t be good for my Bumblebee.
I mean, my baby.” Tears were just falling freely down my face, and I had to make sure that I didn’t accidentally set off some kind of weather event.
With this many tears, I could set off a rainstorm just in this room.
Try explaining that to building maintenance.
I briefly wondered if I could make everything dry again if I did unleash a psychic storm.
The doctor took a seat on the stool in the room, the kind with wheels, and got as close to the bed I was on as The Organization nurse would let him.
They had a brief verbal scuffle, and he threatened to escort her from the room if he wasn’t allowed to examine his patient, or talk in a comfortable and calm setting.
She shut her yap but didn’t look pleased with it, while the doctor rolled the stool over to about the midpoint of the bed, not far from me.
He then said to me in a softer tone than he probably used with his patients, “I’m Dr. Collins, and I’m here to help you and your baby.” He perused my chart a bit more. “Olive McLeod. May I call you Olive?”
I said in a voice a fraction above a whisper, “Olly, if you don’t mind.”
“Olly, lovely. Look, I have your chart, and nothing listed here will harm your baby. She may be groggy and sleep more than normal, but we just did an exam, and she is strong. Your child isn’t in danger from any treatment you are getting on the unit.”
“But you don’t understand!” I said, and I knew I had lost him already, but couldn’t stop myself.
“That chart is a work of fiction. Dr. Bell wrote in it what she thinks are appropriate, pregnancy-friendly doses of drugs, but she didn’t write down what they are actually pumping me full of, and my diagnosis is wrong, too. She invented it. Fiction!”
Dr. Collins leaned forward on his stool, bringing him closer than what The Organization nurse said was “safe.” “And why would Dr. Bell falsify records about you or your child?”
In for a penny, in for a pound.