Chapter 34
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Sybil stabbed me.
I can hear her frantic steps, and a couple of minutes later, the sound of my truck engine starting. Fuck. How did I let this happen? The pain in my abdomen is unbelievable, and my head throbs so badly it’s hard to think. If I don’t get moving, I’m going to die right here.
A dishtowel lies on the floor nearby. I crumple it up and press it to the wound. A wave of nausea and dizziness crashes over me while I try to breathe through it. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Just get to the phone.
I scoot through the blood on the floor and drag myself into the living room. It’s freezing in here. No wonder. The front door stands open, letting in the bitter cold. As I struggle past it, I see my truck is missing from the driveway. I can’t believe I screwed up this badly and let her get away.
Clover keeps barking from my bedroom and I call out, “It’s okay. We’re going to get her back. It’s okay.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her or myself. The storage room door is open and I make it inside, but for a few terrifying seconds, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand up.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, I press the dishtowel to the wound more firmly and force myself to my feet. I grab the iPhone from behind a box, disconnect it from the charger, and sink down to the floor as another dizzy spell strikes. Bleary eyed, I call for help.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“My address is eight fifteen Hale Creek Road. I need an ambulance. I’ve been stabbed in the stomach. I’m bleeding out.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Troy Sellers,” I gasp out, fighting to hold onto consciousness. “My wife. She stabbed me and took my truck. You have to find her. Please don’t hurt her. She thinks it’s nineteen ninety-seven.”
The room sways and rights itself again while I repeat. “Please stop her. She’s in the middle of a psychotic break.”
“I’ve got an ambulance on the way and officers coming to find Sybil. Just keep talking to me, okay?”
I recognize the dispatcher’s voice. Amber has been a customer at my shop for years, and she knows Sybil. Of course she does. Everyone in this small town knows her and her condition.
“The front door is open. I’m down the hallway in the first bedroom.
” It isn’t a bedroom anymore. I’m lying on the floor, surrounded by the things I have to pack away when she slips into the past. The mirrors that would show her forty-three-year-old self with a neck tattoo that’s faded to almost nothing.
Her paintings, some complete and some half finished, evidence of the amazing art career she has and doesn’t remember.
All the pictures of us and our friends over the years, our flat screen TV, modem and routers, anything that doesn’t fit her reality.
These breaks are rare, years apart, and always triggered by snow.
It puts her back in that terrifying place, running for her life in a snowstorm, running for both of our lives.
She never recognizes me or realizes she isn’t twenty-three anymore.
The episodes usually only last a day or two, but this one was so much worse.
I thought I was ready. I disabled her car in the driveway, set up the living room with an old entertainment center and our boxes of tapes and CDs.
My brothers at the shop knew what to tell her if she called, and Jane played along when she answered the phone like we planned.
I disconnected the phone line from outside afterward.
Her doctor provided me with sedatives and taught me how to use them.
It wasn’t enough. Even in her altered mental state, she’s too smart and too strong to give up. I should know by now not to underestimate her.
Blood starts to pool around me. “If I don’t make it, Jane Franklin is her secondary healthcare proxy. She needs to make the decisions.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Amber assures me and repeats instructions to attempt to slow the bleeding.
I’m trying to hold on. Sybil’s face when I caught her flashes through my mind.
God, she was so scared. It tears my heart out every time we go through this.
That’s the worst part of it. Telling her the truth only makes her worse.
There’s no other option except to play along and try to keep her safe, but seeing her terrified of me hurts in a way I can’t begin to explain.
It wasn’t until she begged me not to send her back that I realized she thought I was one of the cult.
In that moment, I made the decision to call her doctor and have her admitted.
As much as I’ve tried to keep her from being locked away, she’s better off in the psych ward than believing she’s still with those monsters.
She would’ve been in the hospital in the next hour.
Instead, she’s missing, running from ghosts.
My vision is going dark at the edges. I’m not going to make it. All I can think about is Sybil. After all she’s been through, all we’ve been through together since she saved me twenty years ago, it can’t end like this. She’ll never forgive herself.
I should’ve called for help and had her admitted when she started talking about getting to a city. She always wants to find an FBI office because it was an FBI agent who helped her back then.
“They’re only a minute away now,” Amber says.
“Tell her I love her. Please tell her this isn’t her fault. Don’t let them lock her away. Don’t make…” It’s getting harder to speak and the sentence finishes in my head. Don’t make her a prisoner again.
A blurry face appears and from a distance, a voice speaks to me, but the words don’t register. My body is lifted and carried, followed by a brush of cold air against my face. A deep peaceful feeling settles over me, leaving me so weightless that I could float away.
In the dark, I look over and see Sybil smiling at me. Our song fills the air around us as she sits beside me, wrapped in a blanket and staring at the sky.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.
Her hand slides into mine, and I turn my head to follow her gaze. It is. It is indescribably beautiful here with her, surrounded by stars and music.