Blood Mate (20 page)

Dr. Cronan took
his own high-backed leather chair on the other side of the desk. The
chair swiveled in an undignified manner when he sat, making him seem
like a small child trying out being a grown up. He cleared his throat
and took out a notepad and fountain pen.

“I want to speak
with my husband.”

Dr. Cronan looked
up, his face creased with disappointment. “Now, we’ve talked
about this, Mrs. Rose. We agreed after a few sessions with your
husband that the course of your treatment would go more smoothly if
we had a period without intrusion from the outside world. Dominic is
part of the world you inhabited with the delusions. We’re trying to
create a different space here for you. A safe space.”

“But you can’t
keep me without my permission unless a judge… ”

“Mrs. Rose, what
do you think the date is?”

“I’m sorry,
what?”

“The date? What
is the date on the calendar?”

“I… ” She
hadn’t known the date on the calendar, anyway. She’d been too
busy sorting through all the conflicting information her brain had
been trying to process since the moment she’d met August to bother
with the date.

“Let me ask it
another way. How long do you think you’ve been here?”

“Three days…
I think.” Or was it four now?

Dr. Cronan
scribbled down some notes on the legal pad in front of him. “You’ve
been with us for three months, but I’m not surprised you’ve lost
time. Drugs can have side effects, and we still haven’t found the
right combination.”

“You’re
lying.”

“Please don’t
do this again, Mrs. Rose. We’re trying to help you.”

Nicole stood and
began to pace the room. “This isn’t real. You’re lying. This is
all wrong. I was just with August and Dominic. Things happened that
were upsetting, but they happened. August got me out of here, like I
said he would.”

Dr. Cronan’s
eyes held a paternalistic sort of pity as he shook his head. “No.
That isn’t what’s happened. We dealt with that delusion two weeks
ago.”

“Then this is a
dream. The last thing I remember with August, I was going up to my
room to sleep, so this must be what I’m dreaming.”

“You’re
becoming agitated, Mrs. Rose. Could you please sit down? I’d like
to go over some of our previous discussions, and I can’t do that if
you’re pacing.” He indicated the chair she’d vacated. “Please.
Sit.”

Whether this was
the reality or the delusion, more information couldn’t harm the
situation. Nicole sat and tried to appear calm though everything
inside her was screaming. Papers snapped in rapid succession as the
doctor thumbed backward through the notepad. “Okay, here we are.
I’m interested in talking about the desire for August not to be
real, because I believe that’s the key to helping you. A delusion
tends to serve a purpose in a person’s life and gives them a sense
of control. Do you remember the session we had with your husband a
couple of months ago?”

Nicole shook her
head as the doctor pulled out a tape recorder and sorted through
several mini cassettes until he found the one he sought.

When he pressed
play, Dominic’s voice came out of the recorder. “I feel like I’m
partly to blame for all this.”

“Why do you say
that?” Dr. Cronan’s voice.

“I’d been
neglecting her. I had such a big case load, and it kept dragging on
month after month. I took her out for our anniversary and tried to be
there with her, but I know she didn’t think I was there.”

Nicole could
almost hear Dr. Cronan nodding over the recorder. “I see where
you’re going with this. Yes, we talked about how a delusion can
create a sense of power. If one’s world gets out of control, one
might invent a fantasy that makes it right again. Nicole, do you
think you invented August to give you someone who would pay attention
to you, who would want you, even
need
you to a degree your
real partner had stopped feeling?”

“That’s not…
he’s not… ” there was a long pause. “Maybe.”

Dr. Cronan shut
off the recorder. “Do you remember that session Mrs. Rose?”

Nicole shook her
head. This was the first time the realities had crossed because she
did remember Dominic neglecting her, of treating her like she didn’t
exist and didn’t matter, like she was some annoyance he had to deal
with in between the important business of being a big shot attorney.
It had never been that way before. Somehow he’d always made time
for her, and then suddenly it was as if they’d dropped off a cliff,
some point of no return where the relationship could never feel good
and right again.

But to invent a
vampire
of all things? That wasn’t a normal response. But
were Uncle Chuck’s bathroom butterflies normal? And if delusions
were about control… what was her uncle trying to control? What good
could butterflies do him?

“I think you’re
ready to let go of August. Don’t you? Your real husband loves you.
He’s concerned for you and wants you to come home.”

Yes, Dominic was
concerned
now
. Now that she’d been deemed mentally unstable
and hospitalized, she was probably all he thought about. And didn’t
that make it more likely that August
wasn’t
real? Because
Dominic had really neglected her. Maybe this was the outcome of that,
not a vampire who had somehow made him stop loving her.

“Mrs. Rose, do
you want August to be real right now?”

“I don’t
know.” It was the truth. Whenever she was with him, she hoped for
some reprieve that would save her from a life that couldn’t end.
Without completion. A life without Dominic, without her family. But
now, in the hospital, faced with the almost certainty that she was a
nutcase, being the immortal victim of a vampire seemed less tragic.

He was an external
force acting upon her, not the gaping, terrifying void inside her own
mind. If her brain really worked this way… or failed to work this
way… how could she know anything was real? Wasn’t August better
than that? As bad as he was? Wasn’t it better to be a victim of
sound mind?

There was a knock
on the door and another doctor poked his head in. “Excuse me, Dr.
Cronan, may I speak with you in private?”

As soon as she was
alone, Nicole raced to Dr. Cronan’s side of the desk to see the
notes he’d written about her, but it was all scribbles. Not the
illegible writing of a doctor, but literal scribbles that were not
and could not be words. They had never been real words. She pressed
play on the tape recorder.

“The vampire bat
feeds solely on blood, a trait called hematophagy. Vampire bats are
distinguished from fruit-eating bats due to their short, cone-shaped
muzzle,” a monotone female voice droned. Nicole pushed the eject
button. The label on the cassette said: “The Lifecycle and Habitat
of the Vampire Bat.”

She raced to the
other side of the office. A filmy white curtain covered the windows,
allowing blinding sunlight to filter into the room through the gauzy
fabric. She pushed the curtains back, frantic to open a window and
get some fresh air, but there was no window, no sun. Only a solid,
brick wall with white spray-paint graffiti that read, “Poor, crazy
girl.”

She turned back to
the desk, her gaze lighting on a letter opener. She grabbed it and
sliced her arm, watching it heal in front of her eyes. What did that
mean? Either she hadn’t just cut herself… or August was real and
this wasn’t.

Dr. Cronan
returned to find her standing, crazed with the letter opener gripped
tightly in her hand. “Mrs. Rose, put that down. We don’t harm
ourselves here.”

She had a sudden
flash of being hosed down and kept in a dark hole of a room here at
the hospital.
No, we don’t hurt ourselves here. Other people
hurt us. That’s how this all works.

“Is there blood
on my arm, Dr. Cronan?”

Nicole couldn’t
see any. Almost as soon as she’d sliced her arm, before the blood
could properly pool up, it had sealed.

“I need you to
put that down, now.”

“Answer me! Is
there blood on my arm?”

“Of course not,
and we don’t want there to be, so please put it down.”

Dr. Cronan edged
to his desk, as if she were holding hostages, and pushed a red
button.

Before she could
process the turn of events, two strong orderlies burst into the room
and wrenched the letter opener from her hand. They dragged her down
the hall while she screamed. She knew the crazier she acted the worse
whatever happened would be, but she couldn’t stop the hysteria
bubbling out.

Halfway down the
hall she was shoved into a room. The door locked behind her.
Something soft broke her fall. Dear God, it was a literal padded
cell. Were those things real? Did people use them? It made sense to
protect someone from themselves, but was it a myth? A pop culture
idea?

Where did her
ideas about mental institutions come from? Movies. Unrealistic
movies. So if what happened to her in here was like those movies,
then didn’t that make this the delusion? She tried to grab hold of
the flash she’d had in Dr. Cronan’s office… being hosed down
and the dark room. Nobody did that. Did they? Did people get hosed
down now?

Nicole squeezed
her eyes shut and tried to relax, breathing slowly in and out,
allowing the images and memories to flow over her. There was a room
with a box and a dial and screams, her screams. But everything was so
quiet and peaceful for a while after that… until she got upset
again. There had been a crackling sound like static just before the
screams.

Another time…
ice baths. Another time, straps and needles. Lots of pills. Lots of
fogginess. No hope of ever leaving. What had he told Dominic? How had
Dr. Cronan convinced him? How had he convinced a judge? It was like a
dream where everything jumped from one event to the next without a
bridge. So this was a dream, it had to be a dream. And then she’d
wake up… with August? Was that better? She held her face in her
hands.

This can’t be
real. It can’t be real. It makes no sense.

But did August
make more sense? She’d tried to understand how she could possibly
not be traumatized by months in his cellar no matter what he’d told
her about the power of the bond, no matter how much of his blood
she’d consumed to make it all go away. But if this was the real
world how could she not remember her months here? What had they done
to her head? Had they done something that had destroyed her memory?
Had it been the shock treatments? Or a drug with a bad side effect?

Nobody does
those things anymore. That’s not how mental hospitals work now.

But how did she
know? And if this wasn’t real, why did it feel so real? Didn’t
that equal crazy either way?

She crawled to the
far corner and drew her knees up to her chest. Would they bring her
food? A banana and mushy cereal wasn’t going to last her long. How
many drugs was she on?

She’d been
abandoned by both Dominic and August.

Which version of
hell did she prefer? The other one had a possibly-dead and possibly
crazy-vampire Dominic and a definitely crazy-vampire August. This one
just had crazy in all flavors and styles wafting down the hallways,
seeping into the air, floating screams.

“I don’t want
to be delusional. I can’t be delusional.” As if saying it out
loud could somehow demand reality to take form around those words.

The door startled
her when it opened. Dr. Cronan dragged in a plastic chair with fat
legs that wouldn’t tip over on the padding.

“Are you ready
to speak reasonably now?”

“I don’t want
to be delusional,” she whispered.

“That’s
something close to progress.”

Was he being
sarcastic? Did they do that in mental institutions?

“I want to speak
to Dominic. I want my husband,
now
. He’s my attorney, and I
have rights.”

“You will see
your husband when we’ve had a chance to sort you out.”

“No. You’ve
had your chance. I want to see Dominic, or I won’t participate.”

He shook his head
and glanced at the notepad that held scribbles and no substance. “It
didn’t go well for you the last time you gave that ultimatum.”

“Is that a
threat?” Dominic wouldn’t abandon her, would he? But… in either
reality he’d brought her here. August’s image slipped into her
mind. “I’d rather have the other world.” She turned away,
assuming Dr. Cronan would take the hint and pack up his chair and
notepad of nonsense and leave. But he didn’t.

“Interesting. I
thought you were ready to let him go. Would you mind telling me why?”

Nicole picked at a
loose thread in the wall. “Why would I prefer this world? The one
where I obviously have no chance at recovery. I will rot in this
place behind bars with lunatics and too much medication to remember
half of it. As bad as some of the other reality can be, there is a
whole world to explore and infinite time to explore it. August
wouldn’t let anybody else hurt me. And maybe Dominic will be okay.
It’ll work out somehow.”

“Dominic? You’ve
integrated your husband into the delusion?”

“August made him
into a vampire. He’s not separating us. I get to keep him.”

Nicole jumped when
a hand gripped her shoulder.

“Nicolette… ”

She opened her
eyes and leaped out of the bed, putting distance between herself and
the vampire. It took her a moment to realize where she was as her
eyes darted about the room, trying to make sense of things. “Did
you… did you do that to me?”

“Do what to you?
Let you sleep?”

The dream had been
too real. It wasn’t as if she usually realized she was dreaming
while dreaming—most people didn’t—but that dream had been
hyper-real in a way that made her worry it was the true reality and
this was merely a delusion. How often did dreams do
that
? If
it were possible, the dream had felt more real than waking up out of
it. So how did she know she was awake now?