Breach (32 page)

I could make out the tenor more than the actual words. Nathan didn’t say much
, for which I was thankful, but I could hear Andrew; he was angry, screaming and cursing. Caroline was pleading.

I shook every time I heard Nathan. His voice
threatened to pull me back.

I didn’t want to go back. The calm darkness held the pain at bay. I didn’t have to feel my heart shattering in there.

Though the pain came through anyway every time he spoke.

It wasn’t
often, but it was there. He stayed silent, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he was there. Didn’t he leave
me
? Break me? Wasn’t that why I had resigned myself to the darkness?

More voices came, an urgent tone, unknown. I couldn’t feel my body, but I could tell I was being moved.

More time passed and voices came and went. Some familiar, others not.

Dr.
Morgenson? He was angry, yelling at someone.

No more Nathan. He was gone. I couldn’t feel him anymore. He left.

A feminine voice, smooth like Nathan’s, showed up at some unknown point. She didn’t talk around me, or about me like the other unknown voices did, but she spoke
to
me. I couldn’t make out most of her words, but I could tell they were sweet and encouraging. There was a hint of sorrow in her voice as she apologized, but I couldn’t understand why this unknown woman would do something like that.

My chest tore a little more
, and I slipped back deeper, away from the pain.

Darkness prevailed. Up, down, day, night; I didn’t know any of those. B
ut I did know I was safe. The pain, the loneliness, the worthlessness; it was all unable to touch me in my own black world.

Nathan didn’t want me.

I rose again, something was pulling me. Not a voice. I couldn’t quite tell, but it pulled me from the darkness, calling out to me. I could hear the beating.

Ba-bump.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

No voices, no sounds, j
ust the beating, calling to me, pulling at me.

There was n
othing but the darkness and the beating. And it was constant, unrelenting.

Ba-bump.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

Nathan?

It drew me closer to the surface, and I heard the voices again. They spoke medical terminology—gibberish to my ears.

Ba-bump.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

It was so close. There in
the darkness.
He
was so close.

I began to shake, fighting against his call. I knew it was him, only he pulled
at me. He wasn’t in the room, but he was close.

The unknown voices were still speaking, but I didn’t understand them. I only heard him.

Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

“…
ven Palmer.”

One of the voices broke through
, calling out the name of the man who helped to conceive me but would never be my father.

All sound stopped. A ringing filled my ears along with the voice.

“Emergency contact. This paperwork is about thirteen years old, but it does say next of kin. Perhaps we should call him? He would want to know about his daughter’s condition.”

No. No.
No. Please. You can’t call him. Don’t. No!

I thought I had been screaming
in my head, but before me were two wide eyed doctors, staring at me in shock.

I began to scream, begging them not to call him, thrashing in the be
d, tears streaming down my face as I yanked on the tubes in my arms in an attempt to flee.

“What the hell is going on in here?” I heard Dr.
Morgenson’s voice ring out through my screaming. “Lila. Lila. Calm down!” He called out to me, his hands stroking at my hair.

“Please, please, Dr.
Morgenson, don’t let them call him. Please. He doesn’t want me. No one wants me,” I cried. “I can’t listen to him tell me again that he hates me.”

I trusted
Dr. Morgenson. He knew my past; he had worked with me before and knew I had no one. That turning to my former family would be worse than death to me.

“
Shh, no one is calling anyone, Lila. It’s just you and me here now. You need to calm down before you make me give you a sedative, which I really don’t want to do.” His voice was soothing.

I made my body relax back into the bed,
but my breathing was still labored, tears streaming out of my eyes uninhibited. It was then that everything came crashing down on me. The pain in my chest seared like a red hot poker. I stared up at the ceiling in an attempt to calm myself, but it didn’t help. A sob ripped through my body, and I turned to the side, my body curling in on itself as sob after sob poured out.

“Not enough. I’m not
enough. Not strong enough. Now…I’m nothing. Nothing. Just like they always said.”

“Lila, I need you to focus on me now, can you do that?” Dr.
Morgenson asked.

I turned my hea
d to look at him. He was blurry through the tears, but I could make out his black hair and the look of concern on his face.

“How do you feel?”

“L-like there’s a h-hole in my chest. It h-hurts so much,” I stammered, gasping for air.

“Breathe, Lila. You need to calm down. Take a
deep breath,” he instructed.

I complied as best I could. It was difficult with all the things I was suddenly feeling.

There was a pinch on my arm and coldness slipping up my veins and then nothing. I ceased to be. The blackness took me. Thank God…

When I came to
, an unknown amount of time later, Dr. Morgenson was there, waiting for me and waiting to explain what was going to happen.

“Lila, I had to sedate you. Do you understand why I did it?”

Yes, I knew why, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. It hurt too much, so I resorted to basic communication through facial expressions and head movements. I nodded and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes. Not his too. I would listen to anything he had to say, but I couldn’t bear to see that look.

One of the things I loved about my doctor was how perceptive he was and how he seemed to believe in me.  If it wasn’t for him in the
past, I wouldn’t have made it. And here he was again, bandaging me up so I could pretend to exist enough until…what? Until I decided I was done. Until I left and found something better or…

“Here’s the plan. I’m giving you a new prescription. You’re going to take it exactly
as I prescribe it. And if you’re still having insomnia you need to start taking the sleeping pills in conjunction. You will go to bed at ten p.m. each night. You will get up at six and shower, get dressed, eat something and go to work. I want to see you every Friday after work at six p.m. No drinking, no bars. Friends are allowed to see you, but only if they’re supportive of you and don’t interfere with your therapy.”

I swallowed hard. What friends? Caroline? Andrew? Would they even want to be around me when I was a black hole of a being? I didn’t
care. What would I say anyway?

“If you agree and sign the release paperwor
k, then you can go home afterward. Any questions?” he asked, patting my arm.

He was being firm but also empathetic
, and I didn’t deserve it. Any of it.

“How long?”
I asked in a whisper of a breath so I didn’t crack in half from the pain.

He knew
what I meant, and gave me a sympathetic smile before dealing my fate. “Indefinitely. You’ll be on the medication until we get you going with some serious trauma therapy. This episode, this ‘parataxic distortion’ you experienced, it will come back. It always does until it’s dealt with. But with how fragile you are right now, we have to wait until you can handle it because it will dig at your core and bring up all sorts of nasty memories you’ve suppressed and buried for years.”

Just say it…
say the word… Broken. A step away from being institutionalized.

But he didn’t. There was no way I could come up with a better plan
, and I was scared to do the trauma work. I’d avoided it in the past with him, because I didn’t want to go that deep… because I knew I couldn’t survive it. So, I did what I always did. I nodded my head like a good little girl, swallowed my terror, signed a damn paper and went on my way.

When signing my release
, I looked at the date on the form and was stunned to see it was Saturday. It didn’t seem like that much time had passed to me. Hours, maybe, but in actuality it was a little over three days.

Dr.
Morgenson called me a cab after he gave me my personal belongings, and I stepped back into the ninth circle of hell: my condo. An empty inferno where I would suffer alone.

Two days without
Nathan, and I had nothing but my pain to keep me company…at least until Monday, when I returned to work and entered a whole other, deeper level of hell.

The pills did their job, though I didn’t end up needing the sleeping pills. Sleep was something my mind begged for so I could shut
out the pain. I didn’t dream much, for which I was thankful. The other pills kept my mind groggy, and I felt like I was sleepwalking through the day.

I
t didn’t take it all away. It only dulled the edges of the sharp stabbing pain. Now it was a general ache, a dull throbbing sensation as I zombie-walked through existence.

I parked in my
regular spot, noticing Nathan’s car was also in his normal spot. Creatures of habit. My breathing was even, the medication wouldn’t allow me to hyperventilate, but it didn’t stop my mind from dreading what I would see in Nathan’s eyes. Rejection. Absolute repugnance at a woman who was not worth talking to, not worth thinking about, not worth having in his life. Only worth fucking until he was done.

N
ow he was done. He got what he needed, what he wanted, and we were over. I was expendable. I would have to go back to what I knew, fading away into the background.

With quiet steps
, I walked into the confined space I’d shared with Nathan over the past five months. It was with great trepidation that I placed one foot in front of the other and moved forward. My eyes avoided his desk as I sat down at my own.

I turned on my computer and put
away my purse. I didn’t look at him, didn’t speak to him, and tried to ignore his presence entirely.

A difficult task because
I could still smell him and, per usual, he smelled divine. No medication could block that out.

I wanted to drown myself in liquor every
night, but I knew it would make things worse. If things got worse Andrew and Caroline would tell Dr. Morgenson and he’d have me committed faster than I could blink.

However, if I remained lucid enough
, I would still be allowed outside, could still work. I’d be left alone. At work I could still see him.

“Good morning, Delilah
,” he said in a whisper.

I cringed against his words and ignored them, turning my attention to anyth
ing that wasn’t related to him.

Nathan
didn’t blink or move, but he breathed. In and out. So did I…only just.