It didn’t take much for me to come my parents. Perhaps I’m still trying to punish myself, or perhaps I’m trying to punish them. Either way, I feel like this is the last place Elliot would think to look for me.
I’m sure it seems like pure insanity to keep refusing him. And maybe it is. He calls me every day, but I haven’t spoken to him since that night he called me drunk. When he calls, I watch the words ‘International Call’ blink on my screen and wait for it to go to voicemail then listen to it later. I don’t want to give him hope by answering and talking to him. It would be cruel. And I’ve already been cruel enough.
I’m ignoring him to be kind. I took a vow of celibacy and sobriety when Phoenix was born, and I broke it with him. I need to get back on track and focus on the memory of my little girl. She's more important than anything else in this world, and even though I never got to know her or watch her grow, I live my life for her. Taking her into consideration with every decision I make. My inability to control my impulses and walk away from a party is what got me in trouble. Sex and drugs ruled my life, and in her honour I gave them up.
I gave them up. For her. It was the very least I could do when she gave her life.
Am I making sense yet? Is anyone besides me able to understand?
This is my punishment. I won't allow myself happiness when all Phoenix ever experienced was drugs and death. Nothing will change how I feel about that. Not even Elliot Roberts.
When I lie on the bed, the springs creak. I close my eyes and drift off. Maybe if I stay like this for long enough, I’ll die. Then it can all be over.
What happens to me if you die? Phoenix asks.
We’ll be the same if I die. I'll get to hold you instead of you holding me.
OK then, she says. You can come to me.
I’d like that.
I don’t know how many days and nights pass, but I have vague memories of food being offered and refused, along with conversations between my parents as they hover about, not sure what to make of the wreck of a daughter who's returned to them. Just let me go.
Thirty
Paige
A cool hand touches my forehead.
“Is there something wrong with her?” That’s my mother’s voice.
“There’s no fever.” Another female says before something cool, possibly a stethoscope, touches my back. “Does she have a history of mental illness?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you say she was your daughter?”
“Yes. But we’ve been…estranged. For quite some time.”
“I see.” Light flicks in my eyes. “And she’s been unresponsive like this for how long?”
“Almost a week. She won’t eat or drink. Sometimes she mutters like she’s talking to someone but she won’t respond to us.”
“Hmm.” The light goes away. “Paige,” the woman says rather loud. I hear her. But I have no desire to respond. “Can you sit up for me?” She tries to move me, but I don’t shift. I don’t want to. And I can’t.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing physically that I can tell. Mentally… I couldn’t say without knowing more about her history and running tests. It does look like a severe depressive episode. I think we need to take her in for observation. Even if it’s just to get her hydrated.”
They struggle to find a vein. The IV sticks out the side of my wrist as I lie on a white bed in a white room, grey clouds showing through the window. I stare and I stare. Day turns into night. Night turns into day. And I’m still here. I’m still alive.
Does this mean you won’t come and be with me, Mummy? Phoenix asks growing distant when a nurse injects something in my IV line.
Where are you going? It's like I can feel her withdraw from my mind. Phoenix!
“No drugs,” I gasp, my voice hurting from its lack of use. “I don’t want any drugs.”
The nurse smiles. “Is nice to hear your voice.” She hands me a cup of water and I drink before speaking again.
“I can’t take drugs. I’m an addict.”
“This is saline for hydration,” the nurse says, pointing to the bag hanging on the IV pole. “And what I just gave you was an antidepressant and an antipsychotic. It’s what’s bringing you back to us. How’re you feeling?”
“What? Why do I need those?”
She touches my knee and gives me a sweet smile. “I’ll get the doctor to explain things to you.”
Sitting up slightly, I look around the room. There are flowers all along the table. “How long have I been here?”
“A few days. Your Ma and Da have been sitting with you. They brought you the flowers.”
“Oh.”
As if on cue, my mother appears in the doorway with a shopping bag on her arm and pink lilies in her hand. “She's awake,” she gasps, looking at the nurse. “You’re awake.” This time it’s aimed at me.
“I’m awake,” I state as the nurse excuses herself to find the doctor.
“I’ve been worried you’d wake up and I wouldn’t be here. I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you again.”
Why can’t I feel Phoenix?
“Why did you bring me here?”
“I was worried. You wouldn’t eat or drink. You were having an episode.”
“An episode? Is this a hospital, or a psych ward?”
She presses her lips together. “It’s both. It’s a private facility. You’re getting the very best care.”
“Why?” I whisper, eyes burning. Phoenix! “Why am I getting the very best care?”
“Because you’re my daughter, and I care about you. And because you’re carrying my grandchild. I care about your baby too.”
“But, I’m not,” I cry, touching my head. “I can’t feel her anymore. She’s gone. She was in my head, but now she’s gone.” I place my hands on my ribs. There’s no pressure anymore. “She’s not here. What did they do to her?”
“In your head?” Mum’s eyes shine with concern. “I don’t understand what you mean. The baby is in your stomach, Paige. You’re twelve weeks pregnant.”
My heart stops. “What?”
“You didn’t know?”
I shake my head. I’m pregnant? “My cycle has been irregular ever since….”
She presses her lips together. “Since you lost your baby,” she finishes for me. When my eyes meet hers in alarm, she explains. “We saw your records.”
“What? How? Those are private.”
“Someone had to make your decisions for you. You weren’t able to yourself. They think that the drugs, and…the abuse you suffered—” she pauses to sniff and clear her throat when it clogs up with emotion. “—caused schizoaffective disorder to develop. You were talking to someone who wasn’t there, and you were deeply depressed. That’s what they’ve been treating you for.”
“Schizoaffective disorder?” I place my hand on my stomach. “But the baby?”
“Is perfectly healthy. The medication they’re giving you is safe during pregnancy. But you’ll need to be monitored throughout.”
“How?”
“Medication and counselling.”
I lie back against the pillows. “I hate counselling.” I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with Elliot’s baby. Holy crap. Did you hear that, Phoenix? You’re going to be a big sister. When silence echoes back, my breath hitches. She’s gone. “The drugs,” I cry, panic gripping my chest. “It’s the drugs. They took her away.”
“Took who away?”
“Phoenix. She was in my tattoo and I could talk to her. But she’s gone. I can’t hear her or feel her. They’ve sent her away.” I grab the IV line and tug it from my arm, clapping my hand over it to stem the flow of blood. “I can’t be here. I can’t lose her again.”
My mother gasps and the nurse returns, the doctor at her side. There’s a lot of ranting and yelling going on—mostly from me. And I'm told that if I don't calm down, they’ll be forced to medicate me.
I stop instantly, my eyes filled with tears.
“That’s why I’m upset. The medicine sent my little girl away.” I feel like I'm losing her all over again.
* * *
“Do you think we could sit and talk?” my mother asks once I’ve been out of the hospital and back at her house for a week. I’m still not particularly forthcoming with her. On top of not trusting her because she dumped me in the street at fifteen, I’m also mourning the loss of Phoenix. Ever since I started taking the medication, I can’t hear her anymore. My counsellor tells me it was always my imagination, and that she wasn’t real. But I already knew that. I just miss being able to talk to her. I miss the feeling of carrying her on my back. It’s just a tattoo now. It’s just a tattoo.
“What is there to talk about?” I ask, putting my book down as I give her my attention. My therapist suggested a few sessions with mum could be beneficial to my healing. But I don’t know if I want to drag her shit along with mine. I can only handle one thing at a time. Schizoaffective disorder is something I’ll have to manage for the rest of my life. It’s a disorder that comes and goes depending on my stress levels and circumstances. They believe I developed it because of my drug use, and the trauma associated with my year as a drug whore. I fucking hate that they’re making me talk about that shit again. But Schizoaffective disorder is managed with medication and counselling, and if I don't participate, they can hospitalise me. I don’t want to be drugged up and trapped in a room ever again. So I'm cooperating. Especially since my parents have been granted medical custody of me. It’s pretty fucking hilarious if you ask me—the people who abandoned me are responsible for my medical decisions. It’s insanity of the highest order. And I'm supposed to be the crazy one. Right. The good news is, their custody is temporary. There'll be a hearing in a couple of months to assess my competency. So I’m focusing on being my best self for that. I also want to be my best self for this baby.
“You’ve been here for almost a week, and we’ve barely spoken at all.”
“That’s because I don’t want to be here, but I'm forced under your guardianship by law. The paperwork says I need to be here. It doesn’t say I need to talk to you or be your friend.”
“I’m not asking for you to be my friend. I’d just like us to come to an understanding.”
“Fine. Talk.” I say, sitting up to eye her as she fidgets with a loose thread on her sleeve.
“First, I wanted to give you this,” she says placing a small comb on the bed in front of me.
“Why?” Why would I want a comb?
“This is the comb I used to brush your hair when you were little. Before things got really bad with Oliver—”
“And you withdrew your love from me.” I remember her when I was small, singing to me, telling me stories while she sat with me before bed and untangled my curls. I craved those moments when they were gone. I cried for them.
“Yes,” she whispers. “He accused me of favouring you because you were Daniel’s. I went too far trying to prove it wasn’t true.”
“And that’s why you kicked me out? To prove I wasn’t your favourite?”
“I lost my mind.”
“It was well planned out for something done by a madwoman. You changed the locks and moved away. You left me with a bag of clothes and two hundred dollars. How did you expect me to survive?”
She’s crying now, the loose thread wrapped tightly around her finger as she continues to pull at it. “I thought you’d stay with a friend or go to a shelter. They could have helped.”
“You think a shelter is a good place for a fifteen year old girl?”
She sucks in her breath. “I thought social services would get involved. I kept expecting the police to turn up with you and make us take you back. I never expected…”
“That I’d be sold for two thousand dollars to a drug dealer who enjoyed keeping drug dependent girls in his home?” I frown and look at her. I can’t believe how naïve she’s being. “Yeah. I didn’t expect that when it happened either.”
“I’m so sorry, Paige. I hate myself for what I did to you.”
Pressing my lips together, I nod and wipe at my cheeks. “If it’s any consolation, I hate you too. You were supposed to love and protect me, but you fed me to the wolves instead. My baby died because of you. My brain is busted because of you. And I'll never be capable of having a real relationship because of you. Because you loved yourself more than you loved me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she cries, breaking down, crying so loudly that Daniel comes barrelling in from another room, demanding to know what's happening.
“All I did was tell her the truth,” I say, my voice cool and calm as I level with him.
“Do you know how upset your mother has been this past month?” he starts, defending his wife. “She has lived and breathed your illness.”
“And that’s supposed to make everything better? I wouldn’t even have this fucking thing if she’d done her goddamned job and taken care of me as a child.”
“She didn’t make you take those drugs.”
“No. But she wasn't around to stop me either.”
“How dare—”
“Stop, Daniel!” my mother calls out, silencing him. “She has every right. I’ve been a horrible mother. And you’ve never been a father. We both have a lot to answer for.”
He stands there working his lips together as he looks between us, two women who look nothing alike bar our height and bone structure, but both of us his family. “Perhaps we should all try to talk this through together,” he says quietly.
I have no idea what they think this will achieve, but I follow behind them, taking a seat at the dining room table and waiting while they talk quietly to each other in the kitchen, making a tray with tea and biscuits. I’m not hungry or thirsty, but I accept it anyway.
Mum sits across from me with Daniel by her side. “Perhaps it will help if I explain how you came to be,” she says.
I doubt it but I would still like to hear it, so I sit back and nibble on the corner of a biscuit.
“I’d been travelling back and forth between Australia and the UK for about a year with work, and Daniel was a colleague. Every time I visited, he was so kind to me. I tried to resist my attraction because I was already married and had a son. But, eventually we both fell prey to temptation.” She looks at Daniel, her eyes so filled with adoration that it hurts my heart to watch them. I’m jealous and annoyed by their obvious happiness. “I was so in love with him, and he was with me too. However, I couldn’t stay with him. I had to go back and look after my son. I had to honour my marriage vows. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew you were Daniel's. But, I hid all of my dates from your father and pretended that I fell pregnant before I’d left. You were premature, so they kept you in an incubator, and your father couldn’t understand what went wrong because by what I told him, you should have been full term. That, coupled with your dark shock of hair made him realise you weren’t actually his.” She draws invisible circles on the table with her index finger as she goes on. “We had a lot to lose by separating, so we decided to stay together and tell the world you were his. Then another baby—your sister—got added to the mix and things went from bad to worse.
“Your father hated that I seemed to play favourites with you and would torment me over my affair. I started to resent you. I thought that if you weren’t around, my life would be better. So, I sent you out, I drove you away.
“We moved to Melbourne. Oliver had a new job and went ahead of us. It was supposed to be a fresh start. But when I turned up without you, he was livid. Despite his anger over my affair, he didn’t hate you. He just didn’t know how to love a child that wasn’t his.
“We reported you missing, but you were long gone by then. The police spoke to your friends and your school, but no one knew where you went. Slowly, Oliver’s and my relationship crumbled, and we separated. I couldn’t live with the guilt, and he, well, he couldn't live with me. I gave him custody of Adam and Sophie and came back here and…” She looks at Daniel
again and smiles with quivering lips. He places his arm around her, resting his hand on hers and squeezing it gently. She left her life and children behind to be with the man she loves.
I’m crying. But I don't know if it's hurt, anger, or sorrow. My life has just been one horrible mistake after another. The first one being hers. I never had a chance.
“Did you know about me?” I ask Daniel. “I mean, before I contacted you. Did you know about me?”
“I did,” he says. “I had to sign as your father for your birth certificate.”
“And you just left me with them?” I stare at him, watching as he thinks through his answer.
“I thought it was best. I didn’t know you were being treated poorly.”
“But you married her, anyway?”
“I did. She made mistakes. Lord knows I've made mistakes too in my life, but those mistakes don’t change the fact that she’s the woman I love.”
I laugh humourlessly. “You’re very passionate for an Englishman,” I say flatly.
“Don’t believe everything you see on television, Paige. We English can be very passionate people. However, my mother, your grandmother, is Italian. She was a very passionate woman.”
I look at my mother. “What happened to Adam and Sophie? Where are they now?”
She looks down at her hands. “I don’t know, Paige. I left everyone,” she whispers. “I left, and I never looked back.”
Her words hit me square in the chest. Like mother, like daughter.
Thirty-One
Elliot
Time crawls when you’re waiting for a new visa to be approved. I went for my interview and produced all the necessary documents to prove my heritage so I can get a five-year visa. My grandmother is English, so I applied based on my ancestry which is an easier way to get approval. But now I’m in limbo while I wait. It’s already been well over a month. I'm hoping it doesn’t take much longer. Tick-tock.
Forever: Beautiful Series, book two Page 22
