by Kim Cormack
Now it was the nurse’s turn to look confused. Kayn was sure she had heard the nurse’s voice before. Her pulse seemed to be racing like she had been running and received a surge of adrenaline. The nurse’s words of wisdom seemed to veto the harshness of the doctor’s words. Both the doctor and the nurse looked absolutely mortified. “That is the most profound thing I have ever heard you say,” Dr. Cambridge said to the nurse, who still looked confused.
“Thanks,” she said. “It kind of just came to me?”
“Well, it was beautiful,” the Doctor said.
Kayn heard the Doctor’s thoughts as clearly as if he had said them aloud. She was hearing people’s thoughts. Not all of them, she assumed. Just the ones that pertained to something she wanted to hear. Kayn was also pretty sure she had just made the doctor tell her everything he knew against his will. Could she really be doing this or was it just her groggy, coma mind playing tricks on her?
Kayn watched the mortified and completely confused doctor and nurse excuse themselves and leave her room in uncomfortable silence. She was feeling hungry all of a sudden and looked at the bags of liquid hanging above her bed. I see I’ve been on a liquid diet. I’m starving. Somebody come. I’m starving. A nurse appeared with a tray containing chicken consume, some soda crackers, and Jell-O.
“Seriously, this is breakfast? Judging from that bag I’m guessing I’ve been living off sad cuisine for the last seven months,” Kayn said to the nurse.
The nurse smiled back at her and said, “Have patience. Take baby steps. It’s been a while since your body has had to digest any solid food, dear.”
Her brother came back into the room drinking a coffee, “Hey Princess, how’s brunch?”
“You are such a jerk,” Kayn replied bitingly as she glared at her meal of clear soup and Jell-O.
“Where’s my coffee?” Kayn huffed. “Matt, you should go grab me a coffee,” Kayn whispered quietly so the nurse wouldn’t hear her.
“Don’t you dare,” the nurse scolded Matt as she gave Kayn a scowl. “Would you like some help eating, Kayn?” the nurse asked with an overdone smile that made Kayn smile back.
She had always loved it when people had to be polite, but she knew they didn’t really want to be. That certain strained, extra polite voice always made Kayn want to giggle. She was often told by her mother that perhaps getting a summer job as a waitress would cure her urge to giggle. Her mother had been a big believer that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes was one of the best life lessons it was possible to learn. She felt a sudden clenching, raw feeling in her chest. She would never again get to hear her mother’s voice scold her over any smart-assed remarks. She tried not to think about her family’s death, and when it sneaked into her mind, Kayn would try to let only happy thoughts inside. Happy moments, loving memories and think of them as if they were on vacation somewhere.
She thought of them as if they were not really gone. Maybe it was a mentally unhealthy way to deal with things. All Kayn knew was that it made it easier for her to deal with her physical inabilities, if she could just block out her emotional pain and concentrate on regaining use of her fine motor skills. She had moved her arms with no problem earlier. Her digits were a different story. Kayn was frustrated and increasingly angry as she fumbled around trying to pick up her spoon with extremely, uncooperative fingers.
“I can do it,” Kayn stammered.
The nurse smiled while she picked up some garbage and then she left the room. Kayn was willing her to come back now to help her eat because she was too tired to continue being stubborn. Her brother was zoned out drinking his coffee and didn’t notice her struggle to operate her spoon. He finally noticed and without words scooped a big spoonful of cold chicken consume into his sister’s mouth. Kayn smiled at him. He kept feeding her until the whole unappetizing entrée was done. They sat in silence for a minute and then Kayn saw that the nurse was standing right outside her doorway again.
The prickly nurse showed her sense of humor as she leaned into the doorway and teased, “That straw on your tray was for drinking the soup.”
“Can you get me some ice-cream,” Kayn whispered at her brother who was grinning because he knew his sister was intentionally trying to push the nurse’s buttons.
The nurse leaned her head into the doorway and teased, “After dinner I will get you some myself, if you don’t throw up your crackers.”
Kayn grinned. The nurse had presented her with a symbolic fig leaf. Kayn said, “I hope I don’t throw up. I can’t run to the bathroom.”
The nurse walked back into the room and laid a small Styrofoam container on Kayn’s lap and said, “Just in case you need it.” She smiled at her with an I’m trying to be nice, but you’re very high maintenance look.
Kayn thought as she looked at the tiny container, has anyone in the history of the human race puked that small an amount? She would need at least ten of those tiny containers. They looked like they should be holding a serving of fast food French fries. She definitely must have imagined those mind controlling abilities because they sure didn’t work on this particular nurse.
Weeks passed by uneventfully with little victories on Kayn’s behalf. She could stand and walk. She even reacquired her fine motor skills. In the wee hours of the morning, her dreams fed her fragments of her Sweet Sleep. She had visions of running with her sister through a seemingly endless field of buttercups. She could hear the buzzing music of the bees and the steady rhythm of waves.
Strange and impossible images flickered through her mind. Movie reels of brightly colored starfish and orbs of light as they sped past her toes in the water. It was not only good memories that had followed her home. The torturous agony of her legs as they solidified into the ice and the blinding panic of the unknown had come along for the ride. Her subconscious told her that all of these things were important although she couldn’t recollect just why. There were split second visions of a lady in the light and a mysterious man that crept in from time to time, as well. Kayn could not remember how she knew them. She just had the impression that she would understand what it all meant when she was ready to know the details.
After a month or so had passed, she started to feel like herself again. She had regained the ability to control her own body. The officers were still on duty outside of her door but on a voluntary basis. Nobody had come for Kayn. They couldn’t just continue to sit outside of her hospital door indefinitely. Everyone had come to the consensus that Kayn’s assailant had simply moved on.
Kayn could still catch a few people’s thoughts as they passed down the hospital corridor, but she seemed to hear only the thoughts that involved her.
Tomorrow was the day. It was finally time for her to go home. Her brother would be there in the morning to pick her up. She thought about going home and wondered if it would trigger any memories. She didn’t care. She needed to go home to feel close to the family she’d lost.
The tentative plan was that her father’s old friend Jenkins would spend the first week or so in the Brighton house during the night. She could decide whether or not she was comfortable staying at the house alone during the week until her brother graduated from college. She was seventeen, and her brother was twenty years old—everyone thought it would be best to leave them alone. There was no other family to stay with. Kevin’s family had set up a bedroom at their house for her just in case she couldn’t bring herself to stay the night in the house where her family had been slaughtered.
Kayn looked at her hospital window at the steadily growing collection of colored rocks on the ledge. Kevin kept placing them there, saying they were gifts from his Grandmother. Granny Winnie had always been a believer in the energy that they held. Kayn knew the rose quartz had been placed there to help her heal. The others she suspected were there to keep her safe. Knowing his grandmother they were to ward off evil of some kind. Kayn now had been a victim of darkness. She had never believed in his Grandmother’s tales. She had listened, and she had professed to believe. Kayn c
ould now without a shadow of a doubt, profess that she had become a true believer in magic.
She had been seeing things and hearing things in the hallways at night. A giggling little girl had been running up and down the halls. A child nobody else seemed to be able to hear. Kayn also had the unmistakable feeling that she was being watched. It wasn’t a sense that something ominous was watching her. It was a feeling that someone important was close by.
Kayn swung her legs over the side of her bed and walked to the bathroom. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, and she imagined for a second that she was seeing her sister. This always made her feel better. She could almost hear her sister’s well-timed snide comments as they passed each other in the hallway while they were getting ready for school.
This is crazy. Why in the hell do I continue to torture myself? She is gone. Chloe is dead. It was easy to bring herself back to reality when she looked at the scars from that night. Kayn took off her nightgown and dropped it to the floor. She stood in front of the mirror staring critically at her body. It was strange to look at the scars that lingered, wondering what had happened in the moment she had received them. It was a detached feeling. It was as though she were staring at another girl’s body. Her forefinger trailed across one still largely pronounced scar. This one will never go away. She began to trail her finger across it again, and her memory started to flicker.
Her mind travelled to a dark cold place surrounded by trees. It took a journey back to the night that it had been successfully shielding her from remembering for all of this time. She felt a sudden onset of searing burning pain; she cried out in agony and doubled over. Kayn, trembling and terrified, knew that she had regained a memory from that night. Her arms wrapped tightly around the area where the pain had come from. She regained her composure. She was in the hospital.
“It’s not real. It’s not real,” she repeated under her breath.
As she stood up, her sister Chloe, bloody and beaten, looked back through the mirror at her. Chloe’s eyes were glassy and white. They smoldered with such vengeful distaste that it made Kayn shudder.
Fury seethed through her raspy crackling voice as Chloe hissed, “Stop.”
Kayn was startled by her sister’s reflection and jumped back from the mangled version of Chloe that had appeared in the mirror. Chloe was angry with her for some reason; maybe something had happened that she didn’t remember. She loved her twin sister so unconditionally. She attempted to swallow her fear.
Calming herself, she took a step toward the mirror and whispered, “Chloe, I miss you so much. What am I going to do without you?”
A tear trickled down her face as she placed her hand gently on the mirror. Chloe raised her hand to meet Kayn’s from the other side. As Kayn’s hand met Chloe’s hand on the mirror, it felt as though they had really touched each other. An amazing burst of energy enveloped Kayn’s entire body from the inside out. Her hand joined with her sister’s was glowing with a white light that felt wonderful at first.
Then she found herself a little afraid as Chloe began to smile in a way that made Kayn uneasy. She couldn’t remove her hand from the mirror. Chloe’s face contorted into a twisted evil smirk, and she cackled. Kayn squirmed in place with quiet desperation as she fought to move her hand. The light began to turn orange, and it started to burn. It was hurting her now, and she was terrified, yet Chloe smiled from the other side of the mirror as if something pleased her a great deal. Her hand was glowing crimson; it felt as though her skin was ablaze. Kayn was screaming for help, and someone began ramming the other side of the door. The light seemed to explode throughout the room, blinding her, and then the lights went out.
She must have blacked out. Kayn awoke naked on the chilly bathroom floor. She was being shaken frantically back to reality by her nemesis, the nurse with whom she had the love-hate relationship.
“I saw Chloe in the mirror. She was covered in blood, and her face was all crushed,” Kayn whispered to the nurse.
The nurse, Penny, embraced Kayn to her chest and stroked her hair, triggering another flicker of a memory, a vision of being cradled in her mother’s arms.
“I remember; I’m beginning to remember things,” Kayn stammered. “I remember being stabbed. I was in the bushes. I could see someone; I remember the pain and how much it hurt,” she sobbed as the doctor and Jenkins walked into the room.
Jenkins had been off getting a coffee. He said, “Did I hear you correctly, did you see the face of the person who hurt you?”
“I remember a bit, some images; and I saw Chloe in the mirror. Did I see her being killed? Did I run away and leave her there or something?” Kayn asked.
“The only person who knows, if you saw her dead, is you, Kayn,” Jenkins responded with the fatherly tone she had grown to depend on. “We had some confusion because Kevin said he went to your house in the first place because you had pocket dialed him with your cell phone. While he was waiting for you to notice you had dialed him, he heard Chloe screaming for you to run. We determined after we found the bodies that your sister had been dead for at least three hours.”
“No, I remember that, too. I remember hearing her screaming for me to run,” Kayn said. “I was almost hoping you wouldn’t remember a thing. I was praying you could live out the rest of your life without ever having to relive the pain of that night,” Jenkins said.
“I’m not sure you should go home tomorrow,” her physician stated. “I’m worried that the stress of going home will set you back. You have come so far.”
Kayn said, “Isn’t it a good thing? Not the set back part of course, but the memories. Don’t I need to remember?” Kayn knew it was imperative that she regain every missing piece of the puzzle that was her memory.
Jenkins said, “I am coming home with her. I will bring her right back to the hospital if it looks like she’s not adjusting. I will stay with her until she is comfortable and we can be sure she is safe.”
Kayn gave him a look of grateful appreciation and said, “What about your family?”
Then she remembered why he had stayed by her side all of these months. She felt like kicking herself. She quickly said, “I’m sorry, I forgot for a second. Thank you for staying with me all of this time.”
He replied, “It’s been my honor. Your father would have done the same for my daughter had she been the one in this situation. I know he would have. He was a good man.”
Kayn had heard the story. Jenkins’ wife had left him after their daughter Katy drowned in the swimming pool. She’d been only four years old at the time of the accident. It had been over thirteen years now. Katy would have been the same age as Kayn was today. Kayn understood now why he was putting all of his energy into helping her. Katy and Kayn; the names were close. If she hadn’t died at four, she would now be the same age as Kayn. He had to help her because he hadn’t been able to help Katy.
She had wondered about a child she kept seeing and hearing at night running in the halls. She had asked about her and often questioned why nobody was preventing her from running around in the middle of the night making all that noise. Nobody appeared to know what she was talking about. Kayn knew she was seeing things and hearing things that nobody else could comprehend. In the beginning she attempted to explain it to herself as brain damage from a shortage of oxygen during her attack. Perhaps it was her memory playing tricks on her and piecing old fragments over the top of new events. She had begun to think of that little girl as an old memory replaying in a broken mind. Now she knew that some things could not be explained away. After this conversation with Jenkins, she suspected that the little girl that she had been hearing was Katy. Katy was still trying to play with her father even after her death.
She had seen Chloe in the mirror. Somehow she was completely sure of that as if it were an irrefutable fact. What had happened in the bathroom? She looked down at her hands and rubbed them together. One hand still felt quite a bit warmer than the other one. She’d had a serious head injury, so it was easy to use
a scientific explanation. Today there was no explanation for the things that had happened. As a matter of fact, she was sure there were many more unexplainable moments to come.
Kayn said, “Thank you, Jenkins. That would be great if you stayed at our house.”
He smiled at Kayn, and she felt as though this was how it was supposed to be. He had stayed here night after night for months to protect her. She could feel Jenkins’ relief as it swept over him.
She knew she had given him a sense of purpose outside of work, a sense of family. Kayn knew that she needed that, too. Jenkins was the person who could help her with the parental security that she was missing.
Kayn lay in bed smiling that last night she spent at the hospital. She was smiling because she was listening to the sound of a little girl’s giggles and the sound of small feet as they ran up and down the hallway. Maybe one day she would tell Jenkins that his daughter had never really left his side.
In the morning, she spoke to Kevin’s family and told them she still needed police protection, and she would need to sleep at her own house. She didn’t want to offend them by turning down the family support that they were offering. Kayn’s instincts were telling her not to stay at their house, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. It did stand to reason that what had happened to her own family could happen to the Smith family, if she attempted to stay at their house. She could never take that chance with Kevin’s family.
There was also an extremely confusing and unexplainable attraction that had been building steadily between Kayn and Kevin. Was it his physical changes that had begun to spark something new within her? Did she want him because he seemed to want her back? The whole situation confused her. It left a dull ache in her heart. If Chloe had survived would Kevin want her? Questions arose like, was she only a substitute for her sister, Chloe? Kayn Brighton despised any form of weakness within herself. This was why she had always avoided teenage drama like the plague. This was why she had preferred to be the invisible twin. She needed to run again so she could regain her sense of strength and control.
