“Honey, it’s okay,” Loren said, trying to comfort me.
“I’m going to request a psych evaluation,” I heard Kennedy whisper to Loren.
Now they think I am crazy.
“I don’t need it.” I wiped my eyes. “I’m not crazy.”
“Braelynn, you’ve been through a lot.” Kennedy stopped walking and turned at the door to look at me. “Maybe it would be best if you talked to someone, that’s all I’m suggesting.”
“Fuck you, Kennedy! I don’t need you to suggest anything.”
“Braelynn!” Loren yelled, but I ignored her.
“I don’t need you to worry about me. I don’t need you to do anything for me! Don’t do me any fucking favors. I don’t need your concern,” I spat at her.
I hadn’t forgotten the fight we’d had and how it was never resolved. When Peyton showed up at my house to yell at me for contacting Drew’s exes, she’d agreed with him. She should have been on my side and she should have understood why I couldn’t tell her about him. Instead, she’d agreed with him and rushed out. My best friend chose to ignore our friendship. I had been walking home to talk to her when my normalcy was stripped from me.
Kennedy chewed on the inner part of her lips, biting back her words. “It’s a standard hospital procedure because of the overdose, and because you said you were taken against your will. We need to make sure you’re just being a bitch and that nothing more is going on.” Without another word, she stomped out.
Loren opened her mouth to say something, but I raised my hand to stop her. “Save it. Why don’t you go take a walk, give me a few minutes to calm?”
She tossed the insurance papers on a nearby table and stood, bringing her bag and coffee with her. Once she was out of the room I closed my eyes. This was what I needed—peace. I lowered my head and covered my eyes with the thin covers.
Kennedy’s words burned. I wasn’t claiming anything.
I had been taken.
I was telling the truth.
I shivered under the blankets. My chin quivered, but I was soaked from the sweat that covered my body. I pressed the call button on the side of the bed before I woke Gus. Gus had given Loren the night off so he would watch over me.
“G-G-Gus?” My teeth slammed against one another.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” The night nurse came in, turning on the light. I pulled the covers higher and shook my head at her. Drenched in sweat, I shook from the cold. The cover over my body felt like a sheet of snow. Gus rose from the chair, coming to stand next to me.
“It’s the medication leaving her body,” she said to Gus.
“Is there anything you can do for her?” he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“No, her body is withdrawing.”
“P-P-Pain. I’m … in… pain…” I gestured with my hands for the button that made it all stop.
“No, sweetie, I’m afraid I can’t give you that. Dr. Murphy has given you the max for one day. Try to get through it, Braelynn.”
But I couldn’t. My skin suddenly felt like it was on fire, pins and needles stabbing me all at once. I screamed from the pain. “Make it stop, please!” I gasped for air.
I noticed the retractable pen she had in her scrub pocket and with desperation I rose on the bed and reached for it. The need for the pain to stop gave me the strength to sit up rapidly. With my thumb, I clicked the top then pointed it directly at her. “Give me the medicine … or I swear to fucking … God … I’ll stab you … in the fucking eye.” My legs trembled from the pain. My head twitched as I tried to stay focused on her.
The moments that followed were blurred.
Gus yanked the pen out of my hand, tossing it to the floor. Hospital security rushed in and restrained my arms, holding onto me so I couldn’t attack the nurse with my bare hands as she stabbed me in the arm with another sedative. With all eyes on me, I became motionless. Conversations regarding my well being flowed throughout my hospital room, but I lay there motionless, listening to the betrayal of everyone around me.
Peyton
I paced in front of my desk as I waited for his arrival. My fist locked around the sanded stress ball. He was ten minutes late and my breath was becoming irregular.
“Have you heard from him?” I asked Melissa.
“No, do you want me to call his office again?”
“Give him ten more minutes. If he doesn’t show, call his secretary, his mother, father, the fucking President if you have to.” My fingers locked around my hair.
I paced, watching my clock tick down the seconds. I needed to see with my own eyes that Drew was out of the country the week Braelynn went missing. I needed to assure myself that the rat bastard was far away from her.
A part of this puzzle was missing, but Braelynn refused to let me anywhere near her. I didn’t doubt her.
Liar.
Truthfully, a part of me didn’t believe all of it. Gustavo had said they partied a lot during college, and the fear I saw in her eyes when I discussed us taking our relationship to the next step didn’t help the uneasy feeling I had.
But the necklace on the ground…
That was a sure sign something was fucking wrong.
“Fuck!”
Is this what love does to a man? Drives you mad so you can’t function?
If I were to try this case in a courtroom, she would have been guilty. Officer Walsh had presented me and Loren with copies of their evidence—receipts from the clubs she allegedly attended with her chicken scratch signatures; the statement from the hotel employee who checked her in. And the fucking security footage photos from multiple locations. All had her description. But I still had my doubts. Though she may have not wanted to be with me, she wouldn’t have thrown Drew’s case out the window. Not after she’d fought tooth and nail for it.
“Melissa!”
She pushed my office door open and ran in. “I sent the elevator down for him, Mr. Haas.”
Her eyes were soft when she looked at me. I knew she was concerned; it wasn’t like me to act this way, this distraught. My hand was entwined in my hair, scratching my scalp as I relieved some of my tension.
“Would you like me to stay?” she asked.
A full sigh escaped my lips. “No, that’s all right. Leave the door open. If you hear things getting out of hand, then you can intercede.”
Drew paraded down the hallway, a smug sneer plastered on his face. My fists clamped to my sides when his eyes met mine. He was still the same conceited bastard I remembered from school, walking around as if his shit didn’t stink.
“Haas! Good to see you, my man. What do I owe you for making that case disappear?” I felt my teeth grind, the uncomfortable noise piercing through my ears.
“I need your passport.”
“Why? The case was dropped, no? What does it matter?” His smug smirk was still plastered on his face.
“It was noted in your file that you were out of the country, but I need a copy of your passport in the event we have to reference it at a later time,” I lied.
His hands opened his suit jacket. From the inner pocket, he retrieved his passport before handing it to me. His eyebrows darted up, the conniving sneer still present on his face. My hands opened the blue book before I studied the TSA stamp.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Melissa standing outside my office, waiting to intervene if needed; waiting for the moment when I would flip and beat the shit out of the man standing in front of me. A man who I should have considered a brother.
The pit of my stomach dropped when I found the stamp on his passport. The rage that built inside me was like no other. My fingers pressed against the flaps of his passport, indenting in the navy blue cover. It wasn’t him. Fuck.
Drew had been out of the country before Braelynn went missing and hadn’t returned until the morning she woke up in the hospital. The asshole in front of me wasn’t the reason she had kicked me out, pushed me away from her.
Could he have hired someone to take her? Possibly. But Dr
ew wasn’t that smart enough to hire someone on such short notice. He knew I would search for every possible reason to blame this on him and with a few weeks he would have no time to hire someone.
The unwanted feeling of rage boiled my blood. I wanted it to be Drew.
He was the type of person who would do some fucked up shit like take a woman against her will. Shit, he had done it on multiple occasions, and no one had stopped him. Braelynn was the one who had come close.
It was all too coincidental—Braelynn finding the one possible thing to put Drew behind bars, her going missing days before we met with the judge, to appear again days after the case was dropped.
“I’ll make you a copy, Mr. Haas.” My head snapped up from the booklet. Melissa stood in the doorway, her hand held out to me.
“Uh … yes. Sure.” I handed her the passport.
Taking a seat, Drew kicked his feet onto the desk and crossed them at his ankles, his entwined fingers locked behind his head. “The weather is fucking beautiful this time of year, no?” he questioned, admiring the sun illuminating the streets below. I didn’t reply. I stood frozen in place like a bull waiting to strike. I felt the muscles on my neck contract with each word he spoke. “Why don’t you blow off the rest of your day? We can head to the range at Chelsea Piers. I have a couple a Cubans we can smoke. It’ll be my way of personally thanking you for helping me deal with another whiney bitch.”
That was it.
“Get the fuck out!” The words were out my mouth within seconds. “Drew, you’re fucking guilty. Not only now, but with every other woman you’ve managed to have sign an NDA. You’re fucking lucky this case fell apart. I don’t want to join you at the range. I want you to get the hell out of my goddamn office.”
Melissa returned from the copy machine and handed Drew his passport. “Mr. Seymour, I’ll see you out.” She smiled politely at him.
“I’ll see you soon, bro. Try to look happy that your undefeated record still stands.” He laughed out loud.
Melissa led Drew down the hallway. When they were no longer in my view, I sat back on the table. My fist slammed the mahogany wood before I pushed at the closest stack of paperwork and watched it fly.
“Fuck!”
“Do you need me to do anything?” Melissa’s question forced me to snap my eyes open. Papers littered my office floor. Her worried eyes searched the floor and then looked back up at me. “I can ask one of the interns to clean this up for you.”
My elbow rested on the table holding my head, my fingertips massaging my scalp. This couldn’t be true.
I poured more sugar than normal into my black coffee. Though I needed food in my stomach, hospital food never looked appetizing. I took cash out of my pocket and handed it to the cashier before I located Kennedy and Gus in the cafeteria.
I pulled out the chair next to Gus and sat, scratching the back of my neck and yawning from my lack of sleep. Kennedy’s eyes were puffy and her head hung low, lost somewhere deep in her thoughts. Gus’s forehead lay flush against the table.
“You two are quiet,” I finally said after taking a sip of my coffee.
“You look like shit,” Gus said, looking up. Kennedy sniffled and wiped back a tear. She shook her head in disbelief.
“Speak for yourself,” I threw back at Gus. “Drew came by to see me today.”
Kennedy dropped her fork on top of her pasta salad when she heard his name. “What happened?” I’m sure she was hopeful I had found something that would help Braelynn.
I shook my head and looked past her to the windows. It was the same question I had thought over and over for the past forty-eight hours.
What happened?
“When my assistant told me that Braelynn quit the internship, I knew something was wrong. I suspected he had done something to her.”
“So Braelynn was right? He is a scumbag?” Gus asked.
“Yeah.” I shrugged my shoulders. “One of the biggest scums I know. But when I went to his office, his secretary said he was out of the country. This morning I had Melissa ask him to come into my office and bring his passport. I made some bullshit up that I needed proof for his file.”
I exhaled the breath that was trapped in my chest. “He was out of the country. Left the day before she went missing and returned the day she awoke in the hospital. It wasn’t him who took her. TSA stamped his passport.”
“Fucking A!” Gus slammed his head on the table, his hands covering his head like a shield.
“Well, I don’t mean to throw salt on your wound, but this morning Braelynn was given a 5150.”
“What? When the fuck did this happen? Why the fuck didn’t you call?”
Kennedy’s tear-filled eyes flicked from Gus’s to mine. “This morning.” A soft sob escaped her. “I just found out.”
“My phone is dead I couldn’t call anyone. It was a long fucking night.” Gus reached across the table and took Kennedy’s hand in his. His head lay on the side of his arm.
“Last night she began to withdraw from all the crap she was on. When they wouldn’t give her any pain medication, she took the nurse’s pen and threatened to stab her.” Kennedy brushed the tear that dripped from her eyes.
“Shit!” I slammed my fist on the table, then slid my chair back and pushed off the table. “Where is she?”
“Sit, Peyton,” Gus murmured.
“Officer Walsh returned with some pictures from the security cameras at the clubs. Braelynn was there,” she sobbed. “It all happened so quickly. Braelynn was restrained so she asked Loren to remove her pillow, complaining it was uncomfortable or something. But when the pillow was gone, Braelynn began slamming her wounded head against the hard mattress, shouting that she wanted to return to the dark hole, for us to let her go to the unknown.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That wasn’t the woman I had fallen in love with, the woman who was strong—a fighter.
“She’s been sedated three times in the past forty-eight hours. They’ve requested an involuntary psychiatric hold.”
Shocked, I sat there with my hands holding my head. Maybe she had fooled us all. “Have you heard anything from the shrink?” I asked after a couple of minutes had passed.
“I spoke to Loren a little while ago. They’re saying severe depression, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, rape trauma syndrome since she never properly dealt with the shit that happened to Loren and her.” Kennedy’s pager beeped on the table. “Crap, I’m getting called to HR. I should have never given her the morphine. I’m so getting fired.”
“It’ll be all right, Kenn. You’re not going to get fired.” A small sad smile appeared on Gus’s face.
“HR?” I questioned.
“Yeah, I got written up for giving Braelynn morphine. I probably lost my first-year internship.”
“I’ll make a call to the Board of Trustees. My mother is a big benefactor for this hospital.”
“Thanks.” Kennedy rested her hand on my shoulder before walking away.
I lowered my head to the hard surface of the table. Now I knew why I’d never wanted to love anyone before. Why having any real feelings towards her was the wrong thing for me to do. Love could only fuck up things. I’d lost all my power. I was helpless, unable to protect her. I felt absent, powerless, and alone. All due to that fact that I loved that woman.
“What the fuck do we do now?” I asked.
“We wait and see what happens.”
I couldn’t wait. I had to take the evidence that was presented and choose the verdict. Black and white, no room for gray. Not when I was this involved. The facts were simple: drugs in her system, fresh heroin scab, pictures, receipts, and testimony. She was guilty. Any jury would convict her. Whether I believed her or not, there was no way I could make all this evidence go away.
I knew what I needed to do.
I needed to step away, let the storm pass and see what happened after she was out of involuntary hold. I needed to erase the love I had for the Braelynn I once knew.
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Fuck. I needed a way to forget her.
Braelynn
“Braelynn, do you want to talk about what happened with the night nurse?” he asked, but I ignored his question for the fourth time.
I stared out the window from Dr. Varrasso’s office. The sun was bright in Manhattan, but I still couldn’t keep my eyes opened when looking at the window. My vision was still blurry and sensitive to light.
“Braelynn?”
I looked at him and licked my chapped lips. My chest was heavy, the uncontainable need to scream and cry weighed on my shoulders. But it was pointless to do either. I was in hell, and screaming or crying would only get me sedated. Again.
I moved my eyes around the room once again and looked back at him. He was an attractive psychiatrist—dark hair, pleasing athletic physique and dark chocolate eyes. He was young, clearly still finishing his boards.
“What was the question?”
His eyes softened when I wiped away a tear. He still hadn’t mastered how to hide his emotions from his patients and his empathy caused more ache. I was growing tired of the sympathy of the people around me.
“Do you want to talk about what happened with the night nurse? Tell me—step by step— why you think you’re here now.” He sat on the small couch across from me, crossing his hands in his lap.
My head still ached. There wasn’t enough banging on the fracture that could make this all disappear.
Trust me, I’d tried.
“I’m here because Dr. Pearson insisted on a 5150 and my sister thinks I’m a danger to myself. I’m being held here against my will for the next seventy-two hours while you and the rest of your staff pump me with happy pills and ask me all of these questions, trying to pick my brain apart.” I met his chocolate eyes and raised my eyebrow.
“And what happened with the night nurse?”
“Withdrawal, or so she said.” I shrugged my shoulders, looking out the window again.
“Braelynn, I can’t help you unless you open up.” He dropped his notepad on the table and crossed his arms. “You want to sit here in silence, we can do that, but that only means that you’ll stay here longer. Your conduct with an intern was inappropriate—”
Coherent Page 3
