“No! No! Get off me!” Tiana squealed so hard and loud the back of her throat burned. When it was all said and done, it had taken twelve orderlies and two security guards to get her into a position where they could stick her with the needle filled with Ativan.
Tiana had tried screaming from the pain of the needle prick, but the medicine took effect so quickly her mouth just hung open with no sound coming out of it.
Tiana’s body relaxed within a few seconds, and her head lolled to the side. She could hear footsteps around her and see light, but she couldn’t react or control her body movements.
“Ready? One, two, three, up.” The orderlies’ voices sounded robotic in Tiana’s ears. She felt herself being hoisted up and then slammed down onto a stretcher. Tears drained out of the sides of her eyes, but not because she had made them come. She felt herself moving, but it felt more like she was floating.
Right before her eyes closed on their own, Tiana saw two girls huddled together watching everything that was happening to her. Both girls had looks of genuine concern and pity etched into their facial expressions. It was like they knew something that Tiana didn’t know. Tiana didn’t understand why they looked so concerned when they didn’t even know her name.
Tiana spent three days in a straitjacket locked in an all-white padded room before she was let out to mix with the other patients on the floor.
“Let’s go, Caldoron. I ain’t got all day. Step lively or go back to the white room!” an orderly had screamed as Tiana shuffled her feet, trying to keep up with him. The odor emanating from her body was making Tiana herself sick. She hadn’t had a shower since the police had picked her up from the local hospital where she had been treated for the deep self-inflicted cuts on her wrists.
Tiana felt like she had to learn to walk all over again and her body ached in places she didn’t even know existed. She had been so drugged up, and tied down for so long, that it was as if her brain wasn’t sending signals to the rest of her body parts. A few times she’d even stumbled, nearly spilling to the floor flat on her face. She was mad at her body for betraying her like that. If she hadn’t been drugged up, she could’ve been trying to figure a way out of there.
“Here you go. This is your bed, and this is your side. Stay on your side and on your bed, and there won’t be no problems. Got it?” the dark, lanky, bull-faced orderly told Tiana, dumping a blanket roll and a small hospital basin filled with toiletries onto a tiny, unmade metal-spring bed that had a thin stripped mattress atop it.
Tiana collapsed onto the bed and closed her eyes. Suddenly, before she could fight against it, a deep, comatose type of sleep overcame her and everything faded to black.
“Please, no! Please, not tonight! I’ll do anything! Just don’t take me!”
Tiana thought she was having anther nightmare when she was jerked out of her sleep to the sound of a high-pitched, squeaky, pleading voice. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Although it hurt Tiana’s head to open her eyes, she did it anyway. Her eyes went round when she noticed two men dragging one of her roommates from her bed. Tiana sat up, her head throbbing. It quickly registered with her that the girl’s face was familiar.
“What are y’all doing to her? Where y’all taking her?” Tiana croaked through cracked, dry lips. Her throat burned with every word and, even though she was trying to speak loudly, her voice barely came out above a whisper.
As one of the men walked by her, she tried to reach out to him and was able to pull at his pant leg. The man turned on Tiana and glared at her with the most evil blaze in his eyes. “Stay quiet, keep your hands to your fucking self, and mind your business before you get thrown back in the room,” the man growled, baring his yellow teeth like a wild animal on the attack.
“Please! Please!” Tiana’s roommate continued to cry as the men dragged her past Tiana’s bed and out of the room.
Tiana struggled to her feet and rushed as fast as she could to the door, but her view and movements were obstructed right away by the broad body of one of the orderlies.
“Go back to bed, Caldoron. It’s for your own fucking good,” the Kimbo Slice look alike said, pushing Tiana in the chest and pulling the door to the room shut. At that time, Tiana didn’t know how often she would be seeing the face of Daniel, the orderly, after that.
Tiana turned around in the darkness and began moving back toward her bed.
“Don’t worry. You’ll find out where they took her real soon and then you won’t be so fast to want to know,” said a voice in the darkness.
Tiana jumped; the eerie tone in the voice gave her chills. “What? Who?” Tiana squinted. The source of the voice moved closer to Tiana’s bed. Through the darkness, she could see the silhouette of a petite girl with long, wavy hair.
“I’m Celeste,” the voice said, boldly flopping down on the end of Tiana’s bed. “The girl they just dragged out of here is Elizabeth, but she likes to be called Izzy.”
Tiana looked at the girl tentatively. She didn’t trust many people.
“When people introduce themselves you follow up by introducing yourself,” Celeste told her. Celeste reached over and turned on the bedside lamp closest to Tiana’s bed. She surveyed Tiana up and down and smiled like she knew a secret that Tiana didn’t know.
Tiana raised her eyebrows at the personal intrusion. “I’m Tatiana, but you can call me Tiana.”
“So I guess you’re here for trying to commit suicide too?” Celeste said, nodding toward the old, dingy, bloodstained gauze pads on Tiana’s wrists.
“Something like that,” Tiana replied, looking at the nasty dried blood on the wrappings, then shuffling her hands so neither of them could see them anymore.
“Well, so did I and so did Izzy. That’s why we are here too,” Celeste said, her voice trailing off. “I wasn’t bold enough to do what you did, though. My death choice was pills and alcohol mixed with a big ‘fuck you’ to everybody I knew. I just took whatever I could find. I’m not into physical pain.”
“How long have you and Elizabeth been here?” Tiana asked with no sympathy in her voice for Celeste’s suicide confession.
“We both got here the same week,” Celeste replied, jumping up from Tiana’s bed abruptly and returning to her own bed. “We’ve been here almost two months, but it feels like forever.”
“Well, I’m planning on being here just a few more days. I’ll be damned if they think they’re going to keep me here more than a month.”
“Yeah, we thought the same thing when we first got here. They’re gonna keep you here as long as they want. You’ll see. Good night, Tiana,” Celeste said.
Tiana tried to keep the conversation going, but Celeste didn’t say another word.
Tiana wasn’t awake when Izzy was brought back to their room, but even in her dreams, Tiana could hear Izzy sobbing like her entire world had just ended. It wasn’t until she got up the next day that she saw the blood droplets leading from the door to Izzy’s bed.
“You what, Cee Cee? We don’t need to rush to go our separate ways so fast.” She smiled at her friend. “Tomorrow morning let’s all grab some breakfast and then head to the Courtyard like we had originally wanted to do. We can hang out in the room, relax, and spend two nights together there. We still have some money from the two grand Dr. Syed gave us, so we’ll be good.”
“Really? That sounds amazing,” Cee Cee said excitedly.
“That sounds great, Tiana,” Izzy agreed. “I’ve never been to a fancy hotel like that,” she admitted.
“All the more reason for us to go,” Tiana stated. She felt good that she had managed to cheer up her two best friends, and she decided she’d make the best out of the next two days she’d get to spend with them.
Chapter 4
“This shit is not bad for two girls who broke out of a psychiatric hospital with nothing and no one to run to after offing their sick, twisted psychiatrist.” Tiana beamed as she, Izzy, and Celeste entered their room at the Courtyard by Marriott. “Shit, Cee Cee, you
’re a genius for this one. Look how easy it was for you to say you were some doctor’s daughter and get a room without showing some form of ID or anything. I swear, when you’re in these high-society neighborhoods there ain’t shit you can’t get,” Tiana asserted, rushing over to check out the wet bar.
“Tiana, you make it seem like you didn’t grow up living comfortable too,” Izzy pointed out.
“I never said I grew up starving in the ghetto. I grew up comfortable, but Cee Cee grew up a whole lot better than me,” Tiana replied.
“It would’ve been even better if I’d had some Rag & Bone jeans, a Givenchy T-shirt, some Gucci stilettos, and a Céline bag waiting for my ass out here for when I got out. I’m so tired of looking like a fucking runaway refugee it’s not even funny,” Cee Cee griped in that perfect, pampered princess way that only she could pull off.
“We sure picked the right one to send to the front desk,” Tiana mumbled and shook her head. “All your ass thinks about is clothes, shoes, and bags.”
The girls had all decided that when they checked into the hotel, they would send Celeste to the front desk to check in because Celeste knew how to turn on the proper English and act like a pampered little rich girl who could simply use her eyes and facial expressions to dare a lowly front desk clerk to question her.
Tiana knew her strong alpha-type personality, her street swag, and that little hint of attitude that traced through all of her words would not have gone unnoticed, and the front desk clerk definitely would have requested identification from her before giving her a room.
Celeste was the right one for the job with her model poise, and beauty queen looks, too. Tiana always thought Celeste was the prettiest of them all. Celeste had perfectly straight white teeth, light brown almond-shaped eyes, and high cheekbones; and her blemish-free olive skin tone gave her that Kardashian family, Arabian princess type of glow. Celeste, who was half Haitian, half Italian, had what Tiana always referred to as that Italian princess body: big, perfect boobs, a flat stomach, slightly rounded hips, and a round, plump booty that looked like it was store-bought and chiseled by the surgery gods themselves. Her wavy dirty blond hair hung down to the middle of her back. At nineteen years old, Celeste managed to get a man’s attention by just walking into a room.
Tiana, on the other hand, felt like she was the average Puerto Rican girl with light brown skin, a fairly cute face, and shoulder-length curly hair. Tiana was secretly jealous of Celeste’s striking beauty. She would never hate on Cee Cee; she just hated feeling so average when she was around her friend.
Tiana failed to realize that she was beautiful in her own right. Tiana was always taller than most girls her age, standing five foot eight inches tall. She had an athletic, track star’s body and was pretty tall considering she was full-blooded Puerto Rican. Most Puerto Rican females were of average height. Her breasts filled a 36C cup and were perfectly round and perky. She had four-pack abs, curvy hips with a small heart-shaped backside, and thick, toned thighs that looked amazing in skinny jeans or a short, tight dress. She had piercing brown eyes and full, pouty pink lips that stood out from her light brown complexion.
Her curly black hair framed her face in a way that gave her that exotic Latina flair. Since she had been locked in the hospital, Tiana kept her hair lazily combed out and unkempt. Her bangs hung over her face, giving her this crazy, deranged look. She walked with her head hung low, and she scared staff when they’d try to look into her face and see her brown eyes staring at them through the mess that was her hair. It was a far cry from how she looked out in the real world when she took care of herself. Compared to Celeste and Elizabeth, Tiana was the one who had scared the hospital staff and other patients the most. At twenty-four, she was the oldest of the three girls, and she had become very overprotective of them.
“I need a shower and a nap,” Cee Cee huffed, kicking off her sneakers and unzipping her hoodie. All of the bending, ducking, and running in the past seventy-two hours had her aching all over. She may have had a nice body, but the only sport she’d ever indulged in was running through the stores at the mall. This was their only day at the hotel, and at the motel last night she hadn’t felt like she had really been able to rest the way she had hoped she would.
“Yeah, I feel you. You can go to sleep. I’ll be up. I want to watch the news and see if they’re saying anything about the explosion. If they’re suspecting it has any connections to his patients, we’re going to have to leave here as soon as possible, Cee Cee. We’ll just get a few winks, and then we gotta bounce,” Tiana replied, shrugging out of her hoodie.
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Celeste grumbled as she headed into the bathroom.
“Don’t sound like that. We just did what we had to do,” Tiana reaffirmed.
Celeste didn’t respond, but the slamming door told Tiana that Celeste was still upset about killing the little boy. Tiana shook her head, cracked open an Absolut vodka nip, took it to the head, and then picked up the television remote and clicked it on.
“I knew this shit would be all over the news,” Tiana whispered, finishing the tiny bottle of vodka and squinting at the television screen.
A reporter said, “Police and fire officials have confirmed that a prominent and much-respected psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Syed, died in an apparent car explosion outside of his home yesterday. Police have not confirmed this, but we are also told by a source that a child as young as four years old may have also been in the car when it exploded. Neighbors here say they are shocked. They speculate that the child may have been the doctor’s nephew because the doctor did not have children of his own. Right now, police are not saying whether this explosion was the result of something faulty in the vehicle or whether they suspect foul play. Dr. Syed was head of the psychiatric evaluation department at William P. Rollins Psychiatric Hospital in Detroit. We will keep you updated on this very tragic event.”
Tiana listened to the reporter’s words, and waves of nausea rolled through her stomach. She didn’t know if it was the excitement of knowing that she and the girls had pulled off a perfect hit—one that would’ve made her father proud—or if it was anxiety leaving her body knowing that they had been able to kill this bastard doctor who had abused, raped, and tormented her and the girls for so long.
Tiana was so transfixed by the news that she hadn’t even heard Izzy enter the room. She had run down to the lobby to purchase bottles of water for them. “So I was right after all. He didn’t have a kid,” she said.
“Yeah, it wasn’t his kid,” Tiana replied.
At that moment Cee Cee came out of the bathroom. “So now they saying that the kid wasn’t even his? We killed someone else’s baby?” Cee Cee asked, her face folded into a scowl. “This is all types of fucked up, Tatiana.”
“Look! Stop blaming me. We all planned this and it just so fucking happened to be the little boy was there. It’s over and what’s done is done,” Tiana snapped as the knot of anger and anxiety in her chest finally unraveled. She hung her head as a quick pang of guilt came over her like a dark hood. She knew Cee Cee was mad because she called Tiana by her full name. She almost never did that.
“Blaming you? Believe it or not shit’s not always about you,” Cee Cee fired back.
Tiana quickly shook off the feeling of dread and guilt that had trampled on her mood. Fuck it. What’s done it done, Tiana told herself. She could hear her father’s voice in her head: “When you have to kill somebody to protect yourself or your family there is nothing to feel guilty about.” He would’ve never approved of killing kids, but under the circumstances, Tiana had no other choice but to let it go down the way it did.
* * *
All three girls, Izzy, Tiana, and Cee Cee, lay awake in their room at the hotel in silence and hardly able to sleep. Tiana was resting on the sofa bed pullout while Izzy and Cee Cee had each taken a bed. When the digital clock on the hotel nightstand read 4:00 a.m., Tiana sat up in the sofa bed like she’d been jolted with a shock of electricity.
“Cee Cee, you asleep?” Tiana asked, shaking Celeste’s arm slightly.
“Tuh, no.” Celeste sucked her teeth and sighed. “Sleep? What’s that?”
“Izzy, you up too?”
“Yup. I can’t stop thinking about everything that’s happened. It’s surreal.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tiana agreed. “Listen, Izzy, you can come with me if you want. You don’t have to go back to that asshole boyfriend of yours.”
“Don’t call him an asshole, Tiana,” Izzy pleaded with Tiana. “You’ve never even met him. He’s a really nice guy when you get to know him. He just has a nasty temper sometimes.” She wasn’t sure if she was saying it more to convince Tiana or to convince herself. Izzy wasn’t sure what was going to happen when she went back home to her boyfriend, Shawn; but she had missed him the entire time she had been in there, and she had high hopes that he’d been missing her too.
“Well, in case things don’t turn out the way you’re expecting them to, I’m writing my friend Drake’s address on a piece of paper for you. I’ll most likely be staying with him until I get my plan set in stone. Even if you go to him and I’m not there, he’ll make sure to help you get in contact with me.” Tiana reached over to the bed and handed Izzy a small piece of paper.
“Thanks, love. You’re the best.” Izzy truly appreciated Tiana. Since they’d met, Tiana had been kind of mentoring her and trying to get her to be stronger for herself and not rely on Shawn so much.
Shawn had been Izzy’s boyfriend of three years. Two, if you didn’t count the year she’d spent in the facility. He wasn’t exactly the best boyfriend to her. He’d beaten her a few times and passed her around to his friends to make some quick cash when he needed. Elizabeth always did what he asked her to do because she thought that was the only way she’d prove her love and loyalty to him.
Growing up, she bounced around from foster home to foster home, never experiencing any type of real love. When she aged out of foster care at eighteen, she decided to follow in some of her fellow foster friends’ footsteps and start dancing at the local strip club in downtown Flint called Déjà Vu. A year later, she met Shawn, and she had been with him since.
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