Unlocked: Sweet Demands Trilogy #3

by A. E. Murphy

  I don’t take the coffee. I do what I needed to do and escape through his bedroom window, dropping four feet to the dirt below, in between two bristly looking bushes that have survived the cold weather so far.

  It’s nice to see something thriving in this shit storm. Just a shame it’s not me.

  Pulling my hood over my head and my scarf over my nose, I sneak away, being mindful of the alleyway being blocked either end. Luckily nobody pays me any mind as I pass with my head dipped. They’re too busy looking at the back-exit door.

  I wish there was a life exit door, where you step through it and it reboots. I’m not sure what to do.

  I know I don’t want this pregnancy or this kid.

  I’m not ready to be a mother.

  It’s not the baby’s fault, it didn’t ask for this, but I didn’t ask for this either…

  Adoption isn’t an option. The thought terrifies me. Thatcher has money. What if he finds out I’m pregnant, thinks it’s his and gets custody? It’s happened before to other mothers. He raped me. He assaulted me. He forced this choice on me.

  But I didn’t convict him. I let him go free, which means I’ll never stand a chance against him in court. I can’t do that. I can’t go through that.

  I should have been more careful with my pill. It should have been the first thing I took when I got home that night. I should have gotten the morning after pill but I wasn’t thinking. Why didn’t that fucking nurse offer me one?

  Shouldn’t she have done that? Or is it too late after a few days?

  I’m pregnant.

  I’m pregnant!

  There’s something growing inside me that I can’t comprehend and I don’t want.

  Does that make me a bad person? My options are so limited.

  There’s nothing else I can do!

  No matter what I decide, I’ll never be able to live with myself.

  I want my mum. I want her to hug me and hold me and tell me it’s okay.

  Does the foetus want that too? Is it in there, swimming around, begging me to just wait a few more months and hug it?

  No.

  “No it’s fucking not,” I say aloud, bitterly. “It’s not even a group of cells yet.”

  I consider going to the clinic to speak to that nurse but I can’t. I don’t want anybody to influence my decisions. This is all on me. All of it.

  My body carries me and my burdens through the city with no clear objective in mind. I pray for a miracle. I pray that a bus might hit me. Dying would be easier. Even if I do terminate the pregnancy, which is the goal here, I’ll still have to go on with life like I am, with the knowledge that I killed something pure and innocent simply because its father hurt me.

  It didn’t ask for this any more than I did.

  Any more than my aching knuckles that still throb and sting from the mirror impact. Any more than Kai deserved the blame I put on him for my choice.

  All of my choices led me here. All of my choices and my actions.

  I thought I was in love. I thought I was happy.

  I’ll never feel that again.

  What’s the point in this anymore?

  Lockhart: Where are you?

  I don’t text him my location. I don’t want him to find me.

  Instead I sit on a bench overlooking Hyde Park. I’ve been walking for so long my entire body feels like a fleshy block of ice. I stopped shivering a while ago and started shaking so violently I likely look like I’m having a seizure.

  When my eyelids start drooping I stand and continue on, walking more, pushing my legs through the pain.

  There’s only one place I want to go now. There’s only one thing that will help me through this. There’s only one that I can think of.

  I pick up a bottle of aspirin on the way in a low-key corner shop. I tell myself it’s for my headache. Aspirin is a good drug to take when one has a headache, or so I’ve heard my mother say. I always took an ibuprofen but I wanted to be different this time.

  It’s for my headache.

  When I reach Lockhart Enterprises, I stare up at the building, remembering the first time I did this and how excited, young and carefree I felt. They were signing us.

  Us.

  It was insane.

  I wish they hadn’t.

  I take the elevator up, not the stairs. People look when I pop a handful of pills into my mouth and dry swallow. A man offers me some water. Does he not realise I just took ten at once? I accept the unopened bottle with a nod and keep it when we get to the floor I desire.

  I’m not even sure what I’m doing as I tip the bottle back, the bottle of pills, and more pile on my tongue. They taste bitter. It’s the first thing I’ve tasted in weeks, except when I went to that spa with Lockhart. The memory of our two nights together make me smile. How he held me so tightly in the night as though frightened to let me go.

  I wonder how angry he’ll be when he finds out I’ve forced him to.

  Switching on the smart watch I was gifted, I use it to enter the room I was also gifted what seems so long ago.

  The lights come on automatically but, with a spinning head and frozen fingers, I tweak the settings and set them to low. The room looks orange. My piano, which has been gathering dust, shines like a beacon of peace in this sandstorm of fail.

  I always judged those that were suicidal.

  I always thought they were selfish, leaving behind their loved ones.

  Though as I cut into my numb flesh, straight down the middle of each wrist, I realise it’s not even a thought. You don’t even entertain it. You don’t think about it. You just do it, knowing the pain of death is so much less than the pain of life.

  I call Lockhart and he immediately answers. I place the phone on top of the piano as crimson pours down my frozen fingers, warming them as I press the first key of the piano.

  “Cerise?” I hear my name in the distance and I begin to play.

  The melody is haunting. I’ve never played it before. I don’t have to play them before. They just flow from me. It’s why I was so famous. The girl who could play a piece with just a few notes in her mind.

  This piece is my soul, my life force. It’s solemn, a mix between Moonlight Sonata and Palladio, but also none of either. Dramatic, loud, then soft and slow.

  All thoughts of Frank, the reason I stopped playing the piano to begin with, are null. The reason I stopped letting it flow from me like this. He was never worth it. I never loved him, not like I loved Lockhart.

  I never hated him like I hate Lockhart. I never fancied him like I fancied Lockhart.

  I was a fool to stop. Maybe if I’d kept playing, I wouldn’t be so weak now.

  Though for final pieces, this one goes a long way.

  If music could cry, it would be this piece. If music could sob, it would be this piece.

  It is this piece.

  I am this piece.

  As the blood flows from my wrists and the blood thinners kick in, I power my fingers across the stained keys, slipping onto the wrong notes but not caring.

  The continued movement is stopping them from healing. It’s almost over.

  I feel the blood slow. It’s everywhere, on my lap, on the keys, my hands, my feet, the floor around the bench, though it’s no longer gushing and pulsing from me.

  My vision is blurred but I can see the red and I smile at it.

  There’s no more pain as I play the last few notes that I can muster.

  Then there’s no more colour.

  No more thinking.

  No more pregnancy.

  Just death.

  I greet it like it’s the best friend I ever had. My only regret is that I didn’t bring Thatcher down with me.

  No!” Lockhart yells, sounding frantic.

  How can I hear him when I’m dead?

  “Please, Cerise,” he begs. “You have to save her!”

  My body jolts. I don’t feel anything but I’m aware of it. I’m aware of his panicked voice. I’m aware but I’m paralysed.


  I’m supposed to be dead.

  “I love her. I can’t lose her, Enri… I don’t know what to do.”

  Let me die. Let me go. Leave me be.

  I scream and my body jolts again.

  I hear beeping.

  “We have a heartbeat. Get me that O neg NOW! She needs blood!”

  NO I DON’T!

  I fade but I feel locked tight to myself, like my soul is chained to a tether in my body. I’m desperate to go but I’m not allowed.

  I’m not certain how much time passes as I’m stuck in this immoveable and dark limbo, but I’m grateful when I hear voices fade into my atmosphere.

  “The baby looks well.” A woman says, sounding relieved.

  It’s not supposed to be well!

  “Wait… she’s pregnant? She can’t be. She told me she wasn’t!” I hear Lockhart yell.

  “Get him out of here!” The same woman as before shouts.

  “Mr Lockhart, Sir. You can’t be in here. You aren’t family. You aren’t her next of kin.”

  “I’m not leaving,”

  “Call security!” The woman snarls and then addresses him. “I can’t do what I have to do to save her life with you arguing with every decision I make. Mr Lockhart, please leave. You don’t want to see any of this.” The woman curses. “Shit! She’s flatlined again. Get the paddles! Where is that bloody O neg?”

  “Come on,” I hear Enri say to Lockhart.

  “She’s pregnant,” Lockhart murmurs, his tone one of disbelief. “Why would she do this? Does she hate me this much?”

  I fade again but this time it’s reluctantly.

  Lockhart sounded so desperate and defeated.

  My guilt starts rearing its ugly head. Was I too hasty with this decision? Is this what I want anymore?

  “Her parents aren’t coming.” Lockhart yells. “I’m all she has.”

  I roar loudly in the echoing limbo of darkness when I start to fade again.

  What have I done? Why am I being forced in and out of the situation? Either let me witness it all or don’t let me see it at all!

  This is torture.

  A light turns on and my eyes open immediately, not the slow blinking you see in movies on TV. I don’t slowly come back to consciousness. I’m pushed into it and it shocks me like jumping into a pool of ice cubes.

  My chest is tight and there’s a constant cool blow of oxygen going straight into my nostrils. I feel a cool liquid trickling into my arm and look at the plastic tube sticking out of the side of my wrist.

  I’m alive.

  “You should have let me go,” I murmur, keeping my eyes off the man wearing a blood-stained shirt in my peripheral vision.

  “You’re awake!” Lockhart sounds so relieved, it breaks me. “Gods, you’re alive.” He stands, places a hand on top of my head and kisses my forehead. His chest suddenly blocks my view and I realise it’s so he can reach the button that calls for a nurse.

  “Don’t do that,” I snap, going to move my hands to push him away, but the pain in them is too much. They flop back onto the bed and I cry out.

  “She’s awake,” he says to the nurse who pulls the curtain back.

  She smiles kindly at me but I see the judgment in her eyes as she checks my vitals and my reactions.

  “The doctor is on her way.” She smiles, ducking her head, unable to look at me directly as she leaves.

  The doctor literally appears the second she closes the curtain behind her and when she speaks, I know it’s the same doctor who kept shouting at Lockhart. “You gave us quite a scare, Ms Branch.”

  I’m surprised when she taps me on the nose, making me go cross eyed. “I have a few questions of course… as you can imagine, but I’m not going to bombard you with them now. What I am going to do is talk you through the procedure which we had to do to save you.”

  “Should I be grateful?” I murmur, but she chooses to ignore me.

  “Were you aware of your pregnancy?”

  I nod. “I found out yesterday.”

  “Okay.” She looks sympathetic when she responds, “The baby survived and doesn’t look to have suffered…”

  “It’s not a baby; it’s a group of cells.” I correct. “Please don’t call it a baby.”

  “Of course…”

  “But it is a baby,” Lockhart snaps, his tone frustrated.

  I look at him, forcing myself to meet his eyes. He looks so hurt but I can only take the burden of my own right now.

  “It’s an innocent child… did you not think I should get a say in this?”

  “Mr Lockhart,” The doctor warns as I stare blankly at him.

  He stands and rests his hands on the back of his chair, gripping the handle for courage. “No, I know it’s soon and I know you’ve been going through a lot, but we can make this work. I wouldn’t mind a child.” When he hugs me gently, sitting on the bedside, the doctor frowns but he doesn’t stop. She lets him finish and I cry a silent tear when his lips touch the top of my head. “I know I said that your kids would be wild, but… I don’t care. This is a blessing. A light in this darkness. I love you…”

  I’m about to break his heart. “It’s not yours.”

  He squeezes me so tightly, unmoving and silent, and I wonder if his heart has stopped. “Say that again.”

  I inhale a shuddering breath and say, louder this time, “It’s not yours.”

  He’s away from me in the blink of an eye and the doctor leaps from her chair when he throws his at the wall. It breaks the hard surface, crumbling the brick beneath the sterile covering.

  “MR LOCKHART!” She bellows. “REMOVE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY!”

  The curtain flies open and a blood covered Enri comes into view. He grabs Lockhart by the back of his collar, but Lockhart is already on his way out. He doesn’t look at me as he leaves and more tears fall from my eyes.

  “Next time somebody tries to kill themselves,” I mutter, “let them go.”

  “That’s not my job.” The doctor wipes away my tears with a balled-up tissue. “Do you want to talk about it? To me or to somebody from psych?”

  I shake my head. “I just want to sleep.”

  When she nods and stands, I’m surprised. But then she stops at the curtain and, with warm brown eyes on me, she says, “It gets better. Whatever it is, it gets better.”

  “I don’t want it to.”

  “I’ll send somebody in to discuss your options.” Her eyes flicker to my navel and I know what she’s saying. “You’re not alone. If you need anything, press that button and I’ll come. We’re in this together now.”

  No we’re not, I think, but don’t say.

  She leaves me alone and, with painful hands, I lift the rough blanket to my face and sob.

  News of my suicide attempt has spread even faster than the news of my sex tape. I only know because I’ve been Googling myself again, seeing how badly people hate me for everything I’ve done.

  Though now I’m unable to. I’m being forced to stay in a rehab facility in Cambridge. It’s not an NHS facility, which means either the company or myself is paying for it.

  It’s beautiful, which means it’s expensive and the people here are, for lack of a better word, lovely.

  I’m not allowed my phone and I’m only allowed supervised phone calls that I have yet to use.

  Like when I stayed at the spa with Lockhart, I don’t feel like I want to die. I could stay here happily for a long time. It’s easy to forget everything when you shut yourself away from the world.

  Though, saying that, I miss him. I miss him so much. His smell, how he’d hold me when I was sleeping.

  It’s all I talk about with my psychiatrist, who is just as lovely as this place. We don’t talk about what happened or what I did, but instead talk about my life in a band, my music, my powerful love for Lockhart that turned to hate because I couldn’t decipher my own feelings.

  He helps me understand my desperation for somebody to figure out what happened to me.

  I haven’
t told him what happened, but for someone of his age, in this job, I bet it’s not hard to figure out.

  He wants me to say it out loud in a group setting. He wants me to admit to myself that everything that has happened was beyond my control, everything but the cutting of wrists.

  But it wasn’t out of my control. My choices led to that point.

  Mine and mine alone.

  The end goal, he says, is that I leave here with a new outlook on life and a fire in my heart.

  He also doesn’t bullshit me when I ask him every day if Lockhart called.

  “It’s twisted,” I admit, “that I tortured him for weeks, hurt him repeatedly, screamed at him and lied to him, yet it’s him who I miss the most.”

  “Call him,” He replies, but I scoff and walk away.

  That was the end of this morning’s session. This afternoon will tackle my pregnancy. It’s a subject that hasn’t been brought up in the few days I’ve been here. It’s a subject that can’t go ignored for much longer.

  I know what I want to do, so I know that I have a little more time. I’m only three weeks along. I have time. Not much but I have it.

  “The cuts on your wrists are healing badass.” I’m startled by this statement, which comes from a short haired woman with dark skin, beautiful thick lips and braided hair. She straddles a chair opposite me. “You’ll be able to tattoo over them soon.” When she flashes her own tattooed arms at me, showing me the indent in her right wrist that goes all the way down her forearm, I cringe. Not because it’s ugly but because I don’t know how to address her. “That’s if you’re into that.”

  I notice her pink scrubs and blink rapidly before asking, “Wait… you’re a nurse?”

  “I am. I was admitted here for the same thing you were, six years ago. I fell in love with the place and got the qualifications I needed to come back.”

  At this I smile and take her outstretched hand in greeting, admiring the sword tattoo that spans from elbow to wrist. It reminds me of the movie Kill Bill. “I’m Cerise.”

  “I’m Joy, Nurse Joy, but call me Joy. I’m a friend in here, not a psychologist.”

  My bottom lip starts to tremble and I curse myself for being so weak.