A Five-Minute Life

by Emma Scott

  “My Antony…”

  His lips brushed mine. The lightest touch, yet the sensation drew a moan from me and an electric current wrapped around my heart. It pulsed as his kiss came again. He captured my upper lip briefly, then the lower, sucking lightly. Exploring.

  I clung to him, hardly able to keep my feet, as his hand slipped into my hair, angling my head. My lips parted, ready for him. He made a sound deep in his chest, and his mouth took mine completely, pushing in—the sweetest invasion—and I opened to take it all.

  Another moan rose in me at the first taste of his tongue sweeping along mine, and I sank against him. His kiss gave me every part of him—the lust and raw need wrapped around a core of reverence. He kissed me completely, as if his every intention was pouring into my mouth. To take care of me. To cherish me.

  To fuck me…

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. The thought made me dizzy.

  Every electrified particle in my being knew Jimmy’s kiss was a preview of what he would give me in his bed. I’d surrender to my warrior while he worshipped me as his queen. Reverence and need in perfect, equal amounts. I’d come screaming his name.

  The thought set my blood on fire. I found my feet, wrapped my arms around his neck, my fingers sinking into his hair, pulling. He dropped one hand to my waist, pressing me to him. Heat flushed my core, aching with want. Lust. Happiness. The intensity of him made my heart pound, overwhelmed by this much need in a man pressed against me, his every muscle and bone and sinew tensed with it.

  Now Jim’s other hand came up to hold my face. He turned my head to the other side, and a fresh rush of heat surged through me as he gave me more of his kiss. He gave and gave, while his mouth greedily delved into mine and took what it wanted. A gentle sucking that accompanied every sweep of his tongue, every nip of his teeth.

  We kissed and kissed, our hands roaming, the urgency growing desperate. My entire world became the scent of Jim Whelan’s skin, his cologne, the leather of his jacket. I fell against the fence, taking him with me. It rattled, and he broke his mouth from mine, blinking for a moment like a man coming out of a dream.

  That sound… Bad memories…

  I held his face in my hands, his breath coming hard and warm over my wet lips.

  “Stay with me,” I whispered. “Right here. Make a new memory…”

  Our mouths crashed together again, our tongues tangling, teeth biting. He gripped the chain link above my head, so he could press into me harder. My legs spread to fit him closer to me, angling my hips to feel the denim of his jeans rub the denim of my shorts. His mouth descended to my chin, my neck, down to my collarbone, to the scar there. He kissed it reverently, then ran his tongue over it.

  “Jesus, Jimmy.” I breathed.

  My fingers sunk into his hair, as he kept going. Open-mouthed kisses, the brush of his stubble, the flick of his tongue, all sending shivers over my skin and spreading like wildfire over every inch of me.

  My eyes fluttered open. Then they flared wide.

  Jules was leaning against the corner of the sanitarium. Arms crossed, watching us over the cigarette in her hand.

  Oh shit.

  Jimmy felt me stiffen and pulled away. He looked to where I stared; breathing hard. We reluctantly stepped away from each other as Jules tucked her smoke into the corner of her mouth and gave a slow clap.

  God, how long has she been there?

  “Very nice, Miss Hughes,” Jules said. “Making your way through the orderlies?”

  “What? No…”

  Jules chucked her smoke on the ground and twisted the heel of her boot on it. “Sure looks like it to me.” She gave us both a disgusted glance as she strode for the side door. “Watch yourself, Jim. She’ll cry rape and you’ll end up in jail too.”

  Her words slapped my face and Jimmy tensed up beside me. I could feel the anger radiating off of him.

  “Where did that come from?” I asked after the door had closed behind her.

  “She and Brett were friends,” he said.

  “I can see that now,” I said, shivering despite the morning warmth. “She seems like the kind of person who’d send love letters to a serial killer.”

  Jimmy’s hard expression didn’t soften as our gazes locked, everything we’d done hanging between us.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Kind of shocking to hear but just words.” I glanced up at him. “Wait. Do you mean us?”

  He nodded.

  “I regret nothing.” He didn’t return my teasing smile. “You do?”

  “I’m late for my shift,” he said and added, “My last shift.”

  “No, I won’t let them fire you.”

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you here.”

  He trudged to the side door and I gave the road out of Blue Ridge a last, longing look and then followed. I could scale the fence too, but how far could I go without the Hazarin? How many miles to New York would I make before I began to slip back into oblivion?

  And would Jimmy follow me? Or try to stop me?

  Inside, I gripped his arm, my fingers digging into the leather. “What happens now?” I asked. “Are you giving up on me?”

  He moved in, stood as close to me as he could without touching me. “Never, Thea. N-N-Never. I swear it.”

  “Jim?” Alonzo stood at the end of the hallway, his expression grim and hard but his tone heavy with regret. “Can I see you a minute?”

  Jimmy’s final parting glance was full of such longing, my heart nearly broke. He walked away from me, down the hall, and around the corner.

  It felt like goodbye.

  Because it was.

  Later, in the rec room, I stood over a fresh canvas but didn’t touch the paint. Rita came in, her face pitying and I knew the answer before I asked, “Where’s Jimmy?”

  How long has it been? Where are Mom and Dad? Where’s Jimmy?

  The script had been rewritten, but the details were the same—me, stuck here, waiting for other people to tell me how my life was going to be.

  Rita started to answer but Anna, walking in with Alonzo behind her, beat her to it.

  “Jim has been let go,” Anna said.

  My heart felt as if it had been stabbed, even if I knew it was coming. “Jules tattled on us?”

  Alonzo bowed his head as if in mourning. “It is against the facility’s regulations for an employee to have inappropriate relations with a resident. Jim knew that and he left without incident.”

  He sailed away and left me. Left me without a fight.

  I glared at them all. “And what if the relations were completely consensual?”

  “That’s not possible,” Anna said. “Not while you’re here, Miss Hughes.”

  “You all were so happy to see me wake up,” I said. “I don’t know why you bothered.”

  Rita looked pained. “Please, Thea. Try to understand—”

  “My sister is behind this, isn’t she?”

  “No,” Anna said. “This is policy.”

  I lifted my head, unwilling to let them see me broken or beaten. “I’m sure Delia will come today to check on me,” I said stiffly. “I’ll be in my room.”

  I went upstairs and lay on my bed, sucking deep breaths. Jimmy’s kiss lingered all over my lips, my skin, and my heart. And now they expected me to live another few weeks in the sanitarium without him.

  Delia came to my door an hour later. I threw it open on the third knock.

  “You have no right to do this,” I told Delia.

  “I suspected you’d throw a tantrum.”

  “A what…?” I clenched my teeth to bite back a scream.

  “I warned him,” she said. “And he still couldn’t keep his hands off you.”

  “You don’t get to say whose hands I want on me.”

  “Neither do you.” Her expression was smug. “It’s against sanitarium policy.”

  “Fuck the policy and fuck you, Delia!”

  She stared as if I’d slapped her.

  �
��You can’t dictate my life,” I said. “You want him fired because he kissed me? I wanted it, Delia. I want him. I want to live. Goddamn, do I need to write it down? More word chains? More paintings? I’m standing right in front of you and telling you what I want, and you can’t hear me.”

  “Are you done?” Delia asked.

  I blinked. “Am I… done? No. I’m not done. I haven’t even started yet. I’m leaving.” I went to my dresser, yanked out the entire drawer, and upturned it on the bed.

  “You can’t leave,” Delia said.

  “Watch me.”

  I went to the closet, grabbed my new clothes off the hangers and dumped them too.

  “Miss Hughes,” Rita said, appearing at the door, breathlessly. “Is everything all right?”

  I whirled on her, hand outstretched and fingers trembling. “Give me the Hazarin, Rita.”

  “She can’t do that,” Delia said. “Rita, can you leave us, please?”

  Rita hesitated.

  “Don’t go,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please…”

  “Nurse Soto,” Delia snapped.

  “I’ll be right out here,” Rita said to me, her eyes pleading. She stepped outside and closed the door.

  “I hate you,” I seethed at my sister.

  “You are going to listen to reason,” Delia said, her eyes blazing. “For the first time in your life.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not listening to you. I’m going to write a letter to a judge to rescind your power of attorney. I looked it up. I can—”

  “I’ll fight it,” Delia said calmly. “So long as the doctors say—”

  “Why?” I demanded incredulously. “What is going on with you? And why do you hate Jim? Why is the idea of me being with him so hard to take? Or me being awake at all?”

  “It’s not—”

  “You act like you wish I hadn’t had this procedure.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Then why can’t you let me go?”

  “Because I was going to leave and now I can’t.”

  I froze. “What?”

  The words fell from her mouth like stones. “I was going to leave you and marry Roger Nye. We were going to move to Vancouver. He got a job offer there a few weeks ago. We’re supposed to move in a month. But then the procedure came up and…”

  I stared until she tore her gaze away.

  “I’m a terrible, selfish person,” she said. “I know that. But I needed my life back. Then Brett Dodson was caught in your room, and I felt so guilty for even thinking you’d be okay here alone.”

  I sank down on my bed beside the overturned drawer.

  “Not only couldn’t I leave,” Delia said, “but I had to be here even more. I had to try to put everything back the way it was before you were assaulted. I nearly lost my job.” Her voice wavered. “I nearly lost Roger. And then Dr. Chen swooped in with her miracle procedure and the life I tried to scrape together blew up again. For the first time in two years, I didn’t know what was going to happen next. The script was torn up. Again, I tried to put things back where they were and keep you safe. I want that more than anything. More than my own happiness, I want you to be safe.”

  A silence fell as I absorbed her words. “You’re going to marry Roger?” I asked finally. “You’re in love with him?”

  She nodded. “Since junior high. Or… since forever, I guess.”

  “You never told us.”

  “I would have, eventually. I don’t like anyone in my business. You, Mom, and Dad were all so… emotional. They’d make a big deal about it. You’d make fun of me.”

  “No, never—”

  “Yes, Thea. You would.”

  “I’d tease you, but ultimately I’d be happy for you. I am happy for you.”

  “Despite knowing I was going to leave you?”

  I swallowed. “That hurts. That hurts a lot, but I can’t blame you.”

  “I thought you’d never know the difference,” Delia said. “All those absence seizures you had whenever you saw me? They’d stop. It would be better. You would be better. But it turns out you would’ve known I was gone, wouldn’t you? Deep down.”

  I nodded. “You should still leave. You’ve been chained to me for two years. Maybe it’s time you went with Roger and built a life.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You can. I promise it’ll be okay.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I do, and I—”

  “They died, Althea,” Delia cried. “The last time I left with Roger, our family was destroyed. Mom and Dad died. And now you want to run away and… What if something happens to you? I can’t do it again.”

  I shook my head, my voice wavering. “You can’t live like this, Deel. You can’t make all of your decisions based on fear. You have to let go of it. Let me go. You don’t have to do anything anymore.”

  She looked away, wiped her nose. “Someone has to.”

  I saw her so clearly now. How she was forced to handle everything in the wake of the accident. How her fist clenched tight in a semblance of control.

  “There’s no such thing,” I said.

  She raised her head, confusion in her shining eyes.

  “Control,” I said. “It doesn’t exist. You can try to control your life. You can try to get your family to your graduation early and a truck can still come smashing through it, shattering it to pieces. But you can’t live in the fearful moments just before the truck hits. I know what it’s like to live in those few minutes and it’s not living, Deel.”

  Her eyes widened until I could see the whites. Her pulse pounded in a vein on her neck.

  “I see,” she said, her tone chilled and low while her body trembled with raw emotion I’d never seen in her before. “So it’s my fault you got in the car when you did.”

  I gaped. “What?”

  “It’s my fault. I was pushing you out the door to my graduation.”

  “No.”

  “I skipped out to be with Roger.”

  “I’m not saying that. Delia—”

  “I left you to get smashed by that truck.”

  “I wasn’t saying that at all. Jesus, listen to me—”

  “It’s true,” Delia said, biting the words out. “All of it. And I’m not going through it again. I refuse.”

  She rose to her feet, shouldered her purse with hard, jerking movements.

  “You never take anything seriously. Not even your own life. I may not be able to control what happens to you out there, but in here there are doctors and nurses and safety. You can stay put a few more months. It won’t kill you.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  She went to the door. I rushed to it and shut it when she tried to open it.

  “Let me go,” I cried. “Please, Delia. If something’s going to happen, it will. But let me be happy until then. Don’t let all of my memories be of this little box of a room.”

  My sister jerked the door open, her gaze never leaving mine, her composure—her control—returned.

  “It’s for your own good.”

  Then she was gone, shutting the door tight behind her.

  Chapter 26

  Thea

  I backed away from the door and sat on the bed, all that I didn’t know about my sister crashing over me like a wave.

  I don’t know her at all. I never did.

  I curled up on the bed as the sobs came. I cried for all I lost. For all I never had. My sister, Jimmy, Mom, and Dad. The alone-ness of the amnesia loomed, closing in on me.

  A soft knock came at the door. “Thea?” Rita called.

  I didn’t answer. She could come in whenever she wanted. The door locked from the outside.

  The door opened. “Oh, honey.”

  She sat beside me and I curled toward her, needing the human connection. I wrapped my arms around her knees and cried as she stroked my hair.

  “She’s like the witch in a fairy tale,” I said between sobs.

  “She’s try
ing to protect you.”

  “I want to fight her in court, but she said she’d fight back. It could take months.”

  Rita sighed and I peered up at her. Conflicted thoughts played behind my nurse’s eyes. A tiny flicker of hope sparked in me. Rita was my last chance. My only chance.

  I sat up and wiped my eyes.

  “Every morning,” I said, “the doctors come in here and they ask me their questions. They want to know what the amnesia was like and I never could explain it properly. An airless box. A vast desert that was infinitely huge and yet claustrophobic. None of that is accurate.”

  “What is it then?” she asked softly.

  “It’s like death, Rita,” I said. “Because what are we if we aren’t our memories? Who are we without them? Where are we in this life? They anchor us to all the who, what, and where. Without memory, we might as well be dead. Inside the amnesia, I’m not physically dead but I’m stuck in between both worlds. Like a ghost. And now that I’m here, my sister wants to cram me back in that purgatory.”

  “Is Blue Ridge so bad? We want to take care of you—”

  “It’s my pyramid. A tomb stocked with all the things I need for the next life I can’t get to.” I sat up and took her hands. “Help me, Rita. Talk to Delia. Or Dr. Chen. Make them see. Time is ticking away. I can’t explain it. Maybe because my consciousness is determined by a chemical reaction in a pill. It’s all I have, and sometimes it feels like the thinnest thread. Help me live before it snaps.”

  Rita looked away. “Dr. Milton reports that the patients who have undergone the procedure ahead of you are doing well. There’s no reason to think the medication will fail, but if it does…”

  “If it does and I’m still here, then I came back for nothing,” I said.

  She pressed her lips together. My hope guttered out.

  I let go of her hands and curled away from her. I stifled my cries but what difference did it make? I could scream from the rooftops, in my paintings, in word chains, and they wouldn’t hear me.

  They can hear me. They just won’t listen.

  A hand shook me awake as dawn’s light filtered through the window.

  “Get up,” Rita said. “Get dressed, quick. I’ll help you pack.”