Page 32 of Deranged
“You want to go for a walk?”
“Where? Pretty sure I’m restricted to this hallway and that’s about it.”
I looked at her now. She shrugged. “Put your shoes on if you’re coming.”
I scrambled off the bed and shoved my feet into the rough canvas sneakers, the lure of fresh air too great to resist even in my current mood.
I followed her, and she led me down the back stairwell out onto the grounds. “If you try to run, I’ll be forced to tackle you, and I will be pissed.”
I took in a long deep breath and let it out. “I won’t run.”
We walked slowly around the big brick building. “I’ve been at this job a long time,” she said.
I didn’t respond. Something told me she wasn’t trying to have a conversation with me, but something did need said.
“I’ve seen so many weird things. A lot of bad things, and good things too. Yours is the strangest, and it took me a long time to figure out what was happening.”
I kept my snort of disbelief in check.
“I know you aren’t supposed to be here. I know you’re in love with our beautiful young new doctor. And I know if he stays here, he is going to run his career into the ground to save you.”
“Save me from what?” I knew the answer. I just wanted to see if she did. She’s gotten most of it right.
“You’re crazy ass mother of course. What do I look? Stupid?”
I laughed despite the insanity of the situation. “No, Ma’am. You don’t.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I shrugged. “What do you want from me? I can’t do anything about any of it. I didn’t choose to be here. I am helpless.”
She stopped walking and leveled me with a steel glare. “No woman alive has ever been helpless, Child. Use your brain instead of your twat.”
I jerked to a halt a few steps ahead of her. “I wasn’t aware I was thinking with my vagina. If you’re so smart, what the hell do I do here?”
Styx started walked again and I trailed beside her, a new respect for the woman growing inside me. “Arm yourself with knowledge in your mother’s game. Use it to take her down a notch. And stop fucking that pretty doctor and cut him loose.”
I was on board until that last part. Hell, I knew it wasn’t going to last between us, but damn, I wanted it to a little bit longer than this. Once more to feel his arms wrapped around me, the hot heavy weight of his breath against my neck. I took a deep inhale of the chilled air to focus my attention away from him yet again.
“You’re right. Of course. I need to get rid of him to save him. I’m just not sure how to do that since I have no power here.”
“You have all the power here, Baby. You just have to use it.”
We did a couple short loops around the building and then turned to go back inside. I glanced up the building and caught Ash staring out his window. I followed Styx inside. She escorted me back to my room without another word. Everything she had said to me jumbled in my head, trying to create enough room for it all. I had all the power. But how did I use it to get what I needed without hurting Ash?
No. I couldn’t add that into consideration. No way we were both leaving this without bruises on our hearts. As much as I wished we could have both been aloof, that everything we did together was just physical, I knew it was a lie. A pretty lie, one I longed to wrap around myself like a thick comforting blanket, but eventually the cold would still seep in.
I sat on the edge of my bed starting at my little universe in a shoebox of a room. I’d stay here, and I’d manage. It would be a comfort to know I saved him from himself.
Once the nurse brought my dinner, I asked if I could use the phone. She stared down at me confused. Everyone here knew I didn’t want to talk to the only person on my approved call list. But she brought me a phone, and I dialed the number to my mother’s secretary.
It didn’t take long to tell the receptionist what I needed, and she’d take care of it without alerting my mother. For their part, they knew any mention of me was likely to get things thrown at them, if not outright fired.
I gave the phone to the nurse with the questions in her eyes and shut my door behind her.
Then I waited.
My mother’s team worked fast.
