Page 125 of Bend
Elliot got up and turned off the overhead, flicking on the soft table lamp over my photo of Snowcone. “Do you have any muscle pain or weakness?”
“What drugs did you give me? I can’t feel anything.”
“Do you promise not to get violent?”
“Fuck. You’re never going to let me out now. I’m stuck here. Why did I do that?” My face crunched up. I was going to cry right there in front of Elliot, every tear another nail in the coffin of my sanity. When he freed my right hand, I put it over my face.
“I’m not an MD, so I don’t dispense your meds, I only suggest. But it looks like you got a little too much slap and not enough tickle,” he said.
“What?”
He laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s late. My sense of humor shorts out when I’m tired.” He freed my left arm and went to the foot of the bed.
“Nice you have one that’s wired at all.”
He smiled as he unstrapped my feet. “I’ll contraindicate the Paxil.”
He got my ankles free, and I sat up. The world swam a little, and I gripped the edge of the bed. The room righted itself.
“Are you going to let me go?” I asked.
“I have another day of observation. You want to go?”
“Please.”
He sat next to me. “Deacon Bruce, by his own admission, fell on the hoof knife.”
“He what?”
“Fell on the thing twice, apparently.”
Any relaxation I’d gotten from the meds molted off me like a skin I’d never owned. “He’s protecting me.”
“The district attorney doesn’t believe him either. But in the end, it’ll be hard to make a case. You’re a lucky girl.” His green-grey eyes looked at me as if they were peeling me open. “You don’t look relieved.”
“I’m relieved.”
“Don’t start packing yet. Okay?”
“I don’t have much to pack. A picture, and I guess there were clothes? I mean, who knows with me, right?” I held my hand out for the picture, and like a father intuiting what his toddler wanted, Elliot gave it to me.
“You’re going to have to continue some sort of program once you’re out,” he said. “I know you guys have ways of getting around it, but for your own good, I hope this is the bottom for you.”
I barely heard him. I was looking at myself with my new horse. I’d gotten Snowcone as a surprise from Daddy, and my delight in my new black-and-white dressage gear was all over my face. Snowcone was pulling away from the odd, smiling creature at his feet.
“How old are you in that picture?” Elliot asked, sitting in the chair by the bed.
“I’d just turned fifteen. Mom didn’t want me to have him. She thought I was too irresponsible. I swore I was going to prove her wrong.”
“Did you?”
“I did, until recently. When Amanda died, I kind of left him to the stable. Fuck. He was mine; I trained him. He was so good. Perfect temperament, moving off my legs easily, finding the bit like a champ. And I just abandoned him as if he didn’t even matter. And I want people to care about me? Fuck, I am worthless.”
Elliot handed me a box of tissues, and I had to laugh through my tears.
“Fucking therapists,” I said.
“What?”
