The Glass Secret (Chain of Secrets), page 9
“After you’re assessed we’ll make arrangements for telephone privileges.”
“You have got to be joking. You can’t stop me from leaving...this is ludicrous!” I snarled, forgetting any past experiences where my quick temper would only make matters worse. Fuck it! I thought, who gets injured then ends up imprisoned in a hospital? This is really bullshit!
-11-
What the hell!
While my temper soared through the roof, he remained calm and composed, almost too composed. He picked up a cord that was tucked in beside the pillow, which I hadn’t noticed earlier.
The next thing I knew the room filled with at least six nurses dressed in traditional white caps and gowns. One of the nurses carried in a small black box with sorted dials on it. A headphone gadget with metal connectors attached to the ends of the wires. The blonde nurse set it down on the side table. Two other nurses rolled in a chair-like bed, upholstered in black rubber.
What the hell?
My eyes widened. I felt my heart begin to thump wildly inside of my chest. I could not believe that less than a few hours ago I had just woken up from a terrible incident, and now I was scared to death.
This totally confirmed that humans could be the most frightening creatures of all. The irony of insanity is sane people do insane things. That was something to give further thought to.
“What the hell is going on?” I hissed angrily. No one answered me. They treated me as if I were invisible. I tried to push up to stand, but to no prevail, because two large breasted, heavyweight nurses latched onto me and held me down. “Get your fucking hands off me.” I screamed.
“Katharine, get the restrains.” Dr. Tagorski insisted, his voice lethally calm. In keeping with his mild demeanor, he called out to another nurse, “Let’s start out low...at 120kilometers.”
“What? Wait! No, please don’t do this,” I cried out, feeling my stomach drop to my knees. Adrenaline surged through my body. The bubble had burst. It was time to get up and go. Where would I run? I felt like a cockroach with nowhere to hide, yet directly in the path of a can of Raid! I was gripped with anxiety.
The nurse he called Katharine quickly unbuckled straps from beneath the bed. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty-three or so. Close to my age. When she stood, long strands of her shiny red-hair fell into her face. She swiftly brushed it back, when doing so her eyes caught with mine. A sympathetic countenance for my behalf splayed on her eyes. I could tell she felt sorry for me.
I needed someone on my side, someone to help me make sense of what was going on.
“Please, help me.” I mouthed to her as the other nurses scurried around the room, connecting wires into the small box that suddenly seemed larger than me. Pending doom grew in me; I knew something awful was about to happen.
One of the nurses shimmied behind the table and plugged a thick wire into the wall outlet. A good amount of electricity was needed to power up the little beast. My blood coursed through my veins so fast that it caused my breath to stop. The gates of Hell cracked wide open. I wasn’t ready to give in.
“What is wrong with you? Hold still,” one of the nurses barked demandingly.
Yeah, right...I don’t think so!
“Let go of me you...cows!” I wiggled, squirmed, and cursed at the two nurses who held me down. The chaos heightened. “You can’t treat me like some lab rat, that’s caged!” Then a voice of an angel interjected.
“Doctor Tagorski, may I please have a word with you?” Nurse Katharine daringly asked.He stopped dead in his tracks as if her small voice had the power to momentarily paralyze him. My eyes flashed at them as they stepped out of the chaos.
He seemed very interested in what she had to say. I wasn’t the only one that seemed curious, but, not in what Katharine had to say, but in the fact that Dr. Tagorski dropped his tasks at hand and followed in Katharine’s footsteps.
The young blond nurse who held my legs down released me and stared pointedly at the doctor. Her eyes narrowed, nostrils flared, and she blanched, turning to a notable shade of green. She covertly whispered something to the nurse closest to her.
“Doctor, what should we do next?” the blonde nurse called out trying to interrupt his conversation with Katharine. It appeared she was vying for Dr. Tagorski’s attention, too. With her attention on them, it gave me a few seconds to try to eavesdrop.
“Jane, you are one of the best interns on staff, and frankly if you don’t know how to proceed, then why don’t you leave the area and make room for someone that knows what to do. I will discuss in detail procedure with you later.” Doctor Tagorski spoke harshly to her. The room grew silent; you could have heard a pin drop. All the other nurses stopped and stared at Jane.
“I just thought...fine Doctor,” Jane sassed back. She turned beet red, steam poured from every open cavity in her head. She threw her arms into the air and stomped out of the room.
How embarrassing that he reprimanded her in front of all her colleagues. I suspected two things, he knew she had purposefully interrupted them, and of course, he had extremely high standards when it came to medical procedures and expected the nurses to act accordingly. Nothing like teaching someone a harsh lesson, she’d know what to do next time that was for sure. Honestly I believed she knew how to proceed, but her jealousy got the best of her, and he made her pay for that one.
“Please, proceed Ladies,” Doctor Tagorski ordered in a soft voice to the remaining nurses, who were now all gaping with open mouths, and then diverted his attention toward Katharine.
I eyeballed the doctor and Katharine as they spoke in the corner, across the room. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of a large presence hovering over me. A mannish looking nurse grinned down at me, preparing a syringe. My eyes widened, there was no time to brace myself. Without notice, the battle-axe nurse jabbed the long needle into my arm.
Oh shit, that hurt like a @#$@&%. I wanted to curse her up one side and down the other. However, I refrained, after all look where my temper had gotten me. Justified or not, my fury found a cage.
I lay there so still, fat tears streaming down my face. I was trying to come to terms with the horrifying situation I may have to face. How did I find myself in such a deplorable place?
My eyes fell languid and closed as I spiraled into a hypnagogic state, half-awake and half-asleep. I could still hear whispers and rustling movements around me. However, I was unable to move.
“Hold up.” I clearly heard Dr. Tagorski order with authority. “Let’s just give her time to calm down before we go any further,” he said. Relief poured through me when I felt the palm of his hand pat my forearm in a comforting manner. “She’s such a spit ball of fire...like a comet that fell from the sky.”
A comet, someone had called me that once before. In my current daze, I couldn’t recall who that was. I heard a few other nurses muttering on about how out of control I was.
Mean Bitches!
“Yes, doctor...but I think she might be more than a comet, there’s something special about her.” A female’s voice piped in. I was certain it was the nurse named Katharine. I recognized her melodic voice. I believed she saved me from having my brain scrambled like one big egg—then it hit me hard, the intruder, the man who had appeared in my doorway had definitely come to warn me! Who was he?
-12-
No Service
The room grew silent, sucking me a million miles away. My eyelashes fluttered like wings against the eclipse of the narrow light; my reaction was to not fight it.
Clouded memories soared through my mind, and it felt like I was balancing on a pillar of light, looking down on the world, or was I viewing this from the outside in? Behind me there was blackness, accumulating a noir of bleakness. I felt watchful eyes on me from behind a smoky glass window. I had always felt like someone was watching me. It was a constant feeling that I wished sometimes would go away, but then I would be lost without an audience.
The loudest crack of thunder woke me from the unwarranted, induced trance I was under. I fought against the powerful drugs they had forcefully administered to me. I was hell bent on getting out of there. I struggled to open my eyes, and once fully opened, it felt as if I had on a thick pair of glasses.
My eyes darted around the hospital room. I was alone. I examined every inch of it the best I could. A thin light diffusing into the room from the bathroom had caught my attention. I noticed through the cracked door a small green locker. My curiosity heightened. This was something worth checking out.
I threw the blanket back and flipped out of the bed...when my bare feet hit the floor my knees buckled. I reached out and grasped onto a metal standing tray, it rolled forward, and everything, including my body went crashing to the floor. There was no way the nurses would have mistaken this as roaring thunder. I lay there on the cold vinyl tiles, breathless. What an epic fail.
“Ms. Eden...what happened, are you okay?” When I turned my head, my eyes came parallel with Nurse Katharine’s white nursing shoes. She quickly dropped to her knees to get a closer look at me. Her hands rapidly inspected my legs, ribs and arms for possible injuries. “Do you hurt anywhere?”
“Not anymore than I already did. I had to use the ladies room,” I lied, pressing up to my elbows.
“You should have called us on your buzzer—we’re here to help you,”—Maybe you are, but I don’t think anyone else is—“You haven’t walked on your legs in weeks and doing so without assistances could cause further injuries,” she said, quietly scolding me.
“Can you help me now? I need to go really bad,” I lied again.
“Yes, of course, perhaps I should call for help...but you’re such an itty-bitty thing—I think I can manage. Here slip your arm around my shoulder.”
“Thanks,” I said as she lifted me to my feet and helped me to the private bathroom.
“I can make it from here, thanks.”
“I shouldn’t leave you unattended.”
“Really...crap...I can’t pee when someone is watching me.”
She sighed and glanced toward the main door. “I’m the same way,” Katharine hushed, grimacing. “Okay, but I have to stand outside the door until you’re finished.”
When alone inside of the bathroom, I flashed at my reflection in the silver coated mirror. My image was distorted. From what I could see, I looked like shit. My face appeared sallow, slightly thinner, and terribly pale. Of course, the lighting in the bathroom caused an overall unflattering affect.
I had a yellowish bruise under my left eye and one along my jawline. I bit my lips, trying to draw some color into them as I tucked my wild tangled waves behind my ears. There was no reason to primp, and no time to either.
I quickly knelt down on the floor next to the small locker. I flushed the toilet to create a sound barrier, in case the locker made any noise when I unlatched it. Bingo!
Inside, I found my clothes neatly folded into a pile with only one high-heel beneath them. One shoe? How odd.
I quickly fumbled through my jean pockets. Nothing. I grabbed my jacket and searched the pockets. Nothing again.
When I began refolding the items, I felt something between the outer lining and the inner lining of my jacket. Quickly, I stuck my hand into the pocket, down through a small hole in the lining, and found my cell-phone. What a relief!
“Are you okay in there?” Katharine asked me through the closed door.
“Yes...just a minute,” I called back to her. My vision blurred, but I knew my phone like the back of my hand. Power on...with my thumb I scrolled to Nuilley’s number, hit the send button...connecting...call failed...no service! Damn it! Try again. I stood up, held the phone in the air, searching for a signal.
“Ms. Eden...” Katharine said, knocking softly on the door. I heard the handle wiggle.
“Please, don’t come in. I’m almost done,” I gasped.
“Ms. Eden...if you can hear me alright, I just have to say the doctor is really worried about you. We don’t know if you were involved in a raid, or well—that would have been just awful. He thinks you are suppressing what happened to you. We don’t blame you—you seem very confused...and well, I have noticed things too—like the way you speak so outwardly...and even your clothing—”
Oh shit. “I’m coming out.” I reached over, flushed the toilet, knelt down again then quickly folded my clothes—pressed the locker door shut, with the phone still in my hand...thinking...I need to hide this somewhere. I quickly tucked it into the elastic waistband of the granny panties they had put on me. I pulled my battered body from the floor and managed to take a few steps, clinging to the walls. My strength was waning.
Back in bed...Katharine gently brushed the knots out of my messy hairdo.
Katharine was incredibly beautiful, but not in a super model way, something more internal, reaching, something that touches you from far away. Her beauty had nothing to do with her heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, or red-fringe setting off her light-green eyes, or her soft lips, and her full curves all in the right places.
“Miss Eden, your hair is so lovely. I always wanted long blond hair like yours.”
“Oh, I think yours is drop-dead gorgeous.”
“See, you say the dandiest things. Drop-dead”—she tittered—“Hum, but thank you—I think,” Katharine replied with a puzzled expression in her eyes, and I winced.
What an odd girl, I thought. “Just so you know it’s a compliment, Katharine. Oh, by the way, please, call me Brielle. I mean we are around the same age. Actually, I’m probably a few years older than you—but either way, it still feels funny you calling me Miss Eden all the time,” I admitted.
Katharine didn’t say anything, merely watched me and smiled curiously, but she didn’t say a single word. I hoped I hadn’t embarrassed her. That was not my intention.
There was something that was old about Katharine. Instinctually I knew she had seen things that most girls her age hadn’t or never would, but what? That didn’t matter. I innately knew this when I looked into her eyes. Soulful eyes. The only words that best described her, aside from incredibly beautiful, were an old soul.
I watched Katharine, she moved like a quiet breath of fresh air, as she tucked the blanket tightly in at my sides. My grandmother used to do the same exact thing.
She carefully placed the note Dr. Tagorski had given to me in my right hand. I felt safe with Katharine nearby. “There now, you should sleep...the medication they gave you should take affect soon,” she said, adjusting the side-rails that attached to the bed.
“Do you mind; can you please leave those down? They make me feel trapped.”
“I understand.” She smiled and complied.
Suddenly I felt a rush of affection for my caretaker. “Nurse Katharine, I would like to thank—”
Doctor Tagorski’s voice interjected, “Just doing my rounds and wanted to check in on you. How’s our star patient feeling? I’m sorry if we frightened you earlier,” he said as if he were speaking to a child.
Nurse Katharine’s face lit up, staring up at him in awe, capturing his eyes. Their gaze seemed to last a few seconds too long. Hmm? I sensed a stirring energy between them. She squeezed my foot, flashed him another smile, then retreated toward the door and exited. I liked her...as for my doctor, I wasn’t too happy with him at the moment. I considered him the pink elephant in the room!
-13-
Captured
A resistance and unwillingness to move past where I was surrounded me. My complying nature hit into a wall of stubbornness. I felt his eyes appraising me. Chock-full o’ determination, I stared through him like he was a sheet of glass. Who did he think he was? He patiently waited for a response. Yet, I could not acknowledge him. I wanted to be left alone and engrossed in my private thoughts. I continued to ignore him, staring past him as if he didn’t exist. I supposed that could have appeared childish.
My eyes moved upward to the ceiling. The sound of the fan’s motor oscillating above me was hypnotizing. I closed my eyes still feeling heavily medicated. I listened to the sound of my own heartbeat.
I felt so damned cornered by the bizarre events toying with my memory, along with the string of distorted questions. If the doctor wouldn’t release me, I’d do the next best thing. I mentally checked out and pretended to fall back asleep.
Doctor Tagorski stayed in the room; I sensed him moving around the bed. At one point, he checked my pulse. I rolled to my side and restlessly slid my hand beneath the pillow to break our contact. Just a fraction of a moment had passed when I heard the sound of a woman’s heels padding across the floor, stopping at my bedside
“She’s sleeping again,” he said to whoever had entered into the room. “Okay, then. Sleep our little mysterious comet.” Surprisingly, Dr. Tagorski pushed back the long strands of my hair with a damp cloth. One minute he was stern, the next he showed more compassion than any doctor I have ever known in my life. “Do you think she’s involved in the movement?”
“Not a chance,” the female’s voice replied. It was Katharine. She was the one who had entered the room. I wanted to open my eyes and thank her for coming to my rescue, twice that day, but I didn’t dare.
“There’s something about her that defies our times,” Dr. Tagorski said.
“Yes, you’re right...she’s so different than women these days...like an old soul—a sassy one, too.” Katharine exhaled long. “Maybe she was born before her time, that happens you know?”
“Yes, I know,” he responded in an earnest tone.
There was a hush of silence.
