The Devil Inside, page 7
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I just moved out of the bathroom too fast. Temperature change. You did warn me.’
Arwen made a squalling noise. Nobody paid any attention to her except Phil who swayed side to side as he looked at Mel with concern.
‘I think she needs to be fed,’ she said, pointing at the baby.
‘Yes.’
‘I was going to see if Melissa wanted to try feeding her,’ Jerry said. ‘But if you’re not feeling well?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said again. Then swore to herself as Phil walked over to the side of the bed, panic gripping her chest at the suddenly hopeful look on his face.
‘Do you want to?’ he asked. ‘Are you up for it?’
She started to shake her head when the on-call doctor entered, ‘Actually, I need to do my checks and get on with my rounds, so it’s best if you feed the baby for now, Phil. Melissa will have plenty of opportunities to feed her later.’
‘Okay,’ Phil said, taking the bottle from Jerry and going to sit in the armchair. He teased the teat over Arwen’s lips, smiling down at her as she latched on. Simple. It looked so simple. Yet, why did it seem so scary?
‘So, tell me about this turn?’
Melissa dragged her gaze away from Phil and the baby and stared up at Alan. ‘What? It was nothing, as I said. Just some dizziness.’ She wasn’t going to tell them about seeing the woman. They’d gotten so upset about her hallucination over the man in her room. Although, given what she’d just heard, maybe it hadn’t been …
‘You’re not feeling dizzy or disoriented now?’
She blinked rapidly, corralling her thoughts into line. ‘No. I’m fine. Promise.’
‘Hmm.’
He stood back as the doctor went about his tests—blood pressure, temperature, pain scale, reflexes, eyes and a few other neurological tests—waiting patiently as the doctor wrote the results up on his iPad.
‘So, what’s the word, doc?’ Phil asked as he burped the baby. ‘Can I take Mel and Arwen home today as planned?’
‘Everything is looking good,’ the doctor said. ‘I think as long as Professor Marshall says you are fine to go home, then there’s no reason to keep you here.’
Alan nodded. ‘I don’t see why that’s a problem. Although, I do want to have a quick session before you go because I won’t be able to get out to Storm Haven for a few days and I just want to go over the treatment regimen with you both and Jerry again.’
‘That’s fine. That’s fine,’ Phil said, his face blooming as he smiled. ‘Isn’t it, Mel?’
She stared at them. It was what she’d wanted to hear. She should be relieved. She was. It was only natural to feel nervous too. ‘Yeah, great.’
‘I’d just like to have a quick word with the doctor and you, Jerry. If you don’t mind? I’ll be right back.’
‘Sure.’
As they left the room, Phil sauntered over to her and sat on the edge of the bed, the baby cooing lightly in his arms. The scent of baby-powder and milk wafted towards her.
She shuffled over a little as his hip nudged against her leg and nodded dumbly. Hell. Why did him sitting on the bed like that make her feel all fluttery and warm?
Phil transferred the baby to one arm, took Melissa’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re coming home.’
‘Yes.’
He smiled down at her. She couldn’t help smiling back at him. Their gazes met. Clung. There was something so familiar about it. And exciting. She knew she should shift away, take her hand from his, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She liked these little moments of contact with him. She had no idea why her body responded to him when she couldn’t remember him, but it did. Every time. A tug, a need, a frisson of excitement, a rush of heat, a tingling between her legs and in her breasts. She’d never felt anything like it. If she believed in such things, she’d say it must be what love at first sight felt like—but she’d never been so gullible as to believe something so ridiculous.
‘Mel,’ he said when she inched a little closer. He reached out as if he was about to touch her hair, to cup her face.
She leaned in closer, breath hissing between her teeth as he touched her cheek, leaning into the warmth of him while holding his gaze. Something sparked in his eyes, pushing aside the perpetual worry she always saw there. He leaned down, breath brushing her cheeks, her lips. She tipped her head up.
The baby wailed.
Melissa jerked back, catapulting off the bed. Hell, what had she almost done?
Phil stood, putting the baby over his shoulder and patting her back. ‘Sorry, baby-girl. I didn’t burp you well enough, did I?’
His gaze met hers again as he did so, questioning.
She didn’t know the answer to that question. She had no idea why she’d almost kissed him, even if she was married to him. She didn’t know him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t ever have to be sorry for that.’
Phil continued to pat Arwen’s back, rocking side to side as he did so. Silence filled the air with tension.
Then Arwen burped, loud and long.
They both laughed and then Phil, smiling at her, said, ‘I can’t wait to get you back to Storm Haven. I’ve been watching YouTube videos on amnesia and the thing most people say helped them was going back to a place they loved that was familiar.’
‘Maybe we should go back to Gruene then.’ She had a sudden longing to go back there, to see the farm and feel closer to her parents. She hadn’t been back there for so long—even longer than she remembered. She’d been so angry with them the last time she’d seen them. But now, she just wished she could see them again. God, how could they be gone? They’d always seemed so indestructible.
‘Mamochka. Papochka. Kak vashi dela?’ Where are you?
She blinked, shook her head, met Phil’s gaze again. He’d said something. ‘What?’
‘You said you never wanted to go back to Texas again. You didn’t even want to go back for the funeral or to pack up your parents’ things and put the farm up for sale. I did that for you. But if you want to …’
‘No. No.’ She shook her head, trying to clear it of the odd image in her head of a room in a house she’d never seen before, and two people dancing in the middle of the floor, furniture pushed back. They kissed. Then stared at each other, whispering, ‘YA lyublyu tebya.’ I love you.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’ She paused then blurted, ‘Have I learned a different language in the last few years?’
Phil jerked a little. ‘Um, no. Why?’
‘I just keep …’ She stopped as a thought came into her head. ‘Did I like watching foreign language films?’ It didn’t sound like her—but then, getting married to a rock star and having his baby didn’t sound like her either—but it would explain the images of two people she didn’t remember meeting and the fact they spoke a different language.
‘You love noir films and spy thrillers. We binged on them after your parents died. For some reason it made you feel better. Why? Do you remember something?’
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
She jerked as Jerry and Alan came back into the room.
Alan looked between her and Phil. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I think Mel just remembered something.’
‘Really? Do you feel like telling me?’
Chapter 7
She glanced at Phil, then Jerry and finally at Alan before nodding slowly. She wouldn’t tell them about hallucinating the woman in the room earlier, but she could tell them some of what she’d been seeing. Alan at least might be able to help her process it—and maybe Phil might know something about the man and woman she kept seeing.
Alan pulled a chair over and indicated she sit on the bed. Phil and Jerry stood behind her so she couldn’t see their faces, which was probably best.
He patted his pocket as he was about to sit. She took a deep breath, but he held up his finger then turned to Jerry. ‘I seem to have left my notepad in the car. Do you mind running out and getting something from the nurse’s station so I can jot down my notes?’
‘No need,’ Phil said before Jerry could move. He grabbed a pen and pad he kept in the room and handed it to Alan.
‘What’s this?’ Alan pointed at funny marks on the paper.
‘Drum beat signatures.’ Phil’s voice sounded strange; his expression suddenly tense. ‘It’s not important. Just scribbles I did a couple of weeks ago. You can keep the pad if you want.’
‘But surely you need this?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ Phil reached forward and tore the piece of paper out of the pad, but as he did so, she saw it in full. There were lines and lines of music and drum beat notations. It looked like a song.
He crushed the piece of paper in his fist and threw it in the bin before she could ask him more about it.
Okay. He didn’t want to talk about it. She got that. She’d give him a reprieve—for now.
‘So,’ she said, drawing out the ‘o’ until Phil looked at her. ‘I keep seeing these people. In my dreams.’ She wiggled her fingers a little as she tried to remember the image more clearly. ‘A man and a woman. They’re in a dark room with only candles lighting it. They’ve pushed the furniture back and there’s music on and they’re dancing, close, absorbed in each other.’ Her heart started pounding a little faster as she spoke. ‘I don’t know them, and yet, they seem somehow familiar. They’re not speaking English but I can understand them. I thought maybe it was a movie I’d seen and I understood the words because there were subtitles.’
Phil shifted so she could see him. Excitement lit up his too handsome face. ‘We did watch ones in other languages. Do you think you’re remembering that? Us watching them?’
She stared at him. He wasn’t in the images at all. Just the two people. Mamochka and Papochka. But she smiled and nodded, unable to burst his bubble. ‘I think maybe I am.’ It was a good explanation. A sensible explanation. She liked sensible. ‘But why movies? Why not things from my actual life?’
Alan considered for a moment, head cocked to the side, tapping the pen against the paper. ‘Hm. It’s hard to say. There is no manual to the human mind, and each mind is so different in its make up because each mind has a different set of life experiences that form and shape it. But if I was to make an educated guess, I would say that the movies are your mind’s way of gently leading you back into your life. Seeing the couple who were so obviously in love is maybe your mind’s way of telling you that love is important. That it’s here.’
Her gaze flickered to Phil again and then away—the expression on his face made her heart ache a little. Was he remembering their almost kiss as well? She shoved that thought aside and asked, ‘B-but why the foreign language?’
Alan shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure about that one.’
‘Maybe it’s because you’re remembering a time when you went to Russia,’ Jerry suggested.
‘Russia?’ she asked, swivelling around to look at him.
‘The words you repeated were Russian.’
Oh. ‘You speak Russian?’
He smiled slowly. ‘Not really. My maternal grandmother was Russian. She used to speak to me only in Russian, but she died when I was very little. I don’t remember much, but I do remember the words for mama and papa—mamochka and papochka.’
‘He’s right,’ Alan said. When she looked at him in surprise, he chuckled. ‘My paternal grandmother was Russian too. Same story as Jerry here except we spoke Russian at home throughout my childhood, so I’m reasonably fluent.’
‘That’s a coincidence.’
He shrugged. ‘Not really. A lot of Jews came here to escape the war.’ He looked a question at Jerry who nodded. ‘Same story here.’
Huh. So they’d know then. But why Russian? She’d never been to Russia. Or maybe she had. She looked up at Phil.
He pushed from where he was leaning against the table before she even opened her mouth to ask the question. ‘We were touring in Russia when you got the news about your mama and papa.’
Alan nodded thoughtfully. ‘That makes sense. Trauma often fixes things in our minds more permanently than memories not attached to high emotion.’
So, she had those memory flashes of foreign movies because they reminded her of her mama and papa? ‘But that’s not really a memory of the last eight years, is it?’
Alan frowned down at his notes. ‘It is a bit of a mash up of things that happened in the last few years and your grief over your parents’ loss, so, while not an actual memory, it is about things that happened in those years. Like an echo. Or a knowing—you know, those things you just seem to intuitively know even though you don’t know why?’ She nodded—she’d had some of those about Phil and Jerry and the people from Storm Haven who she’d supposedly been friends with.
‘It’s a good first step,’ Alan said. ‘We need to try to encourage more of those dreams for the memories to truly form.’
‘How do we do that?’ Phil asked.
‘Do you mind if I have a look at your journal?’
She nodded and reached over to grab it, her hand shaking a little as she handed it to him. She’d really wanted to do this without Phil seeing them but couldn’t say no to Alan without telling him why—and putting that look in Phil’s eyes—she hated that look. Thankfully, all the ones of him and Arwen were at the back, so perhaps he wouldn’t get to them.
Alan opened the journal, his eyes widening as he took in sketches. ‘You’ve been busy.’
She nodded. She’d always loved to draw and paint. ‘They’re nothing really. Just impressions of things I’ve seen. Not much more than foggy images really.’
He tapped the one she’d made of the room, the two people dancing. It wasn’t much more than lines and shadows, nothing certain. ‘You’re very talented. Perhaps you should try a different medium as well. That’s helped some of my patients in Melbourne to access more.’
‘I used to paint. I don’t know if I do it anymore?’ She looked at Phil.
He nodded. ‘You used to set up a studio everywhere we went—it was down time for you.’
‘Used to?’
He jerked his shoulders. ‘You haven’t done much painting since your parents died.’
‘Well, I think you should get back into it,’ Alan said, flipping through the journal, stopping at the image she’d drawn after waking in the middle of last night. ‘I think there’s something in these images you’re sketching. Do you mind if Phil has a look to see if he recognises anything?’
She swallowed hard, her gaze going between the two men. But there was no way to say no without explaining why. ‘Sure.’ She glanced over at Jerry. ‘Jerry can look too. The more eyes the merrier,’ she said when Phil shot her a look.
The two men came to stand behind Alan as he flipped through the journal, stopping at each sketch to glance up at Phil. Phil looked at them, the frown deepening between his eyes and when they reached the last one, he let out a loud sigh. ‘I don’t recognise any of those places or people. But that’s not saying anything. We’ve been in so many hotel rooms and venues in the last eight years, they all mash together. They could be places we’ve stayed. Or movies we’ve seen. I just don’t know. Sorry.’
Alan nodded slowly. ‘So, there is a possibility these images are from before you met Phil.’
‘My memory before the last eight years isn’t the problem, Alan. I don’t remember any of these people or places.’
Alan smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘Nobody remembers everything, Melissa. You will have forgotten more than you could ever recall with your conscious mind—but your unconscious mind holds untold memories, holding onto them like the greatest of secrets and only releasing them when it’s time.’ He tapped the journal. ‘Maybe your mind is bringing these memories to the fore so that it can remember the rest of what you have lost.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t wish to bring up your loss, but it is such a pity we can’t talk to your parents. They didn’t leave anything behind, did they?’
She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. I can’t even remember them dying.’ Sadness overwhelmed her but she blinked rapidly, not wanting to let it in. She looked up at Phil, but her throat was too tight to talk. She blew out a breath—it didn’t help.
He came to her side, holding her hand, giving it a squeeze, eyes filled with worry and love and a strength she needed right then. ‘We sold most of her parents’ things when we sold the farm. Mel wasn’t up to going back there, even for the funeral—it upset her too much. I took care of it. We sold the farm to her neighbours who were good friends of Calvin and Claire. In fact, they helped me clear out the place and sell what I didn’t keep.’
‘You kept things?’ she asked. How did he know what to keep?
He nodded. ‘You didn’t want me to at the time, but I did anyway. I thought you might want to look at it when you weren’t so sad. Especially the stuff your neighbour and I found hidden in a hole in your parents’ bedroom wall—photo albums and some paperwork, that sort of thing. They looked important so I packed them up with a few other personal bits and pieces and have them in storage for when you’re ready to look through them.’
Memories of the hidden box under the floorboards flashed in her mind’s eye. A locked chest in the barn. And hadn’t she dreamed of a hidey-hole behind the chest of drawers in Mama and Papa’s bedroom?
But it wasn’t like Mama and Papa at all to keep things, hidden or not. They were never sentimental—hadn’t even kept any of her childhood paintings or baby clothes or anything. Why would they hide anything in a floor or chest or wall?
‘Anything that might help us here?’ Alan asked Phil.
Phil squeezed her hand again. ‘I didn’t really go through them properly—just to see the couple of things at the top of each box, so I couldn’t say.’
‘You said you kept them in storage? Would it take much to get them here?’
‘No time at all. I always bring them with us so they’re there in case Mel wants to look through them.’
She stared at Phil. ‘You did that for me?’
‘Of course.’
The pen quivered in Alan’s hand as he looked down at the journal again. ‘Well, it would be good to go through them now. If you feel up to it.’
