Chapter Twenty-Two

I don’t know how long I’ve been here, time escapes me just as my memories once had. The doors to my room slide open and I cower further under my blanket. The nurse has kept me on drugs that make me disoriented since I was brought in.

“Good Morning Bristol,” she says, a voice I don’t recognize. I peek out from under the covers, it’s not the large nurse that has been visiting me daily since I left the doctor’s office. This lady is younger and has a smaller build with a nice smile. It seems they’re trying a different tactic today. No matter how much I cried and screamed about my boys being real, they kept telling me that I had manifested them in my head and then topping up my drugs to keep me in a haze.

“I thought we could try to have breakfast with the other patients today.”

“Okay,” I chirp, my heart beating quickly at the thought of being around other people. I want to ask her if she believes me but I know that she won’t so I just have to play along and wait. Surely someone knows where I am and is coming to get me.

“How are you feeling today?”

“A lot better than I have been. Do I get to speak to the doctor today?”

She nods as she places some clothes on my bed. A very basic light green pair of long cotton pants and a plain white cotton shirt.

“You do and I will need you to get changed. I’m sorry I can’t leave the room.”

I shrug and take off the hospital gown they’ve had me in when I stripped off naked after one of the nurses pinned me down and stuck me with something. Whatever it was, it made me feel like my damn body was on fire.

I quickly change, the nurse opens the doors with her key tag and we walk along a plain corridor lined with locked rooms. More people like me, forced to be here. I wonder how someone like Rory’s mum is here and also someone like me, it makes no sense.

She leads us into the dining room, though I would probably call this the everything room. There are tables set up next to a cafeteria style kitchen but on the far right there are lounge chairs facing out towards glass windows. The view outside is a sea of green grass that leads to a small lake that makes it look so tranquil but for me it’s anything but.

“You can get some breakfast over there,” she says pointing to the kitchen area. “You are free to talk to anyone, everyone that comes in here is friendly enough. We have guards at all of the doors in case anyone tries to start any trouble. If you do the right thing, you will be out of here in no time.”

“Thank you.”

She wanders over to another patient, placing her hand on their shoulder and smiling at them. She must be liked around here and I can see why, the other lady is a huge bitch. I walk over to the case where they keep the fruit tubs and yogurt. I take a vanilla yogurt and a small wooden spoon and head over to the lounge chairs, taking a seat and crossing my legs.

An alarm blasts echoing loudly throughout the room and before I know it, a naked older gentleman runs past the window on the outside laughing. I smile as a couple of nurses chase him, trying to tackle him to the ground and get him back inside.

“That’s old Pete, famous rockstar from the eighties. I think they let him do this once every few weeks so he can feel alive again.”

I turn to my right and my eyes go wide, Rory’s mum has taken a seat beside me and isn’t snarling or glaring at me for once.

“Face forward so they don’t get suspicious.”

I do as she asks, still shocked that she has come to sit beside me.

“I know what you must think of me, I would probably be the same. Drugs can do weird things to a person. Do you love my son?”

“I do, more than I can express with words. Though, they’re trying to drug me into believing he doesn’t exist.”

“I’m not surprised, this place talks with money. The more money you dish out, the more lies they will feed to whoever they need to. I do have a message for you though. They want you to know that they are working on getting you out.”

“I never doubted them; I knew they would come for me. Would you be able to do me a favour?”

“It’s the least I can do for how much of an asshole I was.”

“I don’t blame you,” I say with a slight shake of my head, “seeing your husband with someone the same age as your son.”

“Honestly we were toxic for each other and I was no innocent. Years and years of drug abuse made me not care about anything except how others viewed me. Cindy has been visiting me and making me see that my behaviour is toxic.”

I cough, Cindy, the same toxic bitch that had a go at Maximus and blackmailed the guys.

“I know she isn’t perfect and probably never will be, but she and I are cut from the same cloth. The money and attention speaks to us in ways that others could never understand. She’ll marry up if it’s the last thing she does, just like I did. But one thing I know is she cares a lot for my son and wants what’s best for him.”

The nurse starts to head our way. “What's this favour you wanted?” she asks quickly.

“Get Rory to call Lissa and beg her to come see me. Tell her I remember everything.”

She nods just as the nurse comes to stand next to us.

“Telling the new girl about old Pete,” she says, making the nurse smile.

“Yeah, someone didn’t close his door and he snuck out. Sweet old man but I wish he would keep his clothes on.” the nurse sighs and drifts off somewhere for a second before snapping out of it. “Bristol, it's time for you to see the doctor.”

I nod and get up from my chair, discarding the un-eaten yogurt into the trash. My stomach is unsettled from my memories and figuring out what I do with them now. I push them to the back of my mind; the last thing I need is anyone else realising that I have them back. I need to talk to Lissa and get her to help me decipher if I'm going nuts or not. I need them to stop sticking me with crap that makes me drowsy.

She leads me through a different door and down another long corridor, this one seems less intense, with regular door, not sliding doors that lock as soon as someone walks through them. She knocks on a door at the very end and opens it.

“Bristol, come take a seat.” The doctor smiles at me, causing my brain to swarm with confusion. Why is everyone being nice to me today? What’s changed? Is this a tactic to trick me into thinking I’m crazy?

I take a seat in front of his desk, the chairs in here are nice and comfy, especially compared to the other chairs I’ve seen around the place. The nurse leaves silently, pulling the door shut behind herself.

“I hear that you’re feeling better today.”

“I do feel a lot better”

He looks down at some paperwork on his desk and back up to me.

“Let’s talk about why you’re here,” he says. “Your mother says you had another personality switch and you haven’t been dealing with it very well. She explained you had a breakdown, so they rushed you back here. ”

Lying bitch. “I don’t remember, I thought I was going to move in with my boyfriend and they wouldn’t let me go.”

“And this is the same one who you said broke you out of here. When you were beaten and ended up in hospital?”

“Yes.”

He sits back in his chair and continues his assessment of how crazy I am.

“You never escaped from here, Bristol. You were doing really well on your new medication and we sent you home to see how you would cope, but you don’t remember any of that.”

I shake my head no adamantly. I know I can fight them on this, but it will only make them shove crap down my throat and make me believe I'm insane.

“No, I don’t remember.”

“And this new personality, I’m told her name is JD. Is that correct?”

I nod my head yes. “Why am I creating these personalities? I don’t remember ever having any.”

“That’s because JD is new, she wouldn’t know anyone else yet. As for why, we’re unsure of what triggered it to begin with, but since your brother's death, things have been worse.”

I can’t believe that they would believe this crap. He clearly hasn’t worked with me before, he makes that obvious as keeps looking down at the notes in front of him.

“So you’re saying that since my brother died, I created another personality to hide behind, and that I have been delusional about everything? That I don’t have five boyfriends?”

I almost laugh at myself, of course they’re using this angle. It sounds insane that I would have five boyfriends, since that isn’t normal to begin with.

“Yes to your first two questions and no to your last one. Can you hear how that sounds when you say it out loud?”

I nod because at least that much is true.

“Yes I do understand that it sounds crazy, but honestly it seemed so real.”

“And you believe that it wasn’t all a manifestation of your imagination.”

“Of course I do, I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I suggest when someone like me comes in here you don’t handle things the way you guys did. I mean, you didn’t even give me a chance to process something that felt so real to me before jabbing me with chemicals that made me drowsy and in a cloud of fog in my brain.”

He eyes me warily, he isn’t sure if he believes me or not and I don’t blame him since he is the one lying to me. I wonder how much he’s been paid to lie to me, to keep me locked away here. I wonder what Shandra's end game is. Is it to marry Sebastian and then she will let me out, or is it Carter and is this all his doing so I’ll marry him? There is zero chance of any of that happening now or even in this lifetime. I know that my guys will find a way to get me out of here. My father seemed like he genuinely cared, so I’m hoping that they contact him and he comes to save me.

“In our next session we can work on you finding your way back to being Bristol, but recognising that JD’s life is just in your head is a good start.”

“Is it wrong that I really liked her life? She is a nice person.”

“That is normal, she is obviously all the parts about yourself that you like. We will work through everything and we'll have you feeling like your old self soon enough.”

I nod and hope that I can play along long enough or they may start sticking me with enough drugs to tranquilize a horse.

He wraps up our session after that and a male nurse comes and escorts me to a new room. The door still locks from the outside but the setup is much nicer than the last one they had me in. A single bed -pushed up against the wall- a desk, a closet that has shelves and a small tv mounted on the wall. On the desk there is a journal and a pencil. I guess they want me to start writing down my feelings.

I lay down on the bed and use the remote to turn on the tv. There are no local channels, only Foxtel. I find an Adam Sandler movie and remember when the guys and I had a movie marathon. How can this be my life? Surely things like this only happen in movies. I can’t imagine why they would all want to be with me; they had a traumatic enough childhood and all I seem to be doing is creating more trauma. Yet, I couldn’t walk away from them even if I wanted to and maybe that alone is a sign of the old me.