Alive

Chapter 23: Fiction

After a long, not so friendly, chat with the police officers, I was arrested on the suspicion of multiple cases of homicide. Since I couldn't exactly pop down to the station with them in my state, I was handcuffed to the hospital bed and they left. I was told that they'd return the following day at 7 am, with more officers. At least I had something to look forward to.

If I was going to come to an end, it would be of my own accord. And it just so happened that I knew how to get out of handcuffs. However, unfortunately, it did involve breaking my wrist. But what better place to break a bone than in a hospital, attached to a morphine drip?

Night had fallen on the world outside and the sun resurfaced throwing us into morning, but the ambience and lighting seemed to remain exactly the same inside the hospital. Time is strange, the way we live by it. All it is is a concept, a way to monitor our progress and growth, but we focus our lives around it, well most people do. I try not to.

People go to sleep when the sun sets and eat when the clock strikes a certain hour, like it's a rule, like it never crossed their mind to do things any other way. I tend to have a more animalistic routine. I sleep when I'm tired and eat when I'm hungry. Do what I want, when I want. Well, before I landed myself in hospital, that is.

The next hour passed in a blur, until it was time. 6:50 am. I took the pillow out from under my head, wincing as my movement sent a throbbing pain through my stomach. This was going to be harder than I'd thought.

Putting the pillow between my teeth, I looked at the one wrist that was detained by a handcuff. I told myself that the pain would only be temporary, as opposed to a lifetime of mental torture if I waited for the police to come back.

Using my free hand, I pulled it backwards in one violent yank and heard the snap. I thought I was going to throw up, but the feeling passed and I focused on staying quiet. The pain wasn't as bad as when I'd cracked my head on Charlie's floor at the bottom of her stairs, but it came close. I think the drugs in my system played a big part in my bravado.

Twisting my hand a little I pulled it out of its metal prison and held my broken wrist in my other. Then I pulled the tubes and wires off of me, one at a time, waiting to see if any triggered an alarm or loud beeping when removed from my body.

The heart monitor I'd been attached to made a loud noise and I found the switch at the wall, turning it off and holding my breath in the silence. I strained to hear if anyone was coming down the long corridor. There was no one there. Thank God - figure of speech.

Walking was excruciating. I could no longer feel the throbbing in my wrist, only the pain that stabbed at my stomach with every step I took. I made it to a door indicating that it was the way to the next floor. Stairs and a lift revealed themselves as I pushed it open, wincing at the force it required.

I knew taking the lift would be more risky, as the nurses and doctors were more likely to see me, but I wasn't sure how many floors there were, and I doubted my body could conquer just one flight of stairs.

Looking behind me to check if anyone had followed, I stepped into the empty lift. 15 floors. I made the right choice, I was only on the second. I extended my arm to press the button, and noticed how swollen my wrist was already. A circle of light illuminated the button for the 15th floor and I held onto the metal rail as the lift went up.

There was no cheesy lift music. I guess it wouldn't be appropriate when relatives were coming to visit a dying loved one with cancer. Or when a new father brought flowers to his wife and sick child, locked inside an incubator, as if those pretty petals and sweet smells could take away their pain and worry.

The silence gave me time to think. I thought about Amy, Elizabeth, Charlie, Luke. I wondered what they'd all be feeling now. Amy probably got engaged to someone, she always gave everything she had into relationships. She trusted wholly and threw herself into love like others threw themselves into alcohol or work. I guess that feeling, being wanted, was enough to numb any pain she may have felt.

Elizabeth would probably be the same as that night. Her problems didn't appear to be ones that had solutions. I thought about her artwork, I'd only seen it for a few seconds, glanced at it as I waited, but that was enough. It was imprinted in my mind. Drawings of a small girl, surrounded by tall trees and shadows in one, and the same girl drowning in violent waves in another.

Charlie. Replaying the scene in my mind, I guess it was an overreaction on my part. But she came into my home, climbed onto my body, and tried to take something from me that I very rarely, if ever, allowed to be taken.

I would've liked to know if she'd gotten over it yet, if her life was back to normal; arguing with Sam, drinking with friends, occasionally throwing humorous jokes into her otherwise monotone conversations. Did she have flashbacks of the attack? Did she get nervous every time someone unlocked the front door in case it was me? Did she lose her perfect little world like I did?

Luke probably tried to find out where I'd gone, begging Adam to give him information that he didn't have. He probably looked up every time he heard a car or footsteps heading towards the motel entrance, hoping it was me.

On some level, I felt sorry for him. I could tell I'd had an impact on him, unintentionally made him picture a future where he'd come home to me and our kids. But it wasn't me he'd fallen for, it was a mask. Everything he thought he knew about me was fiction. It's incredible how people see what they want to see, and how easy it is to make them believe a lie.