Decoy (Camren)

Chapter Nine

*trigger warning for mentions of alcohol/pill abuse*

October 14th

I turn towards to the knock on the plain gray door to see an old man wearing a white lab coat walk into the decorated, tidy room.

"Sorry about your wait, Ms. Cabello, it's pretty busy around here...I'm Doctor Lawson. What can I help you with?" 

He takes a seat in the leather arm chair opposite of me, pushing his glasses further up his nose. I take a quick look around his credential filled room and sigh before returning my attention to the gray-haired doctor.

"I haven't been sleeping, and when I contacted my doctor back in New York, Dr. Fredrick, he referred me to you," I explain as he takes a look at my chart.

"It says here that you were in an accident five years ago and suffered from a traumatic head injury?"

"Yes, when I woke up from the medically induced coma, I couldn't remember the two years prior to the accident."

"Ah, selective amnesia." He wrote something down before continuing. "So the not sleeping aspect, what do you mean by that?"

"Um, well, it started a month ago with just restless nights, and then two weeks ago it turned into me getting two to three hours a night, and now I don't sleep at all."

"Did you suffer from insomnia before the accident?"

"Not that I remember, no."

"So you came here in hopes of some medication?" He looks at me over the top of his glasses.

"I usually wouldn't even come here but my roommate, the scary one sitting out in the waiting room, she made me come here."

He laughs as he grabs a prescription pad from his briefcase and sets it on his lap.

"I'll tell you what, Ms. Cabello, I'll write you a small prescription for enough pills for about a week. I want you to come back and see me even if they do happen to work. And if they don't, perhaps your insomnia is being caused by something deeper." He scribbles some illegible words onto a blank sheet before handing it to me.

"Thank you so much," I say as I take it from him. "Hopefully this will help."

He nods before standing up and opening the door for me to exit through. "Try to get some sleep, maybe you'll be able to crack that amnesia faster."

I smile at him before leaving him behind to find Elise scrolling through her phone, looking up when she hears me approaching.

"Did he give you something?" She stands up and makes her way over to me, her body adorned in black attire. She runs a hand through her hair as she looks at me expectantly. I hold the paper up in front of her face and she grabs it to look at it.

"You happy now?" I ask jokingly.

"Thank God," she says as she hands it back. "I'm getting tired of finding you up in the middle of the night. It scares the shit out of me when I hear you walking around."

I roll my eyes at her before snatching the paper back and walking out the door of the doctor's office, looking down at the prescription and sighing. I really hope this works, I say to myself as I hop into my car and drive off towards the pharmacy.

***

I rub my eyes tiredly as I continue to stare at the wall in front of me, trying desperately to piece everything together. All of the murders have been strung together by red yarn, all of the victim's pictures pinned to the location. I open the manila folder to find the most recent victims, a girl named Victoria Scott, a 24-year-old from Seattle who looks just like Normani, her hair matted with blood and dirt from being thrown off a bridge and into icy water along with another woman named Emily Reid, a 22-year-old from Portland. Her eyes are the same color as Ally's, her hair crafted the same exact way. I pin the two pictures beside each other, sighing as I wrack my brain for possible solutions. I absentmindedly play with the necklace around my neck, feeling the engraving against my fingers as I continue to look at the wall.