Surviving the Storm

Chapter 47

"I see you've abandoned your baby," the therapist points out. I glanced over at the doll on the floor across the room. It laid lonesome as other patients walked by.

"It's not my child," I state. I stood there examining the bruises down my legs. The scratches from fighting against guards. I've only been in the asylum for a couple days. It felt like eternity though. The pills they forced down my throat before throwing me outside of my room. The way Celeste would eye me from across the room. A posse of other woman gathering around her. Their eyes following me like hawks.

Nothing felt real anymore. I had no idea how I got in here. I felt myself start to dissociate what reality really was. Starting with the doll I cradled to my chest. I wanted to fill the hole in my heart. The hole caused by the loss of my family. "Why isn't it? You fought with the nurse earlier who wished to take it," the therapist points out. He sat across from me in a small wooden chair. A male nurse sanctioned behind him for his own protection. The long wound on his face told me it wasn't his first rodeo. The male was seasoned and experienced.

"It's a doll, not a living human. I don't understand how I got here. I never consented to this!" I protested. My wrists were buckled tightly to the chair I sat in. It was better than the straight jackets I've seen others in.

"You don't remember coming in? Your husband brought you in here Raine," he mentions. I tense at the brief mention of a husband. I didn't have a husband. The thought of Celeste's testimony ranging through my head. I bit my cheek until the blood pooled in my mouth.

Noah would never have brought me here. The last I remember was giving birth. How could I have ended up here? "I told you before my name isn't Raine. I don't have a husband. There must have been some mistake," I blurt out. The therapist chuckles writing down stuff on his notepad.

               "I'm not too sure Ryland would have liked to hear that. Your husband is really worried about you. He says after your loss it must have really hit you," he mutters under his breath.

                "Ryland? I don't know a Ryland!" I raise my voice. He flinches causing the male behind him to tense.

                 "Listen, you've been through a lot of trauma clearly. It is perfectly normal to experience a break down like this. But what is important is we talk about it. We want to focus on making you healthy again. So you can rejoin society," he preaches. I tug anxiously against the chair. The arm rest doesn't even budge slightly.

                   "I want to leave. I want to leave! Let me go!" I shout. The man clears his throat, pushing his glasses further on the bridge of his nose. The glare of his glasses the only reflection I saw.

                    "We have barely spoken for ten minutes," he points out. I looked around the room noticing the others going about their day. A few strapped to their wheelchairs. The rest sitting on the floor or furniture scattered through the room. Each gown they wore matching everyone else's. "Did you hear what I said? Do I need to repeat myself?"

                     I ignored the man for the last time. The screeching of his chair echoed the room. He stood up collecting himself before leaving. The smell of his cologne burns my nostril as he passes. The male nurse stalks towards me to unbuckle my restrains. I raise my head proudly looking the nurse in the eye. He grunts harshly pulling the restraint right before releasing it. I pull my wrists into my own lap cradling them.