have a plan and that I’m not giving up, but that’d be a lie. Because I am giving up.
They’ve finally won.
Ten days.
Two hundred forty hours.
Fourteen thousand four hundred minutes.
That’s how long I’ve been stuck here. Trapped in this hellhole that’s supposed to heal me. It’s doing everything else but that. After my first encounter with Dr. Aster, things have only gotten worse. Those first three days, she would come in with her stupid gray hair pulled back into a bun and try to get me to talk about Madison. When I wouldn’t talk, she’d provoke me into talking with anger.
She’d mention I belonged here.
That everyone truly thought I was crazy after all that had happened.
Those words always struck a chord in me, and she knew it. In just three days, it felt like she knew my own mind better than I did, and that was scary. During our meetings, she would try to get me to see reason, try to get me to see that the Madison who was coming to me wasn’t my sister. It was my imagination. It was my grief creeping up on me. She said she’d seen it plenty of times before in other cases, but the thing was, I wasn’t just another case. I knew Madison was dead, but I also knew that was her. She was real. I felt her. There’s no other explanation. And I refused to believe it was all in my head because then that meant that my sister…that meant she was really gone. In every aspect.
With every tic of my jaw, furrow of my brow, and the increase in the rise and fall of my chest, it seemed like Dr. Aster knew what I was thinking, or rather, feeling, even before I did. And that stupid fucking notebook.
God, I hated that notebook.
She wrote in there for every little thing. If she’d walk into the room and say, “Good morning,” and I wouldn’t reply? It went in the notebook. If I so much as spoke one word, it went in the notebook. Everything about me was in that goddamn notebook, and I had the urge to chuck it at the wall, rip out each page, toss them into pile, and set them on fire.
I was tired.
Sick and tired of the same faces.
Sick and tired of seeing the same people and doing the same thing.
I was sick of this place.
I missed my friends.
I missed my sister.
But most of all, I missed Baz. And I hated myself for it. I hated how much space he took up inside my head. How much I missed his touch, his smile, his arms wrapped around me.
Arms that did God knows what to Madison.
My chest tightens alarmingly with pain. It reverberates through my body, squeezing my heart in a vise and making it hard to breathe. I can’t help but look back on our time together and wonder the exact moment he decided he was going to keep stringing me along for his sick ruse.
Would he have killed me, too?
And if so, when?
What was their plan?
All the mistakes I’d made in our “relationship” suddenly felt like they were fractures in my bones. They were the exact reason I was here, crippled in this bed.
I’m jolted out of those thoughts when the door to this shit room opens and the same two goddamn nurses come in, followed by Dr. Aster. Annnd, you guessed it, notebook and pen in hand and at the ready. She pauses over the threshold, cocks her head to the side, and rubs her lips together as she regards me. As if she suddenly has the answers she needs, she starts scribbling something down on the open page of her notebook, and I let out a frustrated sound, slamming my good hand into the sheets.
“What in God’s name have I done now? What could have possibly warranted you writing something down when I’m literally sitting here?”
She raises her brow, her head cocking even farther, and she purses her lips disapprovingly, writing something else down.
Pressing my lips together, I hold back all the things I want to say but know I shouldn’t. As if sensing my restraint and approving of it, Dr. Aster’s lip twitches as if it wants to turn up into a smile. I despise that, too.
“How are you feeling today, Mackenzie?”
I make a show of looking down at my bandaged and broken body in the bed. “The same as yesterday. It still feels like I was hit by a fucking truck.”
“That’s to be