Year Two: Rebels - Cara Wylde Page 0,12
even if Nurse T had just walked me out of the building, I already wanted to go back inside. Not that the Karmic Asylum was much warmer. It was freezing in the hallways, and I was pretty sure not all rooms had an electrical heater like mine did. Nurse T never missed a chance to remind me how privileged I was compared to the other patients.
I walked around for a few minutes, and when I couldn’t take the cold anymore, I went to find the nurse. She was the only one I talked to in this horrible place. She and the doctor when he called me into his office once a week. The rest of the patients seemed to be way more sedated than I usually was, so it was impossible to make friends. Maybe they had just been on medication for longer than I was… Who knew? These days, it was hard for me to figure out what exactly was happening around me and why. When I caught a moment of lucidity, I tried to focus solely on myself and my situation, tried to remember if anyone had visited me while the drugs had checked me out of the world.
“Nurse T.” She was standing near the entrance, smoking a cigarette. “I don’t seem to remember… Has Adrian Wyvern visited me lately?”
She gave me a mysterious grin. “Fancy him, eh? Isn’t he your professor?”
“You didn’t… answer my question…”
She smacked her lips, threw the unfinished cigarette in the rain, then gently took me by the arm.
“Let’s get you inside. How does a cup of hot cocoa sound?”
“You still didn’t…”
She cut me off with random chit-chat that didn’t mean anything, and I gave up. It was clear to me that no one here wanted us, the patients, to remember anything, to get better, to have a second chance at a normal life.
I must have lost even more time.
My days were the same. I woke up in the morning, Nurse T would either give me a potion to drink or not, then I had breakfast, lingered forgotten in the common room, more drugs, lunch, maybe a walk in the freezing cold, more lingering in the common room, one last shot of drugs for the day, dinner, sleep. Dreamless sleep. A few times a week, I would deem my head clear enough to attempt to teleport or dream jump. It never worked. Most mornings, I was okay. But never okay enough to do something about my situation. Once a day, I’d make time to go through my things and look for Corri’s bell just in case Adrian had come to see me and brought it with him and I couldn’t remember. I was smart, though. I never left my things and clothes scattered on the floor after a thorough search. I didn’t want Nurse T to suspect anything. As far as she was concerned, I was an obedient patient.
More time was lost, and then one morning, Nurse T came in earlier than usual. Someone was with her. When the key turned in the lock, I jumped awake. The man that followed in after her was tall, with long, elegant limbs, wide shoulders and a wide chest, with dark olive skin, black hair, and eyes as blue as the ocean. I knew him, but I was too groggy with sleep to remember his name or how we were connected. He was carrying a tray of food. He smiled at me, then turned to the nurse and stuffed a wad of cash into her hand. She took it quickly and hid it in her pocket.
“One hour,” he said.
“Are you sure? I should give her the medication first.”
“No. One hour.”
The nurse eventually shrugged and walked out. The man placed the tray on my lap and removed the lids. The smell of fresh pancakes and jam filled the room. On another plate, two fried eggs with bacon waited for me to devour them. This was very different from the breakfast I got in the cafeteria.
“How?” I asked, taking the fork and knife and trying to decide what I wanted to taste first.
“It’s amazing what money can get you around here. A decent breakfast, an hour with a highly dangerous patient…” He chuckled.
I looked up at him. I blinked, staring into his blue eyes, struggling to remember. Flashes from the past assaulted me, and I suddenly knew that he was a sphinx, that he could shift into a beast that was half human, half lion, and had eagle wings,