Bend - Bromberg K. - Страница 68

“People cared about Amanda.”

“No. You cared. The rest of them were slowing down to see the blood on the road.”

There had been plenty of it. Rich blood. Blue blood if you counted Charlie’s cut head. Amanda’s flowed with the webbed lines of windshield cracks as I sat in the passenger seat in a half daze. I thought she looked like a cartoon character sticking her head through a wall, and she’d just pull it out and make a goofy face. I put my hand on her ass and patted it, whispering, “Tight and sweet, baby. Tight and sweet. You’re going to be okay.”

“You’re not going to cry,” Jack said, incredulous. “You’re not allowed to have problems, sweet tits. Sorry.”

I didn’t know what was going on with Jack. Something must have been happening in his world, because he was ornery and defensive, but I didn’t care. The thought that no one had cared about Amanda dying, even though it had been in all the papers and her parents turned people away from the funeral, pulled at my heart. He was right. No one cared about her.

And how did you make people care? Amanda Westin died in a drunk-driving accident, and the driver walked away because his dad was a duke in some tiny European backwater, and the news vans came, and the flowers were imported from India, but how could I make them care? Tell them who she was? That she made me laugh when I was sad? That she loved her dogs? That she gave me the last of her flake when I needed it? Or that she stood by me the million times I bailed on her to get laid?

“She was a good person,” I said. “One of the best.”

“Sure.” He shrugged.

That little knot of anxiety grew into something bigger, something without boundaries. It was larger than me. Wider than the expanse of my chest, with an energy all its own.

It was that force inside me, but not me, that flung my tray. Flinging it felt good, because it made a little room inside me, a tiny corner without anxiety. I flung Jack’s tray. I swept my hand over the table and knocked over the condiments, and then I got up on the table. When I flung myself off it, the motherfuckers were already there to catch me. Bernie, good old Bernie, looked intent on not letting me fall, and Frances already had a needle.

thirteen.

I woke up strapped to the bed. Elliot sat by me, marking something on a chart.

“Oh, God,” I said, trying to put my hand over my eyes and failing.

Elliot got up and turned off the overhead, flicking on the soft table lamp over my photo of Snowcone. “Do you have any muscle pain or weakness?”

“What drugs did you give me? I can’t feel anything.”

“Do you promise not to get violent?”

“Fuck. You’re never going to let me out now. I’m stuck here. Why did I do that?” My face crunched up. I was going to cry right there in front of Elliot, every tear another nail in the coffin of my sanity. When he freed my right hand, I put it over my face.

“I’m not an MD, so I don’t dispense your meds, I only suggest. But it looks like you got a little too much slap and not enough tickle,” he said.

“What?”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s late. My sense of humor shorts out when I’m tired.” He freed my left arm and went to the foot of the bed.

“Nice you have one that’s wired at all.”

He smiled as he unstrapped my feet. “I’ll contraindicate the Paxil.”

He got my ankles free, and I sat up. The world swam a little, and I gripped the edge of the bed. The room righted itself.

“Are you going to let me go?” I asked.

“I have another day of observation. You want to go?”

“Please.”

He sat next to me. “Deacon Bruce, by his own admission, fell on the hoof knife.”

“He what?”

“Fell on the thing twice, apparently.”

Any relaxation I’d gotten from the meds molted off me like a skin I’d never owned. “He’s protecting me.”

“The district attorney doesn’t believe him either. But in the end, it’ll be hard to make a case. You’re a lucky girl.” His green-grey eyes looked at me as if they were peeling me open. “You don’t look relieved.”

“I’m relieved.”

“Don’t start packing yet. Okay?”

“I don’t have much to pack. A picture, and I guess there were clothes? I mean, who knows with me, right?” I held my hand out for the picture, and like a father intuiting what his toddler wanted, Elliot gave it to me.

“You’re going to have to continue some sort of program once you’re out,” he said. “I know you guys have ways of getting around it, but for your own good, I hope this is the bottom for you.”

I barely heard him. I was looking at myself with my new horse. I’d gotten Snowcone as a surprise from Daddy, and my delight in my new black-and-white dressage gear was all over my face. Snowcone was pulling away from the odd, smiling creature at his feet.

“How old are you in that picture?” Elliot asked, sitting in the chair by the bed.

“I’d just turned fifteen. Mom didn’t want me to have him. She thought I was too irresponsible. I swore I was going to prove her wrong.”

“Did you?”

“I did, until recently. When Amanda died, I kind of left him to the stable. Fuck. He was mine; I trained him. He was so good. Perfect temperament, moving off my legs easily, finding the bit like a champ. And I just abandoned him as if he didn’t even matter. And I want people to care about me? Fuck, I am worthless.”

Elliot handed me a box of tissues, and I had to laugh through my tears.

“Fucking therapists,” I said.

“What?”

“Like the most important thing in the world is giving me a place to put my snot.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “The most important thing is that, by doing that, I show you you’re not worthless.”

I blew my nose. I felt so bad, as if a rotting, twisting ball of blackness curled inside me was getting bigger by the minute. I knew how to push it back. I knew how to manage it, and watching Elliot’s fingers woven together between his knees, I started wondering how to get him into bed. When his hand touched my forearm, a blazing heat fell between us.

“You were out for the morning session. So our last one’s in an hour.”

He needed to stop touching me. He needed to back the fuck off. I had to swallow my reaction to him like a horse pill.

“Okay,” I said, not looking at him.

I knew his eyes would be warm and inviting, and his lips curved like a promise. He smelled of musk and desire. His fingers slid a quarter inch over my skin when he removed his hand. When he walked out, he took the air with him.

Oh God.

I was swelled.

I needed it.

If I went into Elliot’s office like this, I would do something stupid. I would lose control. Touch him. Get close to him. Show him my body. And that would be it. I’d be stuck in Westonwood, because despite the heat I felt in his touch, he was a professional. A therapeutic fuck wasn’t on the table. My brain might have been high on fuckjuice, but that didn’t make me stupid.

An hour. I had an hour to get unswelled. I was in a mixed-gender ward with sixty minutes to find willing, slightly sane cock. How hard could it be?

In two days, I’d gotten the hang of the schedule, more or less. I went into the rec room. It was off hours, meaning most of the residents had therapy or visits. Jack wasn’t in front of the TV cataloging flowers. Karen was outside, scribbling in her journal as if homework was due.

“Looking for something?”

I spun around. Frances stood behind me with her hands behind her.

“I was. Uh, Jack’s usually hanging around here?”

“You might check his room.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I stepped back.

“Miss Drazen,” Frances said.

“Yeah?”

“The doors stay open.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I scuttled off toward the hall that led to the rooms. After I made the first turn, I doubled back to the garden. The rain had disappeared for a full day, and rainy-ass Los Angeles was sunny-ass Los Angeles again. I looked for someone, anyone. I drifted over to the creek, thinking maybe Jack was picking up nettles or something. He wasn’t, but Warren Chilton was. His eyes cut through me from the other side of the fence.