Unhinge - Calia Read Page 0,1

pure. Everything in my life seems to be cloaked in fog, impossible to make out, but not Evelyn.

Very gently, I caress her cheek and brush the gossamer strands of her light brown hair away from her forehead. “I’m going to get us out of here. All right?”

She smiles widely as though she understands what I’m saying. I cover her small body with a blanket and kiss her on the forehead. Give her a few minutes and she’ll be out like a light.

Loudly, someone knocks on the door. The door creaks open and Kate, the night shift nurse, walks in. She’s in her midthirties. Her hair is always pulled back in a ponytail. Face stripped of makeup. She’s a mom of three. Every time I see her, she looks distracted and bored. As if Fairfax is the last place she wants to be.

But Kate’s not so bad. There are nurses much more terrible in this place than Kate.

“Lights out,” she says loudly.

Evelyn eyes open and close. I shoot Kate a withering look.

“Why are you dressed up?” she asks.

“No reason.”

Kate narrows her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t feel good and I have a kid that’s sick at home. Go have a night on the town for all I care.”

“If you’re ill why come to work? You could get my daughter sick,” I point out.

She sighs. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Kate holds out a plastic cup with a colorful array of medication. “Here.”

Without a word, I take the cup and toss the pills back. Then I open my mouth dutifully and stick out my tongue. She barely looks. She takes the cup from me and throws it away in the bathroom.

“You should be in bed,” she calls out over her shoulder as she leaves, none too quietly.

I take this as my moment of opportunity and spit out the pills. I stopped taking them a month ago. In the three years I’ve been here, I’d always taken these pills. Never once did I question them. They did their job. They made me blissfully unaware of the world around me. They blotted out all the questions that danced around the corners of my mind. They made the days blur together.

But recently the questions had been getting louder. Loud enough that not even the medicine could block them out. Very swiftly, my body became sluggish, my actions robotic. And the whole time there was an all-out war in my mind.

So I stopped taking them, thinking the questions would just fade away.

But that only made things worse. Now the questions are accompanied by small flashes of memory. I realize there’s so much of my life that I don’t remember.

Sure, I remember some moments, but they’re mostly from my childhood. Family. Teenage years. College. Graduating. Getting my first job as a nurse.

But when I became Victoria Donovan—it all goes blank. There’s an enclosure around that part of my life that I don’t know how to get around.

And I think…no, I know that the only person in the world who can help me is him.

“Did you hear me?” Kate appears at my door again. “You need to get ready for bed.”

“I can’t. I have a—”

“I know. You have a date,” Kate cuts in. “Blah, blah, blah. I’ll check up on you in an hour.”

The chances of her following through are low, but I nod along and smile just to get her out of the room.

But, as she leaves, I quickly speak up. “Kate?” She turns. “Next time, can you not be so loud when you walk in? I’m trying to get my daughter to sleep.”

Kate rolls her eyes. “Yes, Victoria.”

The second the door shuts behind her, I push my bed away from the wall and stuff the pills in a little hole in the wall. It’s no bigger than the tip of an eraser. I found the hole by accident one day when I dropped a piece of paper behind my bed. Many times I’ve wondered how it got there. I like to think that some other patient made that hole and did the exact same thing.

I sit at the very edge of the bed, my heels tapping against the linoleum floor. The clock on the wall ticks slowly, almost taunting me with all the time that I’m losing.

He’ll be here any second. Of course he will.

Over and over I remind myself that I have to stand my ground and not give in to his words. If I follow these two rules then he can’t seduce