Leah 4
There is a thick, caked layer of sand coating the insides of my eyelids, scratching and clawing at my corneas in protest when I try with all my might to will my eyes open, accompanied with the feeling of cotton filling my mouth absorbing any tiny trace of moisture that dare arise. These are the glorious feelings to which I am privy to wake with. The sound of a groan makes me stir even further in to consciousness and force back my lids, as painful a task as it is, to look around and find the source of the sound. To my surprise I find the darkened room completely void of any other beings from myself. It is then that I realize the groan must have come from me. Balling my hands at my sides it takes a world of effort for me to coerce my muscles in to cooperation. If for nothing else than to make it to my bathroom, brush my teeth and rid the cotton dryness from my mouth before coming back to collapse for a night of real sleep. That’s not too much to ask, right?
Collecting my strength of will I roll to my side, which may sound to be a meager task to anyone not doped with a near-lethal dose of Ativan, but that’s where my energy and stamina give out. For just a minute I lay there, content to be pissed off at the world, and stuck uncomfortably on my side while I make a mental note to kick the shrink’s ass that stuck me with the damn syringe. Sighing in defeat I push myself back to lay on my back, landing with a groan, and stare at the ceiling through the cracks that are my half-open eyes.
With my eyes still fighting to hold off the sandy weighted lids, I notice the smallest beam of muted light dance in a line across my ceiling before it disappears again. My mind had not yet abandoned the thoughts on why or how light was dancing on my ceiling, as gracefully as a lopsided two-legged elephant, when I felt the shifting of my mattress. “Lee, what the fuck are you doing here?”
My eyes rolled in my head and I wanted to throw my arm over my eyes in an attempt to hide me from the ghost of my late roommate, “Why are you haunting me? You’re dead, what are you trying to do? Drive me back into the fucking nuthouse?” Oh God. It’s a hallucination; that has to be the only explanation there is. I’m hallucination now. It wouldn’t be the first time Ativan has caused such reactions in me. Well, as long as I’m seeing dead people now, I might as well look up and face the music, theoretically.
I noticed the very typical behavior of her rolling her eyes at me and I was so focused on it that I was almost shocked when she grabbed my hand from where it lay on the bed, and put it to her face. “You moron, I am right here. I am not dead, how could you be touching me if I am dead?”
Was this some kind of damn joke that now I’m being taunted besides? If it was, it worked and I snapped on the apparition, jerking my hand out of her hold, “I have some pretty vivid fucking dreams, Bells.”
There was the briefest of pauses before she sighed, “Okay, what did you tell me at the hospital when I was having night terrors?” Why? It’s the question most predominant in my head, screaming for an answer as to why this is all happening. It took me so long to come to grips with everything that had happened, and now this is threatening for me to lose my shit. My dreams have never been quite so vivid and painfully accurate. The next thing she did punctuated that fact perfectly when she lifted my hand again and put it just an inch front of my face such that I have no choice but to look, and listen.
“In dreams, you never have the correct amount of fingers,” she explained as if I were a toddler needing to be spoke to in a slow, deliberate manner, “so look at your hand, do you see that? Five fingers.”
I couldn’t help it, she didn’t leave me much of a choice, so I stared at my hand frowning as I counted my digits over and over, just to make sure. One, two, three, four, five… One, two… Holy shit! This really is my Bells, my best friend. A woman I’d grown to love and need in my life. A woman I have grieved and mourned, and even attempted suicide just to be with her again. The one person who knows every last thing a person, who isn’t me, could know about me. The speed with which I jerked my hand away from her made her jump to her feet. “This isn’t a dream. You’re real! Here! Right now…”
As she sat back down on the edge of my bed, less reserved and unsure this time, she wore her trademark Cheshire, shit-eating grin, “I am here, right now.”
“Holy shit.” Words couldn’t begin to explain the meaning and the timbre beneath my exclamation, and I know it, which makes me frown even harder as my hand reaches up to touch her arm. “But… the nurses said…at the hospital, you killed yourself.”
I watched her smile, but shake her head sadly mulling over her words before she spoke them, “No, that was Rebecca. Becka got out and her family shunned her and she didn’t get in with the work program. She started using again the second she got out from what I found out. She just… lost the game.”
My heart sank and I weakly lifted a hand scrubbing it down my face and shaking my head, muttering under my breath, “Stupid bitch.” Of the three of us that had been roomed together at the institute, Bex had seemed to be the most put together and with it. Damn, she played it off well enough to have both Bells and I convinced. There is a part of me, albeit an infinitesimal part but a part nonetheless, that wants to mourn all over new again, but the feeling of having been played makes that a difficult task to accept. The only thing I truly regret and feel grievances towards is the fact that I almost followed the bitch’s sorry ass because I thought… No, it wasn’t Bells. That much I need to get out of my head because she is here, with me, alive and well enough.
I watched her nod her head in agreement and grin back at me, “So they let you out finally?”
Trying to sit up so that I could bring Bells close to me and give her a long overdue hug, I pressed my elbows in to the mattress on either side of me and pushed up. I made it not even halfway before my arms gave back out again, the world spinning, and I laid back down closing my eyes and doing a bit a deep, labored breathing to fight off the wave of nausea. “Yeah, if you can call this place out.”
I don’t know what she was doing, but knowing her as well as I do I imagine she is nodding, or smirking, or something to that effect before I hear her response, “Looks like you got pick of the litter for a parole officer.”
That just about summed it up. “You have no fucking clue,” I snorted out and peeked a single eye open at her from under my forearm that is strewn over my face. A wide grin cracked my features and it actually pained me, I couldn’t begin to think back to the last time I had smiled at all, much less grinned so wide.
I heard the creak of the door as it flew open before the growling voice barged in to the room, uninvited, “No, you obviously don’t have any fucking clue if you are in here right now.” The slam of the door followed Sergeant Asshole’s arrival and I twisted my head to see that he was standing there looking as pissed off as ever. I groaned and rolled my eyes, lacing my free hand with Bells’ where Quil couldn’t see it, repositioning my arm back over my eyes. This is the last fucking thing I want to deal with right now. “What do you think you are doing in here?”
To my shock it was B that answered by bolting upright to stand on her feet after the smallest fraction of a second, and squared her shoulders to him, “Listen Captain Pretty,” don’t laugh, don’t laugh Leah. Do. Not. Laugh at that nickname. “You don’t scare me like you seem to think you do, so knock the tough guy shit out. I have been around people and places that would make your pretty little face crumble with tears.” Now my shocked expression was turned to meet the back of her head, mouth falling agape and everything as she stood her ground and, what, threatened him? No, that wasn’t a threat, especially coming from her. I know her well enough to understand that much.
When I finally closed my mouth again and turned my eyes over towards the door I saw Quil wearing a frigid, evil smirk on his lips that made my skin crawl, “That is so adorable that you think that your little stint in the Looney bin and jaunt through prison means that you are some tough bitch that has seen the world.” As crazy as it is, I am beginning to feel like one of those characters in the cartoons that is stuck between two others while their head flies back and forth, side to side, as they watch the exchange taking place around them.
“You have no idea what I have seen or not seen you fucking glorified babysitter! If you want to see how fucking tough I am, come and try me you—” Bells’ voice gave way to her anger that was quickly rising, and I know it too well.
“Pa fè l,” I said softly from the bed. It has been far too long since I had spoken a word of my second language, Creole, but it all came flooding back to me upon registering Bells to be alive and well. “Don’t do it,” I repeated just as softly in the same foreign tongue. I saw B open her mouth to respond but I managed to cut her off with a simple shake of my head, “Jis pa, se pa yon valè li e li pa konprann nou.” Just don't, it's not worth it and he doesn't understand us.
Bells sighed and nodded, and I knew then that I had hit the mark that I needed to find, I had gotten her to relax just enough that she wouldn’t go off the handle on Quil. Instead, I pushed myself up slowly and carefully to watch when she turned and was looking back at him. “Okay hotshot, you win, but how about a scene like today doesn’t fucking happen again, do you hear me?” Well, I did have her calm at one point, just seconds ago.
“You are seriously threatening me right now?” Swallowing the lump that built up in my throat I could plainly see that Quil was pissed off now. Opening my mouth to intervene before the two of them get in to a match of their words, Bells cut me off.
“Abso-fucking-lutely and I won’t do it again because, if I hear her screaming for you to get off her again… I will hunt you down and slice your cock off your package and use it as a pencil to write Ginger Beer across your forehead.” Quil was growling louder and louder, the sound bubbling through his entire being as she spoke.
The entire scene unfolding in front of me was too much and I can’t help but giggle, “She will too!” The mere image of “Ginger Beer” being scrawled across Quil’s forehead in any way, shape, or form just about has me in a laughing fit. But my laughter is stopped dead in its tracks like a train with the emergency brake pulled to derail the entire locomotive in the blink of an eye when Quil responded.
In two fast and heavy steps he closed the space between himself and Bells, grabbing her left wrist in a way that looked like he was going to take it upon himself and physically displace her from the room, but he stopped when he saw her wrist, where I have no doubt the matching tattoo we share is staring at him in a mocking manner, looking a thousand times bigger than it really is. My eyebrow lifted seeing how he stared at it, studying it, for a little bit before turning his look on me so fiercely I could have stumbled backwards had I been on my feet. Quil quickly let Bells’ wrist go, keeping his eyes on me but spoke directly to Bells, “You need to leave. She has had a long day and I have a feeling tomorrow isn’t going to be any shorter.”
There was a question written all over Bells’ face when she turned to look at me, one that I couldn’t and wouldn’t have an opportunity to answer right now even if I wanted to so I simply gave her a nod then watched her shape disappear to a silhouette in the doorway before finally disappearing. It wasn’t even a full second after she was gone that I was already wishing she was back here, holding my hand, holding me and keeping me sane.
“We need to talk, Clearwater,” Quil’s formerly strict and authoritative voice broke the silence in a softer, approachable tone. Begrudgingly I looked away from the door and met his look head on, my brows furrowing together above my eyes as he moved with extreme caution towards me, his hands held open palms out facing me.
“What in God’s name do you want to talk about at this hour, Sarge?” my tone was the exact opposite of his approachable, easy one. “Aren’t you the one that just told B…” I stopped myself, knowing I am the only person able to call her anything other than by her chosen nickname, “Swan that I had a long day, no thanks to you, and tomorrow’s going to be longer? Can’t it wait? I’d like some non-drug induced sleep, if you don’t mind.” My temper was edging and threatening to escape my grasp, my eyes narrowing on his features.
Quil sighed and gave an uncharacteristic roll of his eyes at me but kept his hands up in surrender. “Yes, I did tell her that. No, it can’t wait. Yes, you will get some restful sleep.” He paused just long enough to quirk his brow and grab a breath before he carried on. “And you can cut the ‘Sarge’ crap, Leah.”
The way he used my real name brought me up short, even speechless. He had answered all my questions, which I had meant to be rhetorical, honestly, in one swoop and yet the way my name sounded coming from his lips was what made me sit up and pay attention in a figurative sense. Reaching behind me I grabbed my one pillow and tossed in on my lap then fluffed the second pillow behind my back to serve as a prop against the headboard of my bed. Flopping back in to the pillow I gathered the one from my lap and pulled it against my stomach, crossing my arms in front of it, “Alright, I’m listening…”
I am not a fan of how long Quil stays quiet and unmoving, the only signs of life in him being the way he presses his fingers together and steeples them in front of him resting his chin on them. I can almost hear the wheels in his head turning, mulling over whatever it is that he wants to say. Here I had thought that if it was so important that it couldn’t wait for morning, that it would be right on the tip of his tongue. I’d steeled myself in preparation for the next tongue-lashing I’d be getting because Bells showed up in my room. “You have to know, Leah.” My brows pull together even further, a million different way that this sentence could be finished, and none of them are really anything that I want to hear right now. “There are...,” he paused as if he were thinking carefully about how to say it again, “reasons. None that are easily explained away, but reasons behind…”
“Stop right there, Quil.” I put a hand up as my shield. Shielding my self from who knows what the hell was going to follow all of that. “Just please, stop. I don’t want to hear it right now.”
I was floored when Quil’s hand wrapped around my wrist and lowered my hand, my shield out of his way so he could lean closer to me. “You may not want to hear anything, but like I said, you have to know this, Leah. I promise you, it’s a game changer.”
I stared at him, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks as hot as the natural blush you get from too many hours spent in the summer’s sun before I yanked my hand away and leveled him with a glare. “I said no.” Retucking my arm around my middle and folding it, I sat stiff as a board just waiting.
“I am not going anywhere, Leah. I’m not going away, no matter how big of a fit you pitch. I’m here because I chose… No, I choose to be here looking after you. My choice. I chose you.” Quil’s eyes, always the portal in to his soul, danced with the blazing emotions of his words. In a slow-motion and uncertain kind of way he lifted his hand to brush a piece of hair that had fallen in front of my face aside, “I’m not going anywhere this time.” Seconds, maybe a minute or more passed before I was able to form any kind of connection from my brain to the rest of me, but I was interrupted by Quil gently prodding me with his words, “Say something.”
“Fuck you, Quil.” Shaking my head I start to push myself off the bed to make some sort of escape but the lingering effects of the drugs have my extremities still feeling sluggish and keep me grounded to my mattress which only makes me more upset. The sting of my eyes warns of betraying tears threatening to spill. Grounding my teeth together I throw an arm straight out, pointing a long slender digit at the door. “Get out. I’m tired and I want to sleep, so kindly fuck off and get the hell out of my room. Now.”
The tiniest glimmers of victory flashes in my mind when Quil’s expression actually reflects the hurt I’ve inflicted, the hurt continuing to resonate through him when his hands return to the surrender posture as his protection while he backs his way out of the room. “I’ll be here in the morning. Sleep well, Leah.” A growl-like roar built within me, all the way from deep in my belly only to finally escape after Quil pulled the door closed tight. Taking the pillow from on my lap I launch it, with impressive strength, and feel slightly more satisfied when it collides with the things on top of the dresser and send them crashing to the ground before it hits the door with a thud.
After all these years of trying to recover, how am I to be expected to make any gains with that lingering over my head like a loaded storm cloud ready to cascade down on me with no more than a moment’s notice? Flopping back in to my bed, I grab up my pillow from behind my head and hold it to my face to muffle the screamed profanities I have in honor of Quil’s profession of feelings.
I had screamed myself to sleep at some point last night but once I was out, I was truly out cold and not to be woken by anything. When the pillow I’d sent through space smacked me in the ass, that happened to be up in the air with how my legs were curled under me in a fetal position throughout the night, I jumped lifting my head from the mattress and sending the other pillow that was burying my head to the floor. “What do you want? I’m trying to sleep here.” My voice came out pathetically whiney, but honestly, you don’t wake a sleeping woman. Any idiot knows that.
“Get up, get dressed, and let’s go. We’ve got a meeting, Clearwater.” Bossy, working Quil was back in full force and I am more than thankful for that. “You’ve got five minutes to get yourself ready, I let you sleep in. We’ll get food after. Come on. Chop. Chop.”
“Alright, alright, Jesus Christ, I’m awake.” Like a little child being nagged by her mother, I huffed and threw what little amount of blankets I still had on me to the floor and got myself up. Yawning and stretching as I crossed the room to my small bathroom I grabbed at random clothing I crossed along the way. I made quick work of brushing my teeth and combing my fingers through my hair, that was standing in a million different directions, enough so that I could pull the front half back in a clip. My natural, ethnic curls lying haphazardly over my shoulders. With my toothbrush still in my mouth I managed to step in to my loose-fitting jeans and jump to get them over the bubble of my butt so that I could fasten the button closure on them. Without a care that Quil is present I shrugged out of my tank-top I’d slept in and pulled on a fresh one, at least by the sniff test it is fresh, then pulled on my long sweater, and left it to hang open in front. Turning back to face the room and the eyes on me I gestured to the door, stepping in to flip flops as I did, “Alright, ready. Let’s go get this shit over with.”
Without a word Quil lead the way, all businesslike again, down to the basement meeting room where we are the first ones to arrive. Parking my ass on the couch when I’m told to, I pull out one of my cigarettes and light up, ignoring the glare he gives me, and sit quietly as some other hardass brings his girl in and seats her on the opposite end of the couch from me, leaving a space between us. Great. Looking over the three chairs in front of the couch I deduce that there is still one more person coming to join our little coffee clutch session, I can’t wait to find out who that just might be.
“Ou fukin bata! Ou pi bon mete m 'desann kounye a oswa konsa ede m', Bondye mwen pral rele ke ou yo ap eseye vyole m'!” I heard the Creole flying from Bells’ mouth and flew out of my seat on the couch as soon as my brain translated the words, “You fucking bastard! You better put me down now or so help me God I will scream that you are trying to rape me!” Quil’s hand was on my shoulder pushing me back down in to my seat just before I saw Bells being parked harshly on her ass next me and the other girl on the couch. Instinctively I reached over and put a hand on her knee in a soothing manner to calm her. “What the fuck, Mike?”
“That seems to be the question of the moment,” I snorted and shook my head offering her a cigarette from my pack. Quil had mentioned some kind of meeting this morning, but this is nothing like what I had in mind when he said it.
This scenario playing out before us and around us visibly pissed all of us girls off, but it was Bells that broke the silence with the plaguing question on all our minds, “Alright guys, let hear this. What the fuck is going on?”
In unison, all three guys looked at each other as if they were passing some message amongst themselves before they all, once again, uniformly looked back at us. It was the parole officer that I haven’t met yet, except for when he was helping to separate me and Quil last night that stepped forward slightly, whipping one of the three chairs in line in front of us backwards and sitting on it as leisurely as you would at a sporting event, “Talo …”
“Ha! I told you she was the Talo!” Bells shrieked triumphantly looking at Mike, and I could see the way his lips look to twitch fighting to keep from smiling. I just simply snorted a laugh at her enthusiasm and leaned back in to the couch cushion, chewing my thumbnail painfully clear down to the skin.
The officer speaking only stopped long enough to glare at Bells, and then he turned back to the third chick and continued, “Talo, I know you think this place won’t help and you want to be home, but just look at how that meeting with the shrink went. Could you do that all day everyday? Without me or Sue or anything else as a buffer between you and your brother?” This has to be some sort of a joke, now I know it. They didn’t all really gather the three of us girls here together because one pathetic bitch needs friends to help her keep her behavior in check, did they?
My eyes danced their way down in the girl’s direction just soon enough that I caught the shake of her head. Something about her made my heart want to break for her, but I can’t place it, so naturally I continue watching her, studying her even as her parole officer continues to drone on, “Good, now I know these men here, I work with them so from now on; all three of us are not your individual parole officers. Not according to us. All three of us are ALL of your parole officers.”
As soon as the words where out of his mouth, all three of us girls jolted forward, looking doe-eyed at the men. “What?!” The shock in all of our voices was deafening, but I’m almost certain that mine was a result of something completely different than the other two girls.
“That is right kids, since the three of you seem to be unable to deal with NOT getting into trouble with each other; you have now sealed the deal on three wardens.” Quil was the one explaining now, looking cool as a cucumber with his hands pushed in to his jeans’ pockets and a triumphant smirk on his lips. My eyes narrow on him skeptically the longer they stay locked on him. What is the point to all of this? Honestly, we live in a house full of counselors and PO’s, how is this any different or any kind of special arrangement?
Bells snapped before anyone else could, “Are you fucking kidding me? Mike, this is bullshit and you know it. I don’t need three baby sitters.” She then turned on Quil and narrowed her eyes. “This was your fucking idea, because you get your rocks off by torturing us girls.” Groaning I scrub a hand down my face in fear for how he will respond to that one, fearful for Bells, that is.
The third parole officer and Bells’ both coughed which stole my attention from everything else. My eyes glare daggers at the pair of them, wanting to know exactly what part of this they are finding funny, and if that funny part includes my fragile state from last night. If that is the case, heads will roll. Quil was remarkably calm in his response, considering how he has been handling shit lately. “You have almost killed people on four separate occasions. You have a blatant disregard for rules, seeing how you snuck into my charge’s room last night and on top of everything else, I have a serious inquiry on just how close you are with your parole officer.”
I just sat there and blinked like a fool whose mouth hangs open on a regular basis. Shock may be an appropriate way to describe it, but it mixes easily with the sense of relief settling itself in my belly. My shock is renewed again when Mike bellows, “Swan, chill the fuck out. I can’t be here all the time and when I am not, they are right, you need to be looked after.”
The whole business of being looked after by others is sounding better and better with every time the words caressed the shell of my ear. “Well, I may be the only one that is perfectly fine with this arrangement.” The look Mike gave me with his raised brow made me grin. Shooting a wink in his direction I shrugged and went on, “However, I still wouldn’t wish Sergeant here on anyone, not even my worst enemy.” Of all people, I wouldn’t wish Quil’s harsh ways on Bells, or the pathetic Talo girl, whose name I still haven’t learned.
Perhaps I could have chosen to word it differently, but the look and teeth-flashing grin I get tells me that Quil isn’t entirely pissed off and ready to haul my ass over his shoulder like I was afraid he might. “You, Clearwater, are here because it is obvious that I and you have shit to get through, so your head-quack thinks it would be a good idea if I wasn’t all present in your recovery process. If I comply, I need someone to be watching you while I am not here.”
“That is the biggest cop-out I have ever heard.” I snapped back. “You would never do what some fucking shrink told you to do.” My blood is literally boiling with just how outrageous this all sounds. Despite practicing some deep, cleansing breathing like Jasper taught me, I am ready to launch myself at the meathead for thinking he is being funny bringing that shit up here when it is a blatant lie.
All he could manage was a sigh and to pinch the bridge of his nose, his tone slow and pointed as if I were a child he was talking to, “I got orders because of a call that your fucking queer shrink put in to my department.”
Jasper ratted Quil out? That was it; I burst out laughing falling back in to the cushion of the couch holding my stomach, only frustrating him further to growl at me with an advancing step. “Look,” the third parole officer intervened, “we have worked with Sue to make it so that all chores, fieldtrips and practically everything else that is to be done while you three are in this house will be done together.”
“The only time you are excused is when an individual parole officer or your assigned shrink pulls one of you away.”
“Sa se bullshit nèt sou tout pwen.” This is complete bullshit.
Both Bells and I responded in the exact same way, in the exact same instant; snapping our heads to look where the words have come from. The ‘Talo’ chick jumped in return, probably because we scared the shit out of her. I lifted a brow, growing even more curious about the woman that I was now sentenced to be spending all of me and Bells’ time together with.
Bells laughed hard and I couldn’t help but ask. “Èske ou trè enfliyan?” Are you fluent? I looked between the two awaiting the response. Honestly I’m still in a bit of shock that this could very well be our easy way out of the arrangement.
As soon as I saw the nodding answer from ‘Talo’ my mind was made up. Grinning wide, B leaned closer to both us girls, giving a sideways glance to the line of men, “Byen, paske m' ap ki pou di osi lontan ke sa a kontra avèk twa gardiens dure, nou pale pa gen anyen nan Angle.” Good, because I say that for as long as this deal with three babysitters lasts, we speak nothing of English.
If the men want to play a game and force us all to create some type of bond and friendship, well, two sides can play that game. And we girls can be far better at it!
