Kieran always said never let them see you break, so I take a deep breath and lift my shoulders.
The nurse comes in right behind the doctor with a straitjacket in her hands.
“Wait!” I fold my legs underneath me and hold my hands out to keep them away. The doctor grabs both of my wrists, jerking me forward. I kick and scream, trying to buck him off me.
“Should I get one of the men?” The nurse looks at the doctor with a nervous look.
“Nah, Miss Sissy, we can get him,” he says in a low, confident tone. He inches my left arm in the jacket, his strength surprising, he manhandles me into the tight coat before pushing me face down and strapping me in. Before I know it… I’m restrained.
They both grab a strap from the bottom of the bed and secure my legs and I freeze. I thought things like this only happened in movies. They can’t do this. I’m a human, a normal person. Letting me go, he takes a step back, taking a clipboard from Miss Sissy.
“Thank you, Miss Sissy,” he drawls out, and she leaves the room. “Now, let’s try this again.” He tucks the board with a thick amount of paperwork under his arm, and snatches my face by the chin, shining a flashlight into my eyes, blinding me. I wince and pull from his grip. Grinding my teeth, he looks my face over, his dull blue eyes unfazed by my attempt to fight.
He listens to my heart, watching the watch on his wrist. It’s an ugly watch, all black and plastic looking.
Satisfied with my vitals, he finally backs away and closes the door before leaning against it. He takes a deep breath, looking at the window while scratching his chin deep in thought. “So, you brutally attacked one of your classmates yesterday,” he states, not asks. I don’t answer. He obviously knows what happened.
“Have you ever done that before?” he continues to ask questions, tilting his head to the side as he adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose before looking at me with an unreadable look. He’s the stereotypical doctor you’d see in a horror movie overlooking a patient in an asylum.
“Do you ever feel sad, Romeo?”
I silently laugh. “Who doesn’t?”
“Right, but there’s sad, and then there’s a sadness where you don’t want to get out of bed for days or go even as far as wanting to hurt yourself,” he explains, watching me closely. He’s probably reading my reactions, the tone of my voice, all the things he learned in doctor school.
“I don’t know,” I growl, irritated.
He taps his chin, humming. “I know who you are.” He pushes himself off the door and my eyes widen at the movement. I’m tied to a table in a closed room with a man that has the power to do anything he wants with me. “I know your father is known to be a very powerful, dangerous man,” he states, but I don’t reply. I remain silent.
“I’m sure you’ve seen things or heard things that have you feeling uneasy?” His glasses slip down his nose, his eyes looking at me intently.
“I’m not talking about my father,” I finally tell him, and he pushes the glasses back onto his nose with a disappointed look. He wouldn’t be the first person to try to squeeze juicy stories out of me.
“Right, well I have twenty-four hours to do my job, if you want my help, and I think you do, then I suggest you cooperate with me, Romeo.” He raises a brow.
I look to my restrained feet, the straps look brand new. I wiggle my toes within the tan hospital socks. I don’t know what happened yesterday, and I don’t know what is going on inside of me. I can’t talk to my father about it, he’s always busy and irritated by my presence. My mother has enough problems with what my father does, so that leaves me alone in my room rocking back and forth wondering why I feel the way I do.
“Okay,” I mumble, the urge to rebel is tempting but deep down I am tired of these… moods, I have. I want to be a normal kid and not feel like I’m on a never-ending roller coaster.
“I get sad, yes,” I state, l turning to look at the gray blank wall. “Sometimes I want to hurt myself, sometimes I just want to lay in my bed and not be bothered for days, and sometimes I want to take whatever is inside of me out on someone else just to feel something different than unhappy.” My own words surprise me, I didn’t know I had all of that inside of me. When I opened my mouth to explain myself, I wasn’t expecting my soul to pour from my lips.
“I see,” he mumbles, scratching his chin with clean fingernails. His hands look soft and clean, he sits behind a desk all day judging people, that’s as dirty as his hands get.
“When you attacked the kid at school, what was going through your mind?” He digs deeper.
I roll my shoulders, the jacket hugging me suddenly feeling relaxing as I tell this man things I don’t want to talk about. Things that have been rolling in the back of my mind like a tumbleweed in a western movie.
“I don’t know… relief.” I shrug. When I was beating the shit out of Casen I felt in the right, like it was okay, it felt good and I wanted to keep doing it… until I was pulled away and I saw what I had really done. It was like I slipped into a black void and and now that I’m out and looking back.. it didn’t feel so okay anymore. I wanted to slump into a vast darkness and hide from everyone, including myself.
“So
