Chapter 6
- 6.
I woke up in a hospital room, surrounded by the
sterile smell of disinfectant.
The gash over my left eye, the cuts and scrapes
all over my body, were cleaned up, bandaged.
Sunlight streamed through the window, like
nothing bad had ever happened.
For a split second, I almost believed it.
Maybe the whole damn thing was a nightmare.
Then Mark walked in, standing by the bed,
looking at me with red–rimmed eyes.
“Iiv you’re awake Are you are you hurting
“Liv, you’re awake. Are you… are you hurting
anywhere?”
Our eyes met.
He babbled an apology, saying he screwed up, didn’t make me feel safe enough.
He said he’d change.
“Liv, can you just… focus on getting better?”
The cold hospital light bleached his face, highlighting the lines of exhaustion.
Seeing him brought it all rushing back
–
the
scalpel, the agony, the fear of dying.
Then… the image of him saving me.
“…Mark,” I said, turning my head. My mind was
a mess. “Why did you save me?”
<
“Because you’re my girlfriend,” Mark answered
without hesitation.
He knelt down, gently taking my hand.
…
I closed my eyes.
Memories flashed, disjointed and fragmented. Like a broken movie reel.
Second chance, and I still couldn’t figure Mark
out.
Last time, he hadn’t hesitated to cut me open.
Afraid I’d die too slow to save Lila.
If he wanted me dead so bad, why save me
yesterday?
L
- L
J
–
He wouldn’t have suddenly had a change of
heart.
I looked at him and asked, “Where’s Lila?”
His grip on my hand tightened.
After a beat of silence, he said, “Liv, don’t
worry about that. The most important thing is
getting you healthy.”
“Paranoid delusions are a medical condition.
There’s still a chance they are reversible if you
co–operate with the therapist and meds.”
My head throbbed.
Now I understood what Mark was doing.
“You didn’t save me because I’m your wife. You saved me to get me committed, right?”
く
I yanked my hand away from him with every
ounce of strength I had left.
My scrambled thoughts started to click into
place.
“I made too much of a scene yesterday. You
couldn’t kill me on the operating table.”
“So you played along, let me run, made me look
like a total nutcase to everyone.”
I looked at Mark, really looked at him. Like I
was seeing him for the first time.
“In a mental hospital, if I die, it makes sense.”
Mark’s face went white.
He looked at me, his expression a jumbled
mess. He opened his mouth, then closed it
again. “Liv, you’re doing it again. You’re
imagining things.”
<
“And I would never-‘
“Yeah, you would.”
A raspy voice broke in. I looked towards the
door and saw Lila.
Her face was pale.
She smiled at me, her eyes full of pity and
triumph.
“Why not tell her, Mark? We’ve been working
towards this for a long time, shouldn’t she
finally know?”
