FicWad

Chapter eight

I woke up. My head a pounding mess and my eyes as hot as the damned desert. Something ached on my leg, throbbed with an intense pain. I felt the haze of some sort of drug wearing off and felt myself come to completely.
I was in my room, my arms were bound, and I could hear movement. I looked to the right and saw a nurse standing there. Her back was to me but the way her brown hair was up in a silk bun was so familiar. I parted my lips, strained to see and then she turned around. I knew it instantly. Her smile was soft, her eyes as magnificent as Cleopatra's and her own recognition alive on her features. She knelt down beside my bed, her uniform giving off a scent of fresh laundry as she softly touched my head.
"Jared? Oh gosh Jared, are you alright?" Her voice was panicked and for a moment I wondered if something like this could really be happening. Could she really be here? A piece of my past? Could someone really be caring what happened to me?
I winced at the pain in my leg but soothed beneath her touch. With us it had been all fun, laughs in tight spaces in janitor closets, and jingle of my keys as she raced through the parking lot when our shifts were over. But right now I could have married her.
"Janelle, is that....are you really here?" I asked, my throat dry, bet the damned Grand Canyon had nothing on me. "They said I made you up."
"I took a leave...came back now. They don't know it's me though..." She was whispering. A heavy indicator this meeting was not supposed to be happening.
"How can they not if they have your file?"
She shook her head. "No one working here now was working there with us. Don't you remember that? These men, they aren't doctors..."
"What if they see you now?" My own fear was mounting, wasn't quite comfortable being bound here and engaging in a conversation that was no doubt forbidden.
"They have ordered all cameras in the security system be shut down for your room...Apparently what you're doing is top secret...I'm supposed to be here cleaning up your wound." She lowered her hand and touched to my leg. A pain shot through me again. "What are they doing to you?"
I don't know....I just don't know anymore." I sounded more than desperate. I was willing to do anything if only to get out of here.
"Jared I have to go...but I'll be back, okay? I promise..." She whispered it so sweetly I knew she was genuine. She leaned down and gently pressed a kiss to my lips. There was that lip gloss again.
I let out a heavy sigh once she left, hating that I was alone again. I wanted the strength to get up and get on out but that idea was way past being able to be put into play.
I had the recollections of the night before but all of it was overpowered by that young girls face, her eyes without life and that opened mouth, that death stifled scream. How was I to look past that and try to figure out what the hell had happened? I couldn't think of anything else and that scared the hell out of me. It scared me to think that not even Janelle could give me hope although she was perhaps the one person who could help me out.
The door opened and an orderly walked in. He smiled down at me but it was a sad and restrained smile. "I hope you slept okay.." There was something there straining in his voice. He didn't trust this moment alone with me. His hand trembled slightly on his clipboard. "...Black out again?"
I gave a small nod. I didn't know why the hell he seemed so scared, I was the one being tormented night after night, being held here against my will.
"Do you have any idea what happened last night besides what we caught on tape? After you went into that patients room, the cameras, they just stopped." He looked helpless, the damn bastard seemed beaten by his own ignorance.
"Of course I don't. Look, I've already told you I black out. I don't need something else being pinned on me..."
"Well it already is..."
"What are you talking about?"
"That girl you killed last night...she wasn't some hallucination this time. She was real...you killed one of the patients, Jared....They want you in utter solitude."
"Who does?" I shouted, trying to struggle against what was holding me there.
"Whatever is happening to you, Jared...you have to figure out what the hell it is or you're gonna end up dying like all the others."
I held his gaze for the longest time before he walked away leaving me with that bleak hopelessness. I felt a sting burn in my eyes and I tried to swallow down my emotions. I felt that girl die against me in the darkness but I could swear that I didn't kill her. I wasn't about to end up dying like all the others. But what others?