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I can’t understand why my cuffs are free. Why I’m not being dragged up from the cot, why nobody’s hands are pinching and pulling at my skin, yanking at my sockets.
Working my eyes open with fluttery blinks, I frown harder, shivering again in the icy chill. It’s like being locked up in a deep freezer, barely clothed, no sheets. My spine aches as I push up to sit, swinging my stiff legs over the side of the bed.
“Miss Foster, your guardian is here, and he is very eager to get back on the road, so if you would please get up quickly.”
Scanning my eyes in the direction of the door, a tall, curvy woman I have never in my life seen before, stands just a few feet inside of it, the door open at her back.
“Guardian?” I ask, mouth dry, tongue too heavy.
My dad’s never been here before.
He never does the dirty work himself.
What new game is Soren playing?
“Yes, your guardian, Mr Adams, very insistent young man.”
I look up sharply then, cracking my neck.
Guardian.
“Adams?” the word cracks as I repeat it, blinking past the violent light.
The woman shifts her weight from one leg to the other, her ashy blonde hair falling across her shoulder as she looks over it, out of the open door, at something I can’t see in the hall.
“Yes,” she says slowly, looking back at me, dipping her chin, “please hurry.”
Placing my hands down on either side of the painful spring mattress, I attempt to push to my feet, but my elbows just can’t take my weight, sending me straight back down to the cot.
“Porter!” the woman calls, snapping her fingers, “get a wheelchair, quickly, quickly.”
My breath is heavy, too fast, lungs burning with the sharp, fast inhales of air as I’m movedgentlyinto a wheelchair, my feet lifted and placed on the footrests with care.
Everything seems to blur as I’m wheeled into a lift, the woman in a pale pencil skirt and navy blouse pressing the buttons, scanning her ID card to get us moving.
“Where’s Dr Soren?” I rasp, my throat sore from screaming myself to sleep. “Isn’t he supposed to discharge me?”
The woman glances over her shoulder, peering down at me, a strange, pinched look in the pull of her mouth, “He’s with another patient now.” And then she turns back to face the opening doors.
I think it’s the first real breath I take. Knowing he’s occupied elsewhere. Not with me.
He can’t fight to keep me here.
Then I hearhim.
His deep rumbling floods the room, the glass front to the building is dark beyond the windows.
How long have I been here?
Bennett crowds the reception desk, leaning far over the curve of wood in a threatening pose, the person behind it pushed back from the desk, attempting to avoid his wrath. He lifts a hand, pointing a finger at them and murmuring beneath his breath.
Relief washes through me like my insides just melted into a puddle.
“Mr Adams!” snaps the lady leading me down the hall, a porter pushing the handles of my wheelchair just a few feet behind.
I feel dizzy, watching as slowly, so menacingly slowly, Bennett flicks his gaze onto the woman with a look that I truly believe could kill just as efficiently as a bullet or a knife.
But that’s when he sees me.
