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The dreams came.
I woke up screaming.
*****
“You got a call-out, Arden.”
The words flowed around in my head, but I didn’t find them very interesting. I was far more focused on trying to hold on to the memory of soft, dark hair through my fingers and the way my soul seemed to relax into Lia as I lay my head against her stomach.
“Come on, Arden—scheduled appointment.”
I didn’t remember having one, but at some point a couple of the guards and the unit manager came in and dragged me down to one of the private visiting rooms. The handcuffs around my wrists were checked, and then the other end secured me to the arms of a chair. I lifted my hands slightly, but they weren’t able to move far.
I pressed against the floor with the balls of my feet and tried to keep the panic at bay as the metal lay across my wrists, but the movement wasn’t distracting enough. I frantically tried to think of something to keep my mind off the restraints. I tried to think about what I would do if there was an itch on my nose. I thought about the last soccer game I had watched and wondered if I would be able to watch any of this season’s games from inside. I wondered what Lia was doing right at the moment and if Odin liked staying with her. I was sure he did and was comforted by the idea that he would like living with Lia.
A few minutes after I was placed in the chair, Rinaldo Moretti walked into the room with a tall, lanky guy in a suit behind him. The look in my boss’s eyes was stern and closed—nearly unreadable, except I knew exactly what he was thinking. I was supposed to come to him if I got to the point of breaking, and I hadn’t.
The problem was once you have crossed
that line, you don’t exactly think rationally. It was sort of the definition of breaking.
My throat seized up. I couldn’t look at him and opted to look straight down at the table instead. My lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air, and I had to force myself to breathe through my nose. I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and making the chains rattle.
Rinaldo cleared his throat, and I glanced up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said with an uncharacteristically shaky voice.
Rinaldo just stared at me, his eyes flickering from the emotionless façade he was trying to maintain to fury. There was tightness around his eyes and definite tension in his forearms. His fingers flexed once as he leaned back in the metal chair.
“We’ll have that discussion another time,” he said with promise. “Don’t doubt that. For now, I’m here to introduce you to your attorney.”
“Michael Beard,” the young man said. “I specialize in cases where the defendant has suffered from PTSD. I understand you’ve been given this diagnosis? Can you tell me precisely when?”
I looked over the man in the suit. He wasn’t much older than I was, and I doubted he was beyond thirty. For a moment, I considered that Rinaldo had found me a shit attorney to make sure I went away for a long time, but that didn’t make sense. If he wanted me out of the picture, he wouldn’t be here at all, let alone with a lawyer in tow. He knew all my money was cash and inaccessible from inside, and he would have just left me to rot with a public defender if he wasn’t serious about getting me out.
What he’d do to me after I was released, well, that was anyone’s guess. He wouldn’t have spent the time and effort to get me out to kill me, though. That would be a waste of money when he could accomplish the same thing cheaper with a bribe to a guard or an inmate.
Michael Beard was all business—that was for sure. He waited patiently for me to answer his question and didn’t seem to be the least bit nervous or rushed. Considering Rinaldo must have told him who I was to his organization, I was somewhat surprised at how calm he was. Often, when I was first introduced to someone, they would be all fidgety around me.
“Answer him, Arden,” Rinaldo commanded when I didn’t respond right away.
I tried not to focus on the use of my last name as I swallowed, nodded, and faced the lawyer.
“When I returned from Germany,” I told him. “That was three years ago. I was discharged in May of that year.”
Michael made some notes on his legal pad. I could almost see him in one of those little school desks, jotting down notes during an English Lit class with his knees all tucked up underneath the desktop.
“Were you medicated as part of your treatment?”
“Yeah, for a while.”
“Do you still take drugs as part of treatment, either prescribed or illicit?” Michael’s eyes watched mine as I answered, and I had the distinct feeling he was watching for any untruthfulness.
“No.” I leaned back in the chair and planned on keeping my gaze on his, but the clang of the handcuffs distracted me. I clenched the arms of the chair and took a couple of deep breaths.
“Do you have nightmares or recurring thoughts about what happened to you?”
I swallowed hard.
