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Panicked, I clutched the note to my chest and snapped, “Nobody.”
As the weeks passed we’ve seemed to open up to each other, but part of me still feels like I can’t trust her and during our conversations, I’ve been more forthcoming with information about myself than she has ever been. That makes me wonder things about her. Like exactly how long she’s been here? What she was put in here for? And why if she’s been here so long, (which I assume has to be long because she knows the ins and outs of this place) has she made no attempt to at least try and figure out a way to get out?
I ask her this question as we’re lying in bed and while I wait for her to fall asleep so I can go meet, Damien. “Aurora, have you ever tried to get out of here?”
She’s quiet for a moment then the sound of the springs in her mattress squeak as she rolls over onto her right side to face me. “Once.” There’s pain in her voice.
I know that maybe I shouldn’t press her on the subject, but I do anyway. “What happened?”
She lets out a long ragged breath and rolls back over. My head turns toward her and I can see her staring at the ceiling through the darkness. “I got caught.”
I choke on a gasp. “You tried to break out. I meant like why haven’t you tried in the treatment sessions to get better. Like isn’t there a way for you to show them that you’re doing better and ready to go home?”
“I told you before.” There’s a mixture of pain and misery in her voice. “You don’t get better. You don’t get out. So you just try to make the best of it.”
The best of it? In my eyes, there is no the best of it in this situation. Basically, I feel like I’m fucked either way. “I don’t think I can,” I tell her.
“You’ll learn to.” Her voice is soft. “I did.” Her breathing is heavy. “One girl I know actually escaped.”
Her words breathe hope into my lungs. “What, who?” This is the most marvelous news I’ve heard in the last month.
“It doesn’t matter,” she mutters. “You wouldn’t know her.”
I frown into the darkness, focus on the white ceiling, and play with my fingers. “Well, if I don’t know her, how do you? Haven’t we been here for the same amount of time?”
“No,” she scoffs and rolls over to face the wall. “I’ve been here seven years.”
“Seven years!” I almost shout then cover my mouth and lower my voice to a whisper. “Seven years? How old are you?”
“Almost twenty four.”
A deep, painful stab of remorse blossoms in my heart and I almost start crying. Part of me feels bad for bringing the subject up in the first place, but there’s another part of me who’s glad because now I know what I’m up against if I ever want to try and break free of the shackles that bind me to this place. There’s a throbbing ache pounding in my side as I look over at Aurora, her back to me. This poor, poor girl. She’s spent a good portion of her life locked up in the asylum, too afraid to even hope for a future. “Aurora?”
“Yeah?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“What did you do to end up here?”
She traces a circle on the tiled wall with her finger. “That’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Well then can you tell me what happened to you when you tried to escape?”
She doesn’t answer. The silence seems to stretch on for seconds, minutes, possibly even an hour, but I stay in my bed, even though my time with Damien is getting close, I have to know this. Finally, Aurora clears her throat, and she’s breathing in and out rapidly like her spilling this piece of information to me might cause her enormous amounts of pain. Then finally she rolls over to face me again, looks at me with hurt dancing around in her big brown eyes, and says, “They took me to the basement.”
My lungs clench, refusing to expand. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for an entire minute, then I finally croak, “No.”
“Yes,” she hisses. “You should feel privileged. I’ve never told anybody that before.”
“What did they do to you?”
“No.” I hear the thick layer of emotion in her voice then a sniffle. She’s crying and my heart breaks for her. I think about getting up from my cot, going over to her and holding, comforting her, but then again, I don’t know her well enough to know if she likes that sort of thing. I know I would if I was upset. Then she says, “Just don’t bring that up again, okay? It’s number one on my list of the things I don’t like to talk about. I’m sure, you have one of those lists too.”
“I do.”
“I’m pretty sure everyone here has one of those lists or we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
“I agree.” I yawn and roll over to face the wall as a startling revelation sets in; that maybe, Aurora is trustworthy, and that maybe despite the crazy act that she puts on for the staff and the patients that she’s actually a lot smarter than she lets on.
Chapter 7
