Alliance

Chapter Forty

The operating table was cold on my bare skin. My wrist and ankles were tied down with leather straps. My eyes fluttered open. The operating light above blinded me.

"You are awake," Wilson said in his baritone voice. His beard swam into view. "Good. I prefer you awake for this next therapy."

A long needle entered my vision. It was a very long needle.

"You know what a lobotomy is?"

My body started trembling. I pulled at the straps but they would not budge. I tried to scream, but a leather was wrapped around my head to keep me from screaming.

The needle grew closer and closer to my open eyes. My head wouldn't move as I tried to shrink away from that needle.

The needle almost touched my eye.

I sprang up in bed panting. Before me, my hands were outstretched as if I had tried to push that needle, that man away. My hands shook. Little cuts covered them.

Pain. Searing pain from when I fell on the glass rippled through my body.

But it was phantom pain. My cuts had healed. I had gotten out. Ben had gotten me out when I physically and mentally couldn't.

Lassie raised her head from where she laid against my leg. Her tongue gently licking my shaking hands. Each lick seemed to take the phantom pain away. I only wished she could take away the memories. The memories that still echoed in my mind.

Falling on glass.

Wilson picked me up.

The coldness of the operating table.

Peter was used as a human shield.

Killing that girl with my bare hands.

But I remember Ben picking me up. Carrying my exhausted, broken, abused body to this bedroom. Arnold looked over at me, examining my body for any injury. The last thing I remember was Lassie jumping on the bed, her watchful eyes on me as if to protect me from everything and everyone.

"Where's Ben?" I asked Lassie, scratching her ear. The shaking of my hands seemed to ease. My voice, it was low and husky. My throat ached, I assumed I had blown out my voice box while I was there.

Flinging back the bed sheets, I stood. My legs were weak underneath me. One step forward, I fell into the wall. I braced myself and took a breath.

Baby steps. I need to move slowly for now. I was coherent but that drug must still be in my system weakening me.

Using the wall as support, I walked out of the small bedroom. Lassie jumped from the bed, following me out.

I remembered being carried to this place. The old farmhouse where Arnold lived. Ben carried me through the back door into a large kitchen with a small kitchen table. He carried me through the dining room with a large table and ten high back chairs. I saw a glimpse of the large living room with comfortable chairs before Ben climbed the stairs that stood before the front door.

The upstairs hallway was the only one with several doors protruding from it. I was the second door on the left from the staircase. With Lassie at my side, I made my way down to the kitchen.

Sunshine streamed through the glass of the front door at the bottom of the staircase. The rays were hot on my skin as I took the last step.

I had been in that hospital for two weeks, almost three maybe. But it felt like a lifetime. For the duration of that time, I didn't feel the sun's warm or the wind.