"There are many who don't wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don't wish to wake for the same fear."
Richelle Goodrich~
Third POV
Quynn's eyes open and in the first few seconds, everything around her is a white picture, but as the seconds pass, the blurriness clears and she realised that she's in a white painted room. There is a window to the side, which the sun somehow manages to penetrate through even with the curtain acting as a barrier. The sunlight as well as the brightness makes her eyes sting and she wince and shuts them for a while and she mentally tries to adjust to this alternate reality.
She cannot remember the last thing that happens and she tries to carefully rethink and understand her situation better.
After coming up fuzzy and blank, she sighs in defeat and her eyes open again but unlike the last time, the pain in her eyes is lesser.
She stares around the room and as she silently observes, she hears a beeping sound right beside her head and she looks up and sees the heart monitor there. Fear grips her to her soul and sweat breaks out on her face even as her heart clenches in its cage, fearing what exactly happened and why she's in a hospital bed. She is about to move around and properly assess her environment when she feels a restraining in her right hand and glancing down she sees it cuffed to the bed.
Her panic multiplies and she begins to pull at the cuff, trying to somehow get free even though that is completely impossible and the metal remains against the bed stand unaffected by her pull.
Why is she in cuffs?!
What did she do? Did she kill someone?
Who did she hurt?
She silently wonders.
She's still lost in her thought when the door to her ward opens and a man in a white lab coat enters and behind him is Eli and at that moment all the memories buried comes rushing back into her head and the guilt, fear and panic returns in great measures. She understands why she's in cuffs now, why she's trapped on the bed and unable to make a run for it.
She remembers Jumai at the hotel confronting her with the truth and demanding that she tell the truth to Eli, she remembers chickening out at the last minute and then being chased by the police and she remembers losing control of the brake and crashing into a tree off the road, she thought she died, but that would have been an easy escape after everything she'd done and even God could not let her have that.
"You're awake, ma'am," the doctors say with a cheerful tone as he walks over to her side of the bed and checked her pulse and observe the heart monitor and Quynn tries as much as she can to not look at Eli who seems to be drilling a hole into her skull with his gaze as the doctor does his inspection.
Once the doctor finishes, he turns and picks up her left hand which have a cuff as well as a drip on it and he carefully examines it. "Her pulse shows recovery and the major damage sustained was to her forehead and that is also healing now and she will be out in no time." He informs Eli who is still standing at the door and not willing to step further into the ward.
"I'll give you two room to talk." He says before taking his leave from the room. Quynn wants to protest to the doctor and tell him not to leave her alone, the last thing she can take is being left alone in the same room with Eli especially after everything that has happened.
Eli remains silent as he stared at Quynn for the first minute and soon she becomes uncomfortable under his eyes and is forced to speak.
"I am going to take it that Jumai told you the truth already, I guess that's why I'm in these cuffs," she emphasises by pulling them and making them smack against the bedstand.
He finally steps away from the door and moves towards her bedside and this causes her heart to beat uneasily.
He remains silent and stares at her observing her face, his eyes moving from hers to her lips and chin and then back, perhaps wondering how he couldn't tell the difference all those four weeks she pretended to be Anna.
His gaze burns her skin and the pain behind his eyes, as well as the hatred, makes her want to run and hide away from him but she is handcuffed to the bed and unable to move which makes it even worse.
"Where is Anna?"
Her eyes are fuzzy and dull, "Did Jumai not tell you what I told her?"
"When I ask you a question, you goddamn answer it!" He thunders, his grey eyes glowing with much fury and hate and she almost runs off the bed in fear.
She has never seen this side of him before and it is frightening and dreadful and she knows she's unprotected and weak around him, especially in cuffs. She swallows hard and looks down, trying to stop the tears that threaten to spill out as a result of his hard word.
"I don't know where Anna is, Eli."
He stormed towards her bed and she shifts uncomfortable, trying to get away from him, even though it was impossible to, "And why should I believe anything you say? You are a liar, you've been lying to me pretending to be Anna when in fact you were a fraud."
"I did what I did because I had no choice, it was either that or I get thrown to prison by your fiancée for something else. Anna dragged me into this life even though I didn't want to be a part of it." She can't stop the tears anymore and they come pouring.
"Enough with your lies!" He glares at her murderously and she knows it's taking all the strength he has to not reach out and strangle her on the bed this instant. He turns away from her and ran a shaky hand through his hair, he is heartbroken and in pain and she is responsible for what he's going through.
Eli was never a man driven by his anger or resentment and since she'd gotten to know him, he was always in charge of his emotions and reaction and to see this much change meant something was broken— a lot of things were. His heart, his trust, his joy, his being; all these have been broken. He is the definition of a broken man.
"Eli, I am sorry." She whimpers and her eyes shutter, "I really am, you didn't deserve what Anna and I did to you and your mother was right all along. Anna never loved you, if she did she wouldn't have left and made me her replacement."
He turns to her, the emotions under much control now than a few moments ago, "All the charges against you will be dropped and you will get to walk out of this hospital and never show your face to my family ever again if you can tell me where Anna is."
A terror-filled sob escapes her lips and more tears stream down her face blurring her vision as a result. Her freedom is now hanging on the information she will give and that is terrible because she does not know anything about Anna's whereabouts. "I don't know where Anna is because she never told me where she was going."
"You're clearly not ready to tell me the whole truth so I'll leave you here, maybe Anna will come and save you." He turned around begins to head out and she knows she will never get the chance again.
"She told me she was going on a business trip and she felt you wouldn't let her go if you knew about it. That was why she put herself through the trouble of getting a replacement." She speaks up quickly, halting him on his steps.
If this is going to get her out of these damned cuffs, then she is going to sing the truth she knows at the top of her lung.
"She was supposed to return and make the switch last week at the railway road, but she never turned up and I got a call from her before the wedding, she said she would be present for the wedding hence I had to leave. I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to because she threatened to hurt and kill those I cared about."
He shakes his head, and glances at her and in his eyes she can see that he is fighting to accept the truth even though it's right before him, "No, Anna would never hurt anyone."
"That's because you don't know Anna, the real Anna Wilson, if you did, you would realise she's not the good woman you made her out to be, look what she did to you."
"What she did to me? This is all your doing!" He snaps and presses his lips together in an attempt to control his emotions, "All you've said isn't the answer to her whereabouts which I asked for, Quynn! " he sneers and hearing him take her name does more harm than good to her being.
Her lips quiver with desperation, as she tries to recall information that will help. "I don't know, but I think she might be with George, she talked to him on the phone once and she seemed a little mad and agitated then."
His brows furrow and something flicked in his eyes "George?!" The name seems familiar to him, maybe he knows this George too and maybe the information she just gave will be enough to get her out.
"Yes, that's all I know, I swear to you."
He silently walks away towards the door and turned the doorknob. He didn't tell her if he was going to let her go and she becomes desperate. She doesn't want to be chained up like an animal anymore.
"Eli, please! Let me go, I beg you, please." She pleads, but he doesn't turn to look at her before exiting the ward and the door shuts.
This is how it ends, her being locked away behind bars for the crimes that she committed against humanity and God.
Being Anna Wilson's Replacement came with a greater price than what she anticipated that in the end, she lost a lot of things. She lost her freedom, her sanity, her will to say yes or no and most importantly, she lost her heart.
Two weeks later...
She steps out of the hospital building with nothing but the clothes on her skin, which clings to her like a second skin and the shoes on her worn and dry feet. Her eyes strain as it hasn't been this exposed in several days and it's therefore taking its time to adjust and she uses one of her hands which are still trembling as a shield over it to stop the harsh penetration of light. Her legs are barely holding her up as they too were tired and she knows they will give up on her in no time.
Her teeth clang against themselves from cold, fear and hunger. She was not fed in the last days nor did anyone besides the doctor come to check up on her and most of the times all she was left with was the evil thoughts and voices in her head, nagging her, judging her, laughing at her and telling her she would never see the light of day again. It was a nightmare and worst of it all, the nightmares continued even after she woke up. Reminiscing Eli's hate-filled words and look, served as a reminder of how over her life was and she sobbed and struggled in bed, trying to set her hand free but being unable to and only end up sleeping and falling into another torture. She didn't have to be physically tortured, the voices in her head did the job for her.
Sleep became far from her as the voices in her head followed her into her subconscious and coupled with Eli's words, they turned her dreams into nightmares and soon falling asleep became as much struggle as staying awake.
Eli promised to let her go if she told him the truth but when he left without saying a word and she remained in chains, she concluded that he probably lied and he had no intentions of letting her go. Today, however, the door opened and a man she hadn't met before stepped into the ward with a bunch of keys in his hand. He moved over to her bedside, unlocked both hands and his words were, "Mr Wilson said to let you go."
This was the second chance she wanted, the second chance she prayed for even when the voices in her head teased and mocked at her, she finally had it and one way or another, she was going to find her way back home.
The End
Thank you for reading to the end. It was a really rough right and sometimes we don't get the happily ever after we deserve.
I not sure about a sequel even though they need to be one. I am really preoccupied with other works in my hand. So it might take a while before starting a sequel.
Thank you for sticking with Eli, Anna and Quynn (Cara) story. I love you guys. God bless.