A/N: Well, exams are over, so is school… YAY! Here's the fourth chapter of Chrysalis. I've been thinking about this story constantly, and I decided I had to get it out. I also found a consistency error in the first chapter, so that has been repaired. Sorry about how long this chap is.
Midie: Yeah. I knew you would know. And yeah, the not-remembering is interesting. I'm thinking this story is when she'll figure out that she likes him. The guy in the painting, I mean. I bet it won't go over well with Carlisle, though.
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"There's nothing you can do or say, you're gonna break my heart anyway, so just…"
I reach over to the nightstand and hit my clock radio, and the music clicks off. It's eight-thirty, and I have therapy at ten. With a sigh, I swing my legs off of my bed and wipe the sleep from my eyes. After a few moments of sitting on the edge of the mattress and getting de-discombobulated, I get up, stretch, and rummage through my dresser (I put all my clothes in there last night; I couldn't sleep) for some clothes to wear. I pull out a green peasant blouse and black flare jeans and head for the shower.
God bless whoever invented the modern water heater. It's amazing what a hot shower can do for your attitude in the morning. I shampoo my hair twice and put conditioner in, leaving it in while I wash my face and brush my teeth. Yes, I brush my teeth in the shower. It's just so convenient. Because I'm a pretty fast showerer, my shower only lasts about fifteen minutes, at which point I get out and get dressed. As I comb heat-protecting serum through my hair, I realize that I've forgotten to get my hair-dryer-brush thing, and that it's sitting on the coffee table right now.
As I push the door open, I scream a tiny scream. Jessica is sitting on my bed, leafing through my Teen Trend. "Morning," she looks up and smiles.
"Yeesh," I seize my brush from the table. "Can't a girl get some privacy?"
"Not here," she reminds me. "No locks on anything."
"Why are you here anyway?" I ask her.
Closing the magazine, she watches me as I head back into the bathroom, leaving the door open. "I came to ask you if you wanted to go get some breakfast," she yells over my dryer as I turn the thing on, the brush heating up red, and run it down the length of my hair. "I thought you'd be awake. Most of us are by at least seven-thirty."
I roll my eyes and continue to brush my hair dry. "I'm a late sleeper on days when I don't have school," I shout. "Go on without me. It'll take me at least thirty minutes to finish getting ready. And then I have therapy at ten."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," I bellow, and she gets up and leaves with a wave.
After about five minutes, I get sick of how long it's taking to dry my hair and pull the hotel-style hair dryer from its holder thing and proceed to roll my hair onto the brush and dry it with the dryer. This speeds it up noticeably, and about eight minutes later my hair is silky-smooth and dry. Shaking my head and watching my hair float around like those girls on the Spice Spirit commercials do, I grin and zip open my makeup bag. After applying foundation, I put on powder. Considering the color of my blouse and my strange affinity for radical eye colors, I pull out a dark olive eyeshadow compact and smooth some of that on my eyelids. Two coats of brown mascara later, I put brown lipgloss on and pull out my boar's hair brush.
I've always loved doing fun stuff with my hair, as long as I didn't cut it more than necessary. I'm proud to say that I have few split ends and I condition it well every day. I even do a hot-oil treatment once a week, and that will not end even though I'm in a mental hospital. Today, I brush it into a ponytail at the nape of my neck. At this time, I am far too lazy to try something exciting, plus my outfit is sort of sophisticated and I'd like to match my hair with that.
My getting-ready routine has taken about thirty minutes, and I am proud of myself for estimating correctly. Going back into my room, I sit on the bed and pull on my comfy pink Driftie flip-flops. I'm totally set for breakfast.
If only I knew where it was.
So I get up and look at the light-blue schedule on my coffee table. Breakfast is served in the cafeteria, but I knew that. Okay, that's room 313. Easy enough.
I get up, tucking my Teen Persons under my arm, go to the elevator, and punch the third-floor button. Within moments, I'm getting out. Another hospital-looking floor, I can see. However, what I can't see is room 313. Come on, it's a cafeteria, it can't be this hard to find. But it is, so I turn to one of the nurses.
"Excuse me, ma'am, could you please point me in the direction of the cafeteria?"
Without even looking up, she points left down the hall behind me. I nod and turn down the hall.
The cafeteria's mediocre, extremely reminiscent of my high-school cafet… wait! I just remembered, yeah! My high school! Great. I don't remember what it's called or who goes there, but I remember the cafeteria? Yeesh.
I look around for Jessica, or Bethany, or Carlisle, or anyone who looks familiar. Not a soul. I wonder where they all went. Checking my watch, I learn that it's nine-thirty. So I go up to the buffet, get a bowl of granola and some yogurt, and sit down by the big window. It's raining.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to finish my granola, and about five for the yogurt. I'm reading Teen Persons the whole time. "How to get a guy to like you," I read aloud. "Interesting."
I continue reading after finishing my food for about seven minutes, and then I get up and get ready to go to therapy… and then I realize that I don't know where it is.
Back in the elevator for me. In my room there's the light orange therapy schedule on the table, and I dash forward and check it. Room 914. Excellent—and still five minutes left to go until ten.
I make it with three minutes left, and settle myself into one of the cushy chairs. Apparently, room 914 isn't a room at all, but a cluster of offices with a waiting room, which I'm sitting in right now. A doctor comes out; she's tall with red wavy hair, and she looks at me with a smile. "Mindy?" I nod. "I'm Dr. Pasternak. Follow me."
I do as told, following the doctor into a small dark-red painted office, where she sits down in a chair across the room from the other chair. "I hear that you're in denial," she says.
"Yeah," I sigh. "They can't be dead, you know?"
"I know, but they are," she says quietly.
"I don't want them to be."
That's the last thing either of us say for a good number of minutes. We just sit there, she looks at me and I look at the floor. The session's supposed to be thirty minutes long, and we've already passed the first twenty in long silence.
"I loved them."
"I know."
I sigh and she smiles sadly, and somehow I'm emotionally drained already. I get up and leave the room silently.
I see a familiar face through the small window in the door of the waiting room, and the door opens for me. "Hey Mindy," Carlisle says softly.
I smile slightly. "Hey."
"How'd it go?" he asks and we start walking towards the elevator.
I don't know where we're going, and I really don't care. "We sat there and stared at nothing for the first twenty minutes. It was quiet."
He nods understandingly. "Yeah, my first session was like that too. But trust me, these doctors are great. You'll be making breakthroughs in no time."
"I remembered something," I say.
"What?" he asks, but I can hear something odd in his voice.
"I remembered my high school cafeteria," I say.
"That's great," he says, and I can almost hear some relief in his voice. Though why, I don't know.
We get in the elevator and he pushes the eighth floor button. "Where're we going?" I ask him.
"You'll see," he smiles.
The doors open and he takes my hand, and I shiver, in a good way. He doesn't even do it romantically, just drags me down the hall, but I'm shivering anyway.
We stop in front of a large pair of open doors. Inside…
"Welcome to Paradise," he grins, and Jessica is inside and looks up, waving at me.
"What… is this?"
He pulls me inside and lets go of my hand, to my slight frustration. "This is our youth room," he says. "We've got everything."
Indeed, they do. Two pool tables, a ping-pong table, a foosball table, a ring of couches, a TV and DVD player, and a stereo hug the walls. "Wow," I breathe.
"Ping-pong!" he says gleefully and, seizing my wrist, pulls me to the table.
Within minutes we have started a heated game of ping-pong. People are gathering around to watch me slamming and him saving. After about twenty minutes, he's beat me, 20-18. "Drat," I snap my fingers.
"We'll have plenty of time to do it again," he reminds me.
After that, we sit down on the couch, me cross-legged against the left arm, facing him against the right. The room is slowly emptying—I guess people who aren't me or Carlisle have places to go. I pick up the remote to turn the TV on, but he stops me. "Tell me about yourself," he says.
"I can't," I whine. "I don't know anything."
"Let's see if we can jog your memory maybe? Tell me about your family."
I sigh. "Well, let's see. I have a mother and a father, and I had a sister and a brother. I cloned my cockapoo, Chad, for… for what? I don't know! I can't remember…" I dissolve into tears. You have no idea how frustrating it is not to know anything about yourself.
He scoots towards me and as I lean back to slump onto the back of the couch, he gently puts his arm around my shoulders and presses my head to his own. "It's okay," he says softly. Obviously he's unfazed by crying girls. He leans his head onto mine, at which point I realize that the whole hand-grabbing thing was nothing. Taking my right hand in his own, he rubs my palm gently. My crying is slowing.
"Okay," I sniff loudly and sit up straight, because I know I'll have to keep going someday. "So I have two cockapi, Chad and Brad. I cloned Chad for something. I don't know what, though."
"A science fair?" he asks.
I feel my brain whirring. "Yeah, yeah, that sounds right."
"Did you win?"
I sigh again. "I don't remember."
"I think that's plenty for today," he smiles. We're sitting cross-legged from each other again, and his smile is killing me. Yeesh, he's gorgeous.
We sit quietly for about ten minutes, just Zenning a bit. Checking my watch, I find out that it's about eleven-fifteen.
He sees my gesture and hits his head with a palm. "Oh crap, I forgot to tell you," he starts. "My doctor called early this morning and told me that I had to come to therapy today because he's going to a conference on Monday. Darn."
"I'll be okay," I grin and nod. "I'll go read in my room."
"I'll be done at about twelve-thirty, so, I'll find you, okay?" he gets up and waves, dashing out the door, and I wonder why his therapy is so long.
Getting up, I walk slowly out of the room and go to the elevator. Pushing the "down" button, I wait for about five minutes before one arrives, probably because Carlisle took it already. I go back down to room 313 and get a chicken sandwich for lunch. Because I don't really want to eat in there again, I head back up to my room.
It's still raining, I see. It's started coming down harder. Sitting down at the chair next to the coffee table, I sigh and open my Teen Persons. It doesn't take long to eat, or to finish the magazine, so after twenty minutes of that, I get up and grab one of my mysteries from the tote bag. Curling up in the papason, I start to read.
Unaware of the passing of time due to a young woman detective falling in love with a police officer before my eyes, I finish the book and realize that it's twelve forty-five. I don't see Carlisle outside of my room, so I stretch a bit and walk down the hallway. Taking the elevator back up to the eighth floor, I go up to the art room.
George smiles and waves, and the room is completely empty as I grab the paints and brushes and an apron. Setting up on an easel, I start painting something.
It starts as a giant red blob. A really ugly red blob, I notice, until I add some iridescent white pearly paint to the middle of it. Soon I've added a long brown stick sticking out of the top, and what it is is slowly coming to mind, but I shove that out of the way and let the Muses keep dancing.
I add shape to the red blob, making it almost an eight shape. Shading brings it almost to life, and I add a silver box near the bottom of it, and silver dots next to the top of the stick. Six lines down the middle in black finish it.
It's a guitar.
Why did I paint a guitar?
Ugh, this is driving me insane. I've painted a random guy, a random guitar… what's next? I'm not sure I even want to know! I'm driving myself insane.
I take my painting to the drying rack and pull the painting of the boy off. After I've cleaned up my spot, I take the painting in my hands and look back. There's Carlisle's painting of the irises. I take that too.
The two paintings and I go back to my room, where I put them side-by-side on my coffee table, waiting for someone to put them up. I check my clock radio—it's one-thirty. Where is Carlisle?
I take the elevator down to my floor and go back to my room. Where is he? I stare at the portrait of the guy on my coffee table. "Who are you?" I shriek.
I've been sitting for twenty minutes when I get sick of waiting. Getting up, I open the door and exit my room. Checking the directory at the nurses' station down the hall from my room, I search for Katie's office. For some reason, I think she'll know where Carlisle is.
I find it and take the elevator to the first floor. Office 109B. I knock.
"Come in," she says.
I open the door and sit down in the leather chair in front of her desk.
"Hey, Mindy," she smiles and turns from her computer to me. "What's up?"
I sigh and make a face. "Do you know where Carlisle is? I can't find him anywhere!"
She looks at the clock, and so do I. It's two-fifteen. "Um," she hesitates, "why don't you go check Paradise? If he's not there, I don't know where he is."
"This sounds suspicious," I say, raising an eyebrow, but I get up and leave with a wave to Katie.
I head back up the elevator to Paradise. He's not in there either. It's completely empty. I stomp to the couch and jump onto it, landing with a "floof" on the cushion. Fiddling with the remote, I flip it on and channel surf before landing on a channel called Stick. I'm not even paying attention to the shows (which look ridiculous anyway, plus there's a huge blue blob obstructing the screen).
Someone's shaking me… ugh, stop shaking me!
I blink and realize that I fell asleep. On the TV, a guy is shaking his butt and paper's coming out. Too weird. I click it off and look at the person who shook me awake.
"Carlisle!" I scream gleefully and jump up to hug him. "I've been looking for you for hours! Then I fell asleep…" I check my watch, "two and a half hours ago."
"Go get dressed," he commands.
"Dressed for… what?"
He smiles. "Just wear something elegant." With that, he takes my hand.
Only it's not like before.
This time, it's romantic. He slips his hand into mine and squeezes, looking at me with a smile.
I shiver again.
We depart for the elevator and go back up to our floor. "Meet me out here in forty-five minutes," he says and goes to his room.
I'm extremely confused, but I go into my room and pull out a beautiful red Marilyn-Monroe type dress that I'd brought. Heading into the bathroom, I wash my face, change and brush out my hair. "This is why I brought a curling iron," I say to myself, and go back to get it out of my suitcase.
Twenty minutes later, my hair is styled in graceful waves. Grinning, I pull out my makeup and do the routine. Foundation, powder, gold eye pencil and eyeshadow, dark red lipstick, and a dab of blush. I take out my favorite perfume and put some on each wrist, then on my neck. From my suitcase I pull a pair of red strappy sandals, which I slip onto my feet. Perfect, and still ten minutes left. So I sit on my bed delicately and open Eighteen.
I'm way too excited to sit still, so I leave my room and go to the elevator to wait for Carlisle. He arrives within five minutes… and he's wearing a suit.
"Okay, what's going on?" I ask, crossing my arms and giving him a Look.
"We're going to dinner," he says with a smile. "I got Katie's permission to take you off-site to dinner. She will be providing transportation."
I'm amazed, and I jump with a squeal to hug him. He smells awesome. As do I, of course.
He takes my hand again and we go downstairs to the lobby to wait for Katie. She arrives shortly, and we get into her red 5-Jogger and drive a short way down to Emerald Orchard, the greatest Italian restaurant ever. She gets out and so do we. "I'm meeting my own boyfriend here," she smiles, and I notice she's as dressed up as I am. "So I'll find you, or vice versa, when we're ready to leave."
We enter the restaurant, and Carlisle steps up to the table person. "Reservations for two, under Watson," he says, and the person leads us to a booth by the windows.
"I can't believe we've only known each other for what, thirty-six hours?" I muse.
"I think things happen faster when you're in a mental hospital," he laughs.
We order drinks (Diet Mountain Fizz for me, Mocha Cola for him) and food (alfredo for me, ravioli for him) and settle in for dinner. Talking little, we mostly eat and look out the window.
"I must say," I start after swallowing some pasta, "you know me as well as anyone I've ever met. Because, you realize, you know everything about me that I know."
"I'd say that's something," he smiles and takes another bite of ravioli.
We finish and talk about everything I can think of—literally. Anything that I know, I tell him. He tells me about Honolulu, his family, and anything else he can think of. Small talk gets bigger.
He taps my arm and gestures to the other corner of the restaurant. Katie and her boyfriend are giggling over their meals and looking all lovey-dovey. "Aah, I love that girl," he says, and then blushes. "Not… not like that. Like, she's awesome. I had a similar tantrum to yours the first day, and she helped me."
I nodded and smiled. "What did you do?"
"I stole her shoes and threw them off my balcony. Her expensive shoes."
"One thing you should learn," I joke, "is never touch a girl's shoes."
"Got it," he smiles.
After the dinner's been going on for about an hour and a half, Katie and her boyfriend get up and the waiter informs us that they've picked up our check. Katie looks over and winks, and I grin.
"Well, let's hit the road," Carlisle says and we leave the restaurant behind Katie and the guy.
Then they kiss there in the front of the restaurant. Carlisle and I just stand there looking uncomfortable for a couple of seconds, then clear our throats and get back in the car.
We drive away and Katie talks about her boyfriend. "His name's Gus," she says. "He's charming, smart, and all-around awesome."
Carlisle and I just sit there listening to her.
We pull into the parking garage and Carlisle opens my car door for me. I get out with a smile and then hug Katie. "Thank you so, so much," I say. "You rock."
"I know," she says with a smile, and Carlisle and I go up into the building.
The rest of it is dull. We get in the elevator, floor five, he walks me to my room…
So much for dull.
Standing in my doorway, I sigh. "I'll see you tomorrow morning," I say, turning to get the door.
"Mindy, wait," he says, taking my wrist, and turns me around. We stand there for about ten seconds, facing each other holding hands.
Then he kisses me.
His hands form a circle around my waist and my arms around his neck, and we kiss for quite a while.
Until I hear an elevator ding.
We pull apart and I pinch myself. "I'm awake," I whisper, and he waves and disappears down the hall.
