CHAPTER 10

I could hear Vera before I reached her room. My ears were finely attuned to the faint scratchings of her pencil sketching and like a bird watcher following the call of an elusive avian I followed the sound down the hall to room 437 until I found myself standing in her doorway. She was seated in a chair looking out the window with her back to me her drawing pad in her lap.

I worried that if I said, "Hi" she would scream, but I couldn't very well just grab her and cover her mouth to keep her quiet. She was here because she was traumatized. I didn't need to make her worse.

So I compromised. I took a step forward and I whispered her name. Her pencil paused, but she didn't turn around. She merely stopped as if listening and then started drawing again.

"Vera, Vera, it's me. Please let me talk to you."

The pencil again quit moving and her back stiffened. She looked over her shoulder and gasped at seeing me.

"SHHHH! Vera please let me talk to you."

Vera looked pale as a ghost. She was glancing at a red button by the bed I could only assume was some kind of panic button. I hoped she didn't have one on her body like a panic bracelet or something.

"Polly, is that really you? You don't work here now do you?"

I shook my head.

"Then how did you get in here? They're not supposed to let you in."

"Yeah, Vera. What's with playin' hard to get?" I smiled awkwardly. "I don't understand. Are you mad at me?"

Vera said nothing but walked over to me and touched my face. She looked into my eyes and seemingly satisfied that I wasn't some kind of apparition walked past me. I worried she might be going to call someone to haul me off, but instead she simply shut the door and turned to face me.

"Polly, you don't belong here."

"Funny. That's just what I was going to say to you, sweetie."

"I'm sorry to have hurt you, but I'm not coming home." There was finality to her tone that I found disturbing, chilling even. It took me a moment before I could overcome the cold and find my words again.

"So I've been told, but I don't understand why."

"Because I failed. I've been so sheltered for so long I can't do it. I'm sorry. I tried."

"Vera," I reached for her hand. "You had one bad panic attack induced by ME and my stupidity. That doesn't mean you don't belong out in the world."

She bowed her head.

"Vera, I refuse to stand by while you shut yourself off from life! You do that your kidnappers won. You gotta keep fighting. Life is worth fighting for. Don't you think?" I leaned over so I could look up into her downcast face.

"I can't do it, Polly. I'm sorry!" She threw herself face down on the bed. I knelt beside it.

"Vera, set aside the fact that I'm madly in love with you and that I want you back because of that and pretend I'm just your lawyer again."

"You were never just my lawyer, Polly. You've always been an…inspiration." I felt a thrill run through my body and I fought to ignore it. I needed to get past all my horny, crazed boyfriend feelings and get to the heart of what was bothering her.

"Ok, fine, whatever. Just hear me out. I'll help you in whatever way I can. If I'm smothering you, I'll move out. If you need more support I'll quit working. You get royalties from all those books you've illustrated, right?"

"A lot of it goes as restitution to people for my crimes."

I snorted. In my opinion, Vera's only crime was being too damn talented an artist.

"Yeah, well you're talented. I'm sure we could find a way to live off your art and I'd stay home and-"

"Polly, you can't do that for me."

"I wouldn't be mad. I'd do anything-"

"Polly, people need you. Who else would have believed I hadn't killed my father? You have to help people, Polly. It's what you're meant to do."

"And you think you're meant for this?" I swung my arms around the generic hospitalesque room she now called home. It was as un-Vera as any place could be.

Vera sat up and looked at me. I had to admit she did look confused. I wondered what meds she was on.

"Polly, there's more to it than just that."

Finally. We were getting somewhere.

"I'm not sure we have a healthy relationship." I blinked a few times and nervously ran my fingers through my hair wishing my spikes were there. This wasn't exactly where I thought this conversation was going.

"Are you breaking up with me?"

Vera shook her head rather wildly from side to side.

"Well, Vera what am I supposed to think? I'm not sure how we can be together…" I moved my hands back and forth between the two of us in the universal guy hand gesture for relationship. "If you're here. Tell me how that's supposed to work, Vera."

"I guess you're right."

"I know I'm right. But it isn't about being right. I need to know what you're thinking. Are you angry, scared, what, sweetie?"

"Well, Dr. Jonas has raised some concerns that perhaps I'm not coping well and that maybe our relationship is codependent."

As an attorney I had to take some psychology classes, but I'm no expert. I have some notion that codependency is something the spouses of alcoholics or other addicts tend to be where they enable or support problem behaviors or pretend they don't exist…or something. I blinked at her.

"O…k…" I said slowly letting this sink in with me. "So, what bad thing am I enabling you to do? I thought I was helping you…"

"He says that I'm abnormally fixated on you."

Vera started chewing her nails and I reached over and pulled her hand away from her face automatically. "None of that now."

"Oh, sorry." She mumbled.

"Look, Vera if I'm doing something wrong I'll move out. You just can't stay here and if you want to break up with me I'd much rather you just tell me."

She started crying and her body tremored.

"Vera! Sweetie!" I hugged her and she cried on me and then she was kissing me her hand sliding up the back of my neck, pulling my lips and face ever closer as she leaned back leading me on top of her. I felt her legs starting to wrap around me and I somehow no longer got the impression she wanted to break up. She seemed to want to get together right now. Right here.

"Vera, Vera, easy!"

She looked at me still clinging to me a wild look of desire in her eyes. "I could already be arrested for sneaking in here. Your nurses find me here doing that I'm going to be in even bigger trouble." I smiled…still a part of me thought it would be worth the risk…

FOCUS, APOLLO! You can do all that when she's back home. You gotta get her home first, dumbass.

"Polly, I don't care what Dr. Jonas says! I love you. I think we take care of each other."

"We do."

"I don't understand am I not letting you be independent enough? I know things are weird because you can't go out, but I don't have anything to do with your book deals or anything…I mean, I did tell you I wanted Phoenix there when the editor came over but that's just because I don't think you should be alone in the apartment with strangers…I wasn't trying to be controlling-"

Vera ended my ramblings by kissing me again.

"I'm sorry I listened to him. I get intimidated. He says all these things like he knows and really, Polly, what do I know about anything?"

"You know plenty and you're really smart. It doesn't matter that you're cooped up inside all the time you know more about stuff than most people."

A few tears silently streamed down Vera cheeks and I reached over to wipe them away.

"Vera, if you're worried about not having gotten to live think about what kind of life you're going to have here. Sure you'll get to paint and draw, but will you be able to have a life, friends, family, stuff like that?"

The question was an honest one. I had no idea if she even got to leave her room here.

"Vera, please come home." She crawled into my arms and feeling her body against mine even in this horrible place I felt more at peace than I had since she left.

"Vera, I'm not done helping you." I whispered to her. "You chose me to help you and I refuse to forget that. So, I have something for you."

"I'm surprised there are any white roses left." She said sniffling.

"No sorry no rose today- not right now anyways. I thought I might crush it in the process of smuggling myself in. No, I have something different."

I handed her a folded manila envelope I had stuffed in a pocket on the side of scrub pants.

"I don't understand. It's a bunch of CDs? Why are you giving me this?"

"I'm not. It's a gift from Ema. And so is this." And I produced a miniature hammer from the same pocket. Ema had written a note and taped it to the handle. It said, "Vera, let the bastards have it- scientifically speaking. Ema"

"The police have to keep one copy of the surveillance tapes from when you were kidnapped, but it'll be under lock and key in the evidence vault. These are the other copies."

Vera looked down at the hammer in her hand and the silvery circles and blinked. I wondered what she was thinking.

"They violated your privacy. They took you away from your home…"

She reached into the envelope and pulled out one disc. She gently set it on the ground and she swung the hammer back and forth ever so slightly in her hand before bringing it crashing down on the disc. It shattered and she smiled. I grinned. I hadn't seen her smile in fifteen days. I could probably even count the hours, too.

Then she grabbed the next disc and did the same thing. The third one she bent in half with her bare hands a look of almost sadistic pleasure on her face. Then she started muttering.

"Fuckin' bastards come into my home and take me away and hit me and tell me they have Trucy and Polly. You pieces of SHIT!!"

I had never before seen Vera like this. Either I had unleashed some inner demon that the Sunny River employees would live to rue or I had just created a breakthrough Dr. Jonas was failing to achieve.

"Record me talking to my dad! My dad who was killed by someone he thought he could trust. Make me ruin the life of a nice guy. Make it so Phoenix is so scared he has to keep the only woman he loves away from him…but I'm the criminal…I'm the evil one!"

Then Vera took the envelope and dumped them out and sat down on the floor amongst the pile and as if playing a frenzied full body version of whack-a-mole banged the hammer wildly around her. I took a step back to avoid the shrapnel of bits of CDs. I hoped she didn't get hurt, but I really didn't think she would have cared.

Profanities were spewing from her lips as she rambled about everything she'd been through in her life. It was funny for such a sweet person she had sure put up with a ton of shit. She was crying but not helplessly so instead she hit the CDs with the hammer every time a new tear emerged as if these bits of plastic needed to pay for her weakness.

After every CD was cracked and busted to her satisfaction she laid the hammer down and surveyed the mess around her. I saw her take a deep breath before she looked up at me, the demon sated she was back to the angelic being I was used to.

"That was strangely pleasant. Please thank Ema for me." I offered her my hand and she stood up and walked over to get a trash can and she began picking up the pieces to throw in the garbage. I got down with her on the floor to pick them up, but she gently grabbed my hand.

"No, I want to keep that one. I like the shape of it."

She picked through the rubble of her destruction and selected about twelve pieces and the rest we threw away. The pieces she took to a bedside table that had a drawer and placed them delicately within it.

"I have an idea for those."

I nodded. The mind of an artist is always inventing.

"Please, Vera come home. Like I said I'll move out if you want me to or I'll-"

"I heard you say all that Polly. I'm confused not deaf." She sounded tired, but more like the Vera I was used to the not-living-in-the-mental-ward Vera.

"Polly, I don't know that I can be what you want me to be."

"Vera, I don't want you to be anybody you're not, but that's the whole thing. This place isn't you. You haven't made it this far on your own to wind up here. So, come home and we'll figure things out from there."

I could almost see the gears in her brain taking all this stimulation in and trying to decide how to react to it. I stood there dumbly not knowing what else to say or do, but Vera approached me with open arms and the hint of a smile on her lips.

"Can you tell me that thing about you being madly in love with me again?"

I pulled her close to me. Everything was going to be ok.