10 - The Cuckoo's Nest
Waking up in the hospital after her exorcism and near-fatal knife wound, Charlie was asked to explain why she had sliced her wrist open. Thinking back later, she probably should've come up with something that sounded less crazy than a demon made me do it. However, since she was drugged to the gills at the time, she wasn't able to stop herself from blurting out the truth.
So being deemed an attempted suicide was really no surprise, nor was being evaluated by scores of mental health professionals in the ICU and then in the psych ward during her involuntary 72-hour hold. She really didn't think it was fair that they were allowed to interrogate her while she was under the influence of such damn good medication.
By the time she was off the good stuff, she'd already spilled pretty much everything. Demons, incubi, blood-thirsty pandas. All that jazz.
Paranoid schizophrenia was the diagnosis. According to the clueless shrinks and their damn DSM-IVs, her "disease" had manifested in a pretty much textbook manner: paranoid delusions accompanied by hallucinations and perceptual disturbances, inability to maintain social connections, a pattern of erratic behavior emerging in the late-teens to early-twenties.
Charlie's parents had her committed to a picturesque facility about three hours from home.
Charlie spent every waking moment of her first two weeks there trying frantically to escape, which really didn't do anything to make her look less bonkers.
Charlie's parents wouldn't let Nicholas come see her, stating that she had traumatized her brother enough, that they didn't want him to keep buying into her delusions. That it wasn't healthy for either of them. They said not to worry, that those nice friends of her had dropped off her car and her dog and that both would be well looked after and that Charlie should just concentrate on getting better.
Antipsychotic medication was... awful. It was bad enough that she felt so damn exposed in that nut house, no protective amulets, no way to ward the building against attacks. But the pills... they made her shaky and slow, nauseas. Horribly depressed. And since she wasn't psychotic, they had no upside (other than making her easier for the hospital staff to handle (with all her martial arts and self-defense training, they weren't taking any chances)).
She kept calling Sam, even though Sam wasn't answering. Days and then weeks went by, and Charlie came to the conclusion that the Winchesters were actually going to leave her there to rot. She was sane, and they knew it, but they weren't going to lift a finger to help. She'd been under the impression that they were at least sort of her friends. But apparently not. Bastards.
Her first visitor, nearly a month in, was her old friend Teddy Memphis. Charlie walked into the common area one morning, and he was just waiting there at one of the small tables. Smiling. Fucking smiling.
"Hey, Charlie-cakes," the young man greeted, bright but sheepish, just as skinny as always though a few inches taller than he was the last time they'd met. He leapt to his feet when he saw her, clumsily offering a large chocolate milkshake. With whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top.
Charlie found herself returning the smile, accepting the treat and lowering her body into the chair Teddy gallantly pulled out. "Hey," she murmured, sipping hesitantly at a small slice of heaven before adding, "What're you doing here?"
"Visiting my favorite coppertop, of course," Teddy answered. His unruly curly black hair was a bit longer than Charlie remembered, grown out enough to cover his dopey ears.
And she felt really stupid for not noticing sooner, but she also saw that he wasn't wearing his glasses. "No specs?" Charlie chuckled.
"Oh," he laughed, grinning crookedly and reflexively touching the bridge of his long, slim nose, "Ya, I got contacts a while back. Took me forever to quit stabbing myself in the eye trying to put 'em in."
"Sorry I missed that," Charlie joked.
There was an awkward silence, but it didn't last very long at all (they never did when Teddy was around); the young man cleared his throat and dug an envelope out of his pocket, sliding it across the table and murmuring, "Nicholas wanted me to give this to you."
Charlie snatched the envelope away and tore into it in an instant, almost bursting into tears of relief when she saw the amulets enclosed inside. There was also a letter, from Nicholas of course, telling her to hold on and be safe, that he was fine and still trying to convince their parents to let her come home. He wrote that she should just stay put and try not to do anything stupid. Well, stupider.
"Charlie?" Teddy finally interrupted, laying a comforting hand over hers, "Are you alright?" He toyed idly with the edges of her bandage, probably not even aware that he was doing it.
"I'm not crazy," she insisted, voice stiff and high and tight, "I'm not! And I didn't try to kill myself!... you believe me, don't you?"
Teddy barely had to think before answering, smiling sadly and murmuring, "I certainly don't want to believe the alternative. And I'm all if ears, if you can convince me."
Sighing heavily, knowing that the story just made her sound even more insane, Charlie replied, "If I was capable of convincing other people, I wouldn't be in this hellhole."
"Charlie-cakes," the lanky young man prodded sweetly, "C'mon. You know I'm not other people."
She thought out it for a long few moments. "You got a pen?" she finally asked.
Confused, Teddy dug through his pockets and responded, "I got... uh... a marker. I'm getting an Education degree, so I help out at the elementary school most days."
Charlie grinned. Kids loved Teddy, probably because he was still practically one of them, goofy and sweet and naïve. She took the red marker out of his hand and scrawled a phone number across his palm. "Call Sam Winchester," she ordered gruffly, chewing on her bottom lip, hoping like hell the half-baked plan would work, "Don't use your real name, and don't tell him you know me. Say that you're a hunter and that you heard he and his brother dealt with cursed stuffed animal prizes a few years back. Say that you just took care of a string of them in the state, moving in pretty much a straight line toward this city."
For the first time, Teddy looked at her like she might actually be crazy, withdrawing his hand and warily inspecting the red ink.
On a second thought, on yet another strange whim, Charlie leaned across the small table, tugged down the collar of Teddy's shirt, and drew an anti-possession sigil right over the young man's heart. "Ever thought about a tattoo?" she chuckled lightly, admiring her work, "This is the one I'm getting as soon as I bust outta here."
"But Charlie," he argued worriedly, "You hate needles."
"Well," she replied, "I hate almost dying even more... mind if I keep the marker?"
The subject of Charlie's sanity pretty much dropped after that. They talked more, about nothing in particular. Normal, friendly stuff. They joked and laughed. And then Teddy left with a promise to be back for another visit as soon as he was able. Charlie couldn't really be sure that he made the call like she asked, but she was hopeful.
And when the Winchesters showed up within the week, Charlie sent up a brief prayer that went something like God bless you, Teddy Memphis, you sweet gullible fool.
"C'mon," Sam ordered, leaning over her cot in the middle of the night, dressed like an orderly, "Let's go."
"Nice of you to finally show up," Charlie slurred, struggling against the heavy sedation she'd been treated to after trying to put her fist through a shrink's skull. In her defense, the fucking quack had tried to stop her from finishing the Devil's Traps at the entrances and exits.
Mouth a tight, colorless, slightly angry gash in the dark space, Sam didn't say anything. He hooked his massive arms beneath Charlie's back and knees, picked her up and ran.
She slept in the back of the Impala until the drugs wore off, until it was the middle of the next day (or possibly the day after) and they were several hundred miles down the highway in the wrong direction. Charlie remembered how utterly irate she was at the brothers, remembered that she just wanted to go home.
So while they were stopped at a gas station, inside bickering over a mountain of snack foods, she borrowed a few bucks and left them a brief note, a terse thanks for the assist; she headed for the bus station. She bought a ticket and an unremarkable brown wig.
A few days later, she was waiting for Nicholas just inside the wards on their family's property.
He got off the bus looking gloomy. He had a busted lip and a black eye. His shirt was dirty, torn at the shoulder.
"Do I gotta break some heads over that?" Charlie inquired, falling into step beside the boy as soon as they were out of sight of the road.
The recognition took a fraction of a second. "Charlie!" the boy squealed, launching himself into his sister's arms and holding on for all he was worth, "I knew you'd come home! I knew it!"
"Of course, Nicky," she chuckled warmly, sighing with relief and wincing only slightly as the fresh tattoo just below her left collarbone stung, "I'm not going anywhere without you ever again." She held the kid at arm's length and firmly demanded, "Now, tell me about the shiner. Whose ass am I kicking?"
Pouting, Nicholas responded, "You can't! They'll send you back to that place! Besides, it was no big deal. I won the fight."
Shaking her head, looping her arm around her brother as they walked, Charlie chuckled, "That's what winning looks like? Christ, kid, we gotta work on your defense."
Nicholas scowled, insisting, "There were three of them! Eighth graders! They were talking bad about you!"
"Three eighth graders against one little Nicky?" Charlie marveled, "Way to go, pint-size. The school call Mom and Dad?"
Nicholas shook his head, dark fringe flying in and out of his dark eyes. "It was behind the dumpsters before the bus showed up. They were such wimps. Jared Young even cried."
Charlie smiled.
She hid out at home for awhile, avoiding her parents and everyone else. She slept during the mornings, snug in bed until it was time to meet Nicky at the end of the driveway. Then they had all afternoon together, until just before their parents got home, at which point Charlie would leave to prowl around the property with Bullet, inspecting the wards until night fell, until the sleepy town went silent and Charlie was free to roam and put more wards up everywhere. Nicholas's school was the first priority, but from there she progressed to the hospital, grocery store, library, post office, and city hall. Then along the edge of the city limits in an unbroken circle. Miles of hiking and gallons of spray paint. When the sky began to lighten, Charlie would go home, hover near the back of the house until her parents left for work and Nicky let her back in. They would have breakfast together, and she'd watch him board his bus before returning to crash in her own cozy bed.
Time passed in that fashion. The routine was sort of comforting, but it also made Charlie a bit anxious; she was having a hard time staying put, even though she knew that she had to for Nicholas. Still, she couldn't help sensing the apocalypse looming. Couldn't help being terrified of what would happen next, feeling like she should be doing something more. She must've picked up her phone a hundred times, scrolled to Sam's name in the contacts and let her finger linger on the call button before chickening out. She didn't know what she would've said to him anyways.
She heard about Maryland on the news. The weird lights. The demolished church. It seemed so... random. But Charlie still got a bad feeling about the whole thing. She'd learned to trust her bad feelings. She started stockpiling weapons and other assorted supplies, digging underground bunkers in the woods. Doing everything short of prostitution and murder to finance the project.
Not too much later, in the middle of the night, Sam called. He didn't say anything at first, just breathed wetly into the speaker.
Charlie waited, patiently.
Finally, he croaked, "It's my fault. It's all my fault."
"You didn't stop it," Charlie stoically observed. She gave her can of spray paint another few shakes and added another few strokes to the sigil she was drawing on the underside of the bridge at the north end of town.
Sam gave a drunken, humorless chuckle. "I started it," he confessed. A slosh and gulp echoed over the line before the hunter added, "The planet is doomed, and it's my fault."
"On the upside," Charlie pointed out, "I got enough supplies and gear to last through 2020, and my town's practically a fortress. You know, in case you're ever in need of one."
With another chuckle, another slosh and gulp, Sam inquired, "Am I that pitiful?"
Charlie argued, "I just don't want you doing anything stupid. Well, stupider."
"You're still mad at me," the man observed. It sounded like he might've been pouting.
"Damn straight," Charlie countered, "You were gonna leave me stranded in the whack shack, you asshole. I had to get Teddy to fake a hunt just to get your attention."
In the brief silence, Charlie knew Sam was gaping. "That was-" he said, "You- I can't believe you did that! We really thought you were in danger! We only stopped looking because Nicholas said you'd turned up at home!"
Laughing, Charlie observed, "I figured. Don't worry. You're still my white knight even though the threat wasn't real."
Again, Sam didn't say anything for a few long moments. Then, he grumbled, "You're gonna drive me nuts." He sighed heavily before adding, "I just... I just didn't want you getting hurt again. You were supposed to be safe there."
"And you're supposed to be my friend," Charlie murmured, "Locking me up somewhere, with no defenses, is not how you keep me safe. Hell, you should've just posted a billboard for a demonic buffet." Before Sam could argue, Charlie cut in, "If you really want to protect me, help me learn how to hunt."
"No."
Growling impatiently, Charlie declared, "The world is ending. Do you really want me not to know what to do when the shit really hits the fan?"
Sam heaved another drunken sigh, took a few more gulps. "I have a friend," he slurred, "A hunter. One of the best. He just... he was paralyzed. His legs... but he's going home soon, and he'll need someone to help him out for awhile."
With a triumphant grin, the young woman replied, "Just call me Nurse Charlie."
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Yet another thrilling chapter, lol. As always, reviews are hot monkey love ;)