I don't own Twilight, but the rest, especially Confetti, is mine.
6.
I feel betrayed for him. Burned. I struggle to my feet because this is all unraveling so fast - faster than I can handle. "So you knew? You knew that he was her doctor - that he was-"
"No." Confetti shakes his head fiercely. "I knew he was her doctor, I didn't know that he was a monster."
The truth of this hospital, this place slams against my chest and molds me into the ground, and the velocity of it might just crush me. Confetti pulls himself off the ground and I can barely hear the grass crunch beneath his feet as he steps toward me. "I didn't know, I swear I didn't know."
"How could you not know, aren't you a patient here?"Tremors flex through my voice, so much that I almost don't recognize it.
"Not always, there was a time when I wasn't here just the same as you."
"So get it out then." Waving a hand for him to continue, I return to sitting in the grass with my elbows perched up on my knees as I cross my legs.
He copies my actions but doesn't meet my gaze, staring off into the distance like a film is playing on a screen in front of him. "Ila was my wife, we were married for six years before she died. We had a good life but nothing fancy - most of the time just barely squeaking by to make ends meet. That was our thing, our joke, that we couldn't get anywhere because the man was keeping us down. She painted, people and landscapes. I was the dancing idiot," he laughs, "She used to love my impression of the moonwalk."
A corner of my mouth twitches up into a smirk.
"We were happy though. I came home from work one day to find her ecstatic - turned out we were due to have a baby. Every day after I went to work, whistling show-tunes and waving to strangers."
"Did she have...a miscarriage or something?" I say quietly.
"No, she didn't - and this is going to sound horrible but I wish she had. I guess I figure that if that were the case, she wouldn't have ended up here. No - she had issues -much like yours. Though hers was a problem called Dissociative Identity disorder."
"Like multiple personalities?"
"Yeah, at first it wasn't obvious. She wasn't even diagnosed until about three months after we found out about the baby."
"So she didn't show any signs before that? At all?"
"She had a little, we were looking into it - but her alter ego would only show itself every so often. If she was stressed out it could trigger something...it's my fault really. There were so many signs. So many switches...so many frames to her mind. She had a hard time remembering things, she would go somewhere and then call me, not knowing how she had even gotten there to begin with. The first time, it was nothing, so I dropped it. But the second time we went in - she told me she had been hearing voices."
He lets a tear slide down his cheek finally.
"Tell me, what happened then?"
"We thought we could handle it. Even when the disorder was put out on the table, we thought with the right treatment she would get better and still be able to be a good mom, I knew she would. I knew she could have handled it.
"Well, when she was diagnosed I recall her telling me that reality bites. We couldn't have her on meds because of the baby so they wanted us to try psychotherapy and even some hypnosis. I thought maybe with the treatment, we could eventually kill off the other...part of her."
Fear throbs in my chest, pumping the adrenaline through my veins and the hairs on the back of my neck prick out at attention - holding off the impending knee-jerk reaction to grab onto the grass below me and tear it out in chunks.
" ' There are moments when, even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.' "
"Edgar Allen Poe," I whisper.
His breath is labored as he cries freely now. "I came home...she was in hysterics on the floor, covered in blood. Mrs. Hyde was out and she had a pair of scissors in her hand." He hiccups and we both fall silent for a few moments before he finally tells me, "She was a walking shell afterwards. The doctor thought she needed to come here so she could get the proper treatment. It wasn't even a month later when she died."
"How would she have taken her own life?"
"She didn't take her own life, she underwent electro-shock therapy. The voltage was set too high across her chest and she died. I'm here because I tried to kill myself - on suspension from the force for it. But that's okay, I can gather as much dirt on that motherfucker as possible."
I nod my head, reality does bite.
