Chapter Eight: Heather

Heather couldn't believe it when he had come barging into the room and rescued her. She had been so overtaken with damsel in distress and white knight syndrome that she hadn't seen the clear picture right away. She was slipping. But, it hadn't taken her too long after that to put the pieces together. The bastard was watching her. He was sitting up there in his office all high and mighty spying on her like some kind of a fucking pervert. After he left, it hadn't taken her long to find the camera. They had done a pretty good job of hiding it, but once she was looking for it, she knew all the best vantage points in the room were the places to check. That was when she had noticed the small reflection of light in the upper corner at the front of the room. Who the hell did he think he was watching her like that? Well, whatever it was that he thought that he was going to get out of it, he was wrong. Now that she knew about it, she had the upper hand.

Her eyes once again turned to the corner of the room where she had discovered the camera. She may have had the advantage now that she knew that it was there, but that didn't stop her from suddenly feeling vulnerable and very exposed. She wished at that moment that she had had something, anything, with which she could use to dig the camera out from behind the layers and layers of padding and smash it to smithereens. That thought sounded more appealing than even slitting her wrists and that was saying something.

In the back of her mind somewhere, a little voice screamed at her to not show that she was feeling susceptible. Her instincts were telling her to cross her arms over her chest and hug herself tightly, cover up as much of herself as she could but in desperation to look strong, she chose the opposite pose, propping both hands on her hips and practically jutting her chest out in likeness of a peacock, showing her entire body to the lens.

Heather wondered if the good doctor was watching at that very moment. A sick thought suddenly oozed into her mind like a slug, trailing nasty slimy thoughts in its wake. Scott used to watch her. When she was a little a girl, she would be playing out in the front yard and he would sit up on the front porch with all of his buddies, smoking pot and watching her. His pretty little princess he used to call her. Thinking of it now made her want to vomit. She was overcome with the sickening feeling of Scott touching her. Once again, she could feel the thin fishing line biting into her wrists and the cold metal clasped around her ankles. She could feel her brother's hands on her, all over her. It was like a slimy sticky film that covered her entire body. Unconsciously, she brought both hands up and began to rub hard at her skin, trying in vain to wipe the feeling off of her. Her fingers then twisted into claws and she was soon scratching and ripping at her flesh, desperate to rid herself of her brother's touch…his scent…his taste. Screaming through clenched teeth, she yanked at her hair and tore at her skin, but he was everywhere. Just as he had done when she was a child, he had completely taken over. She was powerless against him.

Her physical sense had gone completely numb to everything but the feeling of reliving her brother's violation of her. She wanted to feel something else, needed to feel something else. She continued to dig and to claw at her skin, her nails drawing blood from the soft flesh of her forearms. She didn't even hear the clang of her metal door swinging open. Two arms wrapped around her from behind and pried her own hands away from the wounds she was inflicting on herself. She struggled against the embrace, but soon found herself being wrestled to the ground. It wasn't long until she was laid out flat on her stomach, her arms and legs pinned down by the body of her assailant. She couldn't see him, but her eye caught sight of one of the hands that held tight to her own and the wrist of that hand were a dozen white scars. It was Crane.

The door to her room stood open from where he had entered without her notice, and a moment later, Dr. Mildred came waddling in, syringe in hand. On instinct, Heather began to struggle even harder against Crane's body weight, but he held her steady. Mildred knelt down beside them and used one hand to pin her head to the floor and hold her steady, then she felt the sharp prick of the needle enter her neck. Her body stilled and within a minute, her vision blurred then went completely dark.

When Heather awoke some hours later, she found herself lying on Dr. Crane's comfortable leather sofa, the pink tinted sunlight of dusk pouring in through the window. Crane was sitting at his desk, shuffling through a stack of papers.

"Hello, Heather." He said, without looking up.

"Doc." She acknowledged.

"How are we feeling?" he asked, his gaze still remaining firmly trained on her papers.

"I think the term is groggy." Heather answered.

Crane simply nodded and paused in his shuffling to write something on a legal pad that was sitting off to the side, then went right back to shuffling.

"I can't stay here anymore," Heather spewed suddenly, "You have to let me go!"

Crane finally looked at her. "Let you go? Heather, you just tried to use your fingernails to peel you skin off. Don't you think that that constitutes as a problem?"

Heather wanted to throw his paperweight at him. Couldn't he see that being in this place was bringing up things in her memory that she could not deal with? These were things that she had spent so much time and energy in tucking down below the surface, that their rising was hurting her. She couldn't bear it; it made her skin crawl. She wanted out of this cold, unfeeling place. She wanted to be somewhere that she could hear the sea crashing ashore and be able to feel the warmth of the sun onto her face. She wanted to be standing on a cliff where she could marvel at the vastness of the ocean and how small she really was. Then, when she had absorbed all the beauty she could, she would hurl herself onto the unforgiving rocks below. She longed to feel the breaking of her bones on the hard surface as she smashed into them. And with her dying breath, at last, she would know peace.

She looked at Dr. Crane, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Could he not see that that was what she needed? Could he not understand that that was the only answer for her? No. Of course he couldn't. All anyone ever saw was a young pretty girl with supposedly her whole life ahead of her, with everything in the world to live for. They didn't see the pain that she hid. They didn't see the turmoil that was just underneath the outside of her skin. She looked at Crane, sitting there, a calculatingly concerned expression on his handsome face and she so desperately wanted to believe that maybe he was different from all the rest of them. She wanted him to see that death was her only way to escape the demons in her head. She wanted to trust him. But he had been watching her. He had been staring at her just like Scott had used to do.

"Why have you been watching me?" she asked, forcing all the vulnerability back down her throat to her stomach. It was thick and bitter and vile as she physically felt it sliding back down.

"For your protection." Crane said, and Heather had to admire his lying skills.

She almost believed him. "I don't believe you."

"Believe what you want to, Heather. But nothing you can say will make me regret my decision to monitor your room. First, you were attacked. Then, you decided to try and claw your way to your veins."

"It's an invasion of my privacy." She said.

"You're considered to be a danger to yourself, therefore the invasion of privacy is completely warranted." Crane countered.

Heather hated him for being so calm and collected. Why couldn't he show her some emotion like before? Even a temper tantrum would be more welcome than this smooth soothing tone. She was feeling drained and she needed for him to have energy for her to feed off of.

She dropped her head into her hands and tugged at her hair. She turned her face away from him, not wanting to show him the onslaught of tears that she was no longer able to hold in. She hated being weak. She hated other people seeing that she was weak even more. And for some reason, she especially didn't want for Dr. Crane to see her at what was probably her weakest moment in a long time.

"Heather, look at me." He said as if reading her mind.

Heather didn't respond.

"Heather, I said look at me." He repeated.

She just shook her head, but she shook it with such vehemence that Crane undoubtedly got the message that she had no intention of looking up at him. He did receive this message as it were, and stood from his position behind the desk and came around to kneel before her. His hands captured her wrists and pulled them away from her face. Heather turned her face to the side and away from him, but Crane was too fast for her. He reached out and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look at him, and as a last resort of defense, Heather squeezed her eyes shut. When she finally opened them, the expression on Crane's face surprised her. He seemed somewhat taken aback by the sight of her tearstained face.

Sure, she had cried in front of him before, but it had generally been in anger. Not this, this complete and total dissolution of strength. Surely, he had had patients break down on him before, why should she be so different?

Simple. Because she wanted to be.

She was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire for him to hold her. She wanted him to save her from herself; to be her salvation. She wanted Dr. Jonathan Crane to take her away from her wretched life.

"Dr. Crane," she said, her voice pleaded lower than a whisper, "take me away from here."