A/N: This chapter is a bit shorter, only because I wasn't one hundred percent sure what I wanted to do with it. I honestly may come back later and add some more, so be on the look out for updates. It's a bit heavy right now, but rest assured there's a lighter weighted chapter coming soon. Thanks again to those who continue to read and review :)
Gray.
Gray tables, gray chairs, gray blinds.
Gray textured tile speckled crimson.
"Do you love it, Daddy?" Charlotte inquired. "You always told me anything blank like a piece of paper was screaming to be made into art, so that's why I did! I decorated all the walls!"
Patrick stood inside the room, horrified. It took a minute to remind himself this was a silly hallucination.
How could something so undeniably fake create emotions so real?
"Honey, who told you to paint these?"
"No one told me! I just wanted to paint some smiley faces! See?" She ran to a bucket of thick red liquid, dipped her hand inside, and proceeded to paint another face on the wall.
She turned around, pleased with her work, only to find her father had quickly bolted out the door.
Patrick ran as fast as he could from the room, the hallway walls covered ceiling to floor in the red smiley face. A deep voice laughed at him as he ran through the halls back to his room.
He slammed the door open and shut as fast as he could, breathing heavy and rapid. He shut his eyes trying to calm himself. He opened his eyes to find his room to have the same smiley faces taunting him at every angle, every size, everywhere. On his bed laid his daughter, throat slit, blood everywhere, similar to how he found her that dreadful night. Above the bed was the same message as he'd seen in his dreams nights before.
"You can't escape me, Patrick."
He went to the corpse of his daughter, tears quickly filling his eyes as he clutched to her.
This didn't make sense! He wanted to prevent losing her again by staying on the medication, but he did the opposite?
Patrick released the girl, his head throbbing uncontrollably. Blood covered his chest, lap, and arms. He got up, rereading the familiar message on the wall, and ran as fast as he could out of the room.
"You can't escape me, Patrick."
The curly-haired blonde shot his head up to a man-the same man who visited him in solitary during his first few days. Same suit, same crimson red time, same voice.
"Okay, I realize that was being a bit redundant but I wasn't sure if I had gotten my point across completely."
"Leave me alone."
"Patrick, you know I can't do that. I'm up inside your grapefruit!" he got closer to Patrick's face. "You know you don't want me to leave you. After all, right now I am just a figment of your imagination."
The man leaned as close as he could to his ear, whispering softly. "It's no one's fault but your own."
Patrick immediately launched himself at Red John, tackling him to the ground. He threw a few heavy punches before reaching for his throat, gripping as hard as he could with his bare hands.
"Patrick! Patrick stop!" George gasped for air underneath the raging mans wrathful grip.
Three burly guards ran down the hallway immediately ripping Patrick off of the innocent male nurse.
"NO! STOP! LET GO OF ME! LET GO OF ME!" Patrick yelled, continually fighting off the men before a sharp pain stabbed the back of his neck.
His struggled slowly faded, his vision blurring to multiple shades of gray.
The familiar white walls of solitary surrounded the restrained Patrick Jane. After an outburst like this one, he wasn't sure when they'd get to releasing him. Since he'd been sedated in the hallway, Patrick had no idea of what time it was, what day it was, when he had eaten last, or if he was still heavily medicated or if they'd wished to clear his system of all drugs to get rid of the hallucinations.
The door opened, Sophie welcoming herself inside. She brought a chair with her, just as before when he'd first met her. She proceeded to set the chair down beside Patrick's bed and sit herself in the chair.
She stared, almost with pity, at the restrained man. She began with a deep inhale and a matching exhale.
"Patrick."
She spoke as if she was a mother gently scolding a small child for eating a cookie before dinner.
"Patrick, I think you need to realize something. You may think that you have this all figured out. You may think that putting on your front that everything going on inside that wild brain of yours is okay and will be effective. You may think that you'll be fine hallucinating your dead family to get yourself through the rest of your life."
Patrick kept his eyes locked on the white ceiling.
"You're wrong, Patrick. I don't know what I have to do to get that through your thick skull. You aren't going to get better if you don't tell us how your body is reacting to the medications we are trying to use to help you, do you understand?" She waited a moment to let this (hopefully) resonate with Patrick. "Were you seeing or hearing things?"
"...both" he answered, childlike.
"What were you seeing and hearing?"
He paused, remembering the hallucinations. "My daughter."
"Your daughter? Your dead daughter?"
Patrick nodded. No, the one I've got alive living upstate. YES THE DEAD ONE.
"What did you do with her?"
"We...we played outside for a bit. She would follow me around to group and to sessions with you and then we'd sit and talk, or color." Things I did with her while she was alive.
Sophie leaned forward more towards Patrick. "Look, you need to promise me that if you start experiencing these things, you will tell someone. Preferably me. Then we can get you adjusted on another medication. Hiding the fact you were hallucinating your dead daughter was a stupid thing to do."
He turned his gaze to the brunette psychiatrist. "Sophie, have you ever lost anyone before?"
She shook her head. "No one that is very close to me, no. I haven't."
"So you don't know what it's like."
"No, I don't know what it's like losing people close to you. But I do understand loss and the effects is has on a person."
"You don't know," he retorted. "You don't know what it's like walking in your house to your spouse and child, slaughtered and laying in a pool of their own blood. You don't know what it's like to make unplanned funeral plans for the only two people who meant anything to you. You don't know the feeling of the empty, gaping hole that sits in your soul that won't be filled again because they're gone. The two people who meant everything, everything, to you are gone for good. I'll never hear the sound of my daughters laughter again. I'll never see my wife dance again. I'll never walk my daughter down the aisle. Sophie, for me to get that chance to hear my daughters laughter and see her bright smile, even if it is just a figment of my imagination, was incredible. And was something I would never turn in for the world."
"Even if that means attacking and almost killing the one nurse who has befriended you and supported you?"
Patrick sighed, closing his eyes. "I thought he was Red John. He was hallucinated as Red John. I swear I would never do that to George in the rightness of my mind."
"Yeah, well how do we know that now? You didn't hesitate to attack Peter in the 'rightness of your mind' when you first met him."
"I was unstable."
"And you still are, Patrick." She took a moment, letting the silence linger between them. "Believe it or not you are just as unstable today as you were the day you walked in here. You aren't going to get better until you want to get better. You have to let go."
Patrick kept his eyes closed, breathing in and out deeply before responding. "I can't."
"Then maybe that is something we need to work on." Sophie stated, matter-of-factually before rising out of her chair. "I'll see you later today. Your system might toss you a little because you're going through slight withdrawal, however you should be fine."
"Wait," Patrick pleaded before she left the room. "Can you please send in George?"
Sophie sighed, followed by a gently nod before leaving the room. A few moments passed before the door opened once more, the blonde haired male nurse appearing in the doorway. He had two stitched cuts by his right eye from the punches Patrick packed with slight bruising forming around each wound. He moved further into the room, slowly shutting the door behind him and leaning on the wall next to him.
"You...ah...you wanted to see me?"
"George, you have to know. I am so sorry. I truly am. I didn't mean to hurt you at all. I promise."
George nodded slightly, shifting his eye contact to the ground.
"I was hallucinating. I thought..."
The moment sat between them for a while. "You thought...?" George questioned.
Patrick sighed. "I thought you were Red John. That's why."
"Oh. That would explain things then."
"Yes, exactly. Please know I had no intention on hurting you. I had meant to hurt Red John."
"No, I understand that. But..."
The familiar silence lingered between the two once more.
"But..." Patrick prodded.
"I just..." George was undeniably shaken up by this incident. "The anger in your eyes, Pat. I...I don't know. I mean, I grew up with an angry abusive drunk dad so I know angry but you...I have never seen someone so angry before in my life. It was honestly terrifying."
Patrick nodded. When someone kills your family, you tend to have a pent up rage inside you that will be released when you see them.
George shook his head, "Thank you for the apology. I forgive you. Just...might have to take some time before I can look at you the same, Pat."
"I understand."
George nodded before leaving the room.
Silence quickly filled the space. Patrick lost his thoughts in the mesmerizing white ceiling.
Now it would take even longer to get out of this place.