A/N: Hey, gang. Sorry about the wait. What has it been? A good three months? School is kicking my rear end. But I'm posting this one now, and that's all that matters. So let's see what happens with Tori, Cat, and whoever else will be in this one.
Just a fair warning… there are some pretty dark elements coming up. They'll probably be in at least the next three chapters. Brace yourselves.
Dreams are in italics.
"Tori, you have to make a move. The police have been on your case for a week." Cat says, as she fills up my cup with water from a pitcher.
"I know, I know! But I'm scared. I'm scared of what I may say. I'm scared of what they might say. I'm scared of what they may do."
She looks at me with a very confused expression on her face. She's quiet for a moment.
"They just want to ask you some questions. Just some questions."
"Cat, I killed someone. You know what their questions are going to be? They're going to ask, 'Do you want a tight or a loose set of hand cuffs?' or 'would you like to be walked out or forcefully removed?'." I place my hands on my face and take a deep breath.
Cat comes over to my bedside and sits down. She grabs my hand and looks at me in the eyes.
"Maybe they can work something out for you. You never know." She says.
It's been forever. And she still hasn't changed at all. She's the same, happy, bubbly, confident redheaded girl that picked me up on countless occasions. I just think that this may be a bit too heavy for her this time around.
I smile. She really cares and I appreciate it. "Thank you for being confident, Cat. But be honest with me. How many cases of Intoxication Manslaughter have you heard of being tossed out? Be real about this, Cat."
Her happy and encouraging demeanor soon fades away and a sad, lost, and hopeless one appears. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She looks up, her eyes a little bloodshot. She appears to be trying not to cry.
"Look, I know that we haven't seen each other in a while, but there are just some things that never change, Tori. Your singing style may change. The way you act around people probably changed since the last time I saw you. But one of the things that didn't change is how much I care about my friend. And my desire to be positive doesn't change. So you can try all you want to get me to abandon this subject and leave my quest to be positive about it behind, but I can promise you that it won't make a difference." She looks away from me and takes another deep breath.
"I'm not telling you to not be positive. I'm only asking you to be realistic." I say.
"Positivity isn't real?" She asks.
"In this case, no, because there's nothing positive about this situation. What is positive about death? What is positive about killing someone? I almost died, to boot. What is positive about this entire fucking situation?" She jumps back at my sharp tone. My hard facial expression turns to a soft, compassionate one at the sight of her puppy dog eyes showing sadness that I caused.
"I'm sorry. This is just… all… so much to take in at one time. I almost died. Then less than ten minutes after I woke up from a mini coma, I find out that I killed someone. And then these cops are trying to ask me about a crime that I don't even remember anything about. I just…"
Cat scoots closer to me and wraps me up in a hug. God, I missed these. I miss her.
There's a knock on my door. A large man with dark skin walks in with a small woman by his side. He is dressed in a suit and tie while she is in a pant suit. Cat rushes over, trying to push them back.
"You can't be in here. This patient didn't give you permission to come into her room. You have to leave until you get permission." Cat says.
The man says, "We have our permission right here. We've been waiting in that waiting room for a week now and we got tired of it. So we went to a judge and got a warrant saying that we could override what the patient says to do and hold our interrogation now."
Cat's jaw is on the ground and my entire body is shaking like a leaf falling from a tree in the middle of October. The man pulls a chair up right beside me. He looks at me right in the eye and doesn't say a word. The woman sits on the bed on the opposite side of the man.
"My name is Emily Ross. I work for the LAPD in the Intoxication Manslaughter division." The woman says. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. If you didn't hear her speak, you would think she was the prettiest thing and the sweetest person in the entire world. But the masculinity of her voice quickly sent those thoughts into the ground.
"My name is Bernard Borland. I work in the same division." He says.
I look back in forth between them and smile. Why, I don't know. I guess I was just trying to break some of the tension. "So which one of you is the good cop and which one is the bad cop?" I laugh, awkwardly. Again, I look back and forth between them. Apparently they aren't very amused.
"Let me guess. You're both bad cops, aren't you?" Again, they say nothing. "Yeah, that sounds about right. That's my luck."
The woman reaches down into a satchel and brings out a notepad and a pen. She starts writing down my information and begins the interrogation.
"Okay, Miss Vega. Why don't we start off with what you remember of the night that Cheryl Tomlinson died? Do you remember where you became intoxicated?" The woman asks.
"I was at my house, I want to say." I nervously utter the words that I never wanted to say.
"Uh, Tori…?" Cat starts.
The two police officers look at Cat who is still sitting in the room.
"We're going to need you to leave the room, ma'am." Borland says.
"Oh, you see, I'm her personal nurse, so I'm required to…" Borland cuts her off.
"I don't think you heard me correctly. I asked you to leave the room. But I'll ask again. Please leave the room, ma'am." Borland repeats himself.
Cat still doesn't get the message. Borland motions for Ross to escort her out of the hospital room. Ross forcefully takes her and throws her out of the room.
"Hey!" I yell at the woman. She turns around. "You can't do that to her." She doesn't say anything. She just returns to her seat. She picks the notepad up along with the pen and Borland pulls out a tape recorder.
"This has to move along." He says. "You claim to have been at your house on the night of Cheryl Tomlinson's death, correct?"
"That's right." I answer. These people are scary. It's like the only emotion they know how to show is… you know, they really don't show an emotion. They're kind of just… there.
"Miss Vega, do you have any history with major drinking? Do you think you're an alcoholic?" Agent Ross asks.
You're kidding me. "No, absolutely not. That is completely insane. Why in the world would you think I was an alcoholic? That's ridiculous." I know my face is getting red because I can feel heat in my cheeks. I don't even care.
"You need to calm down. We're not trying to instigate anything." Borland says, putting his hands up. "We're just covering all possible scenarios. It's okay."
Oh, so now he's trying to be comforting and easy on me.
"No, I am not an alcoholic." I say, trying to remain calm. I guess they didn't pick up on how much I was trying to tone it down. Because I was hot. Like I was beyond pissed. Maybe it was me being still a little groggy after being unconscious for all that time, but that's just a question you don't ask someone. I mean, even if someone is an alcoholic, you don't just ask them if they think they are.
"Miss Vega, you're obviously not wanting to corporate, so…" Ross says.
"Oh, I'm cooperating. But you both are irritating the shit out of me. You show zero emotion. And you say you're people who work in the intoxication manslaughter division. You should know how to conduct these interrogations without using fear as an approach. I killed someone and I don't even remember it. And you're not even being gentle."
"You need to understand something. You are a criminal. You are a murderer. You don't deserve to be treated like a person who littered does."
"I am NOT a murder. Murder is clearly defined as a killing with premeditation or intent. What I did is considered to be manslaughter. Manslaughter, as you very well should know, is when someone kills another person when they are intoxicated in any way. You could be drunk, high… anything. It is when you have lost control of your senses. I couldn't have known what I was doing at the level of drunkenness I was at last night. So don't call me a murderer."
For the first time in the entire interrogation, they're both silent.
Borland stands up and buttons up his suit jacket. "Ross, let's go. We need to discuss some things back at the station."
"But, boss…" She says.
"Now, Emily." He says, sternly.
She eyes me for a while. And then she stands up and walks toward the door to my room with Agent Borland. I call her name and she turns back around.
"Could you send my nurse back in here?" She nods. And walks out. I scream, "And don't throw her in here, please!"
I can't believe that all just happened. Cat walks back in. She just stands there and looks at me. She doesn't exactly show an emotion. She's just… standing there, almost like a statue. Why isn't she saying anything?
She begins to play with her long red locks of hair and begins pacing around the room, again, saying absolutely nothing. Many times, her mouth begins to open as if she's about to say something, but she stops herself each time. She does it one more time and I feel the need say something.
"Cat, are you just going to stand there and open your mouth only to close it again? Or are you actually going to say something?" I snap a little. Her facial expression changes from confused and stumped to one of sadness.
Again, her mouth open and shuts again. She sits down in a chair at the foot of my bed and crosses her legs.
"Shouldn't you be doing something else besides sitting here, wasting your time, and not saying a damn word?"
"For your information, I'm off duty. I'm doing this without any pay. So I'm sorry if I'm sitting in here with you. I'm trying to take care of you. Try being a little more appreciative. I don't have to do this." She says with a serious look on her face.
I don't say a word to her. All I do is pull my covers up and turn away from her. She exhales loudly, but I don't hear her get up and leave the room.
I understand that what I'm doing to her is selfish. I'm basically shutting down. I'm not myself right now. But how could I be? I'm going through so much right now. I killed someone, for one thing. Then I wake up from a coma-like thing to Cat telling me the news, and then I've got these agents badgering me with questions.
Oh, what use is this? I'm drowning in all of this crap and I'm throwing away the only person who actually cares and actually wants to help me through it. But what am I doing right now? Not doing anything about it. I'm not doing one damn thing to fix it.
What have I gotten myself into? The only thing I can do at this point is go to sleep, I guess. I close my eyes and do my best to get some good sleep.
"Don't you take that tone of voice with me." My mom snaps.
Slurring my words, I say, "You don't get to tell me what to do." I take another drink of the bottle of whatever it is I'm drinking. "Apparently it's okay for you to take a rude tone with me. So why can't I take one with you?" I ask, loudly.
"Oh, you think so? Why don't you say that to your father? See what he has to say about you and your little episode here." Her finger is pointing in my face and I slap it out of my way.
"Good, get him down here. Do you think I give one shit? We've gone through this same routine over different stuff since I was seven years old!"
She heads towards the staircase. "DAVID!" She screams. "Get down here and talk some sense into your daughter. She's gone crazy."
A groan comes from upstairs and my dad comes slowly down the stairs. As soon as he looks at me, I take another quick swig from the bottle and let out a manly burp.
"What's he going to do? Slap me again? That's not scary anymore." I say, with a small laugh. "At least come up with some new stuff. What's up, Mom? Can't teach an old dog any new tricks?"
As soon as I make that comment, a stinging pain comes at my left cheek. My dad backhanded my face. I'm sure some of the pain I should've felt was taken away due to the amount of alcohol that was in my system. But damn, that hurt bad.
Nevertheless, I stand up and face him again. "That's not new. What else you got? Give me some new stuff."
"Daddy?" Trina is at the base of the steps.
"Go back upstairs, Trina." Dad says, sternly.
"But…" She starts to come back with a response.
"GO!" He screams.
She jumps back at the tenacity in his voice. Before she turns around, I can see the tears in her eyes and the pain that's hidden inside her soul. I can hear her thoughts right now. She wants to help me, but she doesn't know how. She feels helpless, and secretly, even though I'm drunk, so am I. I can't let him know that, though.
Hell, if I'm going to be beaten to death, why not go out fighting, right? I give my dad a big slap across the face with a smirk on mine. Now, there's no doubt that if I was sober, there'd be no way I'd be doing this, and I know it. But at this point in time, I've just had enough.
He was hurting. I hurt him. Soon after he realized exactly what was going on, he looked up and his eyes were as wide as they've ever been before. He took his fist back, and this time, punched me right in the jaw.
This time, I'm glad I'm drunk because if I wasn't, there'd be enough pain to go around to everyone in the entire state of California. I stayed on the ground this time.
"Tori, aren't you tired of the same old song and dance? I hit you, you hit me, I hit you again, and you stay down. Because I sure am. I'm tired of going through this bullshit. Why do you constantly provoke those around you to become violent?" Dad asks.
"Look around you. Look around you and see who is in the room with you. Think about who is in the house with you. Mom isn't violent. She just doesn't care if you are. In fact, she probably prefers that you are because she doesn't have to be if you do all the dirty work. Trina isn't violent. She can't even kill a damn spider. There are two violent people in my life. One being Jade West, and guess who the other one is. You, Dad. You're the only violent person in our family."
He snickers. He looks back at my mom, but her face is as neutral as it could possibly be. It's almost like she doesn't care that anything is happening.
"There's no point to this." He throws his arms in the air. "I don't know why I'm wasting my time on you. You're useless! Why am I wasting energy hitting you and trying to beat this bad stuff out of you when all you do is forget about it?"
"Don't try to pin this on me! None of this is my fault. And be honest with yourself. You do this to me because you enjoy it. You enjoy it and you know it. You get pleasure out of doing this to me." He laughs again. "Don't lie, you unimaginable bastard. You enjoy this, because you get to take all of your anger down inside on me. And you think there's an excuse to do it because I'm fucking up! Don't you?"
"Shut up." He says, running a hand through his hair.
"Answer me."
"Shut… your mouth."
"Answer me, you son of a bitch!"
And before I can have another thought, he's on top of me, slapping my face and throwing a few punches while he's at it. It's getting to the point where I can't really feel it now. I'm just lying there and taking every blow.
And then, magically, I wake up with a start.
I'm panting and sweating.
"Cat!" I scream. "Cat, where are you?!"
I hear something from the corner of the room moving, and I see Cat trying to get out from under the covers. She stands up and runs to my bedside. It's funny how much she still cares even after how I treated her after the interrogation. She grabs my hand.
"Tori, what's wrong?" She asks, almost out of breath.
I'm actually crying at this point. She takes me into her arms as I try to control my breathing. She strokes the back of my head and softly whispers sweet nothings into my ear. These slowly make my breathing slow down.
"Tori, it's okay. Talk to me. Just talk to me. Breathe and talk to me. It's okay." She coos. Why is her voice so soothing?
"I… I… I… remember… some… something." I stutter through the crying.
"What is it? What did you remember, Tori?" She asks. She put her hands on my shoulders and starts rubbing them softly.
"Cat, this is going to be extremely hard to talk about for me." I say. "Is there any way that I could persuade you to take me down to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast?"
She takes a look at her phone and sees that the time is five o'clock in the morning. It's still dark outside and the room is totally dark except for the light of Cat's phone shining on her face.
"Yeah, I guess we can. I don't know if I have enough money for breakfast and coffee for the both of us, though. We can go…" She says, but I cut her off.
"Well, you don't have to pay for me. They said that patient eat free this week. So this was the right time to get in a car crash, wasn't it?" I laugh.
She gives me a 'what the hell' type of look.
"I'm sorry… I know I shouldn't be joking about that. Especially after someone died and also after I had this awful revelation. Let's head down to the cafeteria and I'll tell you about it, okay?"
She nods and helps me out of the bed. It's almost hard to walk with how long I've been in this bed.
"Oh, god, I'm so weak." I say. As she's helping me out the door, I look up at her and say, "Will you carry me there, please?"
"Nope. You're walking, sister."
Cat and I are in the cafeteria and in line getting our breakfast. And surprisingly, for a hospital, they have some pretty good grub. And you would think that a hospital cafeteria would have a much more healthy selection of food.
Ha. No. They cook they're entire breakfast menu with lard. And as folks from Alabama would say, that's what makes the food taste how it tastes. God, my stomach is going to hurt later from all this grease. Pray for me.
"Okay, pretty lady." The cashier says. "That'll be five dollars and ninety-eight cents."
Cat smiles and goes into her small wallet type thing she carries around her wrist. She pulls out a ten dollar bill and hands it to the lady.
"There you go, Pam." She smiles. Okay, I guess she knows this person.
"Enjoy the food, Cat. Hope to see you tomorrow. We'll have another nice, hot pot of coffee made up fresh for you if you feel like grabbing a cup." Pam says.
"Well, you know I will. I've done the same thing every morning for the past two years!" Pam smiles at Cat's happy tone and waves at her as we walk away from her and head for a table.
We sit down and Cat gets situated. She puts a couple of sugars in her coffee, followed by a creamer. Then she stirs it and takes her first sip. We sit in silence for a moment.
Cat takes a deep breath. "Are you going to fill me in on what's going on with you or not? Because, Tori, I'm really starting to get worried about you." She says. "And not about everything that's happening with the whole Cheryl Tomlinson situation, but you in general."
I laugh a little. "Cat, I haven't done anything to give you that idea. Have you been talking to Jade again? Has she been telling you I've gone insane?"
"No, I promise, she hasn't. But still…" She lowers her head and stares at her coffee. I mean, she has reason to be worried. She has reason to be worried about the fact that I may be going to prison for committing a crime that I don't even remember committing. And maybe she even has reason to worry about my emotional integrity. But there's no way she just have this incessant worry about me as a person.
I'm perfectly fine. I'm totally sane. However, I could really see myself having an emotional breakdown if I have another dream like the last one.
Speaking of which…
"So, you ready to tell me about that dream now?" Cat asks.
"Do I have to?"
"You said you would. So yes, you have to." She says.
I exhale loudly and nod my head, signifying that I'm ready to go.
"So… it's a little patchy. I have a feeling I'm missing a few pieces of what really went down." I say. "But I remember everything before I left my house."
She adjusts her position in her chair, her face becoming more and more serious by the second. She nods. "Okay. What happened?"
I close my eyes, trying to remember everything that was going on in the dream. And suddenly, it was almost like I was having the dream all over again. And it was just as bad as the first time. I started to sweat again. And shake.
Cat grabs my hand. "It's okay, Tor. It's okay. I'm here."
"Cat, it's just so… so real."
"That's because it was real. It is real. Just take your time." She says.
I take a deep breath and muster up the courage to begin. "Let me ask you a question, Cat."
"Tori, I want to talk about you. Forget about me for a minute." She puts her hands up, frustrated.
"If you'll let me finish, I'll tell you everything. I'm leading to something." She quiets herself and becomes a listener. "My question is… do you know why these cuts and scratches are on my face? Like, do you really know?"
"Well, yeah. You were in a car crash."
"Right… but it was something else. It was something you'll never be able to guess."
She thinks about it for a minute.
"Have you noticed anything weird about my visitors?" I ask.
"Well, your only visitors were Borland and Ross. That's about the only thing I can think of. What else has been weird to you?"
I look at her for a minute to see if she picks up on what I'm putting out there.
"My parents haven't come in to see me, Cat. Not one time."
She has a confused look on her face. She cocks her head to the side and looks me in the eye with one of her eyebrows raised while the other one stays low.
"In my dream last night…" I pause. This is the hard part to talk about. "…my dad beat me. Like, bad. He kicked the living shit out of me."
"And that's where you got the… from."
"The cuts. Yes, I believe so. I remember, in the dream, that I was completely drunk. I was completely wasted. And I guess I had an attitude with my mom. I really can't remember what it was about. I just remember that I got into it with her."
"So she beat you?" Cat asks.
"No, no, no. She got tired of dealing with it, so she called my dad downstairs to take care of it." I say. "And he sure did."
"I think if I had just apologized and not been drunk, he wouldn't have done any of this."
"Why didn't you apologize?" She asks, quietly, with the chin in the palm of her hand.
"Because fuck him, that's why." I smirk a little bit, proud of myself for coming to terms with the fact that this wasn't entirely my fault.
"I guess the reason I was drunk was because I was having so many problems at home. Maybe I just couldn't take it anymore. So I just went to alcohol." As the statement goes on, I find myself speaking softer and softer.
Cat gets up from her chair at the table and comes over to mine. She wraps her arms around me and holds me tightly. She rubs the back of my head and starts humming some soothing noises.
"Tori, none of this is your fault."
"You do realize that if I hadn't been drinking that she wouldn't be dead right? Cheryl Tomlinson could go back home to her husband and child without any extra stress provided by me. But no, I had to be selfish and try to kill off all of my problems with alcohol."
"Tori, stop blaming yourself. Could you just think about this for a minute? We can get away with this in court! Your dad drove you to drink and emotionally compromised you." Cat says.
"Look, Cat, I appreciate what you're doing. But right now, all I can think about is how I killed a lady who had a life just like me. And I'm sure that when she died, she wasn't running from her problems like I am or was. She had kids. She had a husband. She had a job. And I took her away from all of those things. How can I think about anything else but that?" Cat is right about one thing. I am emotionally compromised. That, or extremely close to it.
"I understand, Tori. I just…"
"No." I cut her off and stand up from my seat. "No, Cat, you don't understand. You don't know what it's like to be on top of the world for one moment and then the next you're at rock bottom and trying to tell yourself that you're not. You don't know what it's like to be beaten half to death by your dad. You just don't. You don't know what it's like to go into a hospital, look up at all the doctors wheeling you into the hospital screaming and asking nurses for things. And when you tell me what it's like to take someone's life and not even remember it… come get me. And we'll talk."
She sits still, stirring her coffee. I stand there waiting for her to say something. She doesn't. I huff and slowly walk away from our table and towards the exit of the cafeteria.
On my way out I hear, "And you don't know what it's like to have someone you care about more than yourself say you don't know how something this serious feels, especially when they do understand it."
I look back at Cat.
"I understand it all."
A/N: Okay, everybody. I'm happy with this. I know it took me forever to get this out, but hey… it's out now, and that's all that matters.
And also, I'd just like to say that if you're a victim of domestic abuse that it's never your fault. Ever. If you ever need help, always go get someone. It's never your fault. Thank you for reading.