Nessa Raeborn made a small mark on her clipboard beside the line, “Doctor verification,” and gave her patient a smile. “You discontinued most of your medication since your last visit. How have you been feeling since then, Amana?”
Tugging on the ear of a stuffed rabbit and fidgeting on the paper covering her bed, Amana looked up at the doctor. “Better,” she decided after a moment of thinking. “I don’t like pills.”
Monica smiled at her little foster sister from where she sat in the corner of the room.
Nessa nodded slowly. “Makes sense. So, you haven’t experienced any worsening symptoms in the last year?”
Amana shook her head, large eyes fixing on the bunny face in front of her.
Monica shifted on her chair and spoke up. “She’s had a lot of mood swings this past year.”
Nessa’s pen shifted across her clipboard, and she silently checked off a box titled, “Mood swings.” She gave Monica a smile. “What kind of mood swings? How often and how sudden?”
“She usually goes from happy to angry or happy to scared,” Monica explained. “She had some weeks when the mood swings were pretty regular, and Mom got a lot of calls from the school. But other weeks, she was better and not much happened.”
“Her mood always changes from positive to negative? Never the reverse?”
Monica nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Most likely, the mood swings are a side effect of taking her off the medication,” Nessa told her. “The plan is to phase out the rest of her medication this year. But in the process, we’re going to put her on an anti-depressant to hopefully smooth the side-effects of the transition. I’ll talk to your mom about this, of course.”
Monica smiled. “Sounds good.”
“Ari doesn’t like pills, either,” Amana spoke up, still gazing at her bunny. “Are you going to make it so he doesn’t have to take pills too?”
“Ari?” Nessa questioned uncertainly.
“Arius,” Monica filled in.
“Ah, your brother.” Nessa froze momentarily on the realization. She watched Amana for a long moment until the girl turned and met her gaze. “Arius’s condition is a little different from yours.” A feeble smile lifted Nessa’s lips.
“He has to eat different foods,” Amana told the doctor knowledgably. “He can’t have cow milk or wheat bread. It makes him sick.”
“Yes, that’s part of it,” Nessa agreed. Her eyes lowered to the clipboard in her hand. Then, looking up at Monica, “To make sure the final phasing out of her medication goes well, we’re going to talk to your mom about keeping Amana here overnight and maybe for a few days—up to a week maximum. Of course, your mom is a doctor also, but we want to make sure Amana’s symptoms are closely monitored. I’ll speak with her and figure out what she prefers.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure why she’s not here right now,” Monica agreed, lifting her hand in a gesture over her shoulder. “She went to the restroom and didn’t come back.” She laughed lightly.
“Maybe she’s speaking with staff,” Nessa suggested. She looked again at the paper on her clipboard. But her eyes abruptly lifted when a soft squeak sounded through the room. Amana had squeezed her eyes shut. Lips pressed closed in a bitter, tremorous line, she stifled a sob. Her sweet, youthful face flushed red, and tears began to boil out from under her shut eyelids.
Monica got immediately to her feet and hurried over to her foster sister. “Hey, Amana—” Then, looking at the doctor, “It’s happening again.”
“A mood swing?” Nessa stood up as well. But the question was little more than rhetorical as a loud wail uncoiled from Amana’s throat. Mumbled, sob-filled words began to break from her trembling lips. “Why? You—You—don’t have to, you know you don’t have to!” She was shaking her head, speech becoming too muddled with hics and sobs to comprehend.
But outside that room and several doors down, not a hint of Amana’s outburst could be heard through soundproofed walls.
Arius’s breath returned with a weak gasp. Eyelids fluttered open, and his pale, sweaty face turned slowly toward the only sound in the room: the beeping monitor by the wall. Gabriel grasped his shoulder, fingers gripping the papery material of Arius’s hospital gown. Sliding an arm down Arius’s back, Gabriel pulled the nineteen-year-old upright.
“G-Gabriel…?” Cold, clammy hands moved to Gabriel’s arm, and clung on for balance as Gabriel helped him to his feet.
Clasping Arius’s hand and shoulder and pulling him free of the patient monitor, Gabriel directed him toward the door. “We need to go.”
“Go?” Arius blinked, wide, watery eyes shifting to take in his surroundings. “M-My medication…is done already? I-I need…m-my clothes…” He lifted a shaky hand and attempted to pull away from Gabriel’s grip.
But the twenty-two-year-old’s arm quickly tightened around Arius. He grabbed the doorknob and tugged it once, twice. “Shit…” Gabriel’s fingers sagged on the cold metal. Mind racing for a solution, but panic building faster, Gabriel released Arius and slammed both fists into the door. “Hey! Hey, anyone! Let us out!”
Arius flinched at his foster brother’s sudden outburst and shrank away from the door. “What the…?” He crumpled slightly as the two words escaped his throat in a tense whisper, arms lifting to grip his stomach. His face drew into a confused grimace as he watched Gabriel pound on the door again. “Gabriel, what are you doing?”
“They locked the fucking door! They locked the fucking door!” Gabriel turned from the obstruction and walked directly over to the cabinet by the wall. He yanked open the doors and began pulling things out.
Behind him, eyes wide on his frantic companion, Arius moved over to his clothes pile. He lifted his shoes first, then backed over to the bed. He inched onto it, body folding almost in half, fingers digging into the papery material covering his stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Gabe…Gabriel…”
Gabriel found a scalpel blade in a drawer and began unscrewing a metal handle from a small machine he found in the cabinet. But he flinched and turned quickly toward the bed when he heard Arius gag.
That frail figure was shaking and sweating where he sat on the edge of the bed. As Gabriel watched, frozen and helpless, Arius lifted a towel off the top of the bed and threw up in it. Lifelessly, the teenager set the gathered towel on the bed beside him, then silently collapsed back to bury his ash-white face in the blanket.
Gabriel tore the metal handle off the machine after only partially loosening the last screw. He darted over to the bed and drew aside the blanket to check Arius’s face. His fingers touched the boy’s neck, shaking uncontrollably for a moment before finding the reassuring rhythm of a quick pulse. Arius was still breathing, pale face pressed into the folds of the hospital blanket.
Forcing himself away from Arius’s bedside, Gabriel hurried to the locked door and pounded on it a second time. “Mom! Monica! Anyone!” Then he was lifting the metal handle, positioning it like a crowbar under the door, preparing to thrust downward. Ears ringing, something someone had said years ago darted across his mind. Melissa Ambridge, Arius’s 10th grade algebra teacher, having a supposedly private conversation with their mother. “He’s the sweetest kid I’ve ever met. And he's really smart; it would show if only he would have the will to apply his intelligence. I just hope he gets the chance to really apply himself to something.”
Arius pulled himself upright on the bed, pale, trembling fingers grasping the bed railing. Those dark oval eyes watched Gabriel for a moment, a wandering look of dissociation moving briefly across his face before he spoke. “Gabriel.” The boy’s voice was ghastly weak. “Gabriel, what are you doing? You have to…ex-explain.” Shaking hands reached for the pair of shoes he had set on the floor.
Gabriel’s sweaty grip slipped a little on the bar. His eyes suddenly clouded with tears of panic, mind racing for some way to explain what he knew to be true, yet still somehow disbelieved. “We need to get out and call the police, okay?” was all he managed to say.
Arius stared at him for a long moment, watery eyes blinking uncertainly. Then, as hurriedly as his shaky hands would allow, he began putting on his shoes.
“I’m going to break down this door!” Gabriel warned for anyone who might be out in the hallway listening. When nothing but silence answered, Gabriel swung his weight onto the bar in his hands. Every drop of adrenaline flooding his veins went to use, driving the metal toward the floor. In that two-second moment, his muscles strained to the breaking point, pain welling up in his arms and shoulders as he forced his makeshift crowbar down toward the floor.
A wooden ripping sound cracked through the door, and the panel tore free of the locking mechanism. Squatting frozen in the cloud of dust left by the door he had destructed, Gabriel became distinctly aware of his own racing heartbeat.
The solitary nurse standing outside had clearly not taken Gabriel’s threat seriously. Her face paled like snow as the broken door swung open. She gripped a tranquilizer injector in her hand, perhaps in the very case that Gabriel broke out—but she was not ready with it, and Gabriel knocked it easily from her hand.
Catching Arius around the shoulders, Gabriel started for the open hallway. A shout from the direction of the front desk warned that someone else had noticed, but he did not so much as glance behind him. Gripping Arius to steady the boy’s stumbling as they ran, he made a straight line for the red-illuminated exit sign at the end of the hallway.
The handlebar on the door gave easily, and then they were outside, running for the parking lot where the family SUV waited.
“Mom! Mom!” Gabriel’s hands hit the passenger window, only seconds before he saw for himself that the vehicle was empty. He turned briefly back toward the clinic, eyes momentarily meeting Arius’s wide ones. Gabriel saw someone in a security uniform poised beside the clinic entrance like he was holding a gun, right before the weapon went off.
He had nearly knocked Arius to the ground with how forcefully Gabriel pulled the teenager aside. The impact of the single bullet on the SUV was louder than the sound it made leaving the barrel of the handgun the guard held. For one second, then two, Gabriel and Arius simply stared at the small, dented hole in the side of their family vehicle.
Then they were fleeing recklessly toward the forest. Wet grass squelched underfoot, and Arius nearly slipped before they reached the tree line. Then they were running through the woods, Gabriel releasing his grip on Arius so they could travel single file.
Panic drove Gabriel’s every movement as he dodged trees and leapt over branches. The quiet pop of that gun rang back through his head over and over again, terrorizing him with the fear that he was hearing more gunshots. The few glances he dared were only to make sure Arius was still close behind him. The confusion, the disbelief, the chaotic denial—all shredded more deeply than the brambles Gabriel darted past. I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, ran through his head like a broken record, exactly on beat to the sound of that reverberating gunshot.
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