Sugar Baby Beautiful

“I want to be here with you more than you realize, but we can’t be in a relationship when you believe two other people are with you at all times. You need to go back.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head, and I wanted to scream. Why didn’t she understand? “Everything in me is telling me that isn’t the place I should be. If you love me, then I need you to trust me.”

  “Felicity, this is insane.”

  Fuck. I’d managed to put my foot in my mouth again. I had just punched Arty for calling her that. “Felicity—”

  “I know what you meant.” She searched for her things.

  “Felicity—”

  “Why won’t anyone listen to me!” she screamed. “NO. I said it and I meant it, and if you can’t handle it, I’ll go back to my place.”

  “Stop!” Urgh, she drove me insane. “It’s late. I’ll stay in the guest bedroom. Just get some rest, okay? We can finish this in the morning.” She sat on the bed. “I want to believe you. I wish it were just that simple, but Felicity, you aren’t helping anyone by lying about what is really going on with you—”

  “Thank you, Dr. Darcy, for your concern,” she muttered. Annoyed, I slammed the door behind me. Goddamn it all.

  What was I doing? Why did it always feel like one step forward and ten back?

  Maybe I was the crazy one for trying.

  Felicity

  11:39 p.m.

  When the door closed, I went back to the bathroom, feeling the urge to puke what had to be only air at this point. There couldn’t be anything left in my stomach, but I still felt like shit.

  “So telling him the truth was a bad idea,” Mark said behind me.

  Lying on the bathroom floor, I flipped him off. “Go to hell.”

  “From the sight of you, it looks like were already there,” he said, leaning against the sink. “Is this the end of the rope for you and our favorite sugar daddy? He wants you to go back to the nut house and you—”

  “Don’t call it that.” It wasn’t a nut house. I saw the other patients. They had issues. But they weren’t all crazy. All of them just looked broken. What was worse was they didn’t even seem to realize it.

  “But you do,” Mark replied.

  “Get out of my head, Mark.”

  “I can’t.” He sighed, and Cleo came out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her body and hair.

  “Honestly, Felicity, aren’t you tired of being like this?” she asked, drying her face. “No one listens. No one will ever listen. Either you go back to Crossroads or go back home alone. Those are Theo’s choices.”

  “I don’t know what to do anymore,” I muttered.

  “Make them listen, Felicity.” She lifted my pill bottle. “You can’t go back, right?”

  Pushing myself off the floor, I snatched the bottle, not even thinking as I poured them all into my hand, then into my mouth, taking the water Mark gave me to wash them down. The moment I did, they both went away, and the cup slipped from my hand.

  Oh no! Oh no! I didn’t want this. Not this!

  I snatched my toothbrush off the counter and immediately put the end of it into my mouth, trying by any means necessary to force myself to puke. My throat contracted and my body tensed but nothing. My hands started to shake over and over again. Dropping the toothbrush, I tried my fingers, forcing them into my mouth.

  My heart rate was rising and it my eyesight felt like it was dimming. I didn’t know if it was the panic setting in or the drugs.

  Damn it! Oh God. Oh God.

  I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore!

  “Theo!” I screamed, stumbling out of the bathroom, my legs felt like Jell-O, my vision was blurred, but I didn’t stop screaming even when my ears started to ring. “THEO!”

  The doors burst open as I got to the bed. My legs gave out and I gripped the bedpost.

  He caught me, hugging me to him. “Felicity, what happened?”

  “I’m… sorry,” I murmured, my eyes moving to the bathroom. Following the direction of my gaze, he saw the bottle and cup on the floor.

  “FELICITY! What did you do! WHAT DID YOU DO!” he hollered, lifting me in one hand and taking his phone with the other.

  He looked so panicked, his eyes wide, frantically trying to hold me up when in all honestly I couldn’t feel legs anymore. The darkness started to close in, but that was fine; I only saw him because of it. It was like my eyes were zeroing on one thing: him.

  “My… n… no... te… book… see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  So Many Regrets

  Theo

  Four and a half hours.

  That’s how long it’d been since the ambulance brought her to Mercy Hospital. One moment we had been fighting, the next she was in my arms, convulsing. I should have never left that room. I should have—

  There were a thousand things I wished I had done differently that night. They had pumped her stomach when she first came in and now they wanted to run some initial test. I honestly wasn’t sure what they were saying. I just nodded to the nurses and waited…and waited. It felt like all I was good for was waiting at this point.

  “Mr. Darcy?” I stood up when a young black female doctor no more than five feet tall approached.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I’m Dr. Knight. You came in with Ms. Ford? Are you partners?”

  “Yes. Is she all right?”

  “We put her to sleep.”

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, falling back in the chair. Thank god.

  “We noticed on her chart that she’s listed as being schizophrenic. Do you know when she was diagnosed?”

  “She was sixteen, I believe.”

  The woman frowned, taking a seat in front of me.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “When did she start taking the Clozaril?”

  I shrugged. “Three weeks. She started again when she went to Crossroads.”

  “Did she have nausea before that or headaches maybe?”

  “I don’t know about the nausea, but she complains about headaches. I’m sorry, what are you getting at here?”

  “Mr. Darcy,” she sighed. “Felicity doesn’t have schizophrenia. I’m afraid she’s been misdiagnosed.”

  “What?” I gaped. “Maybe you’re mistaken. Three weeks ago, she thought she had spent six years living with two roommates that don’t exist. Now you’re telling me she’s fine.”

  “She’s not fine. She has a brain tumor. We believe we can operate, and my guess is she’s been living with this since she was sixteen. The Clozaril wasn’t helping but actually further disturbing the chemical imbalance in her head.”

  Confusion and anger. That’s all I felt.

  “Let me get this straight. No one realized this? How is that possible? She’s been suffering for years from a tumor that could have been taken out?”

  “I understand you’re frustrated—”

  “I’m not frustrated. I’m pissed off! How did this happen!”

  She shook her head, clasping her hands together. “Her medical history states her mother was schizophrenic. We called in any of her labs, but I can only presume her tumor was nowhere as big then as it is now. She didn’t have a doctor to go see. It was a series of unfortunate events that led to the wrong dots being connected. Like I said, we can start treatment, but since she tried to commit suicide, we needed to talk to family first.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “Yes, her heart rate spiked, and she couldn’t calm down, which is why we put her to sleep.”

  I nodded, trying not to imagine how she’d felt at that moment.

  “I’ll wait until she wakes up and talk to her.” I put a hand over my mouth, closing my eyes. I could still see her screaming in my room, saying over and over how Crossroads wasn’t the place for her. She was right and I, like everyone else, hadn’t listened to her.

  “If she hadn’t tried to kill herself….” I trailed off, not wanting to say it.

  “If she hadn’t tried to
kill herself, she wouldn’t have had the seizures which made us do the MRI, and yes, she still might have been labeled a schizophrenic,” she finished for me.

  “This whole time she’s been crying out for help, and because no one bothered to be around her long enough, she suffered in every way. Her mother died, her father left her to fend for herself, her doctors couldn’t even get her sickness right, and on top of that, she was humiliated time and time again by people who thought that because she had a mental illness, she was somehow less than a person. She’s been alone….”

  “She had you.” Dr. Knight smiled sadly. “She isn’t alone because you stayed, because you cared. You were the first person she asked for when she woke up. That isn’t nothing. Yes, the fact that this happened to her is horrible. But things can only improve from here, right?”

  Part of me wanted to tell her to take her positivity and shove it, but I clung to the hope in her words anyway. What else could I really do? Before she could say anything else, her beeper went off.

  “Ms. Ford is in room 342. Follow the yellow lines on the floor. I’m so sorry. I would walk you down myself, but an emergency just came in. I’ll be back to see you both as soon as possible.”

  She didn’t wait, she ran… right past Nolan, my driver, who was holding a bag and looking around the hospital in confusion.

  “Nolan?”

  He turned to me. “Sir.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Tom, the bellhop, informed me of what happened. I came… I came because I was worried about Ms. Harper. I brought some of her things.” He lifted the bag. “Is she all right?”

  I smiled. It seemed one more person cared about her too. “She’s going to be. Thank you for bringing this. I’ll call. In the meantime, go home to your family.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry—”

  “Don’t apologize for caring. I wish more people did.”

  After he left, I followed the yellow line to Felicity’s room.

  I had so many regrets.

  Not listening to her. Leaving her alone to begin with. Worst of all, telling her to go back… There were so many things I wanted to say, but the biggest was I was sorry. When I reached her door, seeing her asleep, I slid it open quietly. The only sound was the beeping of the machines and her light snoring. I smiled at that. Snoring was good. It meant she was resting and not dead. Brushing her hair back, I kissed forehead before pulling up a chair next to her bed.

  “Shit,” I muttered, opening the bag to get her phone. The only people who called her were Rosemary and me. Pulling out my phone, I realized there were more than thirty missed calls from my aunt. If Nolan knew something had happened in my penthouse, I’m sure she did too.

  I texted her: I’m fine. Can’t talk.

  Lorelei: Are you sure? I heard something happened with that girl. She didn’t do anything to you, did she?

  I wanted ask what the hell did she think Felicity possibly did to me.

  Me: Can’t talk now.

  I put my phone away, then put Felicity’s on silent before putting it back in her bag. However I stopped when I noticed a thick brown notebook in there as well.

  “My…n…no..te…book…see,” I remembered her saying to me. Shaking my head, I tried not to remember seeing her like that. Leaning back, I opened the book.

  Dear Theo,

  We agreed to write letters to each other. But when it comes to words, I’m pretty much useless. I never say the right things, or worse, I end up saying things I don’t even mean. I hate the fact that I’ve complicated your life. I feel like a leech. What’s worse is that I feel selfish for wanting you to stay with me for as long as possible forever. I can’t cook. I’m disorganized. I’m a tad bit selfish. I’ll end up drinking all your wine. I’m not going to look pretty every day. I don’t really have a career. I run away from problems. I get sad every year around August because that’s when my mother died. I might accidently ruin your clothes (you wear too many sometimes anyway). What I’m saying is I’ve got a lot of faults. I’m trying to work through them for myself and for you too because I love you. (Holy shit yes I wrote that, it’s in ink and there is part of me that wants to cross it out but I’ll leave it for now.) We can add slightly immature to the list… and rambling.

  So to end my first and last letter, I would like to give you one of the only two things I’m good at. My music…my finished music. I meant to finish the song I wrote for you so long ago, but I got carried away. There was a piano here. I snuck out every once in awhile at night to go there to work on these. I hope you enjoy them. I hope I get to play them for you.

  Always,

  Felicity Harper.

  I flipped through the book, seeing page after page of notes. She had filled the whole book. It was like having musical gold in my hands.

  “You like it?”

  Glancing up, I saw her staring at me tiredly, her lips chapped, her skin pale, yet she had never looked more beautiful to me.

  “More than you know,” I said softly. “Welcome back.”

  She frowned. “I’m so so so sorry, Theo! I’m so sorry! I regretted it the moment I did it—”

  “Shh.” I hugged her, kissing her temple. “I think you’re the one people need to be apologizing to.”

  “So that was real?” she whispered. “I have a tumor? I wasn’t losing my mind, I had a tumor.”

  I nodded and she just held on to me. “You knew yourself better than any else,” I muttered, and she laughed or sobbed—it was too hard to tell.

  “What happens now?” She wiped her eyes.

  “You get treated, and we move on.” It was all I could think of. She had been living with a bomb in her head… and it was all coming to an end.

  Felicity

  Theo slept on the couch they had put in the suite-styled room they moved me into. He had all but threatened the nurses to let him stay. Seeing him curled up into a ball, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was to have him.

  “I mean he’s okay, but don’t go overboard.” Cleo grinned, her tone sarcastic, leaning against the wall opposite me with Mark beside her.

  Mark smacked her. “Don’t mind her. She just has to get the last word.”

  “You were both trying to warn me about the tumor,” I whispered, and they smiled. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just say it?”

  “Because, Felicity, we aren’t real. We say what you think and you never considered the tumor, so we couldn’t say anything about it.”

  “So once it’s gone, you’re gone too.” I frowned, missing them already.

  “How egotistical? You’re going to miss yourself?” Cleo laughed.

  Mark once again smacked her, and she pushed off the wall, glaring at him. He walked over to me. “Just know, tumor or no tumor, you still have issues, Felicity. Except now it’s the same as everyone else. Try not to have too many regrets, okay?”

  “Prends soin de toi.” Cleo waved. Of course her last words would be take care of myself. To the very end, they played their roles. Mark was fun and Cleo was reasonable.

  There was a bright light, and I turned my head and opened my eyes to see Dr. Knight checking my pulse.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I was asleep?”

  She nodded. “Don’t worry, you’ll be out of it for a few more days.”

  “When do I get surgery?”

  “It could be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. There are still a few more tests we need to run.” She squeezed my hand. “But with these new meds, everything will start looking better in the morning.”

  I lay back against the pillow, staring at Theo. Part of me was nervous, but mostly I was excited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rock Bottom Has A Basement

  Theo

  Friday

  For the last week, I had spent my time basically living out of Felicity’s hospital room. I hadn’t spoken to my family for the most part, other than Walt and Tori. I just couldn’t deal with them. No on
e knew of Felicity’s condition, and she wanted to keep it that way until after surgery, which hopefully would happen over the weekend.

  Just two more days. Two more days and we could put this part of our lives behind us. I knew she was scared. On the first day she found out about the tumor, she seemed to take it all in; however, as the days went by, the gravity of everything sort of hit one by one. Not having friends. All the conversations she’d had with herself in public and in private. She was doing her best not to piece together what were her own memories and what were her hallucinations.

  Feeling my phone buzz in my pocket as I headed down the hall to Felicity’s room, I answered without even looking.

  “Darcy—”

  “Theo, where are you!” I winced when Walt yelled on the other side of the phone.

  “What do you mean, where am I? I told you I’d be at the hospital until—”

  “Reagan Medical, right?” He cut me off.

  “Walt, what’s going on—”

  “Arty overdosed on whatever drugs he’s on. We’re in the E.R.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I yelled, startling the nurses at their stations as I turned and ran in the opposite direction, hanging up on Walt in the process.

  Again?

  This was happening again?

  Felicity I could excuse. Arty. Goddamn it, Arty. No matter how hard we tried to get him off heroin, he just went right back to it. Over and over, it felt like he was stabbing us in the heart. This was the third time! Part of me didn’t even want to go, but…urgh goddamn him.

  “Theo!” Walt stood up from the waiting room at the E.R. Beside him stood my aunt and uncle, both of them barely even dressed for the day. For the first time, I saw my aunt dressed in jeans and just a shirt. Arthur wasn’t much better, his black-and-gray hair a mess on his head.

  Shit. I inhaled deeply. I never wanted them to be in this situation. I had covered up Arty’s prior visits here just so they could have peace of mind. I was the emergency contact for Arty, but since I hadn’t been answering calls, his parents must have been notified instead.