“Floor it,” Mel snapped urgently. “We don’t have five minutes.”
The ambulance skidded to a halt in front of the Emergency Room entrance of the hospital. The rear doors were thrown open. An attending team of medical personnel gathered like a swarm of bees, helping the gurney from the back of the vehicle. One of the team barked orders at a crowd of people in the immediate vicinity. Mel remained at Casey’s head, holding the mask in place as she shouted information to one of the attending doctors.
“Twenty-six-year-old female. Found alone in her apartment.”
Casey could hear everything that was being said through her sedative-induced fog, although it came to her consciousness as fractured and incomplete.
“Multiple life-threatening lacerations to face, arms and hands as a result of impacting with a plate-glass window. Multiple foreign bodies found in those wounds and several old wounds to her chest.”
Somehow, Casey was able to register horror at what Mel was describing to the others about her own body.
“Apparent suicide attempt…”
Casey’s mind screamed in protest.
No! I wasn’t!
Darkness descended like a veil.
___
The first thing she became aware of was a sound. A familiar sound, a rhythmic beeping that echoed, bouncing gently off the walls of her consciousness. The beeping became foremost in her awareness. She knew that sound all too well—a sound from her past.
Where am I?
As her awareness grew, she attempted to open her eyes. At first, her lids would not yield. They twitched once, then twice before fluttering wildly.
Slowly, Casey opened her eyes.
The room was softly lit. Her vision slowly spiralled into focus and she blinked to help steady what she saw around her.
The first thing Casey saw was the monitor that hung from an armature. She grimaced, noting that her head was turned way over to the right hand side, but also that her neck was painfully hyper-extended. As she further awoke from her deep sleep, she realised why this was so.
Her entire face felt swollen and puffy. She tried to draw a breath through her nostrils but she found that she couldn’t. Her nose was packed full with something, some kind of wadding. In fact, her entire head felt this way and she screwed up her face in protest. Casey immediately regretted it. Intense pain knifed through her face, strong enough to take her breath away and she instantly felt nauseous.
Turning her head slowly, Casey attempted to lift her hand to her nose but she was prevented from doing so by a thick fabric cuff that held it firmly at her side. Repeating the same action with her other hand yielded the same result.
Confusion and anger billowed.
Then she remembered.
With an effort, Casey lifted her head off the pillow. She was in a room, closed off from the outside by a thin curtain. Beyond the curtain she could hear the distant thrum of activity: a hospital’s accident and emergency department, the sounds of calls being announced over a public address system. Casey listened for any sign of someone approaching, but it did not seem as though anyone was in any hurry to get to her.
Then, Casey understood why.
She became aware of a presence in the cubicle with her.
Casey’s eyes fell across the slight figure of Geddie Kirkwood, curled up in a chair, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was fast asleep.
Casey recoiled as much as her shackled body would allow. The noise she made caused Kirkwood to stir. She opened her eyes.
“Well, hello there,” Kirkwood greeted, sitting up and stretching her arms out before her. “Welcome back.”
Casey scowled and flinched painfully; as she did so, the intense pain in her nose stabbed her. She glared in Kirkwood’s direction. “What do you want?”
“How are you feeling?” Kirkwood asked, ignoring Casey’s question.
“Why are you here?” Casey shot back.
Kirkwood stood and approached Casey’s bed.
“I just came by to see you and your parents. They’re just getting something to eat so I promised I would stay until they returned.”
Though Kirkwood’s explanation seemed genuine enough, Casey sensed that she was not telling her the full story.
She shook her wrists in the shackles. “What’s with this?” she spat.
Kirkwood frowned. “You have been detained under a section of the Mental Health Act,” Kirkwood explained in a neutral tone. “Your parents agreed to this and have allowed you to be held involuntarily until you’ve been deemed to be a risk neither to yourself nor to other people.”
Casey’s cheeks reddened. Her jaw shook with barely contained rage. “I want out of here right NOW!”
Kirkwood nodded sadly and turned, pacing slowly toward the end of the bed. “I can’t do that. Casey…don’t you remember what happened?”
She paused to see if Casey would answer. She remained silent.
“Two nights ago you threw yourself through a plate-glass door. You completely trashed your apartment. There was blood all over place. It looked like a murder scene in there.”
Kirkwood turned back towards Casey and gestured at the thick fabric shackles.
“When you were brought in here, you assaulted a nurse and a doctor.”
“Bullshit!” Casey retorted.
“They’ve decided not to press charges but it was touch and go for a time,” Kirkwood continued, ignoring Casey. “Look at yourself—right now.”
Casey’s wrists and forearms were flexed so tightly against the shackles, her arms shook.
How dare they hold me here!
“How long have you been planning this for?”
The question caught Casey off guard and she glowered at Kirkwood, who calmly sat down and drank from her coffee cup.
“What? What do you mean?”
Kirkwood held her hands out, palms up and shrugged.
“It’s all there, Casey. I haven’t missed anything. Neither have your parents. The withdrawal, your unwillingness to talk. The alienation from your family and friends. The evidence of self-harm. It is clear to me that you’ve been building up to this for a while. I’d just like to know, how long have you been planning this?”
Casey was apoplectic. She could not believe what people thought she was. But the implication was clear. She struggled once more in her bonds.
“I haven’t. I wasn’t.” She twisted her wrists in the shackles, trying to gain purchase on the Velcro flaps.
Kirkwood watched her. “You weren’t what, Casey,” she challenged softly.
Reaching the zenith of her struggle and realising the futility of it, Casey slumped back into the mattress of the gurney, defeated. Her efforts had worn her out enough that she was panting profusely.
“You weren’t what, Casey?” Kirkwood repeated, more urgently this time.
Casey turned her head and looked at Kirkwood again. The fire had gone from her eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” she said.
“The state of your apartment—and yourself—would suggest otherwise.”
Kirkwood’s remark touched off an awareness of herself then, as her face throbbed from the pain of the bruising.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Casey hissed, through clenched teeth.
Kirkwood sprang from her chair and leaned in close to Casey.
“Then what were you trying to do?” she probed, forcefully enough that it caused Casey to blink. “Look, we’ve been playing this game for years. You come and see me and we sit in silence session after session. We achieve nothing. I’ve watched you slowly withdraw, Casey. I’ve watched an intelligent, vibrant young woman with the world at her feet become a shadow and you won’t—or can’t—tell me why.”
Drawing up to her full height, Kirkwood kept her eyes focused upon Casey. “But you don’t need to tell me why, Casey. Because I already know.”
Kirkwood extended a finger and touched it lightly to Casey’s temple.
“You’re hidin
g something. Something frightening. Something that has you waking in the middle of the night, screaming into the darkness and scaring the shit out of you.”
As she spoke, Kirkwood watched Casey’s expression change: from defeat to anger, then fear. Casey did not attempt to blink away the tears that formed. She turned her head away from Kirkwood and shut her eyes.
“You need to say what frightens you so much, Casey.”
Kirkwood waited for several moments then, calmly, she stepped back, turned on her heel and left the room.
Outside, Kirkwood stood in the hallway. Frustration gathered within her. She turned to the door, flirting with the idea of marching back in there and demanding that Casey speak. Instead, she hesitated, forcing herself to relinquish her anger at the situation. No good would come of confronting Casey now. She sensed a breakthrough was coming. Kirkwood would wait.
She had waited this long. She could wait a little longer.
CHAPTER 11.
Fedele sat on a stool, quietly preparing items on a trolley beside him. Casey sat on the edge of her bed in front of him. She was hunched over, her head tilted to one side. Her eyes were diverted down and away from him. They were glassy and unfocused. Fedele had been told the amount of sedative she carried on board was considerable. Yet, despite this, Casey held herself somewhat defensively. She was shaking slightly, and did not resist him as he applied a tourniquet to her outstretched arm. Any ideas of protestation that Casey might have harboured had been significantly blunted.
Fedele stole glances at her, hoping he could engage her in conversation but, in the short time he’d been here in this locked room, she had said nothing. She’d barely acknowledged his presence. While he had been made aware of her state before coming here, he was still quietly shocked by just how traumatised she appeared.
Donning a pair of gloves, Fedele shifted the trolley then lifted the butterfly needle with a syringe attached.
“Okay,” he said softly. “You know the drill. I’m just going to take a blood sample.”
He hesitated, waiting to see if she would respond, but Casey remained submissive, gazing down at the floor through red-rimmed eyes.
He punctured her skin with the needle and saw the immediate flashback into the tubing. Casey did not flinch. He took the required amount of blood into this first vial, then he set it aside, quickly attaching a second. As Fedele kept a cautious watch on her, he flicked his eyes surreptitiously in the direction of a single large mirror behind her. He raised his brow at his own reflection.
Standing behind that one-way glass window, Arlo watched Fedele with silent admiration. Though he knew Fedele couldn’t see him from inside the room, Arlo nodded in response.
He was in awe of his mentor’s quiet way, his attentiveness. It was highly unusual for a surgeon to perform a task many would consider menial, yet Fedele had never considered it beneath him. Arlo wasn’t surprised. Simeera Fedele’s investment in each of his patients transcended the norm. He had made it his mission to travel with them through each phase of their journey. His ways were considered unorthodox and the subject of much discussion and even controversy within the surgical fraternity but Fedele would have none of it. He cared deeply and Arlo knew that Casey Schillinge’s plight, in particular, affected Fedele. Fedele would be feeling a sense of responsibility for her situation, a sense of failure for not intervening sooner. He knew for certain that Fedele wouldn’t give up on her.
Once he had collected what he needed, Fedele released the tourniquet, then he turned his attention to the samples. He had filled several vials, labelled, dated and signed them, then sealed them in a clear zip-lock bag.
Fedele clasped his hands together, resting his elbows on his thighs.
“The staff tell me that you’re not getting much sleep,” he said softly.
Casey’s expression remained blank. Fedele’s expression filled with concern.
“Sleep is important, Casey, most important. Surely you must know that if you are well rested then it will be that much easier to overcome this.”
He let his words drift between them, hoping that, somehow, they were getting though. She gave no indication that she had heard him.
Fedele rubbed his chin. “Look, I know it is hard, being in here. But it is not unreasonable for us to ask what has happened to you. To try to help you.”
Casey’s eyes turned in his direction, though she made no effort to turn her head.
“You are one of my greatest successes, Casey. You are better than this. You have a fire inside you that is unlike anything I have ever seen. Do not allow that fire to be put out.”
Fedele tapped his own temple for effect. “This torment that has kept you a prisoner. Free yourself from it. I know you can.”
There was a slight quiver at the edge of her lips; an unmistakable tension in her jaw. Her eyes moistened but she held herself taut.
Fedele stood, wheeling the intravenous trolley over to the door where he swiped his card over the scanner beside it. The mechanism clicked and he paused, turning back to her.
“You have a strong heart, Casey—and I don’t just mean the heart that beats inside of you.” Fedele slipped out, ensuring the door locked behind him.
He waited for a moment as Arlo approached him from the antechamber. “What do you think?” Arlo asked.
Fedele put his hands on his hips. The lines on his forehead furrowed deeply. “I don’t know. She is very traumatised. Whatever it is that has scared her, it must be considerable. I can’t reach her.”
Arlo scratched the back of his head. “I’ve never known her to be like this. She hasn’t indica—”
Fedele whipped his hand up, silencing Arlo. He stepped to the door to Casey’s room.
Fedele put his ear to it and listened.
He could hear soft sobs coming from inside.
___
Prishna Argawaal alighted from a lift and scanned the corridor. Consulting her smartphone, she checked the screen with a sign that hung from the ceiling up ahead to her right. Satisfied that she was in the right place, she pocketed her phone and headed in the direction marked by the sign and soon found herself outside a pair of locked doors.
She noted an intercom with a small camera on the wall adjacent to the doors and she stepped up to it and pressed a button.
“Can I help you?” A tinny, metallic voice sounded from the speaker.
“Yes, you have a patient here, Casey Schillinge. I’m hoping to see her.”
There was a moment of pause before the intercom speaker clicked and popped.
“I’m sorry, are you family or a clinician?”
Prishna frowned and pressed the button. “I’m neither, I’m—”
She was interrupted by a crackle of static from the intercom as the voice cut her off.
“Only clinical staff and immediate family are allowed to see the patient at this time. You’ll need to make arrangements with them.”
Shaking her head, Prishna reached into her jacket and pulled her badge from her belt. She raised it to the camera before her and turned her head towards the doors.
A high-pitched buzz sounded, followed by a click from inside the doors.
With a knowing smile, Prishna took the handle and pushed inward, entering the secure psychiatric ward. She saw the nurses’ station ahead and made her way to it.
Prishna had heard secondhand that Casey had been brought here, which accounted for the fact that she had been unable to reach her at home. And though it wasn’t unusual for Schillinge to be difficult to contact, Prishna had thought it odd that she’d seemingly disappeared. Likewise, her parents’ home had been uncharacteristically empty on the drive-bys Prishna had made in recent days. Whatever enmity Prishna might have had towards Casey, it had been replaced with a genuine concern, in light of what she had been told.
Approaching the glass-enclosed nurses’ station, a young, casually dressed woman looked up and recognised Prishna from the exchange she’d just had via the intercom. Prishna smiled as the nurse stood. br />
“I’m sorry,” she started, raising her face slightly toward an opening in the glass that separated them. “I didn’t kn-know we were expecting anyone else from the police.”
Prishna waved her hand, brushing away the nurse’s concern as she showed her badge and identification once more.
“You weren’t to know. I’m not here as a part of the enquiry into Miss Schillinge’s detainment. I am Detective Sergeant Prishna Argawaal. I know the family. I’d just like to make sure she is okay.”
“Well,” the nurse began, pointing over Prishna’s shoulder in the direction of an open doorway behind her. “Her parents are actually here at the moment. They’re in the lounge. I can ask if they’d like to see you.”
The nurse glanced at a colleague as she stepped through a locked door and came out to where Prishna was waiting. Gesturing towards the lounge, the nurse walked in that direction. Prishna followed closely.
Just as they reached the entrance, Peter appeared in the doorway. The anger in his expression was unmistakable.
“Mr. Sch—”
“What are you doing here?” he growled, cutting the nurse off mid-sentence.
“I heard about Casey,” Prishna said, raising her hands. “I was concerned. I wanted to see if she was okay.”
“How do you think she is, Prishna? How dare you turn up here?”
Peter flushed red and he stepped forward abruptly, balling his hands into fists.
“You’ve got a bloody cheek,” he spat. “Thought you’d catch her at her weakest? Thought she’d drop some piece of information into your lap that you can use against her?”
Edie appeared behind Peter. Her eyes met with Prishna’s as she moved to calm her husband, placing her hand on his shoulder.
“Peter,” she implored as quietly as she could.
Peter shrugged her off angrily, then glared at the nurse. “Get her out of here now! You should never have allowed her in.”
His eyes glazed. Prishna gulped, knowing that the situation was spiralling out of control.
“Peter,” she began, trying to placate him. “I just wanted to know if she was okay.”
Peter lunged towards her until his face was mere centimetres from Prishna’s own. She stood her ground, though her heart was pounding.