Twisted Bond by SR Jones
Chapter Two
Amelia
White.
Everything is so damn white.
The walls are white.
The floor is white.
The ceiling…white.
All the bedding is starched, crisp and white. Even the air smells white somehow. Clinical and cool.
I’m so sick of all this white.
I miss the dark. Most of all, I miss the dark with Giovanni in it next to me.
It’s been three days since Grandmother left me here, in the tender care of these doctors.
I’ve been poked and prodded as they dug around in the deepest recesses of my mind.
Everyday I've had two intense therapy sessions where a pleasant but distant psychologist talks to me over and over again about why I did what I did. She talks because I don’t answer.
At night, they give out pills to make us sleep. There are two pills on my breakfast tray every morning too, and a small lunch time cup of pills we’re given. Some of which are vitamins, I am told, but maybe not all of them. I take the meds, but one night I made myself sick after. I’m scared of what the drugs might do to me, but I’m also increasingly scared of the fear they mask. Without the drugs they give me, I might actually crack up.
When a bag was delivered for me with my things in it, there were the contraceptive pills which Giovanni’s doctor put me on in Italy. I was surprised Grandmother packed those, and that they let me keep them here in my room, but then I realized Grandmother would hate me to have a baby with anyone but the sainted Jeremy. She also clearly has a lot of sway with the doctors running this horrible place.
I hold my arms in the air and make a bird with my hands, the thumbs intertwined and my fingers flapping like wings. I laugh at the bird, and I keep on laughing at myself.
Unlike the pretend bird made by my fingers, I’m no longer free to flap my wings.
I did the stupidest thing and ran.
How did I think I was trapped before? Now I really am trapped. I'm a bird in a cage with no way out, my wings well and truly clipped. Even if I could figure a way out, I doubt I'd get far. Whatever is in the pills they give me, it makes my limbs heavy and my mind languid.
In many ways I spend my nights feeling the way I used to after sex with Giovanni. Except this time, my pleasant buzz isn’t caused by natural endorphins. I’m locked in a chemical haze. If I keep making myself sick, I’ll lose weight, and get ill. Yet, if I don’t, I’ll risk becoming addicted to the pills they have me on.
Stupid girl, shouldn't have run.
Never should have trusted Grandmother.
This is what they did to Mother.
I wonder about her all the time, and whether the stories they told me about my mother were even true. Grandmother put me in this place for daring to have a mind of my own, and then she turned on those smart kitten heels of hers and walked away.
I hate her.
No, strike that—I loathe her.
When I do manage to get out of here, I'm going to pay her back tenfold. I’ve spent hours fantasizing about the ways I'll get my revenge. I'm not sure if I can do it alone, but I'm also not sure if Giovanni would help me now.
I wonder what he's doing right at this moment. Probably a business deal. Or maybe he’s found a new plaything to keep him entertained.
The door to my cell opens, and one of the huge men in white trousers and a matching white top who frequents the corridors like a ghoul enters the room.
“Time for your session,” he says.
By session, he means the useless meanderings of my therapist.
“I really don't feel like talking today,” I say with a smile.
“Oh, dear. Did someone give you the impression that this was voluntary? Get up and get walking, or I'll prescribe you some more meds.”
Twice now I've been given extra meds, and I’ve only been here a few days. I was panicked at first, agitated… hence the meds. I was knocked out for hours the first time. I awoke the next morning from a deep, nightmare-filled sleep, with a dry mouth and heavy eyes as if I'd been drinking all night. The second time, I made myself sick. One turn on that merry-go-round was enough for me not to want to ride again. If I keep getting myself double dosed, I’ll end up a zombie. I drag myself off the bed and give the orderly what I hope is a death ray stare.
He takes hold of my arm just above the elbow and guides me out of the room and down the corridor.
One, two, three.
I count the doors on each side as we pass them by, memorizing the layout as I do each time. Then I count the stairs as we climb them, each individual step. I’ve told them I’m scared of the elevators, and this is how they guide me up to the therapy rooms, or down for food and exercise. If I could only figure out a way of not taking the meds that didn’t involve making myself throw up, I might have enough energy to make a run for it.
From what I've seen, this place is huge and old. It's like the typical Victorian asylum of everyone's nightmares, except all white and clean inside. As if they thought they could scrub the horror and heartache of the past away.
The fact it’s such a big, old building must mean there are other entrances than the main entrance and the side door that Grandmother brought me in by.
I escaped Giovanni’s clutches, and he had guards on every single door. I don't think it's beyond me to get out of here; if only I could get this awful, debilitating brain fog to pass. The only way to do that is not to take the medicine.
Problem is that the guards watch every morning and make sure we all swallow our pills by checking out mouths afterward. Then again, the same routine at lunch and the supper time handouts.
We reach the therapy room on the top floor, and the guard opens the door and pushes me gently inside with his hand at the base of my back. I want to slap it away. Who does he think he is touching me without permission? Fucking bastard. They’re all full of their self-importance here. They move us about like we’re nothing but pawns. They force meds and food on us. They even try to get inside our heads.
Speaking of which.
“Amelia, how lovely to see you,” Amanda, my assigned therapist, says, as if we're meeting for a drink.
She gestures for me to sit in the chair opposite hers, and I do so.
I may hate these talking sessions, but I quite like being in this room. This is one of the few places in the whole building that isn't blinding white. The walls are a soothing cafe au lait color. There are large soft chairs dotted about, all in various shades of blue. A couple of lamps with warm bulbs provide a soft glow. There are also a few insipid watercolors on the walls.
I stare at those watercolors as if they are the most interesting thing on earth because right now, for me, they are. We are not allowed books or phones, or any kind of distraction. It is a special kind of torture to lie in that room on that white bed staring at that bland ceiling with nothing but my muddled thoughts for company.
“How are you feeling today?” Amanda asks.
“Just peachy,” I reply.
She continues smiling at me, but it becomes stiff and false. She clicks the end of her pen two or three times, something I'm learning is a sign of irritation.
“You know, Amelia, I'm only here to try to help you.”
“If you wanted to help me, then you'd help me get out of here. I'm being held against my will, and I doubt it's legal. Don't you need paperwork before you can retain someone in this way? I think it's highly unethical the way that I was just brought here and dropped off without any conversation or discussion, and the next thing I know, the goons you employ are pushing drugs down my throat every day to keep me pliant.”
“Do you think you are pliant?” Amanda asks, a touch of disbelief to her tone.
“Screw you.” I flip her the bird and look around the room, ignoring her.
I'm fully aware that I'm acting like a spoiled brat, but I won't play this game with her. Surely, she can't be a legitimate therapist working somewhere like this where people are kidnapped and hidden away.
“I'll ask you again,” she says with that bland smile. “How are you, my dear?”
I want to say: My heart is breaking because I made the worst mistake of my life. I think I ran away from the only thing that's ever really moved me, and I did so because I was scared. I'm a mess. I let my father's tales of my mother’s debauchery scare me until I gave in to the fear.
Of course, I don't say any of those things. “I want to make a phone call,” I tell her.
“Phone calls aren't allowed in the first few weeks of treatment,” she says. “It’s for your own good because calling back home can be very upsetting for some patients, and it disturbs their process.”
Oh, I won't be calling home. I won't be calling Grandmother ever again. If she thinks I'll forgive her for this, and we can just move on, me marrying some blue blood that she chooses for me, she’s sorely mistaken. If I get the chance to use a phone, I'll be calling Italy.
Gio.
Just the thought of his name has my heart beating faster. At night, when I'm alone in my bed and the drugs are pulling me under, I see his dark, flashing eyes. The strong cut of his jaw. The wave of his hair.
“Let's try something else,” Amanda suggests.
I shrug, not really interested in anything she might propose.
She stands, walks to the oak desk underneath the window, and pulls open a drawer. When she turns back around, there's a box of matches in her hand.
For a crazy moment, I fear she's going to burn the place down, but then I remember I'm the one who's allegedly mentally ill, and not her. She walks over to the old stone fireplace on the back wall. Opening the matchbox, she strikes a match and reaches up to light a large candle in a glass holder placed on the mantle.
The scent of sulphur fills the air for a moment, and I inhale. It’s a change from the chemical whiteness of bleach and antiseptic cleanliness that I smell everywhere else in this godforsaken place.
Hot on the heels of the burnt match smell, something else teases me. Instantly, I'm transported somewhere else.
I close my eyes and inhale again more deeply. I see blue sky, sun, terracotta roofs, and most of all, I see him.
Giovanni Bianchi, the one person on this earth who owns my soul.
The fig-laden, woodsy smell of the candle reminds me of him so much, tears push their way past my closed eyelids and run down my cheeks.
“Well, this is an unexpected turn of events,” Amanda says. “I normally have to get people talking before the tears come. This is good though, Amelia. This is a breakthrough.”
I wipe my cheeks angrily, not wanting to show vulnerability or emotion in front of her. She is not my friend, and she's not here to help me.
“Why don't you tell me what you're feeling right now?”
She must be crazy if she thinks I’m going to divulge anything to her.
“You know that anything you say to me is confidential, right?” she asks.
“Confidential to this institution, I presume. I don't want that horrible man that my grandmother knows reading my innermost thoughts. I shouldn't be here, and you could be in trouble with the police when it gets out that I have been held against my will.”
“Involuntary commitment can be a perfectly legal act,” Amanda primly informs me.
“Not without good reason it's not, and don’t you need a judge to sign off on it? I mean, I have some rights, surely? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I would think that running off to another country without telling anyone where you're going, leaving behind a financial mess, and your grandmother worried to bits is hardly normal, responsible adult behavior.” She doesn’t address my accusations, but her cheeks flush, and she shifts in her seat a little as if trying to get comfortable. I won’t get anywhere with her, but I hope I’ve at least planted a seed of doubt in her mind if she’s not in on this.
“They were trying to force me to marry a man I didn't love.”
“They who?”
I grit my teeth in impatience. “Grandmother and my father, of course,” I snap. I'm completely forgetting that I'm not supposed to be talking to this woman.
“Your father passed away, did he not? Do you see him often?”
Oh, God, this is worse than I thought. She thinks I'm seeing my dead father all around the place. “I see dead people,” I whisper.
“Why did the candle make you cry?” she asks, ignoring my sarcasm.
For some unknown reason, I feel the pull to share at least a little of my truth with her. Maybe it's because the desire to talk about Giovanni is overwhelming. “It reminded me of someone that I love and miss,” I tell her.
She clicks the bottom of her pen twice and licks her lips. She's like some lion in a zoo salivating over a lump of meat thrown to it. My tiny confession has the predator within her roaring.
“Your father?” she asks.
“A man I met. In Italy,” I say.
Like a teenager who can't stop talking about her latest crush, the urge to mention Giovanni overwhelms all common sense. The scent of the candle and the thoughts of him are too much for me to ignore.
“I think he was the love of my life.”
I pick at a tiny, frayed hole in the denim of my jeans. These jeans aren’t faulty; the hole is there by design. It allegedly makes them more fashionable. It's these kinds of things that sometimes make me hate the world. I don't even know why I bought them because the tiny rips in them annoy me. I suppose I just wanted to fit in. They aren’t something I’ve worn for ages, but were in the bag of clothes delivered a few hours after I was left here.
I realize something then, something profound. Despite everything he did, Giovanni didn't try to change me. He accepted me as I am. More so, he liked me as I am.
My love of books wasn't something he saw as nerdish or unsexy. My red hair and pale skin weren’t something to be laughed at or teased about. No, Giovanni likes me just as I am. He might be about the only person in this world who does.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Amanda's face lights up as if I've given her the best Christmas present in the world.
“Of course, you can; that’s what I'm here for.”
“Do you think if somebody loves you, and I mean really loves you, it makes it okay if the way they started the relationship was somewhat unorthodox?”
“I suppose it depends. How unorthodox exactly are we talking about? Did this person hurt you?”
“I'm not talking about me. I'm speaking hypothetically.”
“Okay, well, hypothetically speaking, how unorthodox was the beginning to this hypothetical relationship?”
I pick at the thread hanging off the edge of the hole and twist it around my index finger. I twist it so tight that it hurts, and the end of my finger begins to turn red. I quite like the pain. I like feeling something other than that white clinical cleanliness and the hazy muddled thoughts.
“Unorthodox in the sense of taking someone against their will. Using lies and twisting facts to get them by your side. If you started a relationship with someone under false pretences, does it matter if by the end both people love one another?”
Her eyes widen. She stands and walks to where the candle is burning on the mantlepiece. Picking it up carefully, she carries it back to where she's sitting and places it on the table between us, taking her seat once more. “I guess that depends on whether or not the person who was lied to can forgive the person who did the lying. How badly did the liar hurt the other person? Personally, I don't know if I could forgive someone for starting a relationship with me under false pretences. I most certainly couldn't forgive someone for taking me against my will. But then, I have a strong sense of myself and my value. Do you? Maybe, you are willing to forgive this person because you feel that they are the only one in the world who values you?”
I don't like her answer. I don't like it at all.
“You know, if you've never been repeatedly undervalued, then I suppose you don't understand how important that is. If you spent your life with living parents who told you how amazing you are, had great friends too, and you were the popular girl at school, which I'm guessing looking at you was the case, you won’t get it.” I take in her sleek blonde hair, the perfectly golden skin, and the expensive clothes. Appearances aren’t what we should judge others on, but I would pay good money to back my bet that Amanda has lived a blessed life.
“If you were never valued, and instead were denigrated, laughed at, and talked down to, even by your own parents and grandparents, then maybe someone seeing value in you matters more than anything.”
I stand and walk past her to the window and stare out across the green, boring, perfectly manicured lawns.
Maybe I wouldn't have been so vulnerable to temptation if my grandmother hadn't been a hard-faced, cold, and calculating woman.
“Did this person who took you against your will hurt you?” Amanda asks.
“I suppose it depends on what you mean by hurt.” I blow on the glass, then using my index finger, draw a heart the way I used to do in grade school.
Am I so broken I fell in love with the first man to give me even the minor bits of attention that Giovanni threw my way at first?
Can something good rise out of the ashes of a horrendous start?
“Have you heard of Stockholm syndrome?” Amanda asks.
Of course, I've heard of Stockholm syndrome. I read a lot. Many fairy tales are nothing more than Stockholm syndrome tales if you ask me. I don't think it applies to my situation, though. Maybe I'm naive in thinking that, but I truly believe there was a connection between myself and Giovanni from that first moment I saw him in the darkened library in my father’s house.
The thrill of those noticeably short moments of our first interaction stayed with me for years. That was before he whisked me away to his lair, and long before I’d spent any time in his company.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” I ask Amanda, changing the subject somewhat.
“Not really.” She shrugs. “I believe in love. But I don't believe there's just one special person for each of us out there. I've been in love two or three times in my life, and I'm happily married now, but who knows what the future holds.”
Her attitude seems strange to me. If I marry someone, I want it to be for life. Without Giovanni by my side, I feel like I'm drowning.
“I think self-actualization is extremely important,” Amanda says. “If we have belief in ourselves, if our internal strength of character is strong enough, we don't need other people. It's like accessorizing a perfect dress as an analogy. If you have the dress, the accessories are just icing on the cake, no? They complement it, but the dress doesn't need them.”
I look at her aghast. I’m here, finally opening up, talking about the love of my life, and she's giving me cheesy analogies about dresses, bags, and shoes.
“I guess it depends on which accessories we're talking about,” I say. “Take shoes, for example. You’re not getting far without any shoes no matter how gorgeous your dress.”
“Okay, maybe that was a bad analogy. How about, if we say you've had the perfect meal and then you're offered an amazing dessert. You're full and satisfied, so you don't need the dessert. But it's the most wonderful chocolate torte, and you love chocolate torte. So, you have the dessert, and you enjoy it. To me, that's healthy love. It shouldn't be your basic sustenance, your daily food, but it can be the dessert. The cherry on the pie, to be cliche.”
“You see, I want love to be my sustenance. I want that overwhelming, all-encompassing, unbelievable rush when you see the person who stole your heart.” I stare out the window once more as I confess this.
It takes her a long time to answer, and I don't turn around. Finally, she speaks.
“I think you are either very brave, or very foolish. I don't know which. The thing about all-encompassing, burning love is that it might just leave you in ashes.”
I spin around, and for a moment I see the hurt on her face before she composes herself. It is written in the twist of her mouth and the rapid fluttering of her eyelashes as she blinks. So Amanda isn't quite as blasé about love as she seems. Instead, I believe she's a young woman who's been burned herself.
“I feel like, even if I walk away, it won't make any difference to whether or not I'm left in ashes. It's like we're entwined in one another. All I want is to be with him.”
“Then why leave?” she asks. “I know the basics of the story because your grandmother gave us the information, and it's in your file. Why come back to America?”
Why indeed?
Because I'm foolish, and I believed that principles mattered more than feelings. I let pride be more important than love. And I let insecurity triumph over my gut feelings about Giovanni.
I stare at the matches on the table, and the candle burning brightly, and a terrible idea occurs to me. I could start a fire.
Okay, I don't know where the other side entrances to this place are, and I presume the main lobby is heavily guarded and locked. The internal doors, though, to rooms like this therapy room, have an old-fashioned lock with a turnkey. I bet I could break this door down if I tried.
There’s a big difference between needing to get out of my room at night, managing to evade the guards and find my way here, and trying to get out of the building.
If I could get into this room, I could make mischief.
Those matches could start a fire.
Fire would mean the sprinklers would be activated, the smoke alarms would go off, and the building would be evacuated.
This room is at the end of a long corridor, and around it are nothing but offices. We are also on the top floor here, so no one will be trapped above the fire.
I think if I set a fire, people would get out and no one would be hurt, but I would have my chance.
My heart begins to thud wildly, and I wonder if I can really do this.
Then I look at Amanda, who is smiling at me as if she's cracked open some secret portal into my soul.
Yes, I can damn well do this.
These people are holding me against my will. How many other women have they held here?
Worst of all, I believe these people also held my mother against her will, and maybe even killed her.. I'll do whatever it takes to set myself free.
Even if it means burning everything to the ground.