Page 57 of The Hangman's Rope

“I hope you know just how much I’m putting my ass on the line for you and this whole charade,” she hissed at Hangman and he turned stony.

“You know what’s up,” he said and she looked only semi-chagrined. To me her whole countenance changed.

“Come on, you poor girl. Let’s get you into a gown and your room.”

I nodded and let Hangman deliver me into the good doctor’s hands and I honestly don’t know how I didn’t fall apart.

That had been two days ago, and now I was being discharged to go home.

All manner of tests had been run, and I’d had to speak to an endless stream of police officers and prosecutors, and lawyers, and doctors until I just wanted to scream at all of them tojust leave me alone!

My mother and father arrived that first night, and my mother remained glued to my side, her hand in mine, and to be perfectly honest I was so grateful for that.

My dad did his best to hold the flood of people back to a trickle, but there was only so much that could be done.

The story had been that I was in a coma – not an uncommon thing with the corpse weed drug or whatever it was. I’d been found and admitted as a Jane Doe and due to a computer or paperwork error, I’d been cared for but lost to the system for a few days until I’d woken up and told hospital staff who I was.

Somehow, Hangman and the rest along with the doctor, had made it all work.

Now, I was finally on my way home to my parents’ house in Charleston, and as Savannah receded in the distance out theback window of the town car we rode in, whisking us up the interstate, I couldn’t help but feel like I was leaving my safe haven only to return to what felt tantamount to a strange land.

It was all so damn confusing and I was so tired of everything and under so much stress that the two hour or so drive honestly felt like it took an eon.

I slept, but not well for pretty much the next two days.

My mom came in and checked on me, brought me food and something to drink, but I was so medicated I felt like a zombie. Disconnected from it all. It didn’t help that while I was home, it didn’tfeellike home. Everything was as it should be, but my memory was still shoddy at best. Absolutely wrecked… and I didn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone here about it.

It didn’t help that my mom, desperate to have her version of Lorelai back frombefore the bad thing happened,was constantly trying to refresh my memory. It felt like every five minutes or so she was saying something like, “Do you remember when…”and sometimes, yes, I did remember but more often than not, I just stared at her blankly groping for something, anything familiar about what she was saying only to grasp at empty air.

I moved through the shadows of my old life, like a living shade or ghost, and it was beyond frustrating.

I started therapy but couldn’t bring myself to talk. We sat for an hour in almost complete silence, the therapist not pushing or asking any real probative questions, which confused me and put me on edge. Weren’t they supposed to ask you questions? We sat across from each other, her looking cool, calm, and collected while I shifted uncomfortably in my seat for almost an hour.

Finally, she looked at her watch and said gently that our time was up for today and I left feeling more hopeless and lost than the moment I’d walked in.

I missed Hangman.

He was entirely too easy to pour my heart and soul out to and to do so left me feelingheard.

Here, I felt as though I screamed into the void… and it all got worse on my eighth or maybe ninth day back, when I came downstairs to find my mother entertaining in the back garden… and who should it be, but Julie.

I paused in the kitchen as my mother laughed at something Julie said and I felt a fine trembling start in my hands. I was doing as Hangman had asked me to. I was trying… but this? This was rich.

I slipped out onto the back patio and Julie happily exclaimed, “There she is!”

“Lorelai, baby, come sit down. Look who came to visit!” my mother exclaimed.

Julie got up, her sharp heels clacking on the flagstones as she came around the small bistro table and hugged me.

I stood stiff, and didn’t hug her back, just sort of frozen in the face of her sheeraudacity.

“Come sit!” my mother urged and took my hand. I flinched at the light contact and warily came around to take the seat my mother was trying to pull me down into.

“I’m so glad you’re home and okay,” Julie simpered as she re-took her seat and I blinked.

“Okay?” I echoed.

“Yeah,” she said and she looked a little… I wouldn’t say guilty. She wasn’t that. She swept her long, bottle bleached blonde hair over her shoulder and ran the extensions through her hands, catching a stray hair and shaking it off her hand into the light breeze back here and I just stared at her.

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