Page 24 of Heal Me

Something about the idea doesn’t seem right, though. She doesn’t look crazy. If anything, she looks… I stare at her face as she watches the mark, and I realize she looks peaceful.

Maybe this place isn’t so bad after all. Their methods are warped and illicit, but they seem to work. This woman in front of me seems to have found peace with the trauma that is haunting her, and I seem to be doing the same—to some extent.

“I have marks too,” I say, looking down at the ugly scars on my thighs. When she leans close to the hatch, I lift a leg to let her see. The light in here is dim, but the horrific pattern is too vivid for her not to see. The way her breaths grow heavier reveals all too clearly that she’s seeing the shame and worthlessness written across my skin quite clearly.

“A man I was with…” I trail off, closing my eyes and breathing hard before continuing. “He promised me everything, but this was what I got. He used to cut me with a knife, just for the fun of it. Stubbed out his cigars on my skin. I’m sorry someone hurt you too.”

Looking up, I meet her gaze again, but instead of finding the shared understanding I expect, her expression is tight. She seems almost angry as she backs away from the door. Pointing at the tattoo on her arm, she shakes her head, and her brows lower as her anger seems to intensify. And then she runs away.

“No, don’t go. I’m sorry,” I call out through the hatch. I have no idea what I said to cause her reaction, but whatever it is, I’m sorry for it. “Please, come back,” I say again, rising on tiptoes to call out through the opening, then dropping back onto my heels to spy after her and repeating in a whisper, “Please come back.” I stand there for several minutes, barely breathing as I listen for the gentle taps of her feet against the stone floor, but she doesn’t return.

17

LAVINIA

When Dorin comes to my cell sometime after the masked girl left, he’s wearing a furious expression. “Who’s been here? Did anyone bother you?”

At first, I don’t understand, watching him with confusion.

He points behind him to the door. “The hatch. Who the hell was here? The guar—People know not to bother you. Did they speak to you? Hurt you? Touch you?” His voice is raw with violence at those last two words, and I reflexively scoot back on the mattress even though I’m clearly not the one he’s mad at.

“No, no one touched me,” I say breathily.

“Then who the hell was here?”

I don’t know why the idea of someone coming here and talking to me bothers him so much. His reaction feeds the gnawing worry in my gut, but I don’t get to consider it further.

“Who was it?” he demands.

Too shocked to think, I’m almost about to blurt that it was another patient, but my brain kicks into gear in time. “An orderly,” I say. “H-he came to check if I needed a bathroom break, and then someone else came and talked to him, and he forgot to close the hatch.”

He watches me with suspicion for a moment before the tight lines on his forehead soften. “Goddamn idiot. I told them not to use the fucking hatch.”

I breathe a heavy sigh when Dorin lets the subject go. For some reason, I hate lying to him, but I’m more than grateful I did when the girl with the muzzle returns a few days later.

The first thing I do when the hatch opens and I see her is to apologize.

Wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, I push up. “I’m so sorry if I said something to offend you.” I go to stand near the hatch. “I really didn’t mean to. Please believe me. Please stay.” Even though Dorin has been coming in here more often lately, reading and talking to me, I’m starved for company—any kind of mental stimulation, really. More so, there’s something about this girl that makes me want to talk to her. A soft disposition and a vulnerability that seems to match my own.

I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding when she reaches a hand through the hatch to touch my palm, her eyes round and soft with something unspoken. Anit’s okay,I think.

I close my hand around hers. “How long have you been here?” I ask to start a conversation—or, open up for whatever communication is possible since she’s still wearing the leather mask.

She seems almost as eager as I for company as she stays and listens, answering my questions as well as she can.

After a while, she even gestures to me, wanting me to sing to her, which, of course, I’m happy to do.

I sing a lullaby that my mother taught me, both to soothe her and myself. When the last note rings out, she’s resting her head close to the hatch, her eyes dreamy and distant, and I feel calmer myself.

She gives a long nod as if to thank me. Then she points to my mouth and lifts her shoulders. When I don’t understand, she does the same again.

“If I like singing?” I try.

She shakes her head, then makes a motion that has me leaning in to see her hand move up from one invisible point to another as if saying, child, teenager, and adult.

“How old was I when I started?” I guess.

She nods.

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