Chapter 8

Dr. Havishire seemed a bit leery about letting me leave the hospital, but eventually told me, “You do seem to be healing quickly and without fail. Perhaps it would be good for you to get out of here for a few hours.”

So, I am now sitting in the passenger seat of Kas’s small rental car. Apparently, it was her car was demolished in the wreck that killed Colin and caused my amnesia. She was driving and Aria was in the seat beside her. The air-bags were quick to respond and both of them escaped with only minor injuries.

Kas answers many of my questions about the crash, but there’s still one I don’t dare to pose. It involves John and that’s a seemingly touchy subject with her.

But still, I’m slightly confused. I don’t remember the crash, but I do remember sitting in the back seat with John. And that’s the most recent memory I had until I woke up. But according to Kas, I was sitting next to Colin. John wasn’t even there.

“So, why do you want to meet Aria?” Kas asks, breaking the thought-filled silence.

“She was in this picture I found that was dated just before the crash,” I tell her, turning to that page of the photo album. I brought it along just in case Aria tried to deny that she was there. Stranger things have happened. “Plus, the fact that she was in the same crash I was just makes me want to know more about her.”

She looks at the photo and nods, clearly reminiscing about the time of the picture.

“Well, okay. But you should know a few thing about Aria,” Kas tells me cautiously, avoiding eye contact. I say nothing and she continues, inhaling deeply, “She’s in Smile’s Mental Institution right now.” Smile’s? I think to myself. How ironic.

“She’s crazy?” I ask, confused. She surely wasn’t crazy at the time of the picture. Well, she didn’t look it, at least.

“Mentally ill,” Kas corrects, and I swear I saw the corners of her mouth turn upwards at my comment for just a second.

“Was she always like that?”

She hesitates for a moment before saying, “No. She was weird before, but not crazy.”

“Mentally ill,” I correct sarcastically and she snorts.

“Right.”

“So, was it because of the crash?” I ask. I don’t want to make Kas uncomfortable, but I feel like I need to know this. It could lead to me getting answers about my real mysteries that I need to solve.

“Nothing’s been the same since the accident,” she mutters.

“Yeah, I know just what you mean,” I reply bitterly and she laughs.

We pull into a small, slightly run down parking lot that sits in front of an equally small, equally run down building. The letters that are plastered over the sign are peeling and faded. There’s a yellow happy face spreading across both sides of the words, which looks a bit odd on the outside of a cement building.

“We’re here,” Kas tells me and she slides out of the car. We slowly make our way up to the door. It looks heavy. Probably to prevent any escape attempts.

Kas clicks a button on her keychain and the car beeps behind us. She gives me a reassuring smile and opens the door.

When I first walk in, it looks just like a normal hospital, but a bit smaller. There’s a front desk with a kind looking receptionist behind it, taking calls and filing paperwork. The only thing that is slightly unnerving is the fact that there are large men dressed in protective white suits placed in front of every door.

“Names?” the receptionist asks, without looking up from her work.

“Kasarna Liang and Melody Evans,” she answers, pulling out her id. “We’re here to see Aria Katherine.”

The receptionist looks up for a moment to verify the id and then tells us Aria is in room two-hundred twenty-four on level B of the building and hands us a signed pass. We nod and thank her before walking briskly to the elevator, avoiding eye contact with the many guards on both sides of us.

Kas quickly presses the button and we get in as soon as it opens.

“Okay, this is creepy,” I admit once the doors close.

“It’s a mental institution, Melody. Of course it’s creepy,” she tells me slowly with a scoff.

“Well, yeah.”

The elevator dings, letting us know we have reached level B of Smile’s Mental Institution.

“At least we get to see Aria,” she says in a mock optimistic tone as we walk down the hallway that has room numbers two-hundred to two-hundred twenty-five.

We stop in front of Aria’s room. I inhale quickly and bring my shaky hand to the doorknob.

“Excuse me, miss?” a deep voice says and a guard’s hand moves mine away from the door. Kas hands the guard our pass and he opens the door for us with a stiff nod. We cautiously step into the room and I smile when I see it.

It wasn’t how I pictured it at all. I was imagining white, soft walls and nothing else in the room other than big windows for observation and a girl in a straight jacket crying on the floor.

Instead, it looked like a semi-happy place. There were light yellow walls and the only window there was was facing outwards so Aria had a nice view of the mountains. There was a small kitchenette that was lacking an oven; but did have a mini fridge and a microwave with a lock on it.

There was a blue curtain rather than a door on the bathroom door frame and a twin-sized bed was placed in the center of the room we just entered. The girl on the bed was writing furiously in a notebook and she didn’t even look up when we stepped in.

“Hey, Aria. I brought someone for you,” Kas says cautiously, walking towards Aria. Aria looks up slowly and her immediately widen. She shrinks down into her bed and covers her head with the thin blanket she was partially under before.

“She’s dead, though,” Aria says, and even though her voice is muffled by the blanket, I can hear it’s trembling.

“No, she has amnesia. Colin is dead,” Kas tells her matter-of-factly, but I hear her voice catch on the last word.

“No!” she exclaims and sits up sharply. “I saw him! He talked to me! Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”

“I believe you, Aria,” Kas assures her. “And so does Melody.”

Aria looks me questioningly and I nod, not quite sure what I’m agreeing to. Aria smiles at me and gestures for me to stand by her. I walk over and stand on the side of her bed that Kas is not on.

Aria grabs my hand. “It’s really nice to see you, Mel,” she says and the happiness in her voice makes me want to scream. I can’t even remember her or what I did to make her like me. It’s hard to realize that the Melody Evans everyone loves really isn’t me.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I tell her and I feel bad when I see her smile drop.

“Oh, damn,” she says quietly and releases my hand. “You don’t remember me.”

I grab her hand again. “I don’t. But we’ve both been through some hard things recently. I still know that we’re friends.” She smiles widely and nods.

Kas mouths the words, “Thank you,” in my direction.

“Have you been doing okay?” Kas asks Aria gingerly. But her attempts at being careful apparently were fruitless, because Aria absolutely explodes in reply to that question.

“God, Kas, of course I’m not okay! I’m stuck in this hellhole for lunatics, and I’m not crazy. But there’s no way to prove that and nobody believes me.”

“I know just how you feel,” I mutter.

“Is that so?” she scoffs then almost instantaneously adds, “Well, I guess you sort of do, actually.”

“I do. I’ve been stuck in the hospital for the entire portion of my life that I can remember and my first legal outing is visiting a mental institution,” I tell her, a bit of annoyance seeping into my voice.

“Legal?” Aria asks with a smirk.

But Kas adds angrily, “Seriously? I was driving at the time of the crash. All of this is my fault. The guilt has been driving me insane!” before I can respond.

Right then, all of us get quiet at her use of the word “insane”.

Aria smiles. “Too soon,” she says jokingly and Kas laughs an apology.

“It’s not your fault, Kas,” Aria assures her with more seriousness once we stop laughing uncomfortably.

“Yes, it was. Don’t even try to deny it,” Kas retorts, sticking her nose in the air stubbornly.

Aria rolls her eyes and then asks, looking at me, “Okay, you didn’t explain before.”

“Explain what?” I ask, my eyebrows creasing together.

“What you meant by your first legal outing.”

“Oh, well, uh,” I say, a bit flustered. Can I tell this girl what I did? Can I trust her? I look at Kas and see her give a slight shake of her head, silently urging me not to say anything. So I lie, “I just meant this is the first time the doctor let me out of the hospital.”

Aria nods. “That makes more sense, I thought you meant you snuck out or something.” She laughs and Kas and I try our best to join in, but it doesn’t sound fully believable. Aria notices and quiets down, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“We should go,” I see Kas mouth and I nod my head.

“It was nice meeting you, Aria,” I say.

She grabs my hand. “Do you have to leave?” she asks and her voice sounds hurt.

Kas wrenches my hand from Aria’s and replies, “Yeah, we have to get going. We’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” she agrees with a nod and smiles at us as we leave her room. The guard stops us again on our way out and Kas shows him the pass once more, rolling her eyes.

“Why did we have to go?” I ask as we round the corner of the hallway that will lead us to the elevator.

“You would have told her something you shouldn’t have if we stayed much longer.”

“No, I wouldn’t!” I immediately retort and Kas rolls her eyes.

“You almost told her about seeing John,” she points out in a harsh whisper.

“Why can’t she know about that? We used to trust her, right?”

“We still trust her,” she replies, ignoring my first question. I groan, knowing that any more efforts to talk to Kas about this will fail.

We stop in front of the elevator and I press the button,waiting anxiously for it to open. We step in when it dings and step out again on the first level of the building. I smile at the receptionist as I pass her, but she doesn’t look up. Hastily, we exit Smile’s Mental Institution and get into Kas’s car.

“Did you like her?” Kas asks in attempt at conversation.

“I did,” I tell her and then add, “She didn’t seem crazy.”

Kas whispers, “Mentally ill,” in correction before saying, “I’m not entirely sure she is.”

“Then why is she there?”

“Because what she claims is crazy,” Kas tells me sadly. “But I think it’s partially true.”

“What does she claim?”

“You heard her,” she tells me. “When we first got there.”

“She thought I was dead?” I suggest, not sure if that was what she was looking for.

“Not that.” I guess it wasn’t, I think with a smirk. “She thinks Colin is alive.”

Her comment jolts me out of my thoughts. I open my mouth to respond, but the words don’t come out. I close my eyes tight in attempt to wrap my brain around this. Kas said what Aria claims is true. So, he's alive?

“He is?” I ask after a moment.

“No,” she says with no further explanation.

“But you said it was true!”

“I said it was partially true,” she corrects.

“How the hell can he be partially dead, Kas?” I shout in frustration. It’s not possible. It can’t be. You’re either dead or alive. There is no in between.

"Well, he," Kas pauses, as though searching for the proper wording. "Never mind. He's dead; end of story."

"You're sure?" I clarify with a sigh.

"I went to his funeral, Melody. I'm pretty sure," she answers with a finality in her tone that makes me aware of the fact that this conversation is over.

Reviews

[Craig2591]

Sorry this took me so long to get to.

Very good. My only issue is with the mental hospital. I don't have a lot of experience with mental hospitals, but this seemed unreal. I once visited a friend in a mental hospital and it was quite nice. Warm wood tones, potted plants, carpeting, etc... Granted, he was in a private facility. A county facility might be closer to what you described. You might want to clarify that.

Also, I'm pretty sure they don't keep the residents locked up in their rooms. They let them wander around. The ones with behavior problems are doped up and shuffle about like glassy eyed zombies. I think it is more likely that they would find Aria sitting in a lounge starring out through the barred windows. If she is cooperative she will be less medicated, but I'm guessing she would be at least mildly sedated. It might be something that Kas would notice and mention to Melody later.

Otherwise it's coming along quite nice.