Group Therapy, page 20
But Mark tightens his knees around my ribs, holding fast. With a primal growl, I reach behind me and grab his upper arms, yanking harder, but Mark won’t budge.
The Anger Management group circles around us, chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” as I grunt and struggle and Mark slaps my hands away.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I shout, shoving a hand in the direction of the door. “The bar is unattended!”
All four shirtless barbarians stop and share a glance before thrusting their fists in the air with a new battle cry on their bleeding lips. “Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!”
They file out the door and into the dark chaos of the pub.
With Mark distracted, I successfully manage to yank him off on my next attempt. He rolls over the top of my head and lands on his back in the middle of the yoga mats.
I take off running down the corridor as he calls out after me, “I won’t let you go, Jack! I’ll never let go!”
There’s only one door at the end of the short hall. I burst through it without stopping to consider whom or what I might find on the other side. Not that it matters. Nothing I could have imagined would have prepared me for the sight of Lou’s rigid, petrified body pressed against the length of a tall blonde woman with a kitchen knife being held to her throat.
Lou’s eyes dart to mine, but the rest of her remains paralyzed by fear.
Beth stands on the other side of the kitchen, blocking her huddled, trembling life-coaching clients with her body.
“Good job, piggy,” the blonde holding Lou at knife-point says to Beth. “You and your little friends are free to go.”
Her clients turn and sprint out the door leading into the main bar area without a second glance.
Beth grimaces as she walks backward behind them. “Sorry, bro. It was four for the price of one. But hey”—she gives Lou two thumbs-up—“you got this!”
“Call the police!” I yell after her just before she disappears through the door.
The woman I assume is Kimberly abruptly turns to face me. “With what?” the blonde coos, tilting her head toward a familiar-looking basket on the counter. “One of these?”
“The bar has a phone,” Lou says, a twinge of hope in her trembling voice.
“I cut the phone lines when I cut the power, duh.” Kimberly rolls her eyes. “I thought psychologists were supposed to be smart.”
I recognize her now. I’ve seen her on billboards around town.
“Hey, aren’t you …”
“If you say the Drama Llama, I swear to God, I will end this bitch faster than they canceled Boss Wives, season two!”
I hold my hands up defensively. “What do you want?”
“I want to make Dr. Sterling pay for not inviting me to her little fight club.”
“Kimberly,” Lou pleads, “I swear this is not a fight club. Why does everybody keep calling it—”
“Shut up!” Kimberly screams, pressing the knife against Lou’s throat until she whimpers and squeezes her eyes shut.
Fuck!
“It’s true!” I say, taking a step forward. “It’s a therapy group. For the deeply disturbed. Dr. Sterling told me she only invited her most deranged clients. That’s probably why you weren’t—”
“Liar!” Kimberly digs the blade in deeper, and Lou winces. Blood appears along the edge of the knife. Just a smear, but it’s enough to make me see red. “She didn’t invite me because she doesn’t like me! Nobody likes meeee!”
Don’t react. Don’t react. Fuck. Just … stay calm.
“Hey! Kimberly, right?” I smile, the same one I use for talk shows and interviews and women that I wouldn’t mind getting into bed, as I take another step forward. “Why don’t you and I make our own club? Just the two of us.”
I hold out my hand, but Kimberly looks at it with a disgusted sneer.
“Have you ever ridden in a Maserati before?” I ask, lowering my outstretched hand to the counter beside me. My fingers graze the handle of a metal serving spoon and curl around it on instinct.
“Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes. “I got three in my divorce.”
“Right. Well, have you ever—expelliarmus!”
Time slows to a crawl as I throw the utensil, and for a brief, suspended moment, I am seventeen-year-old Harry Potter, pointing a wand at She Who Shall Not Be Named before I release it and watch it soar.
The metal spoon hits Kimberly’s thumbnail with a sickening crunch. She drops the knife with a shriek and jams the injured digit into her mouth, mumbling something that sounds a lot like, “You broke my fucking nail, asshole!”
With Kimberly temporarily disarmed and distracted, I lurch forward and grab Lou by the wrist. We take off running through the kitchen as Kimberly screams like a banshee behind us. Pots and pans sail past our heads as she gives chase, but we burst through the door before she can catch us.
The main bar area is in full-on Gremlins mode. People are fighting, kissing, singing, crying, dancing on the tables, and several shirtless Anger Management blokes are pounding shots with their arms linked around each other’s necks over at the counter.
I shove my way through them all, dragging Lou behind me, as the howls of a woman possessed emerge from the kitchen behind us. I make it to the door, bracing myself for the cold, wet air of freedom when Lou suddenly screams and stops running.
I turn and am confronted with my worst nightmare come to life. I’ve written gruesome, horrible things. Things that give my readers night sweats. Images that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Perhaps this is my penance. Perhaps I’m being punished for all the psychological damage I’ve inflicted because there is no other logical explanation for why Lou—my Lou—is staring at me with wide, stunned eyes as she clutches her side through the blood-soaked fabric of her T-shirt.
With a jerk, Lou’s mouth falls open as Kimberly grins behind her, retracting a red-streaked knife for me to see.
Lou’s knees buckle, and I catch her. The moment I pull her against my chest, Beth swings in on a light fixture fashioned from an old nautical rope and kicks the knife out of Kimberly’s hand. She lands on her shoulders, crotch to face, and both women fall to the floor.
Beth pins Kimberly in a half nelson and pulls her arm back until she screams.
“I got her!” Beth shouts. “Run!”
Cradling Lou’s unconscious body to my chest, I push through the front door and stumble out into the rain.
“Help!” I shout, scanning the car park and street beyond for any signs of life. “Please! Someone help us!” My voice cracks as I glance down at Lou’s side. The dark spot seeping through her shirt is enormous.
“Fuck. Stay with me.” I clutch her tighter as we approach the street, rain blurring my vision.
“Help!” I shout again as two cars approach, but with my hands full, I can’t wave them down.
I manage to get a hand around Lou’s arm though, so I wave that in the air as a few more cars pass. A wall of rainwater sprays us from their tires, but no one stops.
“Help us! Please!”
Just then, an ambulance passes us on the other side of the street and immediately turns on its lights.
“Oh, thank God.” I sink to my knees in relief, cradling Lou’s lifeless body to my chest.
I try to estimate the number of minutes it’s been since she was stabbed. Two? Maybe three? In my research for The House Guest, my third book, I learned that it takes about five minutes for … for something like this to …
“Stay with me, Lou.” I clutch her tighter, giving her a gentle shake. “Please. Help is coming. Please stay with me.” I rock her back and forth as the ambulance turns round in the middle of the road and heads back toward us. “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”
Lou whispers something inaudible and coughs.
“What?” I sit up straighter. Smoothing the wet hair from her face, I lift her head closer to my ear. “What was that?”
The ambulance pulls up to the curb, splashing us from the waist down with rain as it does.
The moment that freezing cold water hits Lou, her entire body shudders, and her eyes flutter open, landing on me. She tries to smile, but it quickly turns into a wince of pain.
“What did you say?” I ask again, my voice growing frantic as a paramedic comes around and yanks open the back doors of the ambulance.
Lou’s lips graze the edge of my ear, and I can hear her teeth chattering beneath them.
“Write,” she whispers, her breath barely warm. “Write me a scary story, Thomas.”
I turn and press my lips against hers, hard enough to stop them from trembling. Her body is so cold. Her shivering so violent. I hear the clanking and rattling of a stretcher being pulled over to us, but I don’t let her go until she is physically removed from my arms.
“She’s bleeding out!” the paramedic shouts. “We’ve got to get her stabilized—now!”
“Her name is Dr. Luna Sterling,” I say to the nameless, faceless man taking her away from me. “She goes by Lou.”
“We’ll take it from here!”
And with the slamming of two doors, she’s gone.
Thomas
I RISE TO MY feet and watch as the ambulance pulls away from the curb, realizing a moment too late that I didn’t ask where they were taking her. Even if I call every hospital in the Atlanta area tonight, they probably won’t disclose who their patients are to non-family members, and I can’t call her directly because her mobile is still in the fucking pub.
A split-second decision sends my feet scrambling toward my car. I stood by and watched her disappear from my life once this weekend. I can’t do it again. I won’t.
The key fob in my pocket unlocks the door just before I dive into the driver’s seat and throw it into reverse. I peel out of the car park and catch up to the ambulance just before it turns right a few blocks down.
My body is mechanically steering and shifting, but my mind is back at the pub, reliving every moment in high-definition, trying to work out what I could have done differently, what I should have done but didn’t.
Lou’s words from two days ago echo in my mind.
“I failed you. And now, you’re gonna lose a million-dollar book deal because of it.”
Tonight, I failed her. Spectacularly. And the price … the price could be much steeper.
My mind presses pause on an image of Lou, lying in my arms, blood soaking through her shirt, rain washing away her makeup, and all I want to do is get her back. I want to feel the weight of her in my arms again, tonight and every night, from now until the last. And even after that. For what is death but an eternal night?
Death.
The ambulance slows to a full stop before turning right at the next intersection, and I realize that its lights are no longer flashing. Its siren isn’t on. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere at all.
And that’s when it hits me.
I’m not following an ambulance anymore.
I’m following a hearse.
“No,” I say out loud, declaring it. Demanding it. “No!”
But there, directly in front of me, is my proof, driving the exact speed limit and obeying all traffic laws.
It’s been over five minutes, a voice inside of me announces.
“Fuck!” I slam my palm into the steering wheel. Then again, and again, and again. “Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck!”
My heart is racing, my throat feels like it’s closing completely, and my body must have switched over to autopilot because when the ambulance turns again, I realize that I’ve been driving on the left side of the road.
But still, I follow because I can’t do anything else. Because my heart has flatlined inside that car. Because I can’t even remember which side of the road they drive on here anymore. All I can do is stare out the rain-streaked windscreen and count the ways that I pissed on Lou’s career, love, and now, life in the short amount of time since I met her. If I hadn’t asked her out, she never would have created that fucking group. If I had taken Courtney more seriously when she said her attacker was looking for Lou, I would have gotten her the hell out of there instead of following her into danger like a bloody git. If I had been braver, I would have subdued Kimberly the second I saw that fucking knife instead of diddling around like a goddamn twat.
But it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that the vehicle in front of me is driving twenty-five miles per hour down a residential street without a single sign of urgency.
Because there is no more emergency.
The ambulance turns right again. And pulls me right along with it.
This is what happens when you fall in love, I think, a self-protective numbness falling over me like a shroud. It destroys everything.
The road goes blurry, and I don’t know if it’s from the rain on the windscreen or the tears in my eyes, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. If Lou is gone, nothing matters anymore.
The ambulance pulls into a car park, and despite their grip on the steering wheel, my hands begin to shake. I’m not ready. I just found her. I just got her back. I’m not ready to say good-bye.
But my arms and legs cooperate, steering and braking and depositing me right next to the vessel that contains my deepest, darkest fear. I’m not afraid of love—I’m afraid of after love. What becomes of you once it is gone. The husk of a human you wither into, the endless years of joyless existence that stretch on further than the eye can see. I thought I could avoid it.
But I failed at that too.
Get out. Get out of the car, dickhead. Face what you did.
As I open the door, cold air whips around me, as if coaxing me out into the night. Pulling me toward the inevitable.
Left foot, right foot. Stand up, close the door.
My chest is so tight I feel like I can’t breathe, and for a moment, I wish that were the case. I wish my breaths would cease right along with Lou’s so that we could go ahead and spend the rest of eternity picking up where we left off.
But I’m not that lucky.
I force myself to take a few more steps toward the ambulance, but when I finally look up and observe my surroundings, I discover that we’re not at a hospital. We’re right back where we started—The Yacht Club car park.
Which only makes my heart sink further.
They probably came back to wait for the coroner.
And the police.
Because this is now a murder scene.
And it’s all my fucking fault.
The sound of a dozen laughing arseholes pulls me out of the coal-black cesspool that is my head, if only temporarily. Harnessing what’s left of my lucidity, I look toward the entrance of the pub and watch as the remaining group therapy members file out of the main entrance with their faces tipped back in drunken delight and their arms linked round one another’s necks.
The woman who was brushing salt off of the Anxiety table turns and calls over her shoulder, “Kimberly, you were amazing!”
The woman next to her, who I’m pretty sure is the one who jumped on Lou’s back, adds, “Oh my God, girl. I had no idea you were such a good actress!”
My hands form involuntary fists as the psycho who stabbed Lou comes strutting out behind them, wearing a smirk.
“Me?” Kimberly laughs. “Did y’all see Dr. Baker? Homegirl can puke on cue.”
Puke on cue?
Courtney walks out next to Beth, sporting a bashful smile. “It’s no big deal.” She shrugs. “I just have a really sensitive gag reflex.”
“Lucky Brian.” Beth chuckles sarcastically, shoulder-checking Courtney. “Yo, Kim. Sorry about the whole Tarzan/crotch in your face thing. I kinda got caught up in the moment.”
Caught up in the moment? Lou was fucking stabbed!
Kimberly rolls her eyes as one of the women from Anger Management bounces over to her, still shirtless. “Can we get a selfie before you go?”
Mark holds the door open as Dee and the last few stragglers walk through.
“It’s cool, guys,” he calls out to no one in particular. “I’ll just clean up the entire bar by myself.”
A woman from Dee’s group gives him a second glance on her way out. “Wow, did Lou paint those scratches on your face? The head wound she gave Dr. Dawson looks so real.”
“Hell no,” Mark huffs. “I had to look pretty to greet everybody. Bill did it with some ketchup.”
Courtney turns to face the other group leaders. “So … do y’all think it worked?”
Mark’s eyes drift across the parking lot, landing on me, and his face goes pale. “Uh, gotta go!” He pulls the door shut as another door opens—the one on the back of the ambulance.
My mind is reeling as a person I never thought I’d see again without quarters on her eyes and a name tag on her toe hops out—very much alive, very much unharmed, and very much surprised to see me.
“Thomas?” she exclaims, looking around as if the parked cars nearby might hold some kind of clue as to how much I’ve figured out. “I … uh …”
“This was all … an act?” My blood feels like molten-hot battery acid pumping through my fragile brain, burning away everything I thought I knew. Everything I thought I felt. Experienced.
I can’t stop shaking my head.
“Shit.” Lou rubs her bare arms with both hands. “Can you just … pretend like you didn’t see this part?”
“What?”
Without taking her eyes off me, she slaps the back of the ambulance twice. “Thanks, Paul!”
The emergency vehicle honks cheerfully and drives away, leaving me with a ghost.
“I thought you were dead,” I hear myself say. I sound so calm. I want to fall at her feet and fucking weep. I want to scream at her. I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and kiss her and shake her again, but here I stand, a captive in my own prison of self-composure.
“Hey …” she says, taking a tentative step forward as her eyes dart back and forth between mine. She sees something there, something I thought I was hiding, and it makes her look as gutted as I feel.
Lou reaches for my face, and I turn away, but she caresses my cheek anyway, wiping away an errant drop of rain.
It’s definitely not a tear.
