Hazel St. James - Fighting For You (Redemption#1)[ (5 page)

Tristan lay in his single bed in his joint room, which was only occupied as of last week. His roommate was in his mid-forties, and thought the government was poisoning him with formaldehyde additives in everything that came from the store.

Tristan didn’t talk much with him; not because he thought the guy was seriously fucked up, or even
crazy
. Though it was easy to follow that train of thought since the guy refused to sleep on the bed for the first two days he was here because it was full of “hyde” as he called it. Tristan didn’t talk to him for the exact opposite reason, actually.

Tristan was fucked up, so fucked up that he had physically hurt an innocent woman that trusted him, as well as pulled a knife on people that were just trying to help him. His roommate had enough to deal with right now after being placed on a seventy-two hour suicide hold since he’d tried to set fire to himself in the middle of a local discount store. The road to recovery was all uphill, in blinding rain swells, with hurricane force winds blowing you over. Tristan wasn’t even sure that he was on the right road at this point, but he damn sure didn’t want to ruin anybody else’s chances of healing, or even just getting out of this psych ward.

It was probably well into his third day here before Tristan even knew where he was, but it wasn’t for lack of trying by the staff at the Colorado Springs Mental Stress Unit. They tried to get him to participate in the nightly group activities, and occasionally he would fumble through them. Even though he didn’t have much of an appetite, if you did decided that you wanted to eat anything, you had to do that in the group area. There were no TV’s or radios in any of the rooms, either, so if you wanted something to occupy your brain, you had to sit with the other fifteen or so occupants of the psychiatric unit.

Some of the poor schmucks in there were in far worse shape than Tristan was, but most of them were willing participants in their treatment. They were fully immersed in their mental disorders and had had time to come to terms with what was happening to them. Tristan couldn’t say that…he was a prisoner here.

His Uncle Morgan had signed him in for a full month stay, no exceptions; not even a chance at leaving early for good behavior. Since Morgan was Tristan’s only living relative, and he was deemed medically unable to make his own decisions, his uncle had the right to do that. Dominic had been the one to take Tristan to the emergency room, but the emergency room staff had contacted his uncle when they realized that Dominic was not a blood relative. The rest of the details of the night were sketchy, but Tristan didn’t need to dwell on them anyway.

He wasn’t surprised that his uncle had committed him when given the opportunity; Morgan was a cold-hearted bastard and Tristan was sure that his motives for keeping him inside these walls had nothing to do with healing, and more to do with keeping him out of his hair for as long as possible.

Tristan had vague recollections of any of the events from that evening. The only things that he could remember were the bits and pieces that woke him up in the middle of the night: the blood dripping from Valerie’s back, the scream that tore from her lungs and pierced his soul…the look of fear on everyone’s face when he picked up the knife and started waving it around.

The shrink assigned to Tristan had filled in the missing blanks at his first willing therapy session early on day six. Up until then, Tristan had refused to participate, and he wasn’t forced to, at least to start. They told him that he would have to work with them, if he wanted a chance at getting better. Fuck that. He didn’t want to sit through the hour-long breathing exercises, and fucking cry fests that he could hear from his room. He had no desire to bare his demons to anyone, and hoped like hell that they wouldn’t force him to.

Instead, Tristan tried getting in touch with his Uncle Morgan to get him out of here. Once Tristan was lucid enough to rationalize the dire situation he was in, he started calling his uncle, but the fucker would never take his calls. He never answered his cell phone, and when he called the office, his secretary would say he was unavailable.

Finally, after the sixth full day of being locked in here, Tristan had reached his limit. He screamed into the public phone in the hallway that
they had better get his fucking uncle down here immediately, or he was going to find a way out of here and hunt each and every one of them down.
Yeah, that got him nowhere fast. Well, the orderlies came and restrained him until a nurse came and sedated him. Another full day passed before he came out of that haze, and then Tristan came to the conclusion that he had to deal with this their way, or be forced to stay here for as long as Morgan, his medical guardian, saw fit.

It was three in the morning, and Tristan had slept most of the day in his room. He’d spent his required one hour with the shrink and two hours with his therapist, but they weren’t making much progress. Tristan was now well aware of the fact that he had a severe mania break and a relapse with his bi-polar disease since he wasn’t taking his medicines anymore. But he had so many questions that needed to be answered, and no one seemed to think that they were important…right now. The biggest one for Tristan was how long until he would be fully recovered and could get on with his regular life? They had him taking lithium medication, which was making his entire body feel numb and stiff as a board. He hated the shit, but he knew he had to play their game if he wanted to get out of here.

Tristan stared at the ceiling in his room, throwing together some lyrics that had been floating around in his brain. He wasn’t musical by any means, but he had a lot of time on his hands, and there was always a lot of free-falling emotions in his brain.

There is no reason to drown out this pain, there is no reason to let it slip away…

The words in his mind were making a melody on their own, and he realized that he was humming when his roommate stirred in the bed next to him. “Can’t sleep either?” Tristan heard across the room.

“Sorry, man, didn’t mean to wake you.”

Tristan could hear rustling and then the lamp on the other side of the bed flipped on. “Nah, I wasn’t sleeping. Can’t fucking sleep anymore. Seems like the only thing that I wanna in here is sleep. Keeps me from having to go to their little group meetings, sing Kumbaya and hold hands.”

They both laughed softly for a moment and then Tristan went back to staring at the ceiling. It felt as if a door had been opened between the two, and he didn’t have anything better to do. He only had one week left in here, and this guy was going to be committed for quite a while. At least that was what he overheard the nurses saying one day when he was on his way to the community shower. Tristan’s outlook on life was a little bit better than it was last week when his roommate first got here. Maybe it would do them both some good to talk.

“The name’s Tristan. You’re Joe, right?”

“Yeah, Joe Vierra. I’d say it’s good to meet ya, but these are some pretty shitty circumstances to be in, for both of us.”

“Yeah, very true. You from Colorado Springs?”

“No, I live a few towns over in Dexter. My wife asked the police to bring me here, rather than our local hospital because she said I’d get better care here. I’m not so sure that was her real motive, though, but, hey, can’t say that I blame her.”

The two men had shared a room for over a week, but Tristan had no idea that the guy was married. No one came to visit him during the two-hour visiting time each day, just like no one came to see Tristan, either. But, Tristan wasn’t surprised about his lack of guests, but if Joe was married, where the fuck was his wife?

“Is she coming to see you soon? Your wife, I mean.”

“Doubt it. I don’t remember a whole lot of what happened, but I do remember the look on her face when I was hauled away. I’m pretty sure at this point, she’s embarrassed of me.”

Tristan had no clue what the circumstances were surrounding Joe’s arrival, other than what little bits and pieces he picked up when the staff was in the room with him. He knew that his roommate was schizophrenic, and that he believed the government was poisoning him, but that was about it. Well, he knew that he tried to set himself on fire, but didn’t succeed since there wasn’t a burn on him anywhere and was brought here by the police.

Still, if you sign on to marry someone, Tristan knew that it was supposed to be forever. Not just for the good parts, but the bad parts, too. Otherwise, why bother? Everyone had their demons to share, and if the person you love couldn’t handle yours, then they didn’t need to be in your life.

“So, that’s it? Did she walk away then?”

Joe sat up on his bed, resting his back against the headboard. “I don’t know. I haven’t even tried calling her. We have two little kids at home, and she has enough to handle without dealing with my shit right now, too. Frankly, I don’t blame her for being embarrassed by me, anyway. It’s gotta be hard having a husband that was arrested for being a
kook
.”

“You have two kids? Damn it, man. There’s the perfect reason to get your shit together. If not for your wife, then do it for your kids.”

Joe just nodded his head, and answered, “Yeah, that’s the plan. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I know that I plan on getting better…for them. You got a family, Tristan?”

“Nope. No one gives a fuck about me. But, hey, I’m good with it. Other people just have the opportunity to hurt you. I don’t give them that chance.”

Joe laughed and reached over to flip off the light again. It was nearing dawn anyway, and there was light filtering in through the vertical blinds. “Yeah, man, but without them, I wouldn’t have a reason to get better.”

Without knowing it, Joe had just said what Tristan had been thinking for the last three weeks of his life.
There was no reason to get better, other than to get his ass out of here. Once he left these four walls, there was nothing left for him.

Chapter Six

T
ristan woke to the screaming vibration of a vacuum cleaner outside the door. The whine of the machine was enough to make him grit his teeth together, which only exacerbated the pounding in his head.

“Shut that fucking thing off!” Tristan half groaned and half screamed to the door. When the noise didn’t stop, he fumbled over the side of the bed for the nearest thing that he could pick up to throw at the wall. There was no way that his weakened muscles could launch anything heavy enough to be heard by whoever was out there. The last few months were spent mostly “sleeping,” or what he called “drugged out” because of his meds and his muscle tone was suffering.

It would be extremely odd for one of the skank whores his uncle “dated” to still be around mid-day during the week, but he also knew better than to think that his uncle would be cleaning up after him. The man didn’t even own a vacuum of his own; why would he be over here cleaning up the tiny apartment that Tristan lived in? But that was the only logical explanation, and he didn’t have the motivation to think beyond his uncle having a lobotomy.

Tristan rolled over in bed, groaning as his face landed directly in the rays of sunshine that were pouring through the bedroom window in the space he occupied above his uncle’s garage. Flinching almost as if the sunlight burned his skin, he turned himself so that he was lying on his stomach and pulled both of the pillows over his head to drown out the vacuum. Why his uncle hadn’t stopped yet was proof enough for him that Morgan really was a narcissistic fuck that got off on making other people’s lives miserable. Either that, or the stupid bastard was just trying to kick him while he was down.

Tristan was just contemplating getting out of bed and slamming Morgan’s head against the wall, and throwing him out, when the apartment was eerily silent again. Relaxing back under the covers, he let the last of his anger flow out his fingertips as he released the tight grip on his bed sheets and slipped back into his unconscious prison.

The whip severed the air, making everything crystal clear for Tristan. There was no way that he could fail at this. There was no way that he would let this beautiful girl who had completely given herself over, leave this playroom without having been to the moon and back with Tristan controlling her. Better than that pansy ass fucker, Dominic who was standing off to the side, watching his every move. Bastard was just watching to get some pointers from Tristan. That’s all it was.

The strikes barely licked the bronzed skin of Valerie’s back in perfect vertical bands. The next flick of his wrist had felt off, but the stripe was just a bit darker, leaving Valerie moaning in pleasure. Tristan could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins when he felt the all-consuming power…the drive to be able to give to another human being the kind of pain/pleasure that she needed; just enough to make her reach nirvana.

But then Valerie said the three words from hell, and disobeyed him. The need to bring her ultimate pleasure was destroyed…all that was left behind was an all-consuming anger.