Under My Skin (28 page)

I tell her.

“Be there in five.” She ends the call again.

Damn, she doesn’t waste time.

Adam lifts his head. “Who was that?”

“Shaw.”

He exhales. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay. I know I’ve gone mad and I’ve scared you. You don’t deserve this.”

“As long as you don’t run away from me again.”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to.” He laces his fingers with mine. “Darby, I want you to know something.” His brow furrows as his gaze searches mine.

“What?”

He swallows. “I don’t trust Shaw. I never have. But I do trust you.”

I sniff, blinking back tears. “It’s going to be okay.”

He sighs and closes his eyes.

Five minutes later, Shaw pulls up as promised. Her white Mercedes is spotless, like the rest of her.

The driver’s side door pops open. Shaw gets out, her dark hair pulled into a low ponytail. Her light green pea coat flaps around her knee-high boots.

“What happened?” she asks.

Adam squints at her. “The medicine,” he says.

“Shhh.” She places two fingers on the inside of his wrist and watches her watch. After a few seconds, she says, “You’re tachycardic.”

“Why do you want to kill me?” Adam swats her hand away.

Shaw gasps. “I don’t, Adam. I’m trying to help you.” She looks at me like she expects
me
to help
her.

“You were running like a maniac. Of course your heart is fast,” I say.

He groans. “It hurts.”

“Oh god. We don’t have much time.” Shaw draws something out of her pocket. A needle.

I stiffen. “What’s that?”

She levels me with her dark stare. “Help me get him on his side.” She hooks one hand under Adam’s shoulder and another beneath his knee. “Stay still, Adam.”

I have to release Adam’s hand to roll him.

“What’re you doing?” Adam asks. His voice is shaky and high-pitched. He’s totally freaked out.

Shaw tugs his waistband down and jabs the needle into his butt. “It’s a sedative. It’ll calm you down so your heart won’t keep being overstressed. It’ll buy us some time.”

“Time for what?” I ask.

“For me to figure out what to do,” she replies.

“I’ll call 911.”

Adam bucks and flails. “No! No hospital. Mum and Dad’ll go bonkers.”

Shaw throws her body over his. “Hold him down!”

I do as she says. It’s like riding a bucking bronco, he’s fighting so hard. Electric shocks travel down my arms. I won’t be able to do this for long.

“Relax, Adam.” Shaw talks to him with a calm voice. “We won’t call an ambulance, okay? No hospitals, I promise.”

He stops thrashing. “Please, please, please,” he repeats.

“It’s okay, Adam. Let the medicine work. You’ll feel better, I promise.” Shaw coos to him. “Darby, he’s acting under the delusions. It’s true, I have been challenging his suicidal thoughts. As a result, I think he’s internalized it as me trying to kill him, but I’m not. Do you believe me?”

I want to, but his pain is so real. Then again, Shaw’s a professional. She knows what she’s doing. I can trust her. We’re helping Adam. “I believe you.”

“Good.”

“No, Darby. Don’t fall for her lies,” Adam cries.

“Nothing bad is going to happen. I won’t let it,” I tell him. “What do you want me to do?” I ask Dr. Shaw.

Shaw stands. “Help me get him to my car.”

Adam needs both of us to get him up. He limply drops into the Mercedes’ backseat. His eyes are dulled by the sedative and his lids keep slipping shut. At least he’s not panting anymore. He’s stopped sweating.

Shaw buckles Adam in. “Hop in the front seat. We have some things to discuss on the way.”

I’d rather sit in the back with Adam, but Shaw’s right. And she has some explaining to do.

After we’re both buckled in, I ask, “Where are we going?”

She grips the steering wheel for a moment. “My house.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the ER, even if he doesn’t want to?”

“It will stress him more. Sometimes depression gets so severe it leads to psychosis. I’ve been trying to work with him, change his meds, but he’s so resistant.” She turns the engine on, keeping her focus on the road. “But he trusts you, so with your help, in a quiet, neutral place, I think we can break through to him.”

The sun is so bright, we both squint.

“Like an intervention,” I say.

A smile. “Yes.”

I glance back at Adam as she pulls onto the road. “I didn’t know medicine could make you crazy like this.”

“I don’t think it’s the medicine. Adam’s become so obsessive, he needed to blame me—and subsequently the meds—for why he’s not well. Unfortunately, I’ve made mistakes with Adam. I thought we could work through them, but then he got too paranoid on me. I took risks, for sure, and none of them paid off. I feel terrible about it.”

I rub my temple. Like him, she uses words I barely understand. “So the medicine won’t work because he doesn’t want it to?”

She speeds through a yellow light and turns onto the freeway. “The mind is a powerful thing. While the medicine works on receptors in the brain, it’s more complicated than simple biochemistry. The patient has to believe the medicine will work too.”

“Is the medicine hurting him? Because if it is, we have to go to the hospital.”

“I’ll admit he may be having side effects, but they’re not life threatening.” She glances at her rearview mirror, then to me before merging into traffic. The bridge looms ahead.

“How do you know?”

She glances at me. “I am a doctor, Darby.”

“Yeah, but you said you made mistakes.”

She bites her bottom lip. “Touché. But I swear it’s not my intention to harm Adam. I’m trying to heal him.”

“How did things get so twisted in his mind?”

“Depression is powerful. So are delusions. The sufferer believes them and ignores evidence to the contrary.”

“So he can’t see reality?”

“Exactly.”

“How do we get him to?”

Another glance in the rearview. “Hopefully the injection I gave him will decrease the intensity of his thoughts, then we’ll talk things out when he wakes up.”

“That’ll really work?”

She nods. “It should.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we’ll have to go to the hospital.” She checks her blind spot and shifts lanes. “Sound fair to you?”

Poor Adam. He thinks Shaw’s trying to hurt him but all she’s done is try to help. “Yeah, it does actually.”

“Good.”

Five minutes later, she pulls up to a super modern house with tons of windows and tasteful landscaping. It’s beyond nice.

She presses a button to open the garage door. “Ready?”

I unbuckle my seatbelt, taking slow breaths.

Adam will make it through this. He has to.

Otherwise, Daniel will die all over again.

I hesitate with my leg half out of the car. Is that the only reason I want Adam to get better, so I don’t have to lose Daniel a second time?

Shaw’s already at the backseat. “
Darby
. We’ll have to carry him.”

I crawl into the seat next to him. “I dunno if I can lift him.”

She frowns. “Of course, your injury. Okay. I’ll do it. Just get the door and help as much as you can.”

I take the keys from her. “Alright.”

“He’ll get through this. We’ll make it work.” She rests a hand on my shoulder. She keeps repeating things will get better like saying it over and over will make it true.

“I know,” I say, more confident than I feel.

Adam

I shiver. Wherever I am is cold. My body is leaden and hollow all at once. At least I’m laying on a soft surface. The last thing I remember is Shaw jabbing me in the bottom with a needle and Shaw and Darby restraining me.

Darby, my only hope, the one person who could help me, has turned against me. Guess it was a fool’s hope, thinking Darby could resist Shaw’s power.

I open my heavy eyelids. The room is vacuous, pristine, and white. Floor lamps anchor the four corners, their soft glow smiling on the pale hardwoods. Windows surround the room’s outside walls. Twilight hovers around the house. I must have been out for a while. Mum and Dad must be beside themselves. Oh, what have I gotten myself into?

The steady, confident click of heels makes my blood run cold. Shaw emerges from a dim hallway, carrying a tray with three glasses of water.

Darby follows in her wake, holding a bowl in her hands. Popcorn domes over the top.
Popcorn?

Across the room, a TV sits above a fireplace. A movie plays on it, muted. Is this what they’ve been doing while I slept? Not exactly criminal behavior, but odd nonetheless.

Darby catches me watching her. Her eyes widen. A tentative smile plays at her lips. Hope. But hope for what? “Adam, you’re awake.”

She sets the bowl on the coffee table and kneels next to me where I lay on a couch. “How are you feeling?”

My throat is dry, thick. “Where are we?” I rasp.

“Shaw’s house.”

I try to sit up, then flop back down, taken over by swirls and dizziness. “No, we can’t … ”

“Easy, rest. It’s safe here.” Darby clamps a hand on my shoulder. “You said no hospital, right? Well, this is the only place we could think of.”

“This is worse,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. My head throbs in time with my pulse. “What the bloody hell did you do to me?”

Shaw sets her tray next to the popcorn. “You were in a full blown panic attack. The injection I gave you terminated it and hopefully it will ease the intensity of the delusions you’re having.
And
your auditory hallucinations should resolve. Darby told me about them.”

I stare at her, mute.

“I’m glad she called me. I never thought this would go so far. Darby saved your life.” She sits in a chair next to me.

I find my voice. “N-never meant …
what?
This is all
because of you
.”

Darby bites her lip. “She didn’t mean it.”

I gape. “Are you serious? Of
course
she meant it. Why else would she prescribe medications that interfere with my
heart
, for god’s sake?” My voice raises a couple octaves, stretching to the tops of Shaw’s vaulted ceilings.

Shaw furrows her brow. “I should apologize to you. I broke your trust. I thought challenging you would break your obsessions and cure your depression. But it only made things worse. Then with the ziprasidone debacle … I should’ve seen the mess methylphenidate would make. Your mom begged me for something. I guess I had my own delusion—that it would jumpstart your recovery. I never thought it would make your symptoms worse, that’s how much I believed it would work. Seems foolish now, that I’ve done all this to you. And I’m so sorry for every single worry, every single sleepless night, every single doubt you’ve had about me, about your parents’ fears for you, about your treatment, and about your own mind.”

Goosebumps erupt all over my skin. I shudder. She can’t be admitting to what she’s done. This must be for Darby’s benefit. “Then why give me something that could upset my heart? And what about the grit in my coffee? And why’d you convince Mum and Dad I wanted to commit suicide?”

Shaw sucks in a deep breath. “The dose of ziprasidone was low enough to minimize any risk of that. I’d also cleared it with Doctor Jenkins. He had no concerns, so I had no concerns. As far as your parents being convinced you wanted to commit suicide, you did that on your own.”

“I never wanted to commit suicide.”

She blinks. Nope, she’s not buying it. Surprisingly, she doesn’t confront me about it.

“And the grit?”

Her forehead wrinkles. “In the coffee.”

“Yeah, the coffees you brought me. They were all full of grit.”

She squeezes her eyes shut briefly. “Oh, god. The coffee grounds. I had grit in my latte too. I asked the barista about it and he said their machine was on the fritz. And you thought … ” She sighs. “You thought I was putting something in your drink.”

“You were. What was it?”

“I swear, I wasn’t doctoring your coffee.” She crisscrosses her heart with a finger, all scout’s honor style.

“You’re lying,” I say.

Darby huffs, frustrated with me. She’s falling for Shaw’s line of bull.

Shaw shakes her head. “I’m not lying.”

I squint at her.

She raises her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. Sometimes I break the rules. Heart transplant work is so unique that it calls for it. There’s such a fine line between life and death and people in your situation live in that line. Most transplant candidates would do anything for a second chance at life. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people say—that they’d willingly kill someone for their heart, that they’ll pay tens of thousands of dollars for a heart. They’ll beg, lie, and steal. They’ll sell their very souls. But you were different. You were the first to voice your reluctance to accept something that wasn’t yours to take. I didn’t know what to do with you at first. So I thought outside of the therapeutic box. Clearly, I went too far and it all folded into your irrational belief system. It’s not your fault. Everything that happened was proof to you. Misguided, but I can see you’d get it confused. I am such a blockhead for missing the signs. I guess we—
I
—was so scared for you the focus turned to keeping you alive rather than confronting your delusions. A dangerous mistake. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

Her words are starting to sink in. She’s looking me directly in the eye, speaking so earnestly. She’s coming clean.

Is it really real?

Shaw goes on. “When I learned you and Darby met, I admit I panicked. It wasn’t fair of me to try and keep you apart. I worried it would interfere with both of your treatments and healing. I was so totally wrong. Darby gave me the what for about it.”

Darby nods.

I try to sit up again, but I’m little more than a ragdoll. Darby helps me prop myself against the couch’s low back. Instead of staying on the floor, she smooshes herself next to me. I’m glad for it. I’m also glad she keeps her hand on my knee. It’s warm, strong, and so very necessary at the moment.

“Listen to her, Adam. Give her a chance before you decide what to believe,” she says.