Chapter Eleven: Inconsistency

“I need you to open your eyes for me.”

I did what I was told. It was cold and I didn’t have any shoes on. My hands felt numb and some man was pointing a small flashlight into my face. The throbbing in my head was like one big earthquake inside of my body that wouldn’t end, and the bright light in my eyes didn’t help. I turned my face away from the light.

I was in an all white room.

“Are you here?” The man asked. Some of the pain went away, not a whole lot of it, but just enough for me to be able to completely see my surroundings. Small white room. One window with bars on it. I was sitting on a white bed, with white sheets, in loose white pants and a loose white shirt. The man sitting in front of me was wearing a white jacket. All of it white. Too white. Wherever I was, I didn’t belong here. “Are you here?” The man repeated His eyes were green. 7-up bottle green. Danny had eyes like that. Danny was dead though. He shot himself in the head while I was in the bathtub. Didn’t he? I remember…I remember that happening. There was a sharp pain in the back of my neck.

The doctor, well at least he looked like a doctor, shone the light in my face again. I winced like I had been hit and turned away again. This room was too cold. No heat at all. Where was Patrick? Why wasn’t I at home? Why was I here?

“I need you to talk to me,” the doctor said. He was young, probably not even in the middle of his thirties. He looked more like a doctor I would see on TV and not in real life: the wavy dark hair, the sharp green eyes, the full lips, the gorgeous olive-toned skin…if he had a girlfriend—maybe even a boyfriend, they must feel lucky to be with him. “I need you to talk to me about what happened, Sean.”

Once again I winced when I heard my name. Why did he know my name? Where was I? I opened my mouth to talk, but it felt sore and for some reason I had the feeling that I hadn’t spoken a word in years, even though I knew that was stupid and impossible. It wasn’t too long ago that I was at home, in my bedroom. It wasn’t too long ago that I was with Patrick and he was touching me. Where is Patrick? Why isn’t he here?

“Talk to you about what?” I finally said. My voice didn’t sound like my voice. I don’t whose voice it was, but it didn’t sound like mine.

“About what happened two nights ago,” the doctor said. There was sympathy in his green eyes. He didn’t know me, but I could tell that he felt sorry for me for some reason.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I answered. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t think of anything that would explain why I was here. And then I thought of Danny. I thought of his shattered head, of all the blood on the white bathroom floor. Directly after that, Patrick’s face came into my mind; it flashed for a couple of seconds and then my mind went completely blank.

“Sean, you need to tell me what’s going on,” the doctor said. And after he said that, his eyes weren’t green anymore, they were brown. Danny’s eyes always used to do that. “I need you to tell me everything.”

“No,” I heard myself say. I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to say anything. It kinda just slipped out.

“Look at me, Sean,” the handsome doctor said. His eyes were green again. Kaleidoscope eyes. “I need you to look me in the eyes and talk to me. Nobody is here except for the two of us. You don’t have to be afraid to tell me what’s going on.”

That wasn’t true. Somebody else was in the room. I couldn’t see who it was, but someone was hiding in the room, invisible. It sounded crazy, but I know it was true. We weren’t alone.

“I can’t let you leave until you tell me everything,” the doctor said.

“No,” I said again. This time I did mean to say it.

The doctor flashed the flashlight in my eyes again, and it was like my eyes were being set on fire. I didn’t scream, but I wanted to. It hurt so much. Light wasn’t supposed to hurt that much. I couldn’t see anything but the light and it burned. “Stop it,” I said

“Will you tell me what I want to know?” The doctor asked, except it wasn’t the doctor’s voice, it was Patrick’s. I knew that voice.

“Okay. Just turn it off.”

He did. And everything went black.

* * *

April 13, 2002

……….Sometimes I wonder how he would react if he knew not only how I feel about him, but what I did. What if he hated me? I wouldn’t be surprised if he hated me. I would hate me…..I think I already do hate me……..

* * *

The telephone rang. I had been about ready to rip apart my journal to pieces when it rang. I picked it up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Sean?” I recognized the deep, sexy voice before he even identified himself. “It’s me, Patrick.” My whole body tingled; I had to take a deep breath before answering.

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “What’s up?”

“I was just calling to see what you were up to.”

I had had this conversation before. It wasn’t just a feeling of déjà vu, this was real. This had already happened before…except last time I had torn my journal up before the phone had rung…

“Sean, are you there?” Patrick asked.

The journal was still in my hands. With the phone cradled against my shoulder and my ear, I leafed trough the pages of my journal. Nearly every page was filled with dozens and dozens of my secrets, secrets that should’ve been destroyed long time ago, but still existed in this book. “Yeah…I’m here.”

“You busy tonight?” He asked.

I remembered the restaurant. I remembered the conversation we had at the dinner table about Rose and how he was becoming more and more dissatisfied with their relationship. All of this had already happened before…hadn’t it? I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I was just being stupid and weird. Maybe none of this had happened and maybe I was just imagining all of this stuff up. But maybe I wasn’t. “Yeah, kinda,” I lied. “There’s this essay I gotta do for my English class that’s due tomorrow and I haven’t even started on it. Don’t think I’m gonna be able to go anywhere tonight.”

“Then just let me come over there for a little while,” Patrick urged. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

My heart started to speed up a little, I don’t know why. “Can’t just tell me over the phone?”

“It’s not the kinda thing I want to talk to you about over the phone, Sean.” There was something in his voice that sounded very desperate and sad. There was no possible way I could say no to him. But at the same time I was afraid of what would happen if I said yes.

“…Yeah. Come over whenever you want. I’ll be here.”

“Good. I’ll be over there in like twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

“Sounds like there’s something wrong with you, Sean,” Patrick said. “Tell me what it is.”

I looked down at the journal in my hands. “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“Alright then,” he responded, “You better. I’ll be over there soon. Talk to you later.”

“Bye, Patrick,” I said and hung up the phone. For some reason, even though I knew it wasn’t true, I had this feeling that I was saying goodbye to him forever.

* * *

January 19, 2003

It hurts. All of it hurts….. Sometimes it’s like days go by and I’m not aware of anything that’s going on…I don’t know how to explain it…it’s like being dead and then coming back to life…but it’s like when I’m not here, I’m somewhere else, and somebody else is in my place…none of this shit makes since…but at the same times, it does….

* * *

The soup was already cold when the handsome doctor with the green eyes brought it to me. I guess it was supposed to be chicken noodle soup, but I didn’t see any chicken, and there were probably only six noodles in the whole bowl. To me it just looked like the doctor pissed in the bowl and called it soup. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he did. Still, I ate it because my stomach was grumbling and empty.

With a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, the doctor sat in his folding chair and started to ask me some questions. The room smelled like bleach and oranges, such a weird smell. “Sean, are you ready to talk to me now?”

“Tell me where I am and then I will talk to you.”

“I’m not at liberty to tell you that until I get the information that I need from you.”

“Information about what?”

The handsome doctor just stared at me with those piercing green eyes of his. Before he looked sympathetic, now he looked at me like I was his worst enemy. “I need information concerning the murder of Patrick Coleman.”

The bowl fell from my hands. It shattered on the ground with such a loud noise that it brought pain to my ears. The only other time I could remember hearing a noise that loud was the night Danny blew his brain out in my bathroom.

* * *

There was a knock at my front door around seven-thirty. I almost jumped when I heard the sound. I don’t know why I so nervous. It was only Patrick. But at the same time I knew I had a lot to be worried about.

When I opened the door, Patrick was standing there, sexier than I had ever seen him before in a simple white, buttoned-down long-sleeved shirt and stone-washed blue jeans. He smelled clean and fresh as though he had just taken a shower ten minutes ago. “You gonna let me in, or are you just gonna stand there and look at me all day?” He smiled such a bright, warm smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him smile like that. It made some of the discomfort I felt go away. I moved away from the doorway so that Patrick could step inside, and as I did, I saw someone sprint across in the darkness. I couldn’t see who it was because it was so dark, but my immediate thought was that it was Danny. He was the only person who would come sneaking around my house at night—

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and my head started to tremble with pain. I squeezed my eyes shut and put my hand over my head which was burning up.

“Sean, what’s wrong?” Patrick asked. I could hear the panic in his voice, but at the same time he sounded so far away. I could feel his strong hands on my shoulders, yet I was become more numb and numb by the second until I couldn’t see at all and everything became dark. Even still, I could hear Patrick calling my name over and over, trying to revive me, but I couldn’t answer him. I was too far away. I was gone. Something else was taking over me.

* * *

“What do you mean Patrick’s dead?” I asked.

Again, the doctor’s eyes were brown, a dark chocolate brown that seemed to get darker as each second went by.

“His body was found in your house two nights ago, along with Danny Madison. Both of them had been shot to death.”

I tried to breathe but I couldn’t. I tried to force the air in, but it wouldn’t go in. It felt like my heart was stopping. All of it was just impossible. “Patrick isn’t dead. Don’t tell me that.”

The doctor just glared at me with his cold brown eyes.

“He’s not dead. There’s no fuckin’ way that he can be dead. I was just with him last night. He’s not dead. You must be talking about someone else. Not him. Not Patrick.”

“He was shot four times,” the doctor said. “Once in the stomach, twice in the chest…and one right to the head.”

I’m glad I hadn’t eaten much of that soup, because if I had, I would’ve vomited it up all over the place. It was no way that what the doctor said could’ve been true. I couldn’t le the image of Patrick’s body mutilated with bullets come into my head. He was lying. He was just telling me all of this just to get this reaction out of me. I didn’t know what this man was trying to get from me, but if his goal was to try and break me down, he was succeeding at it.

“Rose White,” the doctor said plainly.

My throat constricted even more when I heard her name. I stared at him and my skin started to grow very hot. “What about her?” the tone of my voice was sharp and almost scary. Even the doctor shuffled in his seat a little bit.

“She’s missing,” he responded. “There’s been a search for her, but she hasn’t been found yet.”

“Is she dead, too?” I asked, hoping that the answer would be yes.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you, Sean.”

“Why would I know?”

“Because you were the last one to see her. You were also the last ones to see Patrick Coleman he died.”

A chill ran through my whole body. “You think I killed them, don’t you? That’s why I’m here.”

The doctor didn’t respond. He just stared.

“Fuck you,” I said. “I would never kill him. I loved him.”

“Loved who?” The doctor interrogated. Somehow I got the feeling that he was secretly entertained by all of this. He enjoyed watching me suffer.

“Patrick. He was my best friend. I would never do anything to hurt him.”