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“No!” I bolt upright in my bed choking on air. “No!” I try to steady my breathing, but I'm too shaken up to concentrate.

Dr. Watson is sleeping in the chair in front of me and his eyes snap open. I assume he's on suicide watch because he thinks I might try and hurt myself.

I lose my composure and the sobbing starts. Embarrassed, I bury my reddened face into my hands. I don't want Dr. Watson to see me like this. Then he might change his mind and call up Oakhill. He might tell them I belong there after all.

The sobs come out heavier and louder and my chest begins to vibrate. My hands move up my face like they have a mind of their and I grip my hair in bunches at the scalp. The mattress dips down next to me, but I barely notice. The wound of Damien's death has been sliced open and I'm bleeding everywhere. Hands There are hands on my shoulder. “Adelaide.” Dr. Watson's voice is soft. “It's okay, you were having a nightmare.”

“You don't understand,” I cry. “You don't understand.”

“I suppose I don't,” he says with a sigh, “but I do know that nothing in our dreams can hurt us in reality. Even though it seems real in our minds it isn't.” But somehow, gazing into his eyes, I get the vague notion that he might understand more than I think he does.

What I want to ask him is if our dreams can't hurt us in reality, then why do I feel like I've been stabbed in the chest? Why do I feel like pieces of me are being sawed off slowly to make sure I really feel the pain?

But I don't ask him anything.

I won't dare.

I'm already so unstable and I don't want to give him any more of a reason to think that I might not be in the right frame of mind. I also don't want bring up the reason of why I'm emotional in the first place and I don't think I can bring myself to mention his name out loud. The traumatizing events of my nightmare keep replaying over and over again my mind.

There are hands around my throat. Hands around my throat.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

I'm suffocating.

“Oh God,” I cry out. “Oh God.”

Dr. Watson moves his hand to my back. “Shhh. Just breathe, Adelaide. Just breathe.”

Bravely, I peek at Dr. Watson through my arms. He's watching me intently, a caring look etched on his face. I try to steady my breathing, but it isn't working. Every time I take a breath I sob harder.

Dr. Watson lowers his hands and gets up from the bed. He walks to the corner of the room and removes a syringe filled with something and then he walks back over to the bed, sitting down next to me again. “This will help you sleep,” he informs me. “No more nightmares.”

“No!” I shriek and scramble to the other side of the bed. “No! I don't want any! I don't want any drugs!”

I remember all of the drugs I was filled with at Oakhill. They pumped my veins with sedatives and barbiturates every day. I remember how the drugs made me feel. Like I was pointless. Not really supposed to be there but was anyway. I'd roam the halls while shadows did pirouettes on the plaster walls and I'd gawk at the floor. Because when I was on the drugs, it seemed to me that the floor was the only thing that mattered. I could never manage to break my gaze away from it.

Dr. Watson gazes between me and the tip of the needle on the syringe, a puzzled look on his face. He sets the syringe down on a tray next to the bed. “Lie down,” he orders. I don't obey. I sit across from him, terrified and shaking, my mind twisted between my nightmare and the drugs that were almost shot into my veins. “Lie down,?

? Dr. Watson repeats himself. This time with more force.

I lie back slowly. My heart thunders in my chest. My lip quivers. I watch Dr. Watson as he lies down across from me, facing me. “Whh...What...What are you doing?” I ask as a nervous tingle whips through me.

“Trying something different.”

I place my head on my pillow, my eyes never leaving his. “Different?”

“You refused a sedative and sometimes people who have nightmares find comfort in someone sleeping next to them.” How does he know this?

My spine stiffens and my heart races. “You're going to sleep with me?”

“For medicinal purposes only, of course.”

“Oh.” My voice drops to a whisper, but I've realized something. I've stopped crying already. I can't help but feel somewhat disappointed by the medicinal purposes only part of his answer. For some reason I feel drawn to this man. I can't explain why, but some part of me wonders if we might be more alike than he thinks.

“Now go to sleep, Adelaide,” he orders. The tone in his voice is authoritative and adamant.

I yawn and my eyelids grow heavy. “You want to know something, Dr. Watson?”


Tags: Lauren Hammond Asylum Romance