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Chapter 20 – I don't need to be here!

The next morning, Jean came to get me and Red. She didn't tell me where we were going.

"Jean can you please just tell me?" I begged.

She shook her head and watched me in the rearview mirror, "You'll see…"

I raised an eyebrow as we pulled into the hospital parking lot, "What are we doing here?"

"You have an appointment." Jean answered.

We walked inside and Jean went up to the receptionist, "We're here to see Doctor Whiteleaf?"

The receptionist looked up and smiled, "Brooklyn Marie Haskin?"

Jean nodded and pointed a thumb at me, "That's her…"

The receptionist leaned forward and smiled at me, I shrunk back, "Well hi sweetheart, could you come over here for a minute please? We just have to stamp you and give you a little wrist band."

"I…" I stammered, "Jean!"

She jumped and sighed, "Just let the lady put the band on you Brooke… we don't know anything yet okay?"

I cried out in protest, Red placed a hand on my shoulder and lead me up to the counter where the lady wrapped a band around my wrist and stamped my hand with a dumb looking blue dinosaur head.

I sighed and we sat back down. After a few minutes, a lady stepped through the white double doors holding a clipboard.

"Brooklyn Haskin?" She asked the room, glancing around.

Jean waved, "Over here."

The lady smiled and asked me to follow her, I did.

"My name is Doctor Whiteleaf, " she explained, sitting me down in a chair and wrapping a little Velcro thing around my arm. "We're just gonna take your blood pressure, then you and I are going to have a little talk…"

"About what…" I asked.

"Oh about whatever you like, Brooke, may I call you Brooke?"

I shrugged, "Whatever you want."

After she took my blood pressure, we walked to a little room, she sat me down on a little comfy couch and she sat in a big leather armchair.

"So, Brooke, what do you like to do?" She asked, plastering a very phony smile on her face. It looked painful.

I shrugged, "Write I guess…"

"Ohh that's cool." She said, "I like writing too, what kinds of things do you write about?"

I felt like I was being interviewed, "Uhh… Fantasy… Romance… Mostly fantasy…"

"What kind of fantasy? Like space ships and stuff?" she continued.

I shook my head, "Unicorns, leprechauns, Harpies, witches, werewolves, otherkin."

She screwed her face up, confused, "What's an otherkin?"

I raised an eyebrow, "Uhh… it's a kind of spirit, based on a certain animal, trapped in a human body… they show animalistic qualities…"

She nodded, "That's very interesting Brooke."

I felt like a child. "I guess so…"

"Are you writing anything right now?" she asked.

I nodded, "Kind of…"

"Oh? What's it about?"

"It's a kind of fantasy I guess…"

"Oh that's cool…"

I hate when adults say, "That's cool"… it's dumb.

"So Brooke…" she began, this was when the real conversation started. "Your friends and family have been telling me you've been acting a little strange lately."

I raised an eyebrow, "Oh?"

She nodded, "They're been saying you've been having nightmares and such… talking in your sleep, fainting a lot, talking nonsense."

I shrugged, "Everyone has nightmares…"

I was getting a little annoyed, why should I tell this strange woman about me?

"Yes Brooke, but about the nonsense stuff, do you know if it comes from anywhere? When you were on morphine, you were calling your friend Jasmine all kinds of different names, William, Jayden, Catherine, Red… I think you called her dad a few times…"

I shrugged, shivering.

"Would you like a blanket?"

I shook my head.

"Okay… well… Jasmine also mentioned something about you seeing some kind of head in your dreams…"

A chill washed over me and I hugged my legs tighter, "It was just a stupid nightmare."

"Could you explain what the place in the dream looked like?"

Her voice faded away and my eyes glazed over, I imagined myself back in that place, the stench rising as steam from the water and invading my nose, coating my lungs with grime.

"It stinks…" I whispered into the hot air. "It's green and beautiful but it stinks… there's a swamp… the muck is broken in one spot, the slime has been disturbed…" I stopped and listened through the thick air, the sounds of birds barely cut through the trees. "It's very hot… theres a rut in the path… like something was dragged… theres marks in the ground… like fingernails… and a gun…. The water is red… the pistol is warm…" I felt myself choke up slightly. "I pick up the gun but I don't know what it is… and I drop it… I drop it off of the rock and into the water… I go to reach for it again… and my fingers get tangled… I think it's in weeds… but it's not… it's in hair… Blonde hair…"

I stopped and watched, Dr. Whiteleaf was leaned forward, watching me with a horrified look, "How old are you?"

I sank back into the dream again, "I'm 5… daddy told me not to go down there… I haven't… I haven't seen mommy in 2 weeks… and I reach down into the water… and I pull her up… Mommy looks scared, and she screams at me, "Catherine! Catherine get back to the house!!" I try to pull free but my fingers are tangled… she won't let me go but she's screaming at me…" I burst into tears and Doctor Whiteleaf leaned forward, hugging me. Her perfume smelled disgusting.

"When did you start having this dream?" She asked.

"I… since I got the yellow paper…" I choked, tears streaming down my face.

Doctor Whiteleaf wrote furiously in her notebook, "What yellow paper?"

I burst into tears, "When dad died… they sent us a yellow paper… to tell us… and I kept it… and I read it every day, Caroline… she… she's the one that gave it to me… and she didn't even care… she didn't hug me… she didn't… she didn't even cry… he was her daddy too…"

Doctor Whiteleaf nodded and wrote some more, staring at me sympathetically.

"Why am I here?" I cried, jumping up, suddenly furious, "I don't need to be here!" I shrieked.

The doctors' eyes widened, "Please sit down, Brooke…"

I screamed, "No! I don't need to be here! I want to leave!" I kicked the wall beside the door and threw it open, running down the hallway, knocking Jean over, who had stood at the sound of my screaming. I ran past Red and barreled down the stairs full speed, Jean yelled after me.

"Fuck you!" I shrieked. I ran right down to the bottom floor.

They won't come down here, they'll be looking for me up on the main floor, they won't know I came down here…

Breathing hard, I burst through the doors at the bottom of the stairs, slipping into a dark hallway, running to the end and bursting through another door. It was cold, and dark.

There was no noise, the room was pitch black except for a small black light at the other end of the room. The area was lightly outlined by blue. Silhouettes of file drawers lined the far wall, all the same height. A few tables lay out in the middle of the room, each occupied by a small operating tray. The one closest to the wall was covered with a white sheet, occupied by someone…

I realized, to my horror that I was in the Morgue…

Of course you're in the Morgue… you stupid girl… the Morgue is always in the basement of a hospital… it's not like they would keep all the dead people on the top floor… that's where they keep the loonies…

I gulped.

Dead people.

A sudden curiosity overwhelmed me, I stared at the table across the room and advanced slowly towards it without a sound.

The thing that had always scared me the most was people dying with their eyes open. I thought it was the most horrible thing that could ever happen… That's why that dream had scared me so badly… but this was real…

The thin white sheet outlined the contours of the body's face almost perfectly. The large nose was the biggest peak on the body besides the belly. Reluctantly I reached forward, grasping the sheet. I can't believe I was This close to a dead body.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, it was deathly quiet. There was 50+ people around me, but I was the only one breathing…

I shuddered at the thought and held my breath.

They won't care I'm here if I don't breathe either…

I gulped and pulled the sheet down slowly.

The silence seemed loud, the quiet scratching of the sheet sliding across the body's hair was deafening. Then, like thunder, a voice boomed from behind me.

"GET OUT!"

I screamed and whirled around, fainting with fright.

I sat up straight in my bed, my eyes snapping open. Red jumped from beside me, "Whoa Brooke, you okay?"

It took me a second to realize it was only a dream. My heart pounded and my chest heaved. I closed my eyes.

Red hugged me, "You scared the hell out of me… did you have a nightmare?"

I took a deep breath and nodded, slumping back onto the pillow, staring at the ceiling.

She asked me what I had dreamed, and I told her all about the the trip to the hospital, but I didn't tell her about going to the morgue.

She listened intently and nodded, pulling me close and hugging me, "Well, you aren't going to any hospitals… okay?"

I smiled a little, "Okay."