Page 61 of Exit Strategy
“I’ll get directly to the point,” the doctor said. “Calanthe has brain damage, but that can be managed. Sadie gave me the heads-up, so I came prepared. I’ve given her pretty much a thirty-day supply of several medications that will help her manage the condition. She will be fine. All she needs is some security, stability, and patience from the people who are around her. I think that the trauma from the emotional torture will be more lasting than the physical damage.”
I saw Callie look down into her cup and I knew she was starting to blame herself, that she had deserved the abuse that Arik had poured out on her so liberally. I stepped forward and kneeled in front of her. “Callie.” I took her hands in mine and looked into her eyes. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
“Thank you, Kurt,” she said. I could feel everyone in the room staring at me.
“Oh, he lays it on thick,” Sadie said, and I thought she was talking to the captain.
“C’mon then, let’s give them a little privacy,” the captain said softly. The doctor agreed, gathered her bag, and gave Callie a pat on the shoulder before she left. The captain and Sadie went to each other, and something silent passed between them. I felt a little jealous of that connection. It was something that I wanted with Callie, and when I looked back to her, she was waiting for me. Her eyes were bright and intense.
“Your friends are really something else,” she said.
“Yeah,” I managed to get out.
“You don’t have to stay on one knee, you know?” There was a bit of blush in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” I apologized.
“You’re so silly, Kurt.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the tip of my nose. “And I am honored, and in no way embarrassed.”
19
Callie…
I hated how my cheeks flamed at the drop of a hat, especially considering once they started, they only flamed harder at how I felt about them flaming in the first place which could sometime lead, I kid you not, to me blushing all the way down to my knees… my knees which Kurt had carefully perched his hands on over the thick, luxurious terrycloth of my borrowed robe.
I was vaguely disappointed in myself that after such luxurious treatment, massages, and facials on Sadie’s behest, that I was the closest to feelingnormalsince this whole ordeal began. Guilt crowded in and I resolutely tried to push it away.
After opening up a bit and confiding in Sadie about my fears about my mental faculties, she had immediately picked up her phone and called Doc Max. Doc Max had a much better bedside manner than the previous doctor and after reviewing the data from the previous doctors records and a few cognitive tests that she’d given me herself, she’d allayed the majority of my fears. Although I still mourned who I was and was still uncertain as to who I was going to be from here on out, it wasn’t quite so terrifying of a thing that I wascompletelychanged, you know?
I think that was what I was afraid of the most, that I was going to be deeply and irrevocablychangedand would lose myself completely at the hands of what Arik had done, and I didn’t want that. I so fiercely wanted to find and be the girl I had beenbefore.I guess there wasn’t any way to go back to that, at least not really.
Sadie had a way about her. A way of explaining things and providing a new perspective. She’d spent a lot of time, catching me up about her situation and I was so impressed by her. I mean, wow… I decided that I wanted that for myself. To have gone through something like I had and to, in her words,choose to be a survivor rather than the victim that asshat tried to make you.
I smiled at Kurt who was getting to his feet in front of me, holding down his hands to help me to my feet like some old-world and gallant gentleman. I wanted to make him proud as much as I wanted to prove to myself that I could be forged into something harder than steel after coming through such a trial by fire.
“Same room as last night?” I asked softly. We had arrived last night, and tonight would be our second night here. He nodded. “This place is so big, it might take me a minute to find my way back to it,” I said with a bit of a nervous laugh.
Doc Max said I may have some mild memory impairment – forgetting words for things and things like directions and getting back to places I had just been. She’d also told me it was alright to be frustrated and that it may not even be all that bad given enough time for the bruising on my brain to heal. She’d given me a bit of unsolicited advice, to allow myself to feel things but to remember not to unpack and live in those feelings for too long. To be gentle with myself, which was honestly easier said than done.
“I’ve got it, Love. Come with me,” he said with a smile, and he tucked my hand into the crook of his arm and led me away from the sitting room and through the expansive mansion, back to the room we shared.
It was nice. Kurt was at ease here which in turn putmeat ease. Sadie had further put me at ease by telling me she was happy for the girl time and when I’d asked her if she was worried about New Eden making their lives miserable, she’d only grinned with a wicked light in her eyes and had said,“That would be a very bad mistake on their part. Very bad.”
Something about the mix of confidence and the way she lit up with such a dark intention made me believe her with an almost shiver down my spine.
I liked Sadie, but some part of me also feared her a little.
I was glad when Kurt returned each time that he did to check in on me, and even more grateful still when we retired for the evening, and it was just me and him again. There was a comfort in his arms that I just couldn’t say I found anywhere else.
He led me up the curving carpeted stairs to the second floor and along the long line of closed identical doors to the one that was ours. He opened it for me as he did just about every door he could get to before I did, and I slipped past him and inside.
The room was a suite of sorts, large with a bed and your typical bedroom furniture, but also with a nook area set aside for a desk – a little office space if you will – along with the room’s own private bath.
It was nice, nicer than some of the mansions that even Arik owned, but that could just be because of the tasteful décor instead of Arik’s penchant for a sort of gaudy baroque knockoff with its gold leaf saturatingeverythingnext to the garish deep burgundies he preferred. He thought it looked decadent and rich. I thought it’d looked like he was trying too hard, although I never in a million years would have said that to his face.
No, this room was done in light creams and muted pastels that made it seem airy and open. I wanted to attribute the design to Sadie, but to be completely honest, I thought her tastes might lean more to the wiry, sharp-witted and barb-tongued man she called her lover; Kyle.
No, this, I think was Kurt’s captain’s doing. This was all Roan.
