I picture her outside the house, her tiny body running through some cold field. Her dainty wrist had slipped through the chain Colin had wrapped around it. She rushes through snow and the weeds that sprout through the December flurry, making it to the road.
“I need help!” she screams in my thoughts.
A car pulls up alongside her, and she fades away into a new vision.
Reality tries to pull me back, but I fight it, desperate to stay with Dollie.
She’s in the hospital, jumping from the high bed and running toward the one to her left.
“No, Baby. You can’t go in there yet,” Mom says, not letting Dollie pull back my curtain.
“But Ambrose.”
“Ambrose will be fine. Daddy and the doctors are with him now.”
I don’t feel fine, and Colin is the only one with me.
Another attempt to shut down takes me somewhere else, back to the blinding white hospital that forces me to keep my eyes closed.
I lie in the bed, Dad at my side, talking too fast and asking far too many questions for me to keep up with. The doctors touch me, and that makes me cringe.
“It’s just bruising. He’ll be fine,” a doctor tells Dad. “I’m just gonna apply some ointment here. It’ll help with the pain.”Eager to avoid the doctor’s touch, my mind shuts down, taking me to a black hole where only I can fit.
I stay there, breathing in the safety it offers.
Colin can’t get in here.
The doctor and the gel can’t get in here.
I’m wet down there. From him. I tell myself it’s just the doctor’s special cream. It isn’t Colin and his mouth.
But I’m safe here… no one can fit, not even tiny Dollie.
Where is Dollie?
My eyes snap open, and I’m back in Colin’s bathroom. The sticky feeling around my crotch dries in the air. My tears on my cheeks do the same, and my mouth moves, begging him not to touch me again.
The grip that Colin has around both of my wrists releases.
“Go take a bath, kid. You’re filthy and disgusting.”
A sick feeling washes over me when he points to the tub in the center of the room, and the promise of vomit is fulfilled when he slaps my rear. I step through the chunks of stomach lining in a trance.
I need to get to the bathtub.
I need to sink beneath the overflowing bubbles.
“Don’t worry about those or the vomit,” he says, dropping a bath sheet over the bubbles that make it to the floor.
I’m not worried about them. I’m only worried about Dollie and how I’ll heal from this enough to protect her.
I scrub at my skin in all the places I know he’s touched me.
“Where’s my sister?” I ask, using her as a float to stay present. “I need to see my sister.”
“You need to try and wash the filth from you first, boy.”
I nod, knowing that Dollie can’t see me like this, can’t see how hurt I am by whatever just happened.
