The wife and I watch each other for a full minute while Shaun starts flipping through the channels. I'm not sure if we're sizing each other up or if we're just... looking, but something inside me twists tighter every second we spend with our eyes locked together. I finally break eye contact with yet another sigh. I don't know how long the husband wants us to keep her and I am completely confident that it's going to feel like an eternity of turmoil. I'm probably going to end up far more miserable than she will.
The day is spent watching Shaun watch TV, watching the wife watch us, and bringing her cups of water that she won't drink. When dinner time rolls around, I'm starving and growing increasingly frustrated. Maybe this is what she does to drive the husband crazy. Maybe he spends his days trying to take care of her only for her to ignore or turn her nose up at his efforts like she's doing to mine. It doesn't matter. It’s obvious that she’s already in very rough condition and I'm not trying to deal with emergency-level dehydration.
I go to the kitchen and refill her cup again. I even put ice in it. I stalk back into the living room and hold it out to her. “Here.”
She looks up at me and then back at the television.
“I'm serious. Drink this water. I don't want to deal with you getting sick because you're stubborn. I'm not getting paid to kill you.”
Her dry lips press into a small line but she still doesn't reach for the cup.
“What? You don't drink tap water? You need that expensive water in the green bottle? Tough. Drink this.”
She moves as far from my outstretched hand and the cup as she can within the confines of the chair.
“Come on. Just a little bit. Just enough to keep your kidneys from becoming a problem.”
She glares at me and I realize that we've now got Shaun's full attention as he turns toward our battle of wills.
“Do we have any bottled water?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “And even if we did, she'd still get to drink tap water out of this cup. Drink the water, Larken.”
She flinches at the use of her name, but she doesn't even glance at the cup. She just glares at me even harder.
“What's the problem?” Shaun asks.
“She's a stubborn, spoiled, little princess,” I huff. “That's the problem.”
Her eyes narrow and Shaun laughs.
I can feel true irritation begin to wrap its way around my shoulders. “Fine. You don't want to drink, don't. But don't expect me to do anything when you start getting sick. You're already on your way to dehydration.”
She looks away from me and presses herself back into the chair as much as she can and adjusts her feet and legs so that they're tucked underneath her. The urge to launch the contents of the cup at her makes my eye twitch. I don't do it, instead I firmly place the cup on the coffee table and drop into the other chair on the other side of the couch.
Shaun is still staring at her. “When was the last time you drank anything?”
“Why do you care?” she asks sullenly. “You're just doing a job, right?”
“I care because your stubborn ass will make my job harder if you get sick. Just answer the question.”
She huffs, raising her chin. “Yesterday.”
Shaun smiles at her. “Then you're not in trouble yet. You're drying out but you're not too far gone. You'll drink when you get thirsty.”
“No, I won't. I won't drink anything you give me.”
He stops smiling and she balks at the sudden and stark change in his expression. “You will.” Then he turns back to the football game he was watching.
We have our next issue around midnight. I assumed we'd take turns sleeping to keep an eye on her. Just because she's been sitting there quietly this whole time doesn't mean I trust her not to shred her wrists and hands to get free and make a run for it if we take our eyes off her long enough. We are experiencing two impasses right now. Both should be relatively easy to deal with, but I'm beginning to understand that nothing is going to be easy with this woman.
She hasn't been to the bathroom all day. Not once. That's a stubborn-ass problem that will turn into a medical problem if we don't get a handle on it. She still hasn't had anything to drink. She also turned down the food I brought her. And now we have to decide whether or not we're going to leave her on the chair or put her somewhere more secure to sleep for the night.
I don't know why she's refusing food and water. Maybe it's some kind of power play. Maybe she's trying to make herself sick because she believes that we'll take her to the hospital where she can attempt an escape, despite what we've told her. That's not happening. She's staying inside this house until the husband calls her home, even if I have to hold her head under water to get her to drink it. She can go for a while without food, but going without water isn't an option.
I scrub the tops of my thighs with my palms and stand up. “You want the first shift?”
Shaun looks up at me. “Shift?”
