“He’s waiting for you outside her room and you need to speak to him first.” Why? What did that mean? Was Summer angry? We turned a corner and went through onto one of the wards. It smelled too clean and clinical. Henry stood outside a door on the ward and my heart stopped. Summer was the other side of that wall. My heart swelled.
“Lewis,” Henry said and walked toward me. He held his hands up. “Not yet, man, we need to talk.”
I sighed. “Why? I just want to go and see her. Is she okay? Does she not want to see me?”
“Just come to the café with me, and I’ll explain.”
“Henry, I don’t want to sit and have a fucking coffee!”
“Okay, let’s take this into the corridor then.” Take this into the corridor? He sounded like he wanted a damn fight or something. “Lewis, please. For her sake, please. You need to understand what happened before you go in there. She’s not…herself.”
My face fell. “What do you mean she’s not herself?”
“Back up, and I’ll tell you.”
I looked at the door. She was just feet away, but I still couldn’t get to her. I sighed. “Fine. Okay, fine.” I followed him back. Theo stayed behind, going into a room opposite hers. Waiting room maybe? “What then?” I asked, as the ward door closed behind us.
“She’s different.” He frowned. “It’s like she doesn’t properly recognize us. She doesn’t respond that well. All we’ve heard is her asking for Rose, Poppy, and Violet.”
“What?” I frowned, shocked “She wants flowers?”
Henry looked at the floor. “No. They’re the three other girls she was locked up with.” My eyes widened and mouth dropped open. “She said her name was Lily.”
What? That didn’t make sense. I couldn’t get my head around it. Why was she calling herself Lily? “Look, we’ve not got the whole picture. None of them are saying much, but it seems that Brown, or Clover, changed their names.”
“I…” Shaking my head, I tried to make sense of it all. “Clover? What the hell, man? I don’t…”
“Neither do I. Listen, she’s not herself, so don’t expect much. We just need to help her snap out of it, help her remember who she is.” She forgot who she was? What the fuck did he do to her to make her like that?
“I want to see her. Now.” Helping her remember I could do. I just needed to see her, to hold her and smell her. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and magically make everything better.
We stopped at her door and my heart took off.
33
SUMMER
Friday, March 4th (Present)
My whole body felt heavy, like I was made of concrete. A dull pain throbbed through my head. I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t move; it was as if my eyelids had been glued together. What was going on? A dark fog spread across me, and I peacefully drifted back to sleep.
I woke in the dark again; my body still refused to move even an inch. Just open your eyes. Focus on opening your eyes! Voices of strangers surrounded me, and I slowly began to hear what they were saying.
“She’s strong. She’ll be fine.” Me? I didn’t feel strong.
“I thought we’d lost her.” Whose voice was that? My dad’s? Was that him? What happened? As things around me started making sense: the clean, clinical smell—no strong lemon—and the strange but familiar voices of my family. I was out of Clover’s prison and in a hospital. But how?
I blocked everything else out. I could work all that out later; now I needed to focus on waking up. My body didn’t want to respond to the demands I was making, but, finally, I managed to flutter my eyes open for barely a second. A brief ray of bright white light flashed in front of me before it went black again.
A sea of voices filled the room as everyone spoke at the same time. Did they see?
“Summer? Summer?”
Open your eyes, I screamed at myself and tried again, forcing my eyes to open. This time they didn’t close again, but I felt exhausted from the effort. I winced at the bright light. Everything looked blurry, but the room slowly came into focus.
“Summer? Sweetheart?” Mum’s voice sounded so strange. I had remembered her voice only well enough for me to vaguely recognize it. She sobbed, and I tried to smile to soothe her. Being free felt as dreamlike as when I had first entered the cellar. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
I couldn’t talk—I didn’t have enough energy—so I nodded my head as best I could. “I’ll get a doctor,” Henry said. I couldn’t see him, but I had remembered my annoying brother’s voice perfectly. I smiled weakly.
“Oh, you’re okay.” Mum stroked my hair. I turned my head slightly so I was facing her a little better. She looked older, like she had aged eight years in almost eight months. Her hair was almost fully gray and she had deep, dark circles under her eyes. Was that my fault?