Limerence; Draco Malfoy

Chapter Sixty-Three: Asylum

Violet

It felt like slow, mental torture.

My senses burst into life before my body did. First thing that hit me was a familiar sterile, hospital scent. Then the steady pulse of a heart monitor. Cold and scratchy bedsheets brushing against my skin. The murmur of voices, of echoing footsteps, of life.

I did not open my eyes. Refused to.

I am dead, I thought stubbornly.

Instead of moving, or even thinking, I stayed focussing on the voices. Strained my ears to catch onto the tail end of their cold conversation.

"-- Yes, he said she's one in a million,"

"The girl on the bed down there? Sleeping now?"

Muffled questions. Hushed and mysterious. A burst of skin-crawling laughter.

". . . and that most often people don't even survive such a severe fall like that, let alone recover fully. That girl has been blessed with a miracle and she doesn't even know it."

"Yeah, no -- it's just bizarre. And I can't help but feel they must have made a mistake. You can't just recover from paralysis like that. Well, you can, but the chances are--"

"Impossible? Yes. As I said, miracle!"

I frowned, eyes still squeezed shut. Paralysed. I was supposed to be paralysed.

But sure enough, my legs still moved at my own will when I tested them out under the bedsheets. They were still a little sore, a little stiff, but otherwise they felt fine.

Instead of basking in relief, I tightened my fists onto the bedsheets and tried not to think. I didn't dare think. Because I couldn't face reality just yet, or rifle through those memories. I can't I can't I can't.

So I poured all my attention elsewhere: on the conversation of what I assumed was between two of the hospital staff.

"Yes, they've moved her here permanantly. We're awaiting for a psychiatrist to asses her properly, although I personally think it's obvious just from looking at her medical history. Her mother was a schizophrenic, too."

"Hang on -- is that, is Violet Lockwood the girl the others were telling me about?"

"The one woke up in the middle of the night screaming the entire ward down? Yeah, yeah-- in complete hysterics, she was. Screaming about magic and witchcraft -- kept muttering about all sorts of nonesense. My colleage spoke to her briefly and she agrees with my verdict: total nutjob. But you know how it is these days, you can't just lock them away. It's all assesment this and assesment that. Bloody waste of time, it is. The girl's clearly stark raving mad."

"Hmmm, she's only what? Eighteen? She had no mental problems prior to this?"

"No, but as I said, her mother."

"Yes, yes. . . I see. Well, now that she's in a stable condition I'll drop her off at the secure unit. No family I need to ring?"

"Oh good lord, her family have washed their hands of her, and I can't blame them," There was a ripple of cold laughter. "It's best she stays in here indefinitely: it's not safe for people with dellusions that strong to be out in the real world--"

Their gossip faded away, because whilst they'd been bitching about me I'd slipped out of my narrow, hospital bed and had crept over to the curtain which were pulled around it. The two members of staff stood talking to the right. I prayed that they'd be too distracted to notice me making my escape.