Hearing Their Cries

Chapter 7

Cassidy's POV

I lay alone in my cell, pondering whether or not to ask one of the guards to take me back to Liam. I know he made me upset and all, but he was the only one in this place that actually understood me. I had watched doctor after doctor diagnose me with a different illness. I had seen multiple guards watch me have one of my visions and stand back to laugh like I was crazy. I had heard many nurses tell me it was all in my head, but I knew it wasn't. Liam knew it wasn't. We both understood eachother and it felt like in all my life, I had never felt so connected to one person. I had never felt like someone could actually keep me safe from my own mind, but I felt that with Liam.

        He never knew, but we went to school together. I'm positive that he never noticed me though. He was always off working out and playing sports while I was doing improv and preparing for the next school production. We lived in two seperate social groups. I had known him since elementary school, but I only started to notice him in high school. But it could never happen. I was just another stupid freshman obsessed with a senior jock. I had seen him in the crowd during some of my shows, and I always had to fight to keep my voice steady when is eyes were on me. I would go backstage with shaking hands and heavy breathing after my lines and  everyone just thought it to be nerves, which I suppose it was.

        But no matter how many times I tried to convince myself, I never gathered enough courage to talk to him. I was always the scared little freshman until I stepped out on the stage, It's easy to say I love you or look like a fool on stage because everyone knows that its not really you. I could kiss and yell and talk about sex on stage, but in real life I was the opposite.

        It sucked. Lying in my cell knowing that even after all these years, Liam and I still would never work out. He was a doctor I was a patient, and I could get him fired if I tried anything. I remember the night I told him about me. I told him about the dream I had, about a guy drowning. He was drunk and ended up dying in the cold waters of the lake seconds befor I had woken up. So when he asked what was wrong, I was afraid to tell him. But then he did something different than any other worker would have done. He sat on the thin mattress beside me and pulled my head against his chest. He did something that actually made me feel better, rather than telling me to stop screaming and go to sleep, like so many others had done before him. I just felt so vulnerable in that moment. All of my emotions were scattered everywhere. And somewhere in the jumbled up mess I felt a warmth, I felt like I could trust him. So I told him about me and the cries I heard and the dreams I had.

        What he told me shocked me even more than my own dreams did. He had them too. I had a connection with Liam that I had never found with anyone else. My own parents thought I was crazy, but the boy I had crushed on since my freshman year didn't. He knew I told him the truth. Somebody believed me, and it was the best feeling in the world. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and I sould breathe. I didn't have to hold it all in and I could tell him and he wouldn't give me more meds or scribble on his little clipboard. He wasn't here to examine me, He was here to help me.        

        So being mad at Liam was the worst feeling ever, It was worse than being shved in this place. Because I had lost the one person I could relate to. I had lost my rock, the person I could lean on and cry on his shoulder. I could completely break down in front of him without having to worry about being sedated, and I missed it. It had only been a few hours and I missed it so much. All I wanted was to run to his office right now and hug himand apologize, but I knew I could never do that with so many guards watching all the time.

        Clear Waters had to be the worst place that I had ever encountered. Liam mostly saw it from the employee's point of viem. I had layed on the rock hard beds and seen patients be thrown into the cells and mistreated by the guards. I had heard the screams coming from the Black wing. Like I had said, there were the forur colored bands. But from what I had heard, there were patients with black ones the were so dangerous they couldn't be around others. The people that were like this stayed in the black wing, which was guarded by a set of heavy metal bars. I had heard about it from patients talking or overhearing the guards' conversations. There was a man that skinned his wife and daughter. Then there was apparently a woman that tried to eat herself after she ate her newborn baby. There were so many stories I heard, but they never ceased to terrify me. Then there was the mysterious basement. I would see patients be dragged through the entrance and stay there for months, and when they did come out they were thin and bruised and their minds were almost more crazed than before. The patients that left the basement often had to move up a risk level soon afterwards.

        Byt what scared me the most about Clear waters was the fact that one little mishap or mistake could lead to me finding out what happened in that basement. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to ever move down risk levels bacause of the way that this place made me think. The medicines they gave me made my visions worse. Everything was always more vivid and terrifying when I was alone, and with Liam mad at me, that was how I felt.

        I had to talk to Liam at dinner. I would tell him that I overreacted and maybe I would even answer his question from earlier. I didn't know much about what went on at the place, but there was one thing that I knew for sure.

        I needed Liam