Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(67)

What were the chances…? “Doctor Stein, is her name Pamela, by any chance?”

Doctor Stein stilled. “I can’t discuss my patient or her experiences with you any further. I don’t feel that it would do any good, and I won’t violate her privacy as I wouldn’t violate yours. Now, let’s talk about what you wrote here.”

I flashed a victorious Cheshire cat grin. “Does she mention the Keeper as well? Has she mentioned me?”

Doctor Stein shook her head. “You aren’t listening today, Carmen. Unless you’re willing to focus and work to get better, you’re wasting my time. I refuse to go over this with you again. There is no Keeper of Crows.” Unable to hide that she was flustered, Stein hit a button on her phone and called for the orderlies to remove me from her office.

“We made a lot of progress today, Doctor. Thank you.” I smiled as I was wrenched from the room by two large males who obviously worked out. Those bastards were strong.

I clawed toward her, trying to wriggle my arms out of their steely grips. “I know you know he’s real! He is real! It was all real! It happened! I’m not CRAZY! I AM NOT CRAZY!” I screamed, kicking out at her desk. Her face was one of shocked horror and I loved it.

The orderlies threw me in my room and locked the door. Alone, I paced until I couldn’t stand walking on the same twelve tiles anymore. I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the ceiling with a smile on my face. Pam didn’t forget me, after all.





31





“We’re going to try Lithium.” Those words bounced around in my mind several times each day. Every time the nausea started, I made one of my frequent trips to the bathroom where I wasn’t sure which was more urgent: the vomit rising from my stomach, or the diarrhea I could barely control. Adding to the fun, the medicine made my legs swell and my tongue feel dry as the desert.

Doctor Stein was adamant that my experiences weren’t real; so much so, that I began to believe her. Maybe her other patient really wasn’t named Pamela. Maybe I imagined everything. After all, I’d only been in the hospital a short time. That information was in black and white. I saw the medical charts.

After telling Stein that I’d only believe her if she showed me proof, she called the hospital, obtained my signature for the medical release, and they faxed bills and records of my stay to her office. She personally delivered the file to my room and I spent hours combing through dates and treatments, diagnoses and nurse’s notes. Also in the file was a motor vehicle accident report. It said I lost control on the highway, flipping my car. The ambulance had taken me from the scene of the crash to the hospital.

The hospital report said that I was in intensive care for twenty-eight days, transferred to a room on the psychiatric floor for another week, and then released into the care of the mental institution in which I now sat.

In the end, it documented my entire journey. The truth was in black and white ink. The next day during our session, she produced my mother’s death certificate. The cause of death did not read suicide, overdose, or anything about pills or alcoholism. There were no notes about anti-depressants, or that my mom was on any medication at all. It said she’d had an aortic aneurysm and the main wall of her aorta had weakened, thinned, and then collapsed. Doctor Stein stared at me from across her desk and gently pushed a small pile of paper toward me. The papers were Google search results regarding the condition. I took comfort in the fact that she would have died instantly; she didn’t suffer. But did Father use his connections to alter the records?

When I voiced that concern, Stein was ready for it. “Occam’s Razor.”

The simplest answer was probably the correct one.

“So, she died from a heart issue?” I asked tentatively. My head was filled with fog. “Could that really be true?”

“You tell me,” she answered gently, smiling.

I brought my file with me to that session. “This says I was in a car accident; that I met friends at The Castle and wrecked on the way home. No alcohol or drugs were found in my system. Did I go to rehab at all?”

Stein shook her head. “It never happened. There isn’t even a facility named Sunny Bridge in the state of California. There is one in Rhode Island, but it’s a nursing home.” She sat back in her seat. “Carmen, you never went to rehab, and there isn’t a Doctor by the name of Verlund Coleman in the United States. Never has been. I checked. Twice.”

Doc wasn’t real and Sunny Bridge didn’t exist. I felt like I’d been sucked into a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “There is no Pamela?”

She shook her head, pursing her lips. “There is no Pamela,” she whispered gently. “You keep saying I reacted when you mentioned that name, but Carmen, I didn’t. I have no patient named Pamela. The last time I saw a patient named Pamela was six years ago, and she was treated for schizophrenia. She had no near-death experience to speak of.”

I clutched my temples, pushing them and my head to get things straight. Weren’t they straight already? Nothing made sense, so no. They weren’t.

I was Carmen Elaine Kennedy.

My father was running for President.

My mother was dead. She killed herself.

I was in Purgatory.

It was real.

I killed the devil.

It happened.