The Tens, Vanessa Jones [i like reading books .TXT] 📗

do nothing but rest as soon as I get home. I see that is what I need now. And I'll even stop looking for Alex.' Sophie's neck twinged as she heard herself lie to the one person that she felt she could be honest to.

But as Carla gently nodded her head at Sophie, she felt like she was sinking further down a staircase, her shoulders forcing the rest of her body to the ground, her face sagging and her thoughts coming through slower, with longer gaps in between.

Sophie let tears worm out of her eyes. 'I'm so fucking tired Carla.'

'Yes, I see that.' Carla forgot herself for a moment and went to reach across to pat Sophie's head but hesitated and let her hand thump on the blanket. 'Okay, my best advice is to stay here for a little bit. You don't need to move just yet.' She looked at her delicate gold watch. 'I have... patients. I'll attend to them now and, in between, I'll arrange for a doctor or maybe an ambulance, to come and see you. Collect you perhaps. Hopefully, you'll be home in your own bed, resting, by dinner time.' Carla's smile lifted her cheeks and Sophie felt the same reassurance that she felt when she slid into her warm room for her sessions.

But she panicked, she didn't want to stay any longer than she had to, even if it was only an hour or two. 'Oh no, Carla please take me now. You must. Who knows what they will do to me here?'

'You're perfectly safe Sophie. I have known Clive for years and, although their methods seem a little... antiquated... they will look after you until I get someone to collect you.'

'Oh Carla, no. Please,' she begged pathetically.

'Enough,' Carla said sharply which cut off Sophie's wails. 'I simply cannot carry you and you might need medical attention.'

Carla was a good person. She was on her side. She was her therapist, for fuck's sake. Of course, she wasn't having an affair with Alex. Of course, she was only interested in helping Sophie get better and getting her back home. She probably had a duty of care that meant she wasn't even allowed to touch her patients. I must have been so exhausted that my mind was playing absolute havoc on me! Carla isn’t hiding Alex from me. The keyring is just a coincidence, Sophie thought. She'd read about people who even only went two days without sleep and how they had such intense perceptual distortions that it changed them.

The cool relief ran through the blood of her arms. It was just her mind telling her stories because she was so tired. Bone tired. What else had she been telling herself about Alex? Sophie let her mind drift back to a foggy half memory of Alex’s co-worker. How the work he'd been doing, coupled with some bullying from his boss, had stressed him out to the point where he decided to stay up most nights and keep working. After the fourth, or was it fifth— or did it even happen at all?— night his wife found him squatting over their toilet, his hand covered in creamy excrement as he tried to extract a robotic bug out of his arse. He had, somehow, cottoned on to the notion that aliens had implanted something into his anus and they were going to come back down to earth to collect him. He screamed at his wife that he had to get it out and flush it into the sewer system and that the '... bitch didn't understand and never understood him.' Sophie recalled the wife (did Alex tell her this or did she dream it?) saying that it wasn't even that he believed in aliens or the stress or delusions that had encouraged her to leave. It was just that she had seen his own shit on his hand that had so severely repulsed her that she couldn't evoke the initial love for him that she felt. Sophie squeezed her memories to recall where "shit hand guy" was now. Didn't he recover and end up marrying someone he worked with? Or did he kill himself? Perhaps this was all just an episode of The X Files that she once watched.

As she sorted and sifted through her memories and thoughts, putting them into neat little piles, she considered what she would do when she got home. Rest, as she had promised. Enough to get the strength to start searching for Alex again. But this time, she'll be more prepared. She'll eat more, maybe pack a bag and a spare phone. But as she waited and planned, the ambulance didn't come and neither did Carla.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Even though her mind felt like it was holding its breath waiting for Carla to burst back through and take her home, she swore she could start to feel some small movement in her toes. Her legs were coming back to life! She waited a bit and then wiggled them again and it almost seemed like the blanket had rippled. Sophie decided to keep up the pretence that her legs weren't working for as long as she needed to, before she could surge free and run away if she needed to.

The hope she felt was enough for her to catch her breath and summon up a little energy. Carla would understand if she took off and didn’t wait for her and she would be the first person she called when she got home safe, Sophie promised herself. Especially since Carla seemed to be taking her time. Perhaps the woods were harder to find from the road than Sophie originally thought. An ambulance van would have a hard time driving its way in here. Hopefully, the ambulance officers weren’t on foot and lost.

Her planning and excitement were interrupted by guttural sounds. Like a koala's mating groan, throaty calls filled the evening. Please, please