Chapter 75: Figures
Callista.
When I wake up, again, Dr. Haeger tells me what had happened.
I had no memory of the event. In fact, I didn’t remember what happened after he left the room the other day, leaving me alone with Theon. And then thunder had cracked and…
Black. That was all there was. Apparently, I’d forgotten who Theon was and tried to attack the phantom of my sister who was taunting him and attacking him. That’s why my knuckles were busted, and there was a smear of blood on the floor next to me. That’s why I feel so exhausted already, I’d gone head-to-head with a phantom of all things. A hallucination.
As if being like I was already not enough, fate just had to go and put the proverbial cheery on top of the shit-sundae by fucking up my brain.
Figures.
It irked me how I could not remember, frightened me because this was not supposed to happen. And the explanation the doctor gave me chills me to my bones.
“So, it’s an effect of the Chamber of Despair?” I ask him as we walk out of the laboratory. As soon as I woke up, he’d carted me to the labs to run some tests and wrap my knuckles. I felt like a piece of meat during the whole procedure, being prepped and fondled for cooking. They took my blood, my urine, and even some of my spinal fluid. I did not complain even when the procedures felt quite uncomfortable because all of it was a small price to pay to learn what exactly had gone wrong on me, so we could fix it before it got worse.
But they hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary, nothing to say about why I couldn’t transform into my wolf or how I’d miraculously recovered from the blood draining as well as the torture in three days.
I did not know how that had happened. It should be impossible.
And on top of that, the scans didn’t show the damage in my brain. As far as everything was concerned, I ought to be healthy.
But I was not.
“I believe so. All I have at the moment are hypotheses that I came up with after doing extensive research about the Chambers and monitoring your behavior.” Dr. Haeger replies, taking a seat behind his desk after we reach his office.
I wish this whole story wasn’t so bizarre. After hearing the whole thing, I couldn’t help but feel numb about it. I don’t even feel sorry about this happening to me, I just don’t feel.
I know all the emotions are going to hit me later, from the torture, nearly dying, the recovery, being rescued by Theon, and having Theon look so remorseful of his action from before and actually apologizing to me and looking devastated at the prospect of losing me, and not even trying to defend Ruelle because I’m certain that he knows now…by the Goddess, it’s a lot. I’m bottling everything up for now, but when the bottle does get opened (or explode with far too many emotions), it is going to be a teary, snot-filled nightmare.
“How’d you know that I was tortured in the first place?” I ask when I can finally think without feeling like I’m going to overheat like a machine.
The good doctor’s fingers tap on the table in front of him before he speaks.
“In the first 24 hours after leaving a Chamber, your eye color changes.”
Wait, what?
“As soon as the Alpha King brought you here, I noticed how your eyes were more blue than green. At first, I thought it was a trick of light or something along that line, but it stayed that color. In his haste to get you to safety and then treated, Theon did not notice that.” I never thought I’d hear about Theon being that worried about me from anyone, much less Dr. Haeger. “Now, I didn’t know why it was so at first, but I filed the information to research on later. But the color change, coupled with the way you stared unblinking at nothing in particular, I had a suspicion, because I remembered reading something like that when I was in Med school and completing my units about supernatural biology. So, I read more on the subject. When you told us about the black room, my suspicion was confirmed.”
I stare at the desk, replaying his words in my head until they make sense. “So, all in all, does this mean I got some screwed up form of amnesia now?”
“A form of it, that seems to be triggered by rain or storms,” The doctor explains. “Of course, to confirm that we need to wait until another storm passes. So far, we only have one hypothesis. Do you have any memory of the incident in the hospital room?”
“Not really,” I reply. “Just black, like I passed out as soon as it started raining. I remember my head aching something fierce before, and Theon being worried, but that’s it.”
“You injured your knuckles while trying to attack Ruelle’s phantom, but now I see that they are healed.” He comes around the table to examine my hands. “Did the bears do anything else before or after locking you in the Chamber?”
I replay the events of that terrible night in my mind from the start to the finish. I can remember everything that happened before the chamber. It was only after the chamber that my recollection got spotty. “They didn’t do anything except torture me, but…”
But had they done something in the brief period when I was unconscious after being kidnapped from the city? There must’ve been a considerable time there.
“They struck me in the back of my head before kidnapping me,” I tell the elderly doctor. “Maybe they did something then.”
“Even so, what can they do to make you heal like this? I've never heard of such a spell.” He shakes his head in frustration. “I don’t understand it. Miss. Leander, your body functions like none other I have ever seen before, and it frustrates me to no end because we don’t know what would happen at the end of it all. I don’t want you to end up hurt more than you already are because we don’t know how to deal with a stealer.”