Sleeping With The Enemy Page 8

  He walked around for a long time, and still couldn’t find a reason why things had to suddenly go off track when he had reached the finest moment of his life.

  Seventeen

  She was trapped inside a big water tank made of glass. The top was shut tight with a lid. She pushed hard against the lid but it didn’t move. She was holding her breath in her lungs, and she felt them burn under the increased pressure of being denied oxygen. She pushed with all the energy left in her against the lid, but the lid refused to budge. She felt her lungs give up and her mouth begin to open voluntarily. Water rushed into her and she choked…

  She awakened with an agonized scream.

  Moments later the door burst open and Paulina flung herself into the room with a deeply concerned look on her face. She went to Rosina and sat next to her on the bed. ‘Rosie, what’s wrong?’

  Rosin choked. ‘I can’t breathe…can’t breathe!’ she gasped painfully and fell off the bed.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Paulina panicked. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No,’ Rosina tried to get out of the bed. ‘I’m…fine…I’m fine.’ Her feet were on the floor now. She rose up. A dizzy spell caused her head to spin. The room revolved around her in circles. She closed her eyes and tried to fight it, but the dizziness refused to break free.

  Then blackness.

  * * * * *

  In her room at the private hospital, Rosina lay awake, staring with unseeing eyes at the ceiling. She was heavily sedated, but she could see her beloved sister, Paulina, sitting there next to her on the bed.

  ‘Paulina,’ she said in a dry, parched voice. ‘I was dizzy…I fell…’ her voice trailed off.

  ‘Ssh,’ Paulina hushed. ‘Don’t talk. You’ll be fine.’

  A moment of silence passed.

  Rosina spoke again. Paulie?’

  ‘Huh, sweetheart?’

  ‘Don’t tell Ferdinand…please don’t tell him about me…’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Promise?’

  Paulina searched Rosina’s face until their eyes locked. She raised her sister’s left hand to her lips and kissed it affectionately. ‘I promise.’

  * * * * *

  The doorbell rang.

  He went quickly to it, praying and hoping against all hope that when he opened it he would find her standing there outside.

  It was not her though. It was her sister. Standing there with a very distraught face. He recognized her from the portrait of her he had seen at Rosina’s apartment. ‘Mr. Imposimato?’ she enquired when he opened the door.

  ‘Yes?’ he answered concernedly, for some reason his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  ‘My sister…Rosie…is very ill—.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked with growing concern, and then remembered his manners and invited her inside the apartment. ‘Sorry, please come in—.’

  ‘No,’ she quickly declined. ‘I can’t stay. Rosina needs me.’

  ‘Where’s—.’

  ‘She’s in hospital. She begged me not to say anything to you, but I thought it was in your best interests to know.’

  ‘I thank you,’ he said meaningfully.

  ‘Bye,’ she said, turning to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, stopping her with a hand on her arm. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  * * * * *

  She opened her eyes from deep sleep and saw him sitting there on the bed next to her. Her face transformed into an expression of rage, which swiftly transmuted itself into murderous rage.

  ‘No,’ she yelled. ‘Go away!’

  She attacked him, pummeling at him with her feeble fists angrily. He grabbed her wrists and tried to calm her, but she fought him wildly, and her manic strength surprised him. She broke free of his hold and clawed at his face with her fingers.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Paulina, get him out here! I don’t want to see you!’

  ‘Alright,’ he surrendered, rising up and moving back from the bed. The agony of hurt was etched in his face.

  Rosina picked up a glass of water from her bedside table and hurled it vehemently at him. It crashed against his forehead and cut him badly. Momentarily blood trickled from a gash the glass had made on his face.

  At that precise moment, nurses burst noisily into the room and forced him out. He stood outside the room and looked in through the glass windows as they tried to calm Rosina by drugging her.

  Blood dropped from the gash on his forehead and fell on his shirt. He did not feel the pain. The pain he felt was on the inside. He felt helpless. He stood there and died a million times, watching the love of his life fighting for her sanity, and knowing that he had driven her to the edge of reason. He was guilty, he knew, but he also wanted to hold her in his arms and make her forgive her.

  He stood there and felt helpless, and with each dying moment of his increasingly worthless life, he knew that he would always love her more than she could ever hate him.

  * * * * *

  She was heavily sedated. She opened her eyes but they held no life. They were the dead eyes of a zombie. She noticed him sitting there on the bed next to her and slowly pulled herself to sit up.

  They looked at each other for a long time and didn’t speak.

  He took her left hand in his hands and stroked it gently, affectionately. ‘What happened, Rosina?’

  She responded in a weak, tired voice. ‘My mind told my body to commit suicide, but my body refused…so my mind punished my body…’ She looked down.

  He reached forward to stroke her hair but she flinched back with such severity that he shamefully drew back his hand.

  A moment of tense silence passed in the room.

  It was broken by her, pulling her hand from his grip. ‘I think it will be best for both of us if you stop coming here.’

  ‘No, Rosina.’ It was a cry of agony, a plea for reason to come to her mind. ‘You cannot do that to me…to us.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘You have to think properly about this—.’

  She glared at him. ‘I’m irrational, practically losing my mind…and you want me to be accountable for my actions?’

  He didn’t respond immediately. Looked down at his hands pensively, then brought his gaze back to her eyes. ‘You told me once that to love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.’ He paused and swallowed hard. ‘I would like to know what happened.’

  ‘I jumped high for joy, and you removed the ground from beneath my feet.’ Tears fell in rush from her eyes and she fell back on the bed and sobbed bitterly, covering her face in her hands.

  He wanted to take her in his arms, but he was also afraid of her reaction to his touching her. He sat there and felt the tears race down his face.

  * * * * *

  She came to him in his dreams.

  She was wearing a pretty floral dress and was barefooted. He stared at the milky white of her feet and loved her. She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. She looked beautiful and adorable, like an exotic princess he wanted badly but couldn’t have.

  She was holding a mirror close to her face. For a long time she gazed into the mirror, until he was forced to ask her, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m looking in the mirror, trying to find myself, and it hurts me a lot because I can’t see myself.’

  He swallowed hard and didn’t respond.

  She placed the mirror down and looked at him. Her eyes were lifeless. He felt a wave of mixed desire and sympathy overpower him, but he didn’t move to hold her.

  ‘I’m trying to let go of you,’ she said quietly. ‘But my heart won’t permit me to.’

  A powerful emotion overcame him and he fought back the tears that stung his eyes, but his eyes clouded and she saw the hurt in them, but she was too far gone to accept any mutual grief with him. She wanted him as far away from her life as possible.

  ‘I want you to go away. Please leave me alone, Ferdinando. If
you care about me at all you’ll understand that I don’t want you now,’ she said in a low, quiet, grief-stricken voice.

  He felt his heart constrict and it became hard to breathe. It was such a painful feeling he actually hoped the ground would open up and swallow him, to save him from this churning, merciless torment he was facing.

  It is very painful to have to accept rejection by someone your heart has decided to love entirely, wholesomely, without restraint. It is a feeling worse than death, because at least death comes once – it doesn’t stay with the victim forever.

  It is a pain greater than anything you have ever felt. It is a torment worse than the worst grief you’ve ever gone through. It is a pain that will not let go of you. It is a pain that will never let go of you…until and unless you do something about it.

  He looked into her eyes, and he saw the loathing they held for him.

  He went forward to her and stood very close to her. For a long moment they looked at each other. A tear rolled freely down the left side of his face. He swallowed hard and said to her, ‘Rosina, I don’t want to harm you. I mean that. And I don’t have much to say to you. What I want to say to you is that please don’t be afraid of me…I won’t harm you. Please, do not be afraid of me.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Please, I’m begging you, do not be afraid of me,’ he repeated.

  Suddenly he grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. He embraced her in a strong hug. She didn’t fight. Didn’t move. Just buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

  He cried with her. ‘Don’t be afraid of me,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t be afraid of me.’

  He held her like that and promised himself that he would never let her go. And he prayed to the heavens that he would not wake up from this dream.

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