Page 2 of Devoured

“There’s nothing to tell.”I sighed.

“The guards at the County jail said you’ve been seeing someone. Someone who isn’t there.”

My jaw tightened. Of course they’d told her. Privacy was just another thing you gave up when they locked you in County.

“My husband,”I said finally.

“Your deceased husband.”She corrected me.

Deceased.

Such a clean word for what Theo was.

“He stands in the window. Talks without talking. Shows me things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“What he looks like now.”I replied.

Her pen scratched across paper. “These visions started after your arrest?”

I took a deep sigh and then spoke. “They started when I stopped pretending he was gone.”

More writing. More questions. How long had I been seeing him? Did I hear other voices? Had I tried to hurt myself before?

She kept her tone neutral, professional, like we were discussing the weather instead of how I’d tried to open my veins with makeshift tools.

“What you’re experiencing sounds like trauma manifesting as hallucinations,”she concluded. “Your mind is trying to process what happened—the guilt, the violence, the sudden life change. It’s creating these visions as a way to cope.”

I almost laughed. Cope. Like seeing my dead husband’s ghost was some kind of healing mechanism.

“The human mind can do extraordinary things under stress,”she continued. “But these visions aren’t real. They’re symptoms we can treat.”

“With pills?”I shifted in the hospital bed.

“Medication can help, yes. Along with therapy. We need to process your trauma in a safe environment.”

She prescribed something with a name I couldn’t pronounce. Little white pills that would make the visions stop, she promised. Help me sleep without dreams. Let my mind rest from its guilt.

“Will they make him go away?”

She paused. Then said, “The hallucinations should decrease, yes. Eventually stop entirely.”

“But will he go away?”I asked the question looking dead into her eyes. Something in my voice, in my eyes must have worried her because she set down the pen.

“Zahra, your husband is gone. What you’re seeing is a projection of your own guilt and trauma. Once we address those underlying issues, the visions will stop.”

I nodded. Let her think I believed her.

∞∞∞

I was taken back to County jail a week later. The cell looked different. Bigger somehow, until I realized why. They’d taken the metal cot while I was gone.

I was left with a thin mattress and a scratchy blanket. The pillow was flat as paper, stuffed with something that crunched when I touched it. Everything here was designed to keep me alive—whether I wanted to be or not.

I sat in the middle of the mattress and pulled my knees to my chest. The bandage on my wrist had been changed that morning, fresh white gauze wrapped tight as a shackle.

The first pill came with dinner. A paper cup, one white tablet rolling around at the bottom. The guard watched me take it, then checked my mouth to make sure I’d swallowed.