Read Online Grayson by Lisa Eugene - Free Book Online

off again?
    I stood for a moment, then a smile pulled the corner of my lips. I turned around and headed for my backpack and returned to the door with a black sharpie. I put a line through the word: NOT
    I stepped back and smiled. That was much better. I don’t know why, but that simple communication, even though it was a negative directive, warmed me from head to toe. I weaved my way to the painting and stared into the riveting sky blue eyes. My fingers move over the textured surface, stopping at his lips. I don’t know what overcame me, but I leaned in and pressed my lips to the canvas.
    “Thank you,” I whispered, and stepped back.
    I don’t know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t stopped Mark. Part of my emotional tumult was my corrosive self-blame. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed myself to be in such a vulnerable position. I wasn’t a naive virgin. I knew what men were about. But I’d used poor judgment Friday night and was hating myself for it. I hadn’t heard from Mark and didn’t expect to. His face had been bloodied, his nose probably broken. I hope it took him a long time to heal.
    My gaze moved to Grayson’s face again. I wasn’t a psychiatric nurse, but I’d done a psych rotation when I was in school and spent a semester at Bellevue hospital. There’d been many patients admitted with schizophrenia. Admittedly, I saw them at their worse, when the disorder had become so consuming they needed to be hospitalized. I squeezed my eyes closed at some of the disturbing memories. My heart always broke seeing the effects of this mentally fracturing disorder.
    Most of the patients I nursed could not discern reality from fiction. I remembered one man who saw a constant parade of green dinosaurs marching down Second Avenue, and another who insisted on wearing a helmet made of tin foil to prevent aliens from reading his thoughts. It was truly heartbreaking because in their minds these events were very real and very frightening. One of my patients had repeatedly tried to commit suicide because he could no longer stand the riot of voices in his head. One of the voices had told him to jump off the roof of an eighty story building in the middle of Midtown, and he’d obeyed, finally putting an end to the clamor—and his life.
    Charles had said that Grayson got worse and stopped taking his medication after his mother’s death. Experiencing trauma, or certain stressful situations could throw a borderline schizophrenic into full blown, florid psychosis. I wondered about Grayson’s relationship with his wife. With his son.
    The man who’d come to my rescue Friday night did not appear psychotic. If anything, he’d seemed wary and had been able to accurately assess that I was in danger. From what I read online about him, he’d been a shark in the banking industry and a prominently successful business man. His mental condition could not have been that impaired by the disorder. Although, I knew the public persona was not always representative of what really transpired in one’s personal life.
    I pivoted and looked around the room, taking inventory of the stifling debris and the shamble. I recalled how dilapidated it was upstairs. Would someone in his right mind live like this?
    With more questions circling in my head, I got to work. My little oasis was growing and I was setting more and more bags aside for garbage. Soon I would need to have Charles send someone to remove them. Unfortunately, I had to do the dusting by hand because the vacuum stopped working. I didn’t know what happened to it. It had been brand new. It probably seized and self destructed when it saw the amount of dust in the house. This slowed my pace, but I was glad I was still making progress. The monotony of the work somehow soothed me, the rhythm an internal lullaby.
    Looking for another flat surface to work on, I spotted an unassembled table. The parts were stacked against a far wall. Later in the week I’d clean it and tackle the assembly.