As I walked alongside Mandy, my mind was racing with questions of what I
was going to do. Was giving up my life and my freedom the right choice?
There weren’t any options, I thought to myself. This was something I had to
do, Brian’s and Lizz’s lives depended on what I did.
“Okay Nick, you can sit there,” Mandy pointed to a hard chair in front of a
small wooden desk. She placed a thick folder down and walked over and
closed the door behind me. I noticed my name was printed in the upper right
hand corner of the yellow folder.
The room was plain, white walls, dark navy carpet and no decorations on the
walls at all. A white office phone hung by itself on the wall furthest from
the desk.
As Mandy shuffled through the papers, occasionally marking things with her
pen, I swallowed hard, as if it was going to give me the courage I needed to
do what needed to be done.
“I want to make a confession.”
My voice sounded too shaky to me. I cleared my throat and spoke the
sentence again, this time with a touch of confidence to make it sound more
believable.
Mandy looked up from the paperwork, setting her pen down and folded her
hands together. “Okay Nick, what is it you’d like to tell me.”
I made sure my eyes locked directly onto hers. “I intentionally wanted to
hurt Terri. I wanted to see her dead, but my aim wasn’t so damn hot so I
ended maiming her instead. I would have done something to the rest of them
too if I had the chance. I wanted to shoot and kill Marcus but he was a
little stronger than me and he ended up shooting me in the shoulder.”
“What about Kurt, they found dead outside of the plane,” Mandy asked.
I tried to remember that person before I spoke. I recalled Terri kneeling
down by his frozen body, weeping and I remember accusing Lizz of
strangling him with a seatbelt.
“I got sick of his mouth and I took a seatbelt after the crash, and I choked
him. He was a little too hard to kill because of his size. I know you’re
wondering why I’m confessing to you now and why I didn’t say anything to
anyone sooner.”
Mandy didn’t speak, she only nodded.
“I thought I could skate through the system. Play insane and get off of jail
time with mental instabilities and serve a short time here and then be off
scott free. It was only after spending the night here I realized that I
couldn’t stand living here for another hour. Jail has to be far better than
this place.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying Nick?” Mandy asked.
“Yeah, that I’m a murderer and I need to be locked up for the rest of my
life,” I stated quietly. Deep inside of me I was scared to death. Deep inside
of me I wanted to cry out.
Mandy calmly got up and walked over to the telephone and punched in a
three digit number.
“Scott, I need you in conference east. Transfer to ISO nine for a d/c to
county. Thanks.”
“Okay those were all codes to me. I figured we were in conference east, but
the rest went over my head.
“What’s an iso nine and county?”
Mandy answered me and as she wrote notes in my chart. “ISO nine is
isolation unit number nine and county is county jail.”
My heart dropped. I was going back to the county jail. She bought my story.
My life was now officially over.
Brian was happy to see AJ’s face as he rounded the corner. He was starting
to feel sick to his stomach, which he remembered from back when he had his
heart surgery, it was his body’s way of telling him that he had done a little
more than he should have.
“That was a short walk,” AJ commented as he walked alongside Brian.
br>
His physical therapist was holding onto the strap that was around Brian’s
waist. “Just a little further to go, do you think you can still make it?”
Marilyn, the therapist asked.
Biting his lower lip in concentration, Brian nodded. His legs felt like he was
dragging chains behind him.
Brian appeared a little unsettled to AJ. He decided to fish a little to see if
Brian would break and tell him what happened.
“Meet up with autograph seekers in the hallway?”
AJ rushed to Brian’s side to help the therapist guide him back into bed. He
sat on the edge of the bed for a moment. As Brian lifted his legs to get back
into bed, his face contorted with pain.
“You did good Brian, I’ll be back later this afternoon,” the PT stated as she
left the room.
Brian waited until the girl had left before he told AJ what had happened.
“I ran into Lizz while I was out,” Brian stated.
“Oh god, what was she doing out of her room? She’s too sick to be wandering
the halls and besides, she isn’t on this floor. Was she alone?”
“Kinda sorta,” Brian replied. He was vague in his reply because his nurse came
into the room with a syringe.
“Boy Brian, Marilyn was right, you do look like you’re hurting,” the nurse
observed. “Okay, pain scale time. What do you rate it right now?”
“Probably a seven,” Brian sighed.
“Okay, I need you to face your visitor for a sec please.”
AJ winced when he figured Brian was getting the shot. He hated shots,
always had, especially when he saw someone else getting them.
AJ waited until the nurse left the room. “So, kinda sorta meaning she wasn’t
alone?”
Brian straightened his blankets, pulling them up to his chest. “Well, that
woman was....,” he trailed off, not sure what to tell AJ. He remembered the
look in Lizz’s eyes when he was going to tell the crowd outside of the
elevator about Agnes.
“That woman? The one that is always hanging around and stuff!? She was
with Lizz?”
“Agnes,” Brian stated.
“That nasty bitch! She threatened to do something to you guys if she felt
that things weren’t going the way she intended them,” AJ spat.
Brian started feeling drowsy from the pain medication. “AJ, go down to her
room, I don’t trust her and I want Lizz to be safe. Make sure she’s safe,
okay?”
“But what about...” AJ stopped in midsentence when he saw that Brian had
fallen asleep. He stood up and pulled the blankets up to Brian’s chest and
turned the lights off that were shining from the back of the bed. He walked
quietly out of the room towards the elevators.
