"Does anybody here like to write?" a nurse asked, popping her head into the room with a book in hand, its cover plain and dark.
Boris, tired of making pointless small talk with his charge and offering false reassurances, glanced up at the nurse but didn’t say anything.
"What do you mean?" Janelle asked.
"One of the patients who checked out left behind a brand-new journal. We called them, but they said it wasn't worth the trip back to retrieve it. So if anyone wants it, it's yours."
Boris nodded towards Janelle and said, "Give it to her. She told me she's bored and needs something to do. Maybe she can come up with some cute poems."
The nurse chuckled at that. The police department had actually purchased the journal, with its plain navy blue cover and lined pages, and then coached the nurse to give it to Janelle with the story of the fictitious ex-patient leaving it behind. While Janelle was showering or having physical therapy, someone would photocopy any pages she’d written. The idea was to see if she would write about anything they didn’t already know.
Janelle accepted the journal and set it down on the table beside her bed.
"Ever kept a journal before?" Boris asked after the nurse left, knowing full well what the answer was.
Janelle nodded. "I had one for six or seven years that the damn media stole, and I ended up having to sue them for it."
"The media stole it?" Boris asked, playing dumb.
Janelle nodded again. "I had it backed up online, and they hacked it. I don't even know how they knew I used that particular site or that it was there, but they published it on their site without my permission, sharing with the world all my personal thoughts and experiences that most of us prefer to keep private. Plus, I had a stupid little short story someone convinced me to write."
"Oh, yeah?"
"In the end, it was agreed that they could keep the story, but they had to remove my journal. So, I got a little money, and they got rid of it. You haven’t heard about that?"
"Nope," Boris said, feigning interest and surprise. But Janelle wasn’t smart enough to realize that nothing on the internet is ever deleted permanently. In fact, he had read every word of her demented, delusional, and downright twisted journal. Janelle was a dreamer who could do no wrong in her eyes—it was the rest of the world that was messed up. And the blatant hatred she had for people of color was so obvious! The woman seemed to hate everyone different from her, so it was surprising that she supported the LGBTQ+ community. She wrote about her attraction to some women, so maybe it was her own desires for other women that kept her from hating them too. She hated what she couldn't relate to.
He got a kick out of the sicko’s sexual frustrations. He couldn’t imagine always wanting what he could never have and being rejected by his own spouse. That had to be humiliating. But he got it. He understood why her husband wouldn’t touch her. Then to have to get some stranger to knock her up…how crazy was that? He couldn’t wait to see what nonsense she would write in this new journal.
However, as Boris settled in to read a sports magazine, he sensed that Janelle was hesitant to write in the journal. It was as if she feared her thoughts and feelings would once again be exposed and read by others. He wondered if this was because she had something to hide or if she had simply become more private due to previous experiences.
He studied her out of his peripheral vision, unable to comprehend how she could have recently performed in any kind of dance or gymnastics, yet she had. He’d seen the videos himself. The whole scene seemed so macabre, clownish, freakish, foolish, and just plain weird—like a freakshow straight out of the circus. Right or wrong, he laughed more than he praised her talent, which was pretty basic, to be honest.
In one interview, he remembered her being asked if she was in denial of her age and abilities.
"Well, if I'm actually doing something I'm accused of being in denial about, then how can that be denial?" she had countered. "And did it ever occur to you that this thing you call denial is actually confidence?"
Janelle just lay there, seemingly lost in thought in her own little world, when another nurse entered the room to inform her that a local TV station wanted to do an interview with her.
Janelle’s eyes widened. "You're kidding me! How did they find me?"
"Relax," said Boris. "There are only so many hospitals in the area. Of course, they were able to narrow it down."
"But now the sickos that are still out there know exactly where I am!"
"You’re fine."
"We won't allow the media into your room without your permission," the nurse said.
"Absolutely not," Janelle said firmly. "I've dealt with the media before, and trust me when I say they’re great at twisting people’s words. They’ll just pull out what I say and plug in what they want to believe."
"Okay," said the nurse. "No problem. I'll go tell them, but meanwhile, here’s a list of the questions they wanted to ask you."
Janelle took the sheet of paper as if it might bite her and studied the questions. She snorted in disgust as the nurse left, reading some of the questions to Boris. "Can you believe they’re asking about my past issues with the law? That’s so petty and insignificant compared to this."
Boris said nothing.
"As if these things I was accused of, some of which were trumped up if not completely fabricated, have anything to do with what’s going on right now."
"Let me see it," said Boris before Janelle could finish ranting.
Janelle handed him the paper. "I really don't like that one about whether or not I believe you guys are going to keep your end of the deal."
"Yeah, that’s just the media for you, as you know," Boris said.
"You’re going to keep your end of the deal, alright, because I’m going to make sure of that much. The slightest doubt and I’m gone—you’ll never see me again."
Boris was getting highly annoyed. "Don’t let them get to you. You’ve been told exactly what to expect. We can’t just go around lying to everyone, or else no one will trust us."
"But that’s what happened to me before. Between that and what I just went through, it’s put a damper on my trust in just about everyone and everything."
And as horrible as what you went through may have been, Boris thought to himself, it won't be the last time you were lied to.
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