The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

February

“You’re not schizophrenic.”

Ten years.

I’ve waited ten years for someone other than Rosemary Donahue to say those words to me. For someone that was alive and fucking competent to confirm what I’d known for so long.

My gaze is unfazed by this statement. I hold eye contact with Jennifer L. Tako of Evergreen Health Institution. For almost a year, I’ve seen her three days every week. This short, gray-haired woman with a port-wine stain birthmark just beneath her left eye has told me the only thing I’ve ever needed to hear since I was young.

I wait. Wait for several minutes in comfortable silence. Wait for a weight to be lifted, to experience a sense of validation, but that never comes. I can’t bring myself to feel anything other than acceptance.

A lot of my life had been spent living a lie crafted to protect others. Some who didn’t deserve my silence and others who would always be given it freely. And now, I have to sit here with this truth—my truth—and try to make sense of what that means for my future.

Would I know how to live a life that wasn’t a lie?

Jennifer adjusts the thin oval-shaped glasses on the bridge of her nose, crossing one dainty leg over the other, a sour expression on her face. I wonder if therapists know they give us the tools to read them too.

“I’m unsure of what kind of doctor thought this diagnosis was okay. It was extremely reckless and warranted a review of his medical license.” Her gaze softens a bit as she looks at me across the coffee table between us. “I’m sorry we can never ask him his reasoning, Silas. You, at the very least, deserve an explanation.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, holding my tongue.

Ponderosa Springs, a town she will never understand, will go to drastic measures to cover up their vile secrets and corruption. There isn’t a Hippocratic oath in the world strong enough to prevent anyone, including a doctor, from lying to avoid backlash.

“Yeah,” I say plainly. “Me too.”

There are no lingering questions for that doctor. I know why he lied to my parents, why he forged medical reports to fit his diagnosis. I’m only sorry that he died in a boating accident before I could make him swallow his own kneecaps for what he’d done to her.

Of course, Jennifer doesn’t know any of this. Doesn’t need to in order to properly evaluate me. No one would ever know why Ronald Brewer made loving parents and a vicious town believe a twelve-year-old boy had schizophrenia.

A secret. An oath I’d vowed to take to my grave. To this day, I’ve kept my word to her. This was the only way I could still protect her.

Although my promise of keeping her safe had been broken the day of her death, I swore to her tombstone that no one would get away with hurting Rosemary Donahue. Never again.

The price on Stephen Sinclair’s head was a pound of flesh, and I’d spit in the face of God to get it.

“I want to say I’m surprised by your reaction,” Jennifer notes, tilting her head a bit. “But since I met you, Silas Hawthorne, you’ve always been a calm surface of water. No one knows the depths below, do they?”

The corner of my lip twitches in response.

“How long have you known you weren’t schizophrenic?”

I relax my back into the leather chair, looking around the glass-and-steel office as I cross my arms across my broad chest and release a heavy breath.

“Since I was fifteen.”

I knew when I was twelve; I knew what I saw, but they had been so good at convincing me it was all my imagination. They were adamant. “There is no girl. There was never a girl,” they told me.

She did not exist. Her voice is in your head. A sick little game my mind played with me.

Over and over again.

It didn’t matter what I said, no one ever believed me.

So I gave in and got quiet. Why speak if no one put weight to the words you said? Maybe they’d conditioned me so well I’d even believed them for a short time.

“Is that when you stopped taking the medicine?”

I nod slowly. “Vitamin B pills.”

A smile spreads across her lips. I’m sure my therapist isn’t supposed to condone swapping meds, but Jen’s always been cool like that, and I think, given my less-than-common situation, a smile is warranted.

“The episode I had, when I—” I pause, hating myself for needing to ask. Hating that they had made me doubt my mind enough for me to need reassurance. “When I was committed here, that episode, what was it?”

There are flashes of last spring that I remember, fragments of a nightmare. Sage Donahue returning to Ponderosa Springs after her sister’s death. The voices that came to me for the first time in my life, watching the home of Frank Donahue go up in flames while demons danced among them.

I see these moments, pieces, and half the time, it’s like it wasn’t even me. I’m simply watching a movie, and the main character happens to look like me.

“The episode that led to your admission was a psychotic break. You experienced an unimaginable trauma, the death of someone you were emotionally tethered to. That damage, coupled with years of no one believing you, sent you into a spiral that couldn’t have stopped even if you wanted it to. It’s an unfortunate coincidence, but it’s not schizophrenia.”

Jennifer flips through the papers on her lap, furrowing her eyebrows as she continues talking.

“If I had to guess, neither was the episode they recorded when you were young. There is barely any information in Dr. Brewer’s records, not nearly enough to conclude such a serious diagnosis at that age.”

I scoff, unable to help myself.

My first episode.

I was a kid screaming for help. Not because of a hallucination or delusion. No one was listening to me; they wouldn’t hear me. I was panicked, scared, and no one would believe what I had seen.

“From what I’ve gathered from your parents and the scarce records, you were showing early signs of depression, which is probably why your parents brought you to a doctor to begin with. They were afraid of your sudden behavior change, and I think they always had the best intentions for you. They still do, but their trust was misplaced. I’m sorry you were the one to pay for that, Silas.”

I bring my gaze back to Jenn, knowing she means her apology. That a piece of her cares for me and what happened. A genuine concern for my health got her to this conclusion.

This explanation. An answer.

Reassurance that I hate to admit I needed.

When I was committed here, I believed everything they ever said about me. Every whisper, every lie, rumor, and stretched truth.

Because when Sage came back and Rosemary’s one-year anniversary was fast approaching, I started seeing things, hearing them in my ear. I saw them, and they ate at me until I thought they were real. Until I trusted what they told me and put weight in their false words.

I thought, holy fucking shit, they were right—I have schizophrenia, and I haven’t been on meds since freshman year of high school.

My mind became a terrifying place. I mean, it had been before that, but this was different. That year, it sprouted lethal thorns from nefarious roots. My mind leaked black slime that oozed into every pore and choked me with deception.

It twisted and crawled, slithered with creatures too scary for most to imagine. My monster, my demons, the shadows that skidded off the walls and took on humanoid shapes, they would paralyze people with fear.

Even though they’d left and have yet to return since my hospitalization, I’d accepted the memory of their existence, grown used to it. I realized I would always be a much scarier beast than my mind and the evil it can produce.

I’m frightfully worse.

Because I am and have always been real.

“Are you going to be the one to tell the townsfolk of Ponderosa Springs that the nickname ‘Schizo’ no longer applies?”

I lean forward, placing my elbows on my thighs, watching Jennifer’s face twist with sadness. The corners of her eyes wrinkle as she tries to give me a gentle, reassuring smile.

How awful, she’s thinking, that this poor boy lived through all this.

“I think your friends and family can help break the news once you are released from here.”

Without warning, my body tenses up, shoulders tightening and gut twisting.

“No.”

Clear as possible, no room for question, no.

“Silas.” Her eyebrows raise to her hairline in surprise. “I can provide extensive medical proof and data I’ve gathered over your stay here. I am your proof of this false diagnosis.”

An itch builds in my throat, scratching and clawing at the flesh in my mouth. Cotton is lodged deep in my airway, and my hands in front of me weave together. Out of habit, I tap my thumbs.

I shake my head. “I don’t want to tell them. Not yet. I’m not—” I furrow my eyebrows, rolling my lips together. “Doctor-patient confidentiality. I’m not telling anyone, and neither are you.”

Jennifer watches me silently, analyzing every little movement and facial expression, I’m sure. Regardless of what her degree tells her about my behavior, I won’t change my mind.

She knows that.

“You and your family were taken advantage of. You all trusted a professional to prioritize your health, and he abused you all in your weakest state. It’s malpractice at the very least. There is no apology to mend what he did. But today, you can work on healing. You, your parents, your friends.”

“I still have depression,” I point out, leaning back into the leather chair, placing my hands behind my head to stare at the ceiling. “Chronically fucking sad. I’m not totally cured and healthy, Tako.”

Her sigh of annoyance at my stubbornness makes my lips twitch. It took an entire month before I spoke to her, and even then, it took a while for me to give her more than one-word answers. She knows if I don’t want to do something, I won’t.

It has never stopped her from trying though, and I’ve always admired that about her. One strong-willed, tough-ass lady.

“Mental health is a tricky thing. A lifelong sentence of questions with few answers and a lot of lonely moments. You’re allowed to have hope,” she tells me. “You’re allowed to start fresh and head in a new direction, Silas.”

My teeth sink into my tongue, and I grind my molars, the muscle in my jaw jumping. I burn a hole through the gunmetal-gray ceiling with my eyes.

“They won’t believe me, and I don’t blame them,” I say out loud, even though it was an inside thought.

Hope.

All the times I tried to tell my parents with the hope they’d believe me. Until one day, I gave up.

Those moments I wanted to tell the guys with the hope they’d listen, but something has always stopped me.

Feeling hope for the first time when I met Rosemary, knowing I had one person on this fucking Earth that knew the truth, and now what do I have left of that hope?

I have only the pain of losing her.

Fuck hope, because it fucked me a long time ago.

“If you never give them the chance, they have no opportunity to surprise you.”

I nod, simply because there is no point in arguing with her. She wouldn’t understand. There isn’t a degree she could receive that would help her comprehend something I learned at a very young age.

It has always been better to remain quiet than risk speaking words no one believes.