Chapter 13:

"Someone poisoned me."

Lexi doesn't quite get it at first. What does that mean? Someone poisoned him? Who? Why? How? So she narrows her eyes at him in confusion but doesn't ask for elaboration.

"That's why you collapsed?" She asks when he doesn't respond to her dumbfounded look.

Caleb simply nods. "Look, we don't have much time in here. They're going to start looking for me. You need to leave."

It's Lexi who gets angry now. "You can't keep doing that!" She whisper-yells.

"Doing what?"

"You can't keep telling me telling me things and expect me not to ask questions. Do you know how confused I am right now? All I wanted to do is complete my assignment and get the hell out of here. And then you go and tell me someone here, in this hospital has poisoned you and you won't even answer my questions like who would do such a thing? And why they would do it?" Lexi exclaims as loud as she can in a whisper.

She doesn't even realise that in her moment of anger, she had inched closer to him without realising. Her nose is inches away from the top of his bare chest as she strains her neck looking up at him. "I don't know the answers to any of those questions." He simply says, pressing his ear against the door once more to check if anyone was coming.

Lexi sighs as she runs a hand through her hair. Growing more and more agitated by Caleb and his ways, she shuts up and attempts to manoeuvre herself around Caleb and leave the claustrophobic closet.

But he's yet again being difficult when he fails to move out of the way and respect Lexi's wishes. "You just told me to leave?" She seethes. "Move."

Caleb leans in closer to Lexi, bending his knees a little so his face stops just inches away from hers. Naturally, Lexi leans as far back as she can which causes her to bump her head on one of the shelves in the broom closet like an idiot. Though she can't bring herself to react the to slight pain because Caleb is now, almost pressed up against her, looking her dead in the eyes.

Lifting his muscular arms, Caleb closes them around each side of Lexi's head and cups her face ever so gently.

"W-what are you doing?" Lexi stutters, doing everything in her power to stop her lip from quivering. Caleb's lips are now only inches from hers and Lexi is completely powerless to do anything about it. She contemplates looking down just a fraction to see his lips up this close but decides against it when she almost gets lost into the green circles of his eyes.

Just when she thinks he's going to seal the deal and connect their lips, he whispers so low that Lexi doesn't hear what he says. So she does a double take and frowns. "Hmm?" she asks, slightly flustered.

Caleb grins at her slightly, amused by her state of embarrassment and breathlessness. "I said," he starts off, not moving an inch away from her face. "You can't tell anyone what happened today." Caleb explains, stroking his right thumb on her cheek once.

Lexi is so flustered that she can't even comprehend that he's touching her, in the most gentle way. She didn't even think it was possible to see Caleb like this, looking slightly fragile and eyes soft. Everything about his face shows exactly how serious and vulnerable he is in this precise moment.

Lexi wants to know what is going on here. Why won't he just tell her? Hell, she even wants to comfort him if someone has poisoned him. Though she can't even think straight with Caleb so close to her, caressing her face.

Lexi presses her palm on Caleb's bare chest and pushes him lightly so she can think without his natural body scent intoxicating her thoughts. When his hands have completely slipped away from her face she snaps at him slightly. "I don't even know what's going on here myself!"

He seems to have an inner battle with himself, or rather an inner war. In his mind, Lexi is young and naive. Innocent and completely irrelevant in Caleb's life. Making her aware of such things would only corrupt her mind and he didn't think she deserved to know of such things that could potentially endanger her.

Caleb sighs, knowing he'd have to tell her things sooner rather than later. Alexa is involved now and she's going to be in danger if she continues to be oblivious to the things going on around in this place. "Then I'll tell you." He pauses.  "But I mean it Alexa. No one can know anything. You can't tell your boyfriend, friends, family, college professors. No one. Do you understand?"

Lexi wants to correct him saying that she doesn't have a boyfriend or any family for that matter. Friends are in the picture for her but she wasn't as close with them as she'd like to be and as if she would ever talk to Professor Collins about her problems even if he did miraculously listen for once.

But she decided against telling him as it'd be an inappropriate time to have a heart to heart with a psycho in a broom closet, practically pressed up against him as he's shirtless.

"I won't." Lexi promises. Caleb finds comfort in Lexi's words and for some weird reason, he trusts she won't say anything to anyone.

Caleb nods.

Caleb nods and steps aside as far as he can without hitting one of the shelves himself.

Lexi slides past him and opens the door of the closet and opens it as quietly as she can, looking frantically around to see if anyone was there before closing it again and facing Caleb.

"They cleared out your room & they said you're no longer allowed visitors. How am I meant to come and see you?"

"You still want to come and see me?" He smirks.

"Oh get your head out of your ass. I still need to finish my assignment. You've completely ruined that for me now. And I want to know what the hell is going on here." She snaps.

"Come to the fourth floor op room after 8pm tomorrow night." Caleb explains quickly. "That's when the reception staff leave and the night porters start. They don't care if anyone comes in or out of the hospital."

Lexi frowns at Caleb's suggestion to break the rules but she doesn't get to think much of it when he's shooing her away. "Now go."

She reluctantly takes a few steps back as she hears the door close after hearing a faint "Goodbye, Alexa."

Heartbeat slightly elevated, Lexi practically runs out of the sanatorium, wanting to get home as fast as she can to make sense of the entirely baffling situation that she seems to have been accidentally pushed into.

• • • • •

Lexi racks her brain, trying to think of every single detail that she has found out about Caleb Castillo since she had met him about a month ago.

She starts comparing him to other guys she has met but stop when she realises that that would mean Caleb is 'a man in her life'. Which he is most certainly not.

She can't help the feeling she gets though, when she's around him. When she first met him, she feared him. But that fear was quickly replaced with anger. He could push her buttons so easily just as she could his.

And when he touches her, it's like she's completely powerless. She feels weak and vulnerable when he's all up in her personal space. And Lexi hates that she maybe, sort of, kind of likes it.

She immediately gets these stage thoughts out of her head when she realises that she at least needs to try and make sense of things by gathering all the information she does know about him.

She even gets out her notepad and makes a list, which isn't very long so far as Caleb isn't the most open person around.

Lexi writes up the facts first. She knows that he is schizophrenic, though he hasn't shown a single episode of split personality since they have met. Which is odd for those who suffer from the disorder. Most people get them frequently so Lexi draws to the convulsion that maybe he was misdiagnosed.

Lexi also knows that Caleb suffers from delusions from time to time which she also hadn't seen any sign of since she had first met him.

She knows that he's on medication for anti-psychotics which is probably why he doesn't have any episodes when Lexi is around. She finds the whole psychosis thing a little hard to believe at times because he's almost always, 100% of the time, acting like a normal person.

He certainly doesn't act psychotic around her. Sure he has personal space issues that he needs to work on, but maybe he's just a pervert.

Lexi knows that Caleb is on pain killing medication for his drug rehabilitation. This may or may not be true because the doctors seems to have different opinions on whether he takes hem or not which Lexi finds odd.

And finally, Lexi found out earlier today that Caleb had been both emotionally and physically abused, brutally. She can't erase the image of his bare body, absolutely covered in horrific scars which causes Lexi to almost shed a tear again.

Something terrible must've happened to him if he started taking drugs at such a young age and the scars on his body look severe enough to have not healed properly. Maybe he was in a gang when he was younger.

And on top of all that, someone in the sanatorium poisoned him. Whether it was intentional or unintentional, it still happened and that didn't sit well with Lexi.

Riverfield gave her the creeps right from the beginning and she's starting to think that something really weird is going on there and she'd get to the bottom of it no matter what it took.

• • • • •

Word count: 1740

A/N: this is the worst chapter in the history of chapters.

Idek if this part of the is making sense. Like I know exactly what I want to write and what I want to happen but when it comes to writing it, it doesn't make sense. But criticism is welcome.