Chapter 12:

"Caleb!" Lexi screams in panic dropping her bag, file and even her phone of the marble white floor haphazardly and running over to his side. "Caleb!"

Frantically scanning his body, top to bottom, looking for any sign of what may have happened to him, she gives up and goes head first into his chest.

Placing her left ear on his upper chest, Lexi had never felt so relieved in hearing the steady beat of Caleb Castillo's heart of all people.

But that relieved feeling lasts for half a second before Caleb slips back into consciousness and let's out a pained scream as if he was in an unbearable amount of pain.

Lexi lifts her head up from his chest and immediately moves her panic ridden eyes to bore into his. "Caleb! What's wrong? What's happening?"

Without thinking, she's wiping the blood from his nose with her bare hands and using her other hand to feel his forehead which she can only describe as scorching hot.

When he doesn't reply, face twisted in pain, Lexi starts coming to her senses and starts calling for help. She doesn't want to leave his side so she opts for pressing the red button on the remote given to her before every session she has with Caleb.

Though she has never had to use the button before, she's thankful now that the staff insisted on her carrying it on her whilst visiting him. 

She presses it multiple times, as if that'd get them, someone, anyone to come quicker as she attempts to soothe Caleb by putting his head on her lap and caressing his hair softly as he continues to look as if in agonising pain.

She tries to ignore the fact that she is comforting someone who she should despise, but she was raised better than that. And although she should hate Caleb, she can't help but feel absolutely sorry for him as he's clearly been through a lot.

Caleb stops screaming and is heaving instead as his eyes get visibly heavier and he drifts back out of consciousness, which scares Lexi again. She can't help that her heart beat is beating a million beats per second.

"What happened in here?" A voice calls out and Lexi doesn't even notice that at least 5 people had rushed into the room.

Lexi's incoherent when the question is asked and she tries her best to calm herself down and form an understandable sentence. "He..he was fine. Then he collapsed. I-I don't know what's wrong with him." The last few words come out in a whimper.

She doesn't notice the looks that the medics and nurses give each other, too busy fixing her gaze on Caleb.

One of the nurses pries Lexi off of Caleb and leads her towards the door. "I'm sorry but you can't be in here."

Finally taking her eyes off Caleb, she snaps her head towards the nurse and glares. "Why not? What's wrong with him?"

"I'm sorry Miss, but we don't know yet. And until we find out, you can't be in here." She says, motioning Lexi outside.

Taking one last worried look at Caleb, seeing him unconscious but shivering violently, Lexi reluctantly leaves the room and takes a seat in the waiting room.

She couldn't just leave, so she decides on waiting it out to see what could've happened to him. As she loses herself in her thought, Lexi couldn't help but feel a little guilty for being harsh towards him earlier and vows that from now on, she'd try and be nice to him no matter what.

• • • • •

She couldn't remember when exactly, but Lexi fell asleep awkwardly on one of the waiting room chairs.

She was dazed and a little confused at first but as soon as she saw blood stains on her top, she quickly realised what was going on and shot up from her seat.

She didn't know what came over her as she wasn't one to worry about someone as irrelevant in her life as Caleb, but she ran up the corridor towards his room and barged in.

When she got in, she was surprised to see that it was completely deserted. Not only that but the whole room was stripped bare.

Not that the room had much in it anyway, but the bedding was stripped, the drawers were open and empty and the random bits of paper and pencils that were usually scattered around the desk were gone.

Her eyes scan the room in confusion once more until they land on the crumpled picture that's laying on the floor by the door. Whoever cleaned the room out must've dropped it. Lexi noticed it to be the picture she saw on the first time she came to visit Caleb.

All the other times, she was too distracted by Caleb to notice it but now she walks up to it and picks it up off the floor.

It was stuck on by a tiny blob of blue tack and Lexi notices that the picture is not only crumpled, but partly scratched out too. The only visible thing on the picture was the face of a woman in her late 20's who looked undoubtably familiar to Lexi but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

She had big brown eyes and long brown hair. Her facial features weren't too prominent or shaped and she had a round face instead of a sculpted one.

Looking around the rest of the room and even the en suite, Lexi notices that the bathroom had also been emptied.

So she shoves the picture in her pocket and heads over to reception to find out what the hell is going on.

She makes sure to check her phone as she walks over there to check the time and is shocked to find that she had fallen asleep for 2 hours.

"Excuse me , do you know what happened to Caleb Castillo? He was in room 472 and collapsed about 2 hours ago." Lexi asks the same receptionist that she had grown accustomed to on the past few weeks.

The receptionist narrows her eyes at Lexi and blinks. "He's been moved to another unit." She says in monotone.

"Wha- Why? What does that even mean?"

The receptionist sighs in annoyance and Lexi grows impatient. She just needed to know that Caleb was alright. "He's been moved to another department of the hospital."

"Right. So tell me where he is." Lexi countered.

"Unfortunately I can't do that Miss. He isn't allowed visitors at the moment. Maybe you could com-"

Lexi leaves the receptionist mid sentence and storms off towards the white clinical looking hallways. "I'll find him myself." She mutters to herself.

She hadn't been past the first floor of the sanatorium, therefore being quite scared of roaming around the place all on her own. But her determination to find Caleb overrules her fear and soon enough she's leading herself through the second and third floor of the sanatorium.

Whenever she passes a nurse, she would ask them if they had known of Caleb and his whereabouts but none were willing to tell her. Lexi grew more frustrated by the second and regrets not asking the receptionist if Caleb was at least alright.

By the fourth floor, Lexi loses hope and heads back down the stairs to have a go at the receptionist downstairs. As she's passing through the corridor though, she notices an operating room with a familiar shirtless figure laying on a large metal table through the minuscule gap in the curtains that have failed to be shut properly.

"Caleb?" Lexi whispers, as if he could hear her from all the way in there. He looked as if he was conscious but he hadn't noticed Lexi yet.

Lexi notices his scars again which look more prominent now that he was lying down and vulnerable. Her eyes roam his body until they find a white patch on his lower right abdomen and right arm which had wires connected to it.

Walking closer to the door, Lexi attempts to open it only to find it locked, causing her to frown. "Why would they lock the door?" She mutters to herself.

Not knowing what else to do, she lightly taps on the glass part of the door, hoping Caleb would turn his head a little to see her.

When he doesn't, she knocks on the door much louder causing Caleb to flinch and snap his head facing the door.

A mixture of fear, anger and relief is laced into his facial features when he sees Lexi and he glares at her from his places on the metal table.

"Open the door." She yells a little, careful not to be heard by any other nurses or doctors.

Caleb's eyes widen slightly and he helplessly looks around him as if someone was coming. "Get out of here!" Caleb yells back and Lexi can just about hear him through the glass square of the door.

She looks back at him in utter confusion and slight relief that he looks as if he's alright. She shakes her head rapidly and pushes on the door, as if it'd open on her insistence.

The action causes Caleb to quickly glance around the room again before sitting up and pulling out the wires from his stomach and right arm. He manoeuvred himself off the table and around it as he reaches the door and unlocks it in reluctance.

He looks down at her and his eyes bore into her own.

"Alexa, get out of here." He mutters in a dark tone which she hadn't heard before.

"Why?"

He slams his hand on the wall beside the door harshly causing Lexi to flinch in fear. "God damn. Now is not the time to be stubborn Alexa. You need to leave!" He hisses in pure anger as he bores his green eyes into her brown ones.

All of a sudden, that fear is back and Lexi hasn't felt that since her first visit with Caleb.

Lexi wants to be stubborn and ask why she needs to leave. She wants to ask what's going on and whether Caleb is okay or not. But she knows better than to get on the wrong side of a Psychotic homicidal maniac who has mood swings worse than a heavily pregnant woman.

So she turns around to leave only hear voices coming from down the corridor outside the operation room. She doesn't think anything of it until she's pulled back with force by Caleb and shoved into the room he had just told her to leave.

It all happens so quickly but one second she's in the corridor and the next she's running into the operation room, through another set of doors and running through another corridor which leads to a small broom closet to the left. All the while grasping into Caleb's large hand and trying to keep up with his long paces.

"What's going on Caleb!" Lexi demands once they're inside the broom closet and almost pressed up against each other due to the lack of space in the closet.

"Shhh." Caleb seethes in anger.

Lexi scoffs. "Why?! Will you plea-" she begins to shout in a louder time until she's cut off by a large hand clasping around her mouth so tight, that it hurts a little.

"Shut up!" He whisper yells all the while giving her the most fearful glare Lexi had ever seen. "There are things going on here that your naive little mind could never even comprehend. So I suggest you shut up before I make you." He added, clasping his hand tighter around her mouth to add dramatic effect. "Do you understand?"

Lexi is completely petrified now and something tells her that she could potentially be in a lot of danger if she doesn't comply with him right now. The way his eyes darkened just now like Lexi had never seen before told her that this would end badly is she were to rebel now.

So all she does is nod slightly and maintain intense eye contact to show him that she understands.

He doesn't release her when she does nod but he pulls her closer into him as he places an ear on the door of the closet to see if anyone was out there.

He looks back at Lexi who is quivering in fear in his hands. "I'm going to let go now. Don't even think about screaming."

Lexi nods carefully again. She wouldn't scream. For some weird reason, she gets the feeling that Caleb was about to answer some of her burning questions so she intends on staying quiet.

She refuses to believe that he would hurt her.

He noticeably nods too and slowly, as if he was reluctant, he lets her go.

She's too scared to say anything so she just stays immobilised in one place, looking up at him.

Its only now she notices how close they're are forced to be. She looks down at his chest and realises he's still shirtless. Only this time, her first instinct isn't to back away and turn around.

Instead, she reaches out and gently touches the most prominent scar on his chest with her delicate fingers. It bulges out and looks as if it was a knife wound. Lexi thinks back to when Mrs Henderson told her about him having several knife wounds on his body and almost lets out a gasp.

Caleb flinches instantly at the touch which forces her to snap her hand away as if she had burnt it on him. "I'm sorry." She quickly says looking up into his eyes.

"It's okay." He says in a low tone, almost as if he's dismissing her.

It takes everything in her to not ask him about them again. And instead, she fearfully asks about what the hell is going on right now. "Caleb, what's happening?"

He sighs. "If I tell you. If have to tell you everything. And I can't do that. I don't even know you." He explains.

"I'm the one stuck in a very small space with a psychotic patient who has murdered people and you're the one that can't trust me?" Lexi asks smartly.

Caleb narrows his eyes at her and his lips almost tug upwards into a small smile. Almost.

"You're something else, Alexa Reid." He shakes his head.

She crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows expectantly, seeming to have recovered from her fear of him not moments ago.

Caleb sighs and decides to just trust the girl. "Someone poisoned me."

• • • • •

Word count: 2445

A/N: it's literally 5am. Wtf am I doing with my life?