I didn’t do enough.
If he wasn’t with me or his brother, where the fuck has he been all this time?
Okay, so I think I know where, but I don’t want to believe it until I have to. Also, there’s the matter of: did he choose this, or was he forced to leave? Easton has been in fight-or-flight without a break for four years. Even when he was safe at my house, his past still brutalized him on an almost daily basis. There’s no telling what his mind could have convinced him of when I wasn’t around.
The hole in my chest contracts painfully. It never lets itself be ignored, but topping the greatest failure of my life by epic proportions, and letting Easton end up hurt again is enough tohave my fingernails digging into my kneecaps so I don’t dig the useless organ out like a rabid animal. “Alive,” I whisper.
That’s what’s important, isn’t it? He’s fucking breathing. That’s not something to take for granted. Saliva floods my mouth, forcing me to swallow the nausea back down or risk Blakely’s leather interior.
The tires squeal horrendously as she slams on the breaks, the car jerking to a halt on a curb that’s definitely a fire lane. Whatever. A security guard starts shouting about moving it as we rush towards the automatic doors, but she only interrupts with a biting, “Tow it.”
The smell hits me first, overpowering disinfectant and a staleness that it can’t quite cover. It causes me to stumble, only the iron grip of my pint-sized friend on my arm keeps my feet moving forward as I’m faced with the nightmare reality of Easton actually being in this place. “Don’t go into shock on me now, babe. Extreme emotions only after we find him, not before.”
She’s right. I grit my teeth and shove it all down, there’re more important things to deal with than my bullshit. Fuck, at least someone has their head on straight. I’m not sure Brady or I would be capable of this on our own.
“Hi, we’re looking for a patient that was just brought in. I got a call from the charge nurse. Young male, suspected overdose. Bright blond hair, thin frame.”
And, to think, I was delusional enough to believe the cavern in my chest hurt before. Hearing it all laid out so clinically rocks me back on my feet like I’ve been cracked on the jaw. My teeth grind with the effort to keep it together. Suddenly, those scenes in the dumb hospital dramas my sister likes where the person getting bad news collapses on the ground and wails like they’re the ones dying seems perfectly reasonable. He can’t… because so will I.
Blakely’s manicured fingers snapping in front of my face pull me back to reality. I fucking hate it here. “Sorry. But also kinda not sorry because if you want to go see him, we should do that, and you were lost somewhere.”
She looks between us, back and forth several times before frowning. “Look, I can’t carry you two, so something’s gotta give here.” Brady makes another gut wrenching sound, like he tried to speak but it got caught in his throat. “I know, honey. But he needs you, so we’re going to have to do this. Together, okay?”
It feels like a million years ago, but Brady and I did something similar to this for Blake once. I guess history does repeat itself if you give it enough time. Personally, I just wish it would fucking stop. I want off the ride, please. Before it claims another victim.
She’s a really good friend, pulling us through the winding halls with a hand locked in the crook of our arms. Giving us no other choice except walk or break our noses falling on the hard tile was objectively the right move, but the dread stacking higher and higher on my shoulders with each step I take tells an entirely different story.
If I ever have to see the inside of a hospital again, it’ll be too soon. Impending panic from leftover hospital anxiety and the dread of what I’ll find at the end of this trek war with each other for top dog, I don’t even know which one I want to come out on top. Maybe I’ll get lucky and this will all wrap up with me in a straight jacket because my mind finally snapped. One can hope…
At the end of the hall, Blakely pauses. “This is it. Ready to go in?”
CHAPTER 2
CHASE
Am I ready to go in?
A scream builds in my throat with nowhere to go. Of course I’m not ready. How can I ever be ready for this? Can anyone?
Deep breath. Hold it. Three, two, one… and go.
Just fucking walk, you idiot.
The part of my brain that’s been permanently sewed to my best friend’s flares to life, and he takes the first step for me. Like a thousand times before things got bad, and I started leading him out of necessity, he goes in before me. Just one little step inside before he turns around and waits for me. Lets me get my nerves sorted because social anxiety is a bitch that likes to grab onto my ankle like I’m stuck in some shitty zombie movie and the first one is due to climb Earth side. Then I’d follow him wherever he’d convinced me to go. Into the frat party with the music so loud my bones would shake. Get on the plane to go meet his family that unsettled me for reasons I couldn’t put words to. But no matter what it was, we were going to do it together. That made me want to take the step. My mom jokes all the time that we’d follow each other right off a cliff one day, but there’s a steel core of truth to that.
I don’t let him walk into the unknown alone, and he is always right beside me to keep me from falling back into the safety and horrendously lonely comfort of solitude. It’s all I know. Life before Brady, where I struggled to make even the most basic of human connections, even with my brothers and sister. Then there’s after, when I have friends that stand beside me at my worst moments without a second thought… Things with my family are better than I thought it could be, and anyone that met me after Brady didn’t even know the way I struggled before him.
So I do what I’ve always done best: follow his lead and take the step.
Understanding flashes in his eyes, like he felt the shift too. The ever-present give and take that comes naturally for us going the other way because that’s what it took to get both of us through this fucking door. Keeps us moving until we see both of our worst nightmares laid out in horrifying accuracy. My eyes try to take it all in at once, but instead, I get the sickening pleasure of seeing it one detail at a time.
The monitor that says while technically there’s a heartbeat, no other signs of life can be found. The tube coming out of his mouth. All the wires crisscrossing over his body. The rainbow of colors surrounding some kind of cut on his head, just over his temple. Pale pallor of his skin, like he hasn’t seen the sun in weeks. He hasn’t been eating, judging by the way his bones are jutting out. The more I look, the more I can find a myriad of marks, and that’s only with less than half of his body being visible.
Most significantly, he looks dead. There’s no fluttering under his eyelids, no twitching fingers. I know what he looks like when he’s asleep. I’ve laid awake at night and memorized his various movements. What I’m looking at is not… him.
It is, and it isn’t. None of the person I love is there, just the hollow remains. My eyelids burn and a vibration somewhereinside me starts up, gaining ferocity until it makes me want to rip my skin off. This is all wrong… he’s never supposed to look like that. Easton is chaos and beauty and wit and unnatural kindness. He’s made of magic.
I look to my best friend, hoping he’ll be able to make sense of this mess. Provide whatever clarity or context is needed to make this right. He knows Easton; he knows that he wouldn’t willingly leave us like this. This was a mistake; it had to have been.
