I feel the gravel of the road beneath my knees.
I think,There’s so much blood.
It’s dripping into my eyes, gluing them shut.
“Edward, are you okay?”
Harper’s screams fade into whimpers.
Into silence.
36Amelia Blue
“Edward, are you okay?”
He’s squeezing his eyes shut tight, but there are tears edging out, tracing their way down his cheeks and over his angular jawline.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my left hip against his right. I slide off my hat, my gloves, unwind the scarf from around my neck, still cool from the air outside. My fingers, in the sudden warmth of his room, feel like they’re on fire. “Please. Talk to me.” His blankets are piled over him, twisted around his body like ropes.
After my run-in with the third patient, too scared to stay in the woods (she didn’t exactly strike me asstable, though surely there are people who think the same about me), I’d followed the sound of music back toward the cottages, my steps falling in time with the beat in spite of myself.
When I knocked on his sliding glass door, Edward didn’t seem to hear. The hollow thumping sound when I knocked harder make me realize the door was made of the kind of glass that doesn’t shatter. At other recovery centers, they laminate the windows, but here I suspect they use military-grade materials, the sort of glass that can survive an explosion without turning to shards, breaking apart into solid pieces with edges too smooth to cause damage.
The door was locked, but it was easy enough to pick with my kit. Through the window, I could see that Edward’s room was messy: His jacket and gloves were in a pile on the floor, his boots kicked off by the door, the bathroom light left on. Not nearly as messy as Georgia’s room would’ve been, but far messier than my room across the courtyard, my studio in the West Village, my bedroom in Laurel Canyon.
As the lock gave way, it occurred to me, for the very first time, thatGeorgia, who taught me to pick locks, easily could have undone the lock to my bedroom back home. She actually chose not to.
“I can’t see.” Edward’s voice is soft, like a little boy’s, his dark hair mussed, sweat glistening on his upper lip. “It’s getting in my eyes.”
I rush to the bathroom, grab a washcloth, and run cool water over it. I gently press the cloth over his eyelids. “I’m wiping it away,” I say, though of course I have no idea what his nightmare is dripping into his eyes. “You’re clean now.”
Edward opens his mouth, but his words come out slurred, unintelligible.
Here’s something else I know: what it looks like when someone’s taken too many drugs. And exactly what to do to sober them up.
“C’mon.” I tuck my hair behind my ears and slide my hands beneath his arms, pulling him up to sit. I feel the taut muscles of his back as I wrap my arms around him, so different from my mother’s body, so much bigger than my own. “You have to help me get you to the bathroom.”
I begin to push his blankets away, and at once he’s wide awake, his hand gripping my wrist, stopping me.
“Edward, you have to get up.” I used to have to beg Georgia the same way. “You need to purge.”
I manage to twist my wrist from his grip and slide my arm back around him. I pull with all my strength. His muscles ripple with resistance beneath his soft white T-shirt, the sort that looks worn-out when you buy it new.
I wait for Edward to put his feet down on the hardwood floor. All this tugging and twisting can’t be good for his injury, but he’s flailing, reaching for the blankets, dragging them down after him.
Finally, I hear one of Edward’s feet hit the floor, feel it when he starts holding his weight upright.
I step away, my hands flat on his back. His skin is hot through his shirt. I’m breathing so hard from the effort of moving him that it takes a moment to register what I see, reflected in the moonlight streaming in through the windows.
Edward’s fucked-up leg isn’t fucked-up at all. It isn’t anything. It isn’tthere. His left leg is amputated at the knee.
37Lord Edward
I don’t think I’ve ever vomited so much. Or maybe I have and don’t remember; I’m a blackout drunk after all.
I slide my body away from the toilet and lean against the wall opposite.
“Get the fuck out,” I hiss, but my heart’s not in it, and Amelia must know because she simply sits against the wall beside me.
