“Yes. No.” He shook his head before resting it in his left hand. “Well, not just Dad.Everythingthat happened. There’s already so much I can’t remember.” He’d lost two whole months, some of that to a medically induced coma, the rest to a haze of pain and medication. It was an unsettling feeling, knowing why things were fuzzy and still not being able to grasp them. Who knew what he might have said or done when he was in recovery?
“Right.” She narrowed her eyes. “But why else?”
He hesitated. The last thing he wanted was another hospital visit of any kind—but this was the other reason he’d chosen Dr.Amelia Harper over other therapists. Because while she was soft and kind, and an established, respected leader in her field, she was also sharp and incisive while still being understanding. When he needed answers or counsel, she usually had it, whether he liked it or not. A tough-love approach with a gentle delivery. And he trusted her immensely.
“Because I don’t have them anymore.”
Both eyebrows skyrocketed. “Why?”
“I was afraid of what I’d do with them. Sometimes I thought about taking too many all at once, so I flushed them down the toilet. And then I felt horrible because I should’ve properly disposed of them, but I didn’t want to leave the house to do it. And Diego wouldn’t have done it for me. He would have made me take them. Or…I don’t know.” Theo drew in a deep, trembling breath. “Either way, I didn’t want him to know.”
Amelia pursed her lips and looked down at her notebook. She scribbled something and then tapped her pen on the paper. “Whenwasthe last time you left the house?”
“Today is the first time I’ve left by myself for anything but doctor stuff. Diego went with me to my other appointments and took me to my most recent surgery. But I don’t remember that. I don’t remember going. I still have trouble with my memory sometimes.”
He glanced at the door, already dreading going outside again now that he’d thought of it. The walk here was bad enough. People on the street stared at the gauze on his face and gave him a wide berth like he was some kind of monster. Like they knew he’d been disfigured. Like they knew he was trash. And then a kid had pointed at his cane and he and his mother both gawked in wide-eyed horror at Theo before darting quickly in the opposite direction while he limped down the street.
He must have looked horrible, even with his hood up and his face covered as best he could manage. But scaring women and children while he lumbered around? That was a new low.
Well. Hewasbasically sewn together like Frankenstein’s monster, wasn’t he?
The walking dead.
Maybe he should just put himself back in the ground and be done with it.
“What about your art? Have you gone back to your neon projects?”
He blinked. An image flashed in his mind: shaking hands, loud, angry music, his chest full of rage, the rippling heat and whirring sound of flames and feeling of sweat dripping down his brow, soaking into gauze. Nothing was working. Nothing was steady. He saw red through one eye.
And then he saw it on his hands. Everything was shattered, lyingbroken on the ground in jagged shards, blood dripping from his palms and tainting the crystal scarlet.
“No.”
It was all still there in his studio, hidden behind the door, a graveyard of creative corpses.
There was that same irony again: he worked with glass, and now he was shattered himself, broken into a million pieces, left lying on the floor.
He didn’t appreciate the symmetry.
“What about sketching? Painting?”
He shook his head. Touching a pen or a paintbrush was out of the question right now. He’d rather die than have to witness how his skills had crumbled and deteriorated.
The one thing he was good at, gone.
Why are you even here?
“What do you do all day, then?”
“I sleep. A lot. I walk—hobble—on the treadmill. I try to lift weights, poorly. I stare at the TV.” Staring was more accurate a word than watching. Watching implied attention, absorption. But the shows only sounded like static in his brain, white noise whirring in the background of interminable days and restless nights. He couldn’t even saywhathe usually put on. Some baking show, maybe. That was his best guess.
“Are you talking to your mom?”
“No. I told her not to contact me when I left for home. She’s tried to call, but I haven’t answered. Diego lets her know I’m alive so she doesn’t freak out enough to actually come over.”
“What about your other friends? Have you been seeing any of them?”
“Diego comes over every day.”
