I’m frozen on the hospital bed staring at the deep lacerations and dark contusions marred across her legs, taking in the purples and blacks of her injuries. It looked as if she’d been mauled by an animal.
Her hands wrap around the edge, knuckles white, face ashen and gray, she is curled over it, retching in agony.
I don’t realize I’m on my feet until I feel myself moving toward her.
I take the blood-stained locks of her white hair and wrap them around my crimson fist, gripping the strands and holding them back from her face.
Laiken’s frail body is spasming with every convulsion, a promise of relief, only one she would never meet.
My ribs twist and bend with hers when she cries, “It burns, Chase. Everything burns.”
I lift my gaze up and over my shoulder, see Harlen wiping his nose.
I clench my molars, press my free hand gently against the ladder of Laiken’s spine, not realizing that I’m working on autopilot rubbing over her in circles until I feel her shiver extend from the surface of her skin onto mine.
I swallow, press my eyes closed.
“I’m here, Laik. I got you.”
But I didn’t know if what I was promising was true.Could you really have someone else when you didn’t even have yourself?
Her right hand curls to the back of her head, finding mine, and she wraps her fingers around my wrist, nails digging into the flesh of my skin. Her body convulses again.
“I can’t breathe,” she whispers, throat full of fear and gurgling tears.
“Do it with me. One…” I rasp, and on cue our chests rise and deflate.
“Two,” I breathe, tapping each out against her spine.
I press my palm to her back, feeling the way her lungs inflate with mine. I seek out Harlen again, who’s still watching us, his nose red, eyes bluer than I’d ever seen them.
He is cryingsilently.
And I, too, fight to keep my own down.
“Three.” Three taps, and on our joint exhale Laiken spins and falls into my chest.
Her arms are in front of her, a barrier across her heart and I wrap my arms around her shoulders so tightly that I feel the vibrations of each cry rip from her throat, extending into my own.
It shakes my veins, turns my knees to rubber.
I stumble, arms coiled around Laiken when the wall at my back catches us, keeping us on our feet.
“It should have been me, Chase. It should have been me,” she cries, each louder than the last.
I exhale through my nose, my words a breath over her scalp. “You and I both know she wouldn’t have wanted that.”
My elbows press to the top of my thighs, my thumbs beneath my chin, head tilted toward Laiken.
She is sitting beside me on the upholstered window bench. Her knees drawn to her chest, shoulders wrapped in the colored crocheted blanket she’d thrown off earlier.
Her bandaged toes peek beneath the bottom, and even though it’s warm in here, she’s trembling.
She curls her matted hair behind both ears. She doesn’t meet my eye, nor Harlen’s, when she croaks, “I don’t know where to start.”
I reach for a breath. Harlen cracks his neck. He is in the chair across from us, his knees jolting up and down.
“What about at the party,” Harlen says, his voice soft and wary.
