The next morning my alarm went off, but I was already awake. My eyes were glued to the ceiling, staring blankly at the white expanse. In the time I was staring, I noticed the nail pops, small cracks in the plasterboard, and the all-consuming ache in my chest.

I slept terribly; tossing and turning, fighting nightmares and periods of insomnia.

As I lay there, I realized it was the first night in months that Lila wasn't next to me in the bed. Her delectable cherry blossom scent and warmth filling the room. It’d been months since I’d awoken without her soft body curled into mine, our limbs entangled.

Instead the bed was cold.

No good morning kisses.

No morning sex with my goddess.

No sweet smiles from my Honeybear.

No Lila.

My Lila.

An hour later, on autopilot, I was dressed and walking to my car. I noted hers was still in her parking spot a few down from mine. In the rearview mirror the dark circles around my bloodshot eyes made them stand out; evidence of my sleepless night.

I arrived at our office and breathed in her sweet scent that still lingered there. Sitting at my desk, I went straight to work and braced myself for her entrance. It was almost seven thirty; she would be there any moment.

Halfway through the Anderson contract, and still no Lila. Odd, as it was a few minutes past eight. Then again, after what I’d done, I didn't expect her to come in early.

At eight forty-five, she still wasn’t there.

I checked my phone every few minutes to make sure I hadn't missed her call. My leg started bouncing in agitation. In my head, I began to spin different scenarios of why she was late, some of them causing me to worry about what might have happened to her.

The Boob Squad left me alone, obviously noting my mood. Thank God, because there was no way I could deal with them that day.

By nine fifteen I was pulling at my hair when Caroline stuck her head in to say good morning and stopped as she noticed the empty desk.

“Where's Lila?” she asked.

I kept my focus on my work, refusing to meet her eyes. “I don't know.”

She closed the door behind her, and her tone, when she spoke, contained enough force to draw my attention. “What do you mean you don't know?”

I shook my head, my brain trying to find the words so she could understand. “I couldn't keep hurting her, Caroline.”

There was a knock on the door before Andrew entered. I watched his bright smile fade when he noticed the scene in front of him. “What did you do?”

I leaned forward, my elbows resting on the desk, my hands pulling at my neck. “I ended it. I hurt her, and then I ended it.”

“You fucking moron!” Caroline screamed at me.

At the same time, Andrew yelled, “I can't believe I fucking trusted her with you!”

Caroline's hand collided with my right cheek, and I welcomed the physical pain. “You…She's in love with you!” My head swung back to meet her fierce gaze, my eyes wide in disbelief. “Do you have any fucking clue what you've done?”

It felt like the floor was falling out from beneath my feet.

No, oh please, no. Don't love me. Please don't let it be true. They'll kill you. They'll kill you like they did her.

“Give me your key, and I swear to God, if she…if she isn't all right, I will kill you!”

I stared up at Caroline, believing her threat. “I don't have her key. I gave it back.”

“And how did she take all of this?”

“I don’t know. She passed out. I…I took her and placed her in her bed. I told her in a letter, though I’m sure she understood with my actions, and I switched out our keys before I left.”

“You fucking coward!” Andrew said; every muscle was tense, and I wondered when he was going to hit me. I deserved it.

I flinched at his words but agreed with him.

“We need to check on her, and we need to do it now,” Caroline said, pacing in front of me. “I’ll call her cell, if she doesn’t answer, we are going over there and you will get us in.”

I nodded in agreement, my chest tightening.

She was all right. She had to be. She was just upset. She would be fine.

I tried to convince myself over and over. It wasn’t enough. Opening up my desk drawer, I pulled out my anti-anxiety pills and took one, then stuffed the bottle into my pocket.

Caroline wasn’t able to get ahold of Lila, so we headed out, leaving word with Jack’s assistant about the situation, but leaving out the part about my relationship. The assistant hadn’t heard from her either and confirmed she would alert Jack of the situation and our absence.

I let out a sigh of relief that Jack wasn’t available. I wasn’t sure I could face him right then, or lie to him, anyway. He knew me too well and could call my bullshit. One look and he would know. He would know that we were something more.

We all piled into my car, and ten minutes later we were in the parking lot of our building. Her car was where I had last seen it, cool and unused, in her parking spot.

“Mike!” I called out as we rushed in and up to the desk. “Have you seen Lila Palmer today?”

“Lila? No, she hasn’t come down yet,” he replied, a bit bewildered by our entrance.

I began to shake, Andrew had begun pacing, and Caroline was biting her fingernails. None of those were good signs.

“Can you ring up and see if she answers?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Thorne.”

He let it ring nine times before hanging up and shaking his head.

“We need your help. Lila didn’t show up to work, and her car is still here. We’re unable to reach her by phone, and we’re worried there’s something very wrong. We need to get into her apartment and make sure she’s okay; can you help us with that?”

“Well, we do have keys for emergencies,” he said, his voice shaking and his jaw tense, making it obvious he was now infected with the same worry that plagued us.

“This is definitely an emergency.” My voice cracked with the force of my emotions.

Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. My inner beast that had been silent, brooding, was whimpering and pacing.

Please, please, be all right.

Mike unlocked a hidden safe behind the desk and pulled out a bundle of brass keys. Andrew wouldn’t stop pushing the elevator button, all in hopes it would get there sooner, and when it finally did, we all rushed in.

The soft elevator music could not dissolve the building tension as we climbed up to the twelfth floor. Mike was out first, and we followed behind to Lila’s door, anxiously awaiting him to unlock it.

I was trembling, my stomach knotted. I felt like I was on edge and afraid of what we would find on the other side.

The door swung open, and we burst through, all of us calling out for her.

“Lila!” I rushed toward the family room. In my periphery, I watched Andrew head right toward the kitchen, and Caroline make straight for Lila’s bedroom.

I stared after Caroline, and a few seconds later, her voice broke the fear. “In here!”

I stood frozen, afraid of what I was about to see. It shattered when I watched Andrew run out of the kitchen.

I rushed after him, my eyes frantic in their search for her as I entered the threshold.

The sight before me caused my knees to go weak, my legs threatening to give out, and my balance shifted my weight backward into the door frame, my hands grasping it for support to keep me from falling.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no! No!

Please! Please, Lila, please!

No, no! Please be okay, please be okay!

My mind was frantic, begging for hope.

Lying on the floor near the foot of the bed was Lila; her hips were twisted, shoulders against the floor, arms splayed, head tilted to the side. She was naked, just as I had left her the night before.

Her pale skin showed the deep bruises of my body’s assault on hers. I had been too hard, too rough, too much. I was out of control, and I knew it.

The world stopped—everything stopped—when I reached her eyes. Her beautiful gray-green eyes were open, the lids unable to close. They were glazed over, empty, flat, void.

Images of a night years before, another set of eyes, flooded my mind.

Empty.

Void.

Dead.

My stomach turned, and I propelled my body to the adjoining bathroom to heave into the toilet. I hadn’t eaten, so only bile and acid were expelled; my stomach retched to purge my mind.

My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t hear anything that Caroline and Andrew had said from the moment I saw her lying on the ground.

Caroline’s voice erupted, breaking through. “Mike, call 911! Oh, Lila!”

“Is she breathing? Please say she’s breathing!” Andrew begged.

“She is! Lila? Can you hear me? Lila?”

I wiped my mouth and walked back into the bedroom where my Lila lay, alive but unresponsive.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” Andrew roared before his fist collided with my jaw.

I stumbled back against the wall. His hand grabbed at my suit and brought me back up to face him.

“This is what you fucking said to her?” He held up the letter I’d left her. “I thought you understood her. I thought you cared for her. You fucking destroyed her!” He looked at me with absolute contempt, and his tone was murderous.  “You fucking stay away from her. You don’t talk to her, you don’t fucking look at her.” For a moment, I got a reprieve from his animosity as he turned to look at Lila’s lifeless form. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“It’s better this way,” I whispered as Caroline covered her body.

“Like fucking hell it is! She was getting better, we could all see it. That was your doing. You were healing her. Now…she’s barely functioning.”

My stomach clenched again, my breath catching. “I warned her from the beginning. I begged her to go. I hurt her, Andrew.”

“You did this to her. She trusted you. You know what happened to her and you just confirmed everything they ever told her. You knew how broken she was, and you went and fucking crushed her. You were healing her, and now? She may not recover from this.” He was seething, glaring down at me, his nostrils flared.

The room remained quiet after Andrew stopped yelling at me.  We waited on pins and needles for the paramedics to come and take her away.  I couldn’t drive, and Andrew wanted nothing to do with me so he grabbed Lila’s keys and took her car, while Caroline shoved me into my car and drove us. We arrived at the hospital not long after the ambulance.

Since I wasn’t family, they wouldn’t tell me a thing no matter how many people I cursed, yelled, and spat at. It was a nightmare, one from which I was afraid I might never wake up.

 

 

Sometimes it was good when members of your family worked at a hospital, but sometimes it wasn’t. The times when you screwed up and destroyed a beautiful woman? There they were without invitation.

My mother looked at me with such pity, while my father looked disappointed.

We’d been there about an hour when a familiar form walked down the hall toward us.

“Darren?”

“Nathan?” Darren Morgenson, my therapist and friend, wrapped his arms around me in a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I fucked up.” The words slipped out, because that was all that was going through my head.

He pulled back and studied my face. “What are you talking about?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, diverting talk away from me. I didn’t think I had it in me to tell him I’d destroyed my own heart and an innocent one in the process.

“I got a call, one of my patients. Poor girl’s had a breakdown, it seems.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her in months, and now this. She’s so fragile; I always wondered when she’d break.”

My eyes widened, and my stomach dropped. “Lila Palmer?”

I begged to all the Gods that I wasn’t right, but I already knew I was. Darren was her therapist as well. I’d seen his name plastered all over her medications.

He blinked at me. “Yes. How did you know?”

“He’s the fucker who broke her,” Andrew said from behind me, sticking his hand out for Darren.

“Hey, Andrew, how are you doing?” Darren asked, trying to hide the momentary look of frustration toward me regarding my actions that caused all of the fuckery that was going on. His eyes shifted to Andrew.

I exhaled, and my shoulders rounded forward, crumpling in on myself. Every moment away from Lila made my bones ache and my muscles tense up. Yet, there I stood—rooted in place, helpless to do anything to change any of it.

Andrew’s lips were set in a thin line. “I’d be doing a lot better if Lila was at the office.”

Darren nodded in understanding. “I take it you know what happened.”

Andrew jerked his head in my direction. “Like I said, he’s responsible. You’ll need to ask him.”

I tried to meet Darren’s gaze, but I couldn’t. I was drowning in my shame.

“What is he talking about?” Darren turned to me. “Look at me, Nate. What the fuck is he saying?”

“I had to.” I managed to choke out the words.

“He left her this.” Andrew handed Darren the note, and I cringed.

Darren gasped as he read it. My eyes flickered over to him, and I could tell he was furious.

He looked back at me, anger and pain in his expression. “You just undid six years of therapy in four sentences. Four fucking sentences!”

He stormed off down the hall to her room, leaving me to drown in my growing self-hatred.

It was not what I wanted.

We stayed for a few hours, but Lila never woke up.

Darren and her other doctors came out, looking for her family. None of us were, but Caroline lied and said she was her sister. Darren knew better, but he didn’t correct her. They were sisters in spirit.

Self-induced psychological coma, they told Caroline. Lila had retreated into her own mind, unable to take the pain and harsh new reality I’d created.