It’s been a week since the day in the studio when everything came crashing down. Seven days of crying, of worrying, of pacing the halls of the hospital, sleeping in a chair next to Eli’s bed and begging him to come back to me.
The doctor’s called it PTSD with a side of a psychotic break. I call it misery and guilt and a pain so deep that I don’t know how to fix it. For Eli or for myself. I didn’t know what to do when Landry said those words to Eli. I couldn’t stop screaming when he dropped to the ground, holding his head in his hands, whispering and chanting to himself under his breath.
I didn’t pay attention when Paul came running into the room, with the police right on his heels. I know he told me he called them when he heard all of the commotion, but I didn’t care. I didn’t get any satisfaction out of watching Landry shout and curse and being led out of the room in handcuffs. I didn’t care about anything but the broken man I knelt down next to on the floor, held in my arms, and tried to soothe with soft words and apologies.
Nothing made sense when the ambulance got there and strapped him to a gurney. Nothing made sense when he wouldn’t open his eyes at all during the ride to the hospital and just kept muttering to himself, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.” I didn’t understand. I thought he was just in shock, reliving his nightmare all over again, but that was far from the truth. So far from it that I hate myself and I blame myself for not realizing it sooner, for not pushing him to talk more, for not wondering why we never talked about something so important.
Being distracted with each other always helped us…until it didn’t.
Nothing made sense, I didn’t understand, and there was nothing I could do but sit by his side and wait for him to wake up and finally talk to me about what we should have talked about weeks ago.
Kat was a little shocked to see me at the hospital when she arrived with her husband, but the shock quickly switched to worry for her brother when after a few days, he still hadn’t opened his eyes. The two of us kept a quiet vigil next to his beg, telling him we loved him, telling him we were sorry, and saying whatever we could to bring him back, but nothing worked. I blamed the doctors for doing nothing but pumping him full of drugs, but I had no idea what else they could do for him in a situation like this. They said we needed to give his mind time to rest and heal. I just wanted him to wake up and smile at me and tell me everything would be okay. That he would be okay. I couldn’t stand sitting by his bed day after day, seeing him so still and small when he’d always been larger than life to me. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry for him, but I knew that wasn’t what he needed. He needed me to be strong and to fight for him when he couldn’t do it himself.
“Shelby, can I talk to you for a minute?” Kat asks softly, nodding her head in the direction of the door, indicating that she wants to leave the room.
I nod, standing up from my chair to lean over Eli and kiss his cheek.
“I love you. I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper into his ear, smoothing his hair off his forehead before I join Kat in the doorway.
We walk silently through the halls to the elevator and down to the first floor to the cafeteria. We both get coffee and she leads us to a table over by the window. Kat and I had just spent seven days and nights together, but we’d never said more than a few words to each other when one of us would leave to grab food, something to drink, or go to the bathroom. She’d sent her husband out to my place to grab extra clothes when I refused to leave Eli’s side. She introduced me to the doctors when they’d come in to talk to her, but we’d never discussed my reasons for being there. I fell in love with her immediately when she never questioned me or asked me to leave, quietly accepting that it would require a force of nature to take me away from Eli now.
“He never told me about the two of you,” she starts, wrapping her hands around the cardboard cup to warm them. “He never told me about a lot of things, I guess.”
She looks down at her coffee sadly and I reach across the table and grab one of her hands, giving it a soft squeeze.
“The two of us…it’s a long story. One that started six years ago. You were away at college then, and now…it just happened so fast.”
She nods her head in understanding, squeezing my hand right back.
“You love him.”
It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Always.”
She nods again and sighs.
“I should have pushed him more to talk to me. Every time I tried, he’d smile and tell me he was fine. I knew he wasn’t fine. I knew every time he talked to Rylan like he was sitting right next to him, or made plans to move him into his new place, that he wasn’t fine, but I thought he just needed time. I thought he would eventually realize what he was doing.”
She looks up at me when I say nothing and sees the confused, questioning look on my face.
“Did he ever mention Rylan when he was with you?”
I think about all the time we spent together, doing everything but talk about important things. He spoke to me about meeting with a therapist and he briefly discussed the five years he was held captive, but he never mentioned Rylan. Never once talked about the best friend he went to war with, that he watched die right in front of him.
“Never,” I tell her. “I knew he’d died when they were over there, it was all over the news when Eli was first rescued. I guess I just thought it was too painful for him to talk about, and like you, I thought he just needed time.”
I watch as Kat’s eyes fill with tears, and my own vision gets cloudy.
“The first day he was back in Charleston and we brought him home to live with us, I was making dinner and I heard him tell someone to get their feet off the coffee table and stop being such a slob,” Kat tells me. “Daniel had run out to the store and took our daughter with him, and when I asked Eli who he was talking to, he said it so quickly, so naturally, and so easily, “I’m talking to Rylan, obviously.”
Kat laughs sadly through her tears and shakes her head. “I thought he was kidding at first and it shocked me speechless. Until he did it again. And again, and again. Every day, he’d talk to Rylan or talk about him like he was standing right there next to him. Rylan was like a brother to me, too, and I missed him, but I didn’t go through the things with him that Eli did. I didn’t know what he needed to do to cope and grieve so I let it go. I shouldn’t have let it go.”
I move my hand from Kat’s to wipe away the tears that started to fall down my cheeks when she spoke. He was so broken, so hurting, and I had no idea. Why didn’t he ever do any of these things when he was with me? Was he so busy dealing with my drama and trying to put me back together that he didn’t have time to process anything, didn’t have time to heal or grieve or let go of the best friend he was forced to watch die right next to him?
How could I have been so selfish? When I looked at him, all I saw was strength and determination and I wanted that so much for myself that I let him give it to me. I let him build me up when, all along, he was crumbling inside. He gave me everything he had and left nothing for himself.
“Whenever he spoke to Rylan, I would quietly ask him if he’d taken his medication,” Kat continues. “The doctors had him on all kinds of things for depression and anxiety and I just thought maybe he wasn’t taking them or he’d skipped a dose. I was just so happy to have him back that I didn’t want to upset him. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Her reasoning is the same one I gave myself. I didn’t want to force him to talk if he wasn’t ready. He’d been through so much and I just wanted him to be happy.
“I recognized you when I first got to the hospital,” she suddenly says, giving me a small smile. “From the night he was deployed. I was home on break and you stopped by the apartment, do you remember?”
I want to laugh and cry all at the same time. I’m strangely happy that she remembered me and it was probably the initial reason she didn’t immediately kick me out of Eli’s room, but I hate thinking about that night.
“Yes,” I reply softly. “You gave me a letter from him.”
She nods, her smile getting wider.
“I’m such an idiot. When you told me your last name, I knew it was from the stables he worked at and I thought it was a resignation letter or something,” she laughs. “It was a love letter, wasn’t it? I had a mushy love letter from my brother in my hand and I didn’t even read it.”
I can’t help but laugh right along with her even though the memories of that night, reading his words, losing control of the car, losing my dreams…it all tries to overwhelm me. There’s something about her laugh, though, so kind and genuine that I can do nothing but join in.
“Not exactly,” I admit. “He was kind of a jerk in that letter.”
She purses her lips and shakes her head.
“Yep, that sounds more like my brother.”
We laugh together again and I try not to feel guilty that I’m sitting here laughing and smiling when Eli is upstairs fighting with his grief and his fractured mind. Kat makes it easy to relax for a little while and let go of the worry.
“You’ll be happy to know that he more than made up for being a jerk. I have a whole shoe box filled with mushy love letters.”
She claps her hands together like a toddler and I laugh louder.
“Mushy love letters that you will absolutely let me read one of these days so I can tease him, right?” she asks.
“I don’t know, how horrible was he to you when you were growing up?” I barter, taking a sip of my coffee.
“Are you kidding me? He was the worst. Anytime a guy came to pick me up for a date, Eli would sit right next to him on the couch, put his arm around the guy, and tell him he knew fifty different ways to kill a man and hide the dead body,” she tells me with a roll of her eyes. “And don’t even get me started on Rylan.”
Kat falters when she says his name, but I can tell it feels good for her to talk about him and remember him. She spent all this time worrying about Eli and not being able to grieve for Rylan on her own and I know she needs this.
“Did you know he lived with us?” she asks.
I nod my head, remembering when I came home from college and spent the first few days flirting with Rylan just to make Eli jealous. We only spoke a handful of times, but he was definitely a talker. I knew his entire life story five seconds after meeting him. After Eli and I got together that summer, he confirmed what Rylan had told me, and even though he was pissed about the whole flirting thing, I could see every time he talked about his friend how much he cared about him.
“So, imagine being a teenager and having not one, but two overprotective brothers trying to scare away your dates,” Kat says with a roll of her eyes. “It was like good-cop, bad-cop, but they forgot who should be which and they both decided to be the bad cop. My prom date senior year dropped me off five blocks from our apartment because he was sure Eli and Rylan were waiting up with shotguns in their hands.”
We share another laugh, both of us pausing to drink more of our coffee. I’m jealous of what she had growing up and I want to cry at the unfairness of it all. She had two men in her life, and they all cared so much about each other. I can’t imagine how much she must be hurting right now losing one of them, and not knowing if the other will ever be okay.
“I wish I’d had something like that.”
She cocks her head as she looks at me.
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”
I shake my head. “Nope, just me. My father died when I was a teenager and I recently found out my mother never wanted children and has always hated the sight of me.”
Kat’s smile falls and I quickly let out a small laugh to reassure her.
“It’s fine. It’s something I’ve sort of always known. Eli was there when it happened. He made it better. He always makes everything better for me.”
My voice cracks with emotion and Kat reaches over to place her hand on top of mine.
“I want to help him, but I don’t know how,” I whisper, trying to hold back the tears.
“I have a question, and it might seem a little weird. When exactly did you two get back together after he came home? Like, the exact day?”
Pausing for a minute, going back through the time we’ve spent together, I’m shocked to realize it hasn’t been as long as I thought it was. Being with Eli always makes me lose track of time, makes me feel like I’m moving twice as fast as the rest of the world.
“Well, we saw each other again for the first time soon after he got back to Charleston. But it was a little complicated and difficult. So, technically, three weeks ago. Three weeks ago today, actually,” I admit, feeling my cheeks heat with embarrassment that I sort of just told Eli’s sister the day we first had sex again.
She ignores my discomfort and smiles the biggest smile I’ve seen yet.
“I think you already did help him,” she tells me.
I shake my head in confusion and she continues.
“Three weeks ago today, is when he stopped waking up with nightmares every night,” she tells me softly. “I remember because it was the same day my daughter was cutting a tooth and I was up in the middle of the night anyway. And he never woke up. He’d been waking up screaming every night since he came home, and that night, he never woke up once. Or any night after that until he moved out and I wasn’t keep track of his sleeping habits anymore, but I’m pretty confident he wasn’t having them at his new place either.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hoping that what she’s saying is true.
“You already helped him, Shelby, without even knowing it. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it again.”
“Kat!”
I open my eyes and we both look up when we hear the shout, seeing Daniel jogging across the cafeteria to us with a worried look on his face.
“I’ve been looking for you, I tried calling your cell,” he tells her when he gets to our table.
“Sorry, I must have left it back in the room. What’s going on? What happened?”
He looks back and forth between us before squatting down next to his wife and grabbing both of her hands.
“Eli’s gone.”
I gasp and Kat’s head jerks back in shock.
“What do you mean he’s gone? Where is he?” I ask, pushing my chair back and standing up from the table.
“I don’t know. I went up there and he wasn’t in the room. I asked the nurses and they never saw him leave. They’ve called security, but his hospital gown was lying on the floor and his clothes and shoes he came in with are gone, too.”
Daniel helps Kat up from her chair and we all move quickly out of the cafeteria. When we back get upstairs and speak to the nurses, he still hasn’t been located.
Running into his empty room, I grab my purse from the floor and snatch my keys out of it.
“We’ll go to our house and then stop by his,” Daniel tells me.
“I’ll drive to my place and a few others,” I confirm, promising to call them if I find him and making them do the same as I rush to the elevator.
I have to find him. I have to give him back his strength. He needs it now more than me and I will do anything to bring him back and let him know I’m not going anywhere. I will help him get through this, no matter what it takes. I’m going to believe what Kat told me and hope to God I can help him again.