Just Breathe

I HAD TO go back to my house and decide what I was doing with everything. Brandt was communicating with my parents' lawyer about the estate, but the reality was I had to stand in the house I grew up in without the sounds of my parents laughing in the kitchen or my sister singing horribly off-key in her bedroom. I had to choose between keeping something or getting rid of it. Just the thought crushed me.

"I know it's only been a week, but you can't avoid this forever," Brandt said carefully. We were sitting in his car outside my house after the funeral.

Just breathe.

"I know. I'm trying," I replied. He took my hand in his. I felt terrible because of the distance I had created since the crash, but I had no control over it. I was emotionally exhausted, and the only way to shut it off was to retreat and hide from the pain. He was a casualty.

I looked at the front of the house and replayed the day we left for the train station. We were all happy and utterly clueless to the fate the future held.

"It hurts so much. I can't even remember what it feels like to not hurt." I chewed on my fingers, a horrible habit I had adopted.

"You want to know what haunts me the most?" he asked.

I looked at him, wondering what it could be.

"That I could have lost you, too. That I should have lost you. Everyone died, Bay. Everyone except you. It haunts me because I realize I would die if I ever lost you. Yes, I'm grieving the loss of my parents, but in my gut…in my heart, I know I would have been irreparably scarred without you."

Irreparably scarred. Was that what I was? He was right, though. It was a miracle I lived, and had I lost him with the rest of my family, I surely would have chosen a different fate for myself. I would've given up. Right now, sitting in this car, I was still fighting—albeit hard to see—to live. I opened the door and took the first step toward a completely different future.

Step one, breathe.

Step two, breathe again.

Step three, be brave.

I opened the front door, and the silence immediately suffocated us along with the stale air. I ran to the first window I saw and threw it open and then ran into the kitchen and opened another one. I ran into every room opening windows frantically, barely breathing through the despair. I couldn't connect my mind with what my body was doing. It was such a strange feeling, like I was having an out-of-body experience. All I knew was every window needed to be open. That the house needed life because it felt dead, like my family.

Brandt caught me in his arms as I whizzed by the front door where he had planted himself while my episode played out.

"Let go," I cried, but he only held me tighter.

"Bay, stop. They're all open."

"I have to make sure. I need to check again." I was losing my mind, but he let me go. I ran through the house again, satisfied when I confirmed all the windows were open. I stepped into my sister's room, and when I spun around to take it all in, my heart burst. I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door.

"Bay!" Brandt yelled.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. My chest was tight, and my head hurt. I stared at my cast, horrified by the images it conjured. I was covered in blood again and people were screaming, and the air was so thick with dust that I started choking. My doorknob started to turn, so I ran into the bathroom and locked the door.

"Bay, you're scaring me."

My sobs echoed loudly in my ears. I might have even been screaming, but I couldn't be sure, because I was losing all sense of what was real. I scratched hard at the blood on my legs. Why wouldn’t it come off? I ripped the hand towel from the counter, ripping off my jeans, and scrubbed my legs.

"Bay, let me in." Brandt knocked on the bathroom door.

I couldn't stop. I needed to get all the blood off. I was scrubbing the skin raw with the towel, but the blood was still there. I turned to the shower and threw the water on.

"Bay, what are you doing? Please, let me in." His previous knocks were now a measured pounding.

The cast. I needed to get it off. I yanked open the drawers and haphazardly threw things out and around trying to find something, anything to cut it off. I quickly grabbed a small box and opened the cardboard flap, revealing three new razor blade replacements. My hands were shaking fiercely, but I managed to grip one.

"Dammit, Bay. Open the door, or I'm going to break it down."

His body banging into the door didn't shift my focus from getting this cast off my arm. It was full of blood and needed to go, too. I cut and hacked at it with the razor. Every once in a while I felt a sting, but I didn't care.

I finally cut through it and tore it off. My arm hurt like hell, but the cast was soaked in blood, so it had to come off. I was beyond rational thinking anymore. The veils that separated sane from insane had been severed, and I was at the mercy of my fragile mind. I jumped into the shower and filled the loofah with soap and scrubbed hard. I started with my fingers, trying to ignore the pain of my broken arm, but the blood wasn't coming off.

Why wasn't it coming off? I cried to myself.

I scrubbed violently as the panic rose.

Brandt came crashing through the door, looking down at the cast and then to my bleeding arm.

"Holy shit, Bay. What did you do?"

I couldn't take it anymore. I collapsed to the bottom of the shower, grabbed my knees tightly to my chest, and buried my pain. A second later, Brandt got into the shower, fully clothed, sat behind me, pulled me onto his lap, and held me. His body trembled with mine.

"What did you do?" he repeated several times softly.

He peeled off my shirt and scrubbed me down gently with the loofah, starting with my back. Then he shimmied to the front of me and scrubbed my legs, my stomach, and my chest. He paused and stared at my arms.

I was still semi-incoherent, but when I looked down at my broken arm, I saw the slashes I had inflicted while cutting off the cast. The blood was real. At least some of it.

"You need to come back to me, Bay. Look at me."

I peered up to him. "What's happening to me?" I begged. I needed to understand.

"I don't know, but we're going to get you help, okay? I'm here, Bay. No matter what."

I could only nod because the words wouldn't come. I was going certifiably crazy, and I was either going to take him with me, or I was going to lose him in the process.

He turned off the water and helped me out, being careful with my broken arm. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror, I could see how dark the bruises still were on my broken ribs. Healing was going to take a lot longer than we all thought.

After cleaning me up, Brandt took me to the hospital to get a new cast. There were a lot of whispers behind the curtain, and I knew they involved the cuts on my arm. They all probably thought I was trying to kill myself. I didn't know how to explain the urgency in me to get it off. Once I was fitted with a new one, Brandt decided it was best if we went back to his place.

The car ride was uncomfortably quiet, so he turned on the radio for background noise. I wanted to say something to assure him I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I didn't have the strength in me. I just wanted to go to bed.

When we got into the apartment, Grady was pacing. I walked straight past him into Brandt's room without a word, pushed off my shoes, and climbed into his bed. I could hear their voices, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, and I didn't really care. I didn't care about anything anymore. I had just laid my whole family to rest, and I just wanted to go to sleep.

I closed my eyes and blocked out the world, only to be startled by Grady a few minutes later. He sat on the bed next to me, burying his head in his hands. He rubbed his face and sighed.

"I can't do this without you, Bay," he muttered.

The way his voice cracked with worry affected me in a way nothing else had. I reached out and touched his arm. Without looking, keeping his back to me, he took my hand and began to sob.

"I'm sorry I scared you, Grady." I was practically pleading for forgiveness. He had already been through so much. What was I thinking?

"I know she was going to leave me, Bay. I could feel it, but I still had this hope that once she got the freedom she needed, we would get back together and get married…have a family. I was living on that hope, but now…there's no hope, Bay, but there's you. You're still here, and when you're here, I can feel her. It helps me. You help me. I can't lose you. You're my best friend and the only piece left of her."

His words grated at me slowly, peeling away my walls. "I wasn't trying to kill myself, Grady. I think I'm going crazy, that's all." I tried to make a half-hearted joke. We both let out an oddly comforting laugh.

"Crazy I can deal with," he said.

"Good, because that's all I've got."

The next day Brandt took me to see a psychiatrist. I didn't blame him for encouraging it. I had to admit I even scared myself. I didn't like where my mind went, and I had no intention of going back.

The psychiatrist officially diagnosed me with PTSD and depression. She prescribed some medication and recommended I start coming at least once a week to start work on the trauma. She was nice, but when she handed me the prescription, she threw me off a little when she instructed I take a pregnancy test before starting the medication. It was a practical request since I was married, but Brandt and I had only slept together a few times right before the accident, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had my period. Would that even matter? Stress changes cycles, and I had definitely been under a lot of stress lately, and honestly, I never tracked my period. I never had a reason to.

Brandt sat outside during the appointment and drove me to the pharmacy and then back to his apartment. It was almost noon, but Grady was still sleeping. Brandt caught me staring at his door.

"I'm worried about him, too," he said.

"I think he's going to be okay. He just needs time, like us."

"Thank you for being there for him.”

"Of course. I love Grady. He's my brother." I had lost a sister, but tried to hold on to the fact that I had gained a brother.

"When he looks at you, he sees Tessa."

I studied his body language. "It's not like that, Brandt. Tessa and I are practically twins, but he was in love with the complete opposite of me. She and I were nothing alike."

"He's grieving and drinking. Lines get blurred," he pointed out.

"Maybe for him, but not me. I'm your wife, Brandt. He…I wouldn't do that."

He shifted uncomfortably and then walked to the slider. "I know. I'm sorry. I just don't know how to deal with all of this. I'm trying to be strong for you guys, but geez, Bay, I miss the hell out of my dad. I miss my stepmom, too, but after my mom left, it was just us for a while. It's just hard without him."

I felt like such a jerk. He was being so noble, and I was being selfish. Depression consumed me, and it didn't care who it affected in the process. I stood up and hugged him from behind.

"I'm sorry. We'll all learn together how to do this. We'll make it." I still had that nagging feeling I was going to have to give Grady space, a lot of it, for him to get the closure he needed, but I didn't know when or how to talk to Brandt about it, and right now was too soon for any of us to be without each other.

He turned around and hugged me gently. "I can't do this without you, Bay."

"You won't have to."

He kissed me on the head. We had barely touched since the accident, so when he brushed the hair out of my face and looked for permission to kiss me, I pulled him down to my lips and kissed him. It felt good to have his warmth touch me again. His kiss was insistent, as he pressed hard against my mouth. The last kiss we shared was in the hotel room before we crashed. We needed this.

Grady's door opened, catching us in the moment. He looked at us blankly and then headed into the kitchen and poured himself a drink.

"I'll talk to him. I know you need to get some work done." I squeezed Brandt’s arm gently.

"I do. I ignored it all last week, and I don't think Grady will be helping with the business any time soon."

"Go. It's fine."

"I think I'll go somewhere else to work, if you'll be okay?"

"We'll be fine."

"Don't forget to take your medicine. I'll see you in a few hours."

He took my lips in his and then grabbed his laptop bag on the way out the door. Grady had already retreated into his bedroom again. The vodka bottle was missing off the counter. I kept reminding myself it had only been a little over a week. We would all get better with time. I knocked on his door.

"Go away, Bay. I don't want to talk right now."

I put my head on the door for a minute, trying to decide what to do. I knew he would ask if he needed me, but I didn’t want to move, so I slid down the door and sat propped up against it and stared out the slider. Yesterday it was sunny when it shouldn't have been, but today it was gloomy. Much more fitting. Finally, the world was grieving with us.