Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Why was my phone ringing? It was loud in my ears, my earbuds amplifying the noise straight into my eardrums. I groaned as I rolled over, patting the mattress for my phone.
“Hello?” My eyes were still closed, too heavy to fight to open.
A woman’s voice, which I didn’t recognize, came through. “Crescent?”
I squinted as one of my eyes opened. Pulling my phone from my face, I looked at the phone number, confused when it didn’t have a contact name. “Who is this?”
“It’s Sarah. Listen, I have Elio here at the diner. Honestly, it looks like he’s been beat within an inch of his life.”
I shot up in my bed, almost throwing my phone as I threw my blankets. “What? What do you mean?”
Sarah sighed. “He gave me this note with math equations and said it was your number. Took me a minute, but I got it. Are you able to meet me here?”
My pants were already up my legs. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
I’d never made it out of the apartment and into my car so fast. I was pretty sure my tank top was on backward, but I couldn’t give enough of a fuck to rectify that.
Thankfully, with this being a smaller town, I didn’t have to worry so much about cops prowling. Because of that, I was able to speed my way to the diner, park like an asshole, and run in where I could see the lights were turned on.
The moment I walked in, I saw Sarah kneeling beside an unconscious Elio. She was sweeping her hand through his hair, slowly pushing his bangs aside with each stroke. I was frozen in place, standing still at the entrance. I was scared to see his face.
Elio’s arms were covered in red marks, some starting to bruise already. Dried blood splattered his shirt. All I could think of was the boy I used to know. The kid I hung out with on the playground.
Slowly, I started to walk toward them. “Is he…” I trailed off, not completely sure of what I wanted to ask. Asking if he was okay sounded stupid.
Sarah peered up from Elio. She looked like a mess, dark streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. “I’ve never seen him like this. I mean, I’ve seen a black eye or two on him, but never like this.”
My legs trembled as I went to the floor with her.
Elio lay on his back in front of us, his head turned to the side.
Sarah was older—not by much, maybe in her late thirties at most. She looked much older than that now, though.
Worry made pathways along her skin, making crossroads where there hadn’t been before. She looked like she was scared.
And so was I.
“I know.” Was my voice cracking? It sounded wobbly and foreign to my own ears. “How did you find him?”
I watched as her tan hand swept over Elio’s bangs again.
“I left my tip money here. Didn’t even realize until I was home.
I have the keys, so I came by to get it.
When I got here, he was on the ground in front of the bakery.
” Her voice died out, a gurgling, choking sound replacing it as she started to cry.
“H-he barely got your name out to tell me about t-the note.” A shuddered breath.
“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know what else to do. ”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but Sarah was just an innocent bystander in the grand scheme of things.
Elio squirmed, his body jerking as a long, pained groan left his throat. I watched, suddenly paralyzed with something much stronger than fear, while he turned his head toward us.
The name etched into the shards of my heart started to beat.
It was rapid and loud, a scraping of glass against glass as it shrieked and shattered.
The E engulfed me whole, barely leaving any room for anything else.
The L lifted itself, rising into my esophagus, barely stopping before my mouth.
The I irritated the sides of my rib cage, bumping and chafing the flesh surrounding it.
The O orchestrated it all, filling the husk of my body with music, despair, and the sinister, diabolical screams of something so broken I didn’t want to listen anymore.
Nothing felt real.
Everything felt too real.
Elio’s once bright and shiny eyes cracked just a sliver, too swollen to open fully. His nose was busted, with a large scrape right on the bridge of it. His lips were caked in dried blood, his very essence bleeding out through the wounds on them. He was so swollen, I couldn’t see him anymore.
Nonsensical mumblings began at the base of my throat, trailing up it and into my ears. They came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“Crescent?” Elio coughed as he said it.
It fucking hurt to see. For once, I was finally able to understand why fire and the color red were associated with rage. My vision blurred, pure, hot anger clouding it. “I’m here, El. I’m here.” I shifted closer.
He whimpered. A broken, sad sound I’d never heard from him before. “Cres,” he whined.
“It’s okay, El. I promise.” His hand stretched out, reaching past me. I followed it, grasping it in mine. “I’ve got you.” I didn’t take my eyes off him, letting his image seep into my mind. I let it scar me. I let it punish me for not doing more.
For not doing enough.
For not being enough.
“Sarah, call an ambulance.” I refused to not be enough for him anymore.
Elio tried to scramble from the floor, yelping as he did so. “No! No ambulance, no police!”
“We need to, El.”
“Please! I can’t. I can’t.” Glistening tears ran down the side of his face. I wanted to dry them. Take them away and shoulder them all. Bottle them up until I drowned in them if it meant Elio didn’t have to handle them.
Sarah had her phone in her hand, the screen dark instead of dialing. “Do you think he’ll tell them anything at the hospital if we went?”
I didn’t want to take my eyes off Elio. Forcing myself to look at Sarah was almost torture. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know if he even has insurance?”
“I don’t know.”
She was quiet for a moment, looking up and down Elio’s battered frame.
“I know a guy. He’s a doctor at a hospital a few towns over.
I can call him and see if he’ll come to your house?
” It was a question. I was having a hard time even comprehending what was going on around us, never mind how to answer something of that magnitude.
“Instead of getting nowhere with the ER, he can come out and take a look. He won’t ask for payment, and he won’t pressure Elio to make a report.
Which, with how he is now, I don’t know if he would agree to filing one anyway. ”
A trembling, scared hand reached out to me and grabbed onto my shirt, pulling tight. Elio raised his head to plead with me. “I’ll do that. I-I don’t have money. Please. I don’t wanna go to a hospital. I can’t, Cres, please.”
I let my eyes fall shut for a moment, blocking everything else out. Rushed, panicked whispers filtered through my ears, distracting me.
Finally coming to a decision I hoped wasn’t wrong, I nodded to Sarah and gently cradled Elio to my chest. “Shh, just rest, okay? Everything will be okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got this. I’ll handle it.” I didn’t know if anything I said comforted him.
I wasn’t sure he could even understand my words. All Elio did was cry and beg. Cry and beg. Cry and beg. But my shattered, broken heart still beat for him, so I still had hope that everything would be alright.
Getting Elio to my apartment was hell on earth. Sarah was a big help, but he was in so much pain and so loopy, getting him into the car was a monumental task in itself. It hurt to see him like that and not be able to make it better.
He was lying on his back on the couch now, his eyes closed with little groans of pain escaping him every now and then. The doctor friend Sarah called was almost here, and I was silently begging time to speed up so he could make Elio feel better quicker.
I knelt beside the couch, holding a bag of frozen broccoli over different spots on Elio’s face. Every wince, every slight twitch of his face killed me a little bit more inside.
“Devon is here now,” Sarah whispered from behind me. “He’s bringing his stuff to the door. He’ll get Elio fixed up, I promise.”
Her voice wavered as she said it, not quite matching the positivity she was trying to exude. I didn’t look up, didn’t turn toward her. All of my focus was on making my best friend as comfortable as possible.
Even as Devon let himself in, I stayed stuck to Elio’s side. I could feel his presence beside me, hovering for a moment. I wondered if he was assessing what he’d gotten himself into.
“I’ll need some space, Crescent. Is there a room you two could go to? I’ll come find you when I have more information.”
I didn’t want to leave. I was still glued to the floor, my hand cradling the bag of broccoli for fear that if I let it go, something bad would happen.
What, I wasn’t sure. Devon shuffled beside me, probably trying to urge me to move, but it wasn’t until Sarah wrapped her hand around my upper arm that I so much as flinched.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Let’s let Dr. D do his job, okay? Come on.”
Right. Doctor. Devon was a doctor, and he could help Elio. Maybe he could fix him all the way up, or maybe he could inject something into my veins to wake me up from this fucking nightmare.
I pulled the bag of broccoli off Elio’s face, holding it in my hand until water started to drip down my wrist. I looked at it, frozen with indecision. Where do I put it? If I take it away, what would happen?
“Break it.”
“Tear it open.”
“He’ll die.”
“He’ll die.”
“He’ll die.”
Someone was breathing far too fast, each intake of breath louder than the last. If they didn’t calm down, they’d have a panic attack. Or maybe they already were. I started to look around, wondering who it was, when dark tan hands took the broccoli out of my own, and I realized.
It was me. I was breathing so heavily, the world was starting to swim.
“Go to your room, Crescent. I’ve got him.” Devon’s voice was soothing and calm, but he needed to hurry the fuck up and fix Elio.
Sarah pulled me up from the floor, and I let autopilot take over as we walked to my bedroom.
It was a fucking mess, everything in gross disarray, but Sarah didn’t mention it.
Maybe she was just as tired as I was. I didn’t ask, though.
We were silent as we sat on the edge of my bed together, thinking over the night we’d had.
She sniffled every so often, a wet sound that filled the silence. When she did speak, it was solemn and heavy. “Do you know who did this to him?”
Nodding, I tried to focus on not focusing on the earbuds I desperately wanted to shove into my ears. “His boyfriend.”
“How long have they been together?”
“Nine or ten years, give or take.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I don’t even want to think about everything he’s gone through. I mean,”—I shifted sideways, looking right at her—“what caused a fight so bad, he suddenly reached out for help?”
Sarah shrugged, her shoulders sagging with an invisible weight. “Maybe it was you. I’ve never seen him talk to anyone before you.”
A knock sounded against the door just before it creaked open, Devon slowly stepping in. The bed rustled beneath us as Sarah and I both sat up straighter, waiting for him to say something.
The look on his face didn’t bode too well. “He’s definitely taken quite the beating. I’m going to be leaving some bandages, cream, and a prescription for antibiotics just in case. He might’ve cracked or broken a few ribs, but those will heal by themselves.”
I made mental notes of everything he said, paying careful attention to every word. “What about his pain?”
“I can’t prescribe any pain meds, unfortunately.
Not without raising some red flags. Antibiotics are one thing.
Switch between ibuprofen and Tylenol, use ice to keep the swelling down, and make sure he’s hydrated and well-fed.
” He fished his wallet out of his pocket, pulling a card from it.
“If you have questions, or if he starts to show signs of infection, call me. If you’re concerned and I don’t answer, take him to the Clandestine hospital. ”
Standing, I took the card from him, immediately opening my phone to enter his number into it. “Thank you. I mean it. Is he awake?”
He hoisted his bag over his shoulder, adjusting it against his side. “No, and I don’t expect him to be up for a while. If you work tomorrow, I’d call in sick. He’ll need someone with him.”
Fuck, I’d completely forgotten about work. “I’ve got it. Thank you again.”
“No problem.” He started to walk out of the room, but stopped, turning on his heel. “By the way, if you ever expect to get the police involved, I’d take pictures of him now. For evidence.”
I patted my pocket, feeling my phone there. Suddenly, it was burning a fucking hole through the material. He was right. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want him to be. Especially since I knew Elio would probably be mad about it when he woke up.
Sarah and I followed Devon back to the living room, stopping in front of the door. He was halfway out already, but Sarah hesitated where she stood, glancing from me to down the hallway. “You okay?”
She shook her head, bringing her eyes back to mine. “I don’t want to leave. I’m worried about him.”
The skin on her face sagged with exhaustion, pulling the smile lines and small wrinkles further down than normal. “I know. If you give me your number, I’ll text you in the morning.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Once she left, silence took over. A heavy, sticky thing that clung to my skin like cling wrap. It haunted me, chasing me around my apartment like a ghost I’d never be rid of.
Elio’s face was covered in little bandages. His eyes were still swelling. He lay sleeping on the couch, just under the photo of us in high school. It was a slap in the face, seeing how different things were now compared to then.
And amongst the ghosts, I let the whispers take over as I lay on the floor beside him. I refused to let go or leave him alone. No matter how loud the voices got, I wouldn’t fail him again.