Chapter 19
ELLIOT
He didn’t look back. He just walked away as if breaking my heart had cost him nothing.
That was the part that broke me. Not his words. Not his cold indifference. The way he walked away like I was nothing after everything we’d shared. After every broken piece of myself I’d given him.
The door closed with a soft, final sound, and something inside my chest tore open so fast it stole the air from my lungs. I was already crying—had been crying—my face wet and aching, my throat raw from trying not to make noise while he spoke to me like distance was mercy.
I lay there staring at the place where he’d been standing, my vision swimming. My heart pounded hard and uneven, like it couldn’t figure out what rhythm it was supposed to keep now that he was gone. Every breath hitched halfway in, caught on something sharp behind my sternum.
I waited for the pain to crest.
It didn’t.
It just kept coming.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time lost its edges. My body curled in on itself without me deciding to move, knees pulled tight to my chest, arms wrapped around my ribs like I could hold myself together if I tried hard enough.
The room hummed. Machines beeped. The world refused to end. Nurses and doctors walked past my door like voyeurs of my suffering.
Tears kept leaking out of me—steady, relentless—soaking into the pillow until it was cold against my cheek. My face felt swollen, my jaw aching from clenching. My chest burned like I’d inhaled smoke.
Guess that was what happened after you’d tried to drown yourself. But in many ways this felt a million times worse than when the cold water had filled my lungs until they screamed for oxygen.
Then some part of me believed he’d rescue me—he did. But now there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that he’d never come to my rescue again. I’d been discarded. Forgotten by the one person who’d promised to stay even when I got ugly.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t even when exhaustion claimed every cell in my body. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I just cried until my eyes felt scraped raw and my head throbbed with every pulse of my heart.
A nurse came in sometime during the night. She spoke gently. Used my name like it might anchor me.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t even acknowledge her.
When she touched my arm, something feral ripped through me. I jerked away, breath breaking into a sharp, ugly sound that scraped my throat.
“Please,” she said. “We can give you something to help you rest. It’d been hours and being this distressed won’t help your recovery.”
“No,” I croaked. My voice sounded wrong—hoarse, shredded. “Don’t.”
“Elliot,” she spoke in a soft yet admonishing tone. “I really think you should reconsider.”
“I won’t”
She tried again later. And again. Still that same soft scolding voice. Like she knew best. By the third time, I was shaking so hard the bed rattled beneath me. My teeth chattered even though I wasn’t cold. My skin buzzed, every nerve lit up and screaming.
They brought medication anyway. Stated I was unstable and unable to think for myself. They ordered a psych evaluation.
I screamed when they tried to push it. The sound ripped out of me before I could stop it. Raw, animal, desperate. I thrashed, hands clawing at the sheets, chest heaving like I was drowning on dry land.
“Get away from me,” I sobbed. “Please. Just leave me alone.”
I yanked at the IVs with hands that barely felt like mine, pain flaring bright and sharp. A clean, cutting sensation that made my vision white out for a second.
Good. I wanted that. I wanted something that hurt in a way I could feel. They froze. Voices hushed. Someone cursed softly under their breath.
They pinned me to the bed until the last of my energy left me.
Eventually, they bargained. A new nurse came in, older than the others.
She looked at me with sympathetic eyes. Sat with me as I whimpered and cried uncontrollably.
She offered fresh IVs. No sedatives. No pain relief.
Just enough to keep me hydrated and lucid.
I nodded immediately, tears still sliding down my face. My body ached everywhere—deep, bone-heavy pain that sat in my muscles and joints like lead but it was mine. It reminded me I was still here.
They left me alone after that. Alone with my pain. Alone with the memory of the one person I couldn’t forget.
Morning came without my permission.
Gray light leaked through the narrow window, thin and anemic, like it didn’t belong to the day outside.
I stared at it until my eyes burned, until the pounding in my skull synced with the steady beep of machines that didn’t care whether I stayed or broke apart.
My body felt wrong—too heavy, too distant—like it wasn’t fully mine anymore.
They said they wanted to keep me for observation.
I said no and demanded to be discharged.
Said I was fine. Said I would walk out if they tried to stop me.
The words came out sharp and brittle, like glass under pressure.
An old nurse came back with practiced calm and worry etched deep into her face.
She spoke gently, like I might shatter if she didn’t.
I ignored her.
They slid the papers toward me eventually.
Forms dressed up as concern, legal language wrapped around the threat of a psych hold if I didn’t cooperate.
I signed where they told me to, agreeing to outpatient care I already knew I wouldn’t follow through on.
My hands shook so badly she had to steady the clipboard for me.
She asked if I was sure.
I didn’t answer.
My voice didn’t work anymore. I didn’t trust it not to betray me. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in that room another second. Not after everything it had taken from me. Not after him.
I had lost my mother in a hospital room just like this one. And sometime during the night—quietly, cleanly—I had lost the only person I knew I would ever love.
Never again would I open myself up to this kind of torment again. Never again would I be whole.
Someone hurried out of a taxi as I practically crawled out of the hospital.
I jumped in before the door shut behind them.
Promised the driver I’d pay them when I got home.
Dark eyes looked at me in the rearview mirror.
He inhaled like he was going to speak but wisely shook his head and stayed silent.
The ride home felt unreal. The car moved. The world slid past the windows. I watched it like I was already gone, like I’d been left behind somewhere back in that hospital bed with my ribs wrapped around an absence. Or the bottom of the ocean under the crushing weight of the world.
When I got home, the house hit me like a vacuum. Too quiet. Too empty. Too filled with memories that cut like knives. Each one more brutal than the other.
Layers of pain lived in these walls, broken up by small pinpricks of light. And right now, every one of them centered around Anthony.
Bile surged up my throat, my body pushed beyond its limits barely functioning.
Saltwater and stomach acid flowed out of me.
Like my body was trying to purge poison.
I made it to my bedroom, didn’t remember if I flushed the toilet and collapsed fully clothed onto the bed, my limbs refusing to hold me up anymore.
My body sank into the mattress like it was giving up the fight entirely.
I didn’t change.
I didn’t shower.
I didn’t eat.
I lay there staring at the wall while tears kept coming, even when I felt like there was nothing left inside me to cry out.
My chest ached constantly—a deep, crushing pressure that made every breath feel like work. My limbs felt heavy and distant, like they belonged to someone else. Sometimes my hands tingled. Sometimes my feet went numb.
I didn’t care. This didn’t feel dramatic like some childish outburst. It felt like gravity had won.
Days blurred together. Weeks had past before I realized.
I didn’t leave my bed unless it was to use the bathroom and that was starting to feel like too much effort.
My body was weak. My heart barely beat. Each minute that passed was futile.
But my soul was a withered, brittle thing that was clinging by a thread.
The first time I called Anthony, he answered after the first ring but remained silent. I couldn’t even hear him breathing, but I felt him. His presence soothed some of my jagged edges, only to shred me once more when he hung up.
The next call a few days later rang twice before I was sent to voicemail. All it recorded were my hiccuping sobs and haunted cries before it timed out and cut me off.
Eventually I stopped calling him. Stopped trying to bridge the gap between us that was now bigger than the Mariana Trench.
It was just an empty dark cavernous space where hope once lived.
Because hearing the silence hurt more than not trying at all.
His rejection slowly poisoned me. I’d texted my dad once, letting him know what had transpired while he was gone, but he never even read the message.
It was just more proof that I didn’t exist anymore.
By the end of the first month, the pain hadn’t faded. It had settled into me.
It wasn’t the kind of settling that brought peace. It felt more like something heavy finding its place and refusing to move. The initial shock had burned itself out early, leaving behind something dull and constant. It didn’t spike anymore. It pressed.
The quiet stopped feeling loud and started feeling normal. My ears adjusted to it. The house didn’t echo the way it had at first. It absorbed sound instead. Mornings passed without footsteps on the stairs. Even my own breathing felt smaller, like the walls were slowly learning how to ignore me.