14. Ellie
Ellie
The tile is hard, cold, and fucking uncomfortable pressing against my knees, and I can't remember how long I've been in this room. The doctor's voice is still echoing in my head, so I'm pretty sure he was in here earlier.
No idea what day it is, though.
"She's responding well to the diazepam and her vitals are stabilizing. Still, call me if anything changes."
I want to find him and shove his stethoscope up his ass because responding well implies my body isn't eating itself. The sensation of teeth crawling under my skin strongly disagrees with that assessment.
The bathroom light is too damn bright. Someone, probably Cyrus, replaced the bulb with a softer, tinted light at some point in the night, but it still feels blinding. My fingers are wrapped around the porcelain rim of the toilet and I grip so hard my knuckles have gone white.
I don't lift my head, or rather, I can't.
The shaking started in the middle of the night.
It's gone from a subtle tremor, like the one the doctor noted during his first visit, to full-body, teeth-chattering, can't-hold-a-glass-of-water shaking.
Like every receptor that spent years being gently blanketed by benzodiazepines has woken up at once and they're all having a goddamned rave.
The door opens and I don't look up because I already know it's Jinx from the sound of bare feet on the tile. I can also smell that rosemary shampoo he uses, and it's the only scent in hours that hasn't made me immediately vomit.
He doesn't say anything as he crouches beside me, but he presses a wet cloth to the back of my neck. Then his other hand gathers my hair, all of it, twisting it away from my face and out of the vomit radius.
He's done this before, but it's been a long time. When we were fourteen and I drank half a bottle of Kade's stolen whiskey and spent the night puking behind the RV.
The memory hits a little too viscerally and my stomach turns.
"Oh, fuck."
I barely get the words out before my body decides to eject whatever's left in my stomach, which is bile and water, plus the four crackers Cyrus made me eat an hour ago.
The violence of the vomiting bows my spine, wrenching sound out of me I can't control and will never, ever live down.
Through it all, Jinx just holds my hair tighter, his other hand pressed flat between my shoulder blades.
When my stomach is finally fucking empty, I'm left gasping, eyes streaming tears, spit hanging from my lips in a string I'm too weak to wipe away.
Jinx does it for me, much to my humiliation.
The cloth moves from my neck to my mouth and around my chin, gentle as can be.
He dabs at my eyes with a clean cloth and I hate him for the tenderness of it.
I hate him for being one of the reasons my body is tearing itself apart and being tender, like he's not the one doing this to me.
"I hate you," I say. My voice sounds as cracked as my lips are.
The cloth pauses on my cheek.
"I know," he says, as gentle as his hands.
He folds the cloth to a clean side and wipes under my jaw, where sweat gathers despite the shivering. I'm freezing and sweating at the same time and my body can't decide which emergency to prioritize so it's doing both, badly.
I swallow and wince because that hurts, too. "This is really fucking humiliating."
"Nah," he says with a grin. "You're pretty even when you're throwing up. That's a flex."
I almost laugh but I don't have the energy.
The shivering intensifies and I wrap my arms around myself but it doesn't help because the cold is coming from inside. Tank's shirt, the one I've been wearing for God knows how long, is comforting because it smells like him, but it's not doing much to keep out the chill.
I can practically feel Tank on the other side of the door. His silence has a weight to it. He's been there or outside my bedroom all night and hasn't come in once. Or left. I don't know if it's because he can't stand to see me like this or because he thinks I need the space.
I need neither. And I need both. Tonight, I need everything and nothing and most of all, I need for my skin to stop crawling.
The door opens again and Cyrus walks in, holding something. A thermometer, I think. He looks from me to Jinx to the toilet bowl.
"Color?" he asks like a fucking weirdo.
"She's fine," Jinx says, before I can answer. "The bile was yellow, but there's no blood."
Great. They're discussing the color of my bodily fluids like I'm a damn dog. Could this get any more humiliating?
Cyrus nods and steps closer, scanning my forehead with the thermometer.
The beep is too loud.
Everything is too fucking loud.
"Ninety-nine point two." He writes something on his phone in the medical log he's been keeping, the obsessive son of a bitch. "Heart rate?"
Jinx finds my wrist without looking. He presses two fingers on the pulse point, his lips moving silently as he counts the beats.
"Eighty-six," he announces.
"Down from one-twelve," Cyrus says, making another note in his stupid phone chart. He makes a small, satisfied sound like I'm a system that's finally stabilizing after a crash. Guess that's not far off. "Next dose in forty minutes."
He's gone as quickly as he appeared. I hear him talking to Tank outside the door, indecipherable, and Tank's shadow shifts under the door crack.
"Has my mom texted?" I mutter to Jinx.
I haven't been to dinner, and I haven't called. We left off in a weird spot, so I might actually be on her mind, and Todd will notice because the son of a bitch notices everything. No one to stand between them if I'm here, either.
Jinx is quiet for a moment. His hand resumes its slow stroke down my hair, smoothing the tangled mess I haven't brushed in…
God, I don't know.
"Kade's watching her," he says, as if that's supposed to be comforting.
"That's where he's been," Jinx adds, softer now. "Since yesterday."
Since he declared total control, turning my life on its head again, and walked out.
He went to watch my mother.
That throws a small glass of water on my absolute loathing, but it fades quickly in the face of the withdrawal, just like everything else. I press my forehead against the cold porcelain because if I don't anchor myself to something solid I'm going to feel too much all at once and I can't.
I just can't do that shit right now.
But the thought won't stop once it takes hold.
Even in his absence, even in his rage, even thinking I'm a spoiled rich girl who left them behind because she wanted fancy cars and a big, beige room, he went to watch my mom.
"Can you stand?" Jinx asks.
I try. My legs are rubber and the shaking makes my knees buckle almost immediately.
Jinx catches me like he expected that, one strong arm scooping under my knees and the other behind my back, lifting me off the tile.
He weighs more than me, obviously, but I'm always surprised by how strong he is beneath the carefully curated aesthetic, the trendy clothes and the pretty face.
"I'm disgusting," I mumble into his shoulder. "I smell like puke."
"No, you smell like strawberries. Same as ever." He carries me out of the bathroom, past the crack of the hallway where I catch Tank's dark shape leaning against the opposite wall now, like he wasn't just outside the bathroom.
"Liar," I mutter, my head thumping against Jinx's shoulder.
Jinx smirks and carries me into my bedroom.
The sheets are fresh. Someone changed them while I was glued to the toilet and the comforter is pulled back already, waiting. Jinx lowers me onto the mattress like I'm breakable, which right now, I am, and pulls the blanket up to my chin.
The softness of the bed against my aching muscles is almost enough to make me cry.
Then again, so is everything right now.
Jinx sits on the edge and doesn't leave. His hand finds my forehead, and whether he's checking for fever or just touching me, I can't tell. Then his hand slides back and his fingers thread into my hair and I fucking melt.
He's braiding it, I realize after a minute of the stroking that becomes purposeful.
"It'll be easier to keep back this way, next time you get sick," he says softly.
Next time. Because it's inevitable, just like the clawing, crawling teeth under my skin and the cold, clammy prickles climbing up my spine.
But when his fingers are in my hair, it's not as bad. It's easy to close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else, some other time. Sitting on a stained couch in an RV that doesn't run, while my best friend braids my hair and my most immediate concern is midterm exams.
"Stay?" I can barely manage to speak. My throat's scraped raw from all the vomiting.
"Just try and make me leave."
His fingers keep moving in gentle, repetitive motions that make me feel more in my body. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but the nausea is taking a break, at least. The shaking persists but it's softer now, muted by the weight of the blanket and the warmth of his presence.
Also the knowledge that somewhere out in the hall, Tank is parked like an overprotective gargoyle and somewhere else in the house, Cyrus is studying my vitals and plotting my torture like a lab rat.
And across town, Kade is sitting in a parked car, watching my mother from outside the walls that kept me away from them.
Hating me and staying anyway.
Or maybe just not knowing how to bridge the gap between us any better than I do. It's hard to say.
My eyes close. The crawling under my skin doesn't stop and probably won't for hours if not days, but Jinx's hands are steady and soothing.
Usually I fall asleep counting, but for some reason, tonight, I just…
Sleep.