15. Tank
Tank
The chair in the corner of Ellie's room wasn't built for someone my size at all. It's dainty with cream-colored fabric and wooden legs that creak every time I shift my weight even slightly, which I try not to do because even the smallest sound makes her flinch right now.
My knees are practically bunched up at my chest and my shoulders hang over both armrests like I'm sitting in doll furniture. There's something almost funny about it, this massive, ruined body crammed into a princess chair, helplessly watching the actual princess fall apart.
Funny might be the wrong word.
Devastating feels closer.
Ellie is a small, fragile shape beneath the pink comforter, curled up on her side and facing the wall. The pillow arrangement she had before got destroyed sometime during the night when the thrashing started.
I tried to rearrange them the way she likes but eventually gave up because she kept knocking them loose. Didn't want to wake her during the brief stretches where she actually managed to fall asleep.
She's not sleeping now. Her breathing is too jagged and uneven, hitching every few seconds like her body keeps forgetting and then remembering how to do it.
The tremors haven't stopped since four this morning. Even under the blanket, I see them racking her body. It reminds me of a car engine running rough, misfiring on every cylinder, and the mechanic in me wants to get underneath and find the broken part and fix it.
Or at least wrap around her until she stops shaking.
But I can't fix this. Can't reach the thing that's broken. I just have to watch her as she goes through it, knowing the only thing that helps is the thing she hates me for.
It's fucking torture.
Loving Ellie always meant stepping back and out of the way, so she can do what's good for her. But this is the first time what's good for her and what she wants has been so at odds, and I'm not cut out for it.
If this girl told me to move a mountain, I'd find a way, no questions asked. But the one thing she wants from me right now is to give her something that could kill her.
The tablet Cyrus left me is propped on the nightstand, displaying her vitals from the smartwatch he strapped to her wrist while she slept.
Her heart rate is ninety-one. Her blood pressure keeps fluctuating, but it's always on the high side.
So is her temperature. I check it every five minutes with the little infrared gun instead of every half hour like Cyrus told me because it gives my hands something to do.
These massive, scarred, clumsy things that can crack a man's spine like kindling.
I look down at them in the dim light from the hallway and let my mind wander to how gently I managed to hold her in the grass not too long ago.
How carefully I touched her skin, terrified of leaving marks, so fucking terrified of being the monster everyone sees when they look at me.
Everyone but her.
And now, she looks at me like I'm killing her.
She looks at all of us that way, and I try to tell myself it's not personal, it's not really her and she won't hate me when all this is said and done.
But what if…?
The comforter moves and Ellie makes a low, groaning sound. I'm already leaning forward when her hand shoots out from under the blanket and grabs the edge of the mattress.
She's trying to get up.
Her legs swing over the side of the bed and her feet hit the floor and she stands, or tries to. She makes it exactly two steps before her knees fold like paper and the floor rushes up toward her.
I'm there before she hits it.
I'll always be there to catch her. That's what I promised myself when she left. A promise I broke, apparently, because I wasn't there for whatever drove her to take those pills.
I can never forgive myself for that, even if she does.
My hands close around her waist and her ribs and she weighs nothing, she weighs absolutely nothing against my arms. The fragility of her is fucking terrifying. She's shaking so hard I feel it vibrating through my rough palms, through my forearms and my chest where I've pulled her against me.
"Bath…" She can't finish the word but her hand flails toward the bathroom door and I understand.
I carry her into the bathroom where the light is already on and lower her in front of the toilet as carefully as I've ever done anything in my life, one hand supporting her back, the other gathering her hair like I've watched Jinx do a dozen times by now.
I envy the way his hands move so easily and gently through her hair. The comfort they bring her.
His are an artist's hands.
Mine are only made to destroy things.
Her hair is so soft under my fingertips as I try not to pull.
She retches. It sounds like it fucking hurts. Nothing comes up because she can't keep anything down, despite what the doctor said. But her body doesn't know or care that her stomach is empty.
I hate this. I wish I could take it from her. The pain, the sickness, the heat under her skin that makes her thrash and throw off her covers in her sleep.
Instead, all I can do is stand here and hold her hair, completely fucking useless.
When it stops, she sags against the porcelain. Her forehead rests on her arm and the sweat runs down her neck, soaking the collar of my shirt she's still wearing. My shirt she's been wearing for two days because she grabbed it when the shaking started and hasn't let go of it since.
I brought her another and left it on the side of the bed in case she wanted that one instead, but she hasn't taken it.
I reach for the washcloth on the counter and run it under the cold tap. Then I press it to the back of her neck where the heat gathers most, and she makes a sound of shuddering relief.
I wipe her mouth, her chin, and get a new one to dab under her eyes where tears and sweat have mixed together. My thumb catches her lower lip and she flinches, like she can't process tenderness right now without her nervous system interpreting it as an attack.
I yank my hand back, afraid I've hurt her.
"This is so fucking humiliating," she whispers. Her voice is as frail and broken as the rest of her. "You shouldn't… you shouldn't have to see me like this."
I shift, balancing on one knee so I can sign where she can see. My left hand stays on her back, keeping a steady pressure between her shoulder blades. The right hand moves to sign, modifying some of it that I need two hands for. Hopefully she still understands.
Hate seeing you sick. But I've done it before, remember?
She blinks. The ghost of a memory flickers across her face. "That was different." She gives a weak cough. "That was just... stupid teenage stuff."
This is just stuff too. I'm here. Same as then.
"It's not the same." Her mouth trembles and the tears come without warning, sliding down her cheeks. "Tank, I… I feel like I'm dying."
My hand stills on her back.
I've watched people die plenty of times. I've watched the light leave their eyes and gripped throats until the pulse flickered and stopped. I know what dying looks like, and she's not dying, not yet, not for a long damn time if I have anything to say about it.
But the raw terror in her voice is real. Her body screams for something even I won't give her and she knows it.
She turns her head on her arm, those green eyes finding mine.
They're glassy and bloodshot, rimmed in red so dark it looks like the eyeliner she wore for Halloween one year.
The girl in those eyes is barely there, buried under years of chemicals and whatever survival mechanism taught her that numbness was safer than feeling.
"Please," she breathes.
The word hits me like a kick straight to the gut.
This is the thing I've been dreading.
"Help me. Just… you can help me, Tank. I have a stash.
They didn't find all of them. It's in—" She swallows and winces.
"In my backpack. The front zipper has a slit in the lining.
Just one little pill and I'll be okay, just something to bridge it.
I can ride the rest out, and I'll be okay if you just… "
I stare at her.
And I see it for the first time.
It's not her.
It's not Ellie.
She's asking me for things Ellie wouldn't want, not if she was in her right mind to consent to it. Not if she wasn't sick.
And not just because of what the withdrawal is doing to her body, either. But because of what those pills have been doing for a hell of a lot longer than that.
It's not Ellie who's asking me to give her the pills that are killing her, it's the mask she wears to Todd's table and the campaign parties.
To every event where she puts on a smile to show the world she's fine when the real Ellie, my Ellie, is trapped and buried underneath the marbled rubble of that seemingly perfect life.
Ellie doesn't have a manipulative bone in her body.
The mask does. And the most faithful thing, the most true thing I can do for her right now is say no.
I take her hand. Both of mine, hard and scarred, close around her small soft one, engulfing it completely.
I look her in the eyes, look past the glassy, lit-up stare from a girl I don't recognize to the one I love, and I shake my head.
Her face crumbles. Whatever composure was holding her together a minute ago dissolves and what's underneath is raw grief.
I feel sick.
"Please." Her voice cracks on the word. "Please, I can't do this. I can't… it hurts, Tank, everything hurts, and I just need one."
I shake my head again. Slow and steady but firm.
The sound she makes isn't a sob exactly, but it's in the same category and it has the same effect on me as if every bone in my body were broken. She rips her hand free from mine and pushes against my chest, pushing me away. She's not strong enough to do it, but I step back.
"Get out." The words tear out of her, guttural and cold. "Get out, Tank. I don't want you here. Get OUT."
I've had things break inside me before, including my heart the day she left, and then again the day I read that letter, but I guess it's healed enough to shatter all over again.
I know she doesn't mean it.
Doesn't help.
I stand and my knees ache from the tile. The bathroom feels twenty degrees colder as I straighten to my full height, filling the doorway.
She's turned away from me, curled up against the base of the toilet with her arms wrapped around herself, shaking so hard the collar rattles faintly against her collarbone. My shirt is soaked through at the back.
I peel my own shirt over my head and drape it around her shoulders. I'm so much bigger, it might as well be a blanket. Her body goes stiff for a second, other than the trembling, but she doesn't turn around.
I step through the doorway and pull it until it's almost closed, because she told me to leave and I've never had it in me to tell Eleanor Riggs no to anything.
Nothing except this one thing.
Because I love her too much to help her die.
Even if it fucking kills me.