Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Untethered
The world around me is overtaken by white noise. My mind goes blank—my brain shutting down all conscious thought. The only thing I feel is pain. Deep, soul-crushing pain. I have no control over the sounds I’m making or the way my body curls around Luke’s lifeless form in agony.
Not again. I can’t do this again.
A flurry of activity surrounds me, but I don’t comprehend any of it or what it means.
I’m only vaguely aware as hands suddenly pull me back, dragging me away from Luke even as I desperately try to hold on to him.
I don’t want to leave his side. I’ll die right here if it means I get to stay with him.
The tiny kitchen is suddenly overcrowded with people as a team of paramedics rush in and surround Luke, shouting incomprehensible words and commands as they begin to work, cutting his shirt.
They’re abrasive, handling his body with gruff but purposeful methods to position him where they need him to be.
I feel a feral urge to shout at them to be gentle—maybe I do, I’m not sure.
I can feel Marcus holding his arms around me, a solid weight tethering me to this reality.
He’s speaking to me, but I can’t hear the words.
I can’t hear anything but the static. There’s a heaviness in my chest, crushing my ribs like someone’s trapped my lungs in a vacuum.
When I look down, all I can see are my hands covered in Luke’s blood, and suddenly, I’m dizzy.
Then Marcus begins to drag me away—maybe he’s told to do it.
Maybe he thinks it’s better if I don’t watch as the paramedics start their brutally necessary chest compressions, or the way Luke’s body convulses when they strike him with the defibrillator paddles.
But before I know it, we’re outside, the cacophony of flashing lights assaulting my eyes as they illuminate the yard. It’s snowing.
“Ethan, breathe,” Marcus orders, and it’s the first time I realize I haven’t been.
I take a big gasp, feeling the frigid air fill my lungs.
It eases a bit of the pressure in my chest, but that only makes the pain surrounding my heart that much more acute.
Marcus guides me to sit on the stoop and puts himself directly in front of me, forcing me to look at him.
He puts his hands on my face, holding me steady.
How does he look so calm when my whole world is imploding?
“Let them work on him,” he says assertively. “It’s not too late, okay? They’re going to take him to the hospital. They’re going to try and save him. Do you hear me? It’s not over yet.”
I hear him. But I don’t believe him. How could I? He didn’t watch the life leave Luke’s eyes—he didn’t feel the way his body went limp in my hands. He’s already lost so much blood. I’m proof of that by how much of it I’m covered in. God, I don’t think I’ll survive this.
There’s something about the determined intensity behind Marcus’s expression that I can’t help but cling to.
A sliver of light in a void of endless black.
A part of me knows that if I dare to grasp for that hope, I’ll only be let down that much more painfully if he’s wrong.
But I’ve always been a bit of a masochist. Besides, Marcus has never led me astray before. Surely, he won’t start today.
For now, I don’t have a choice but to wait and see.
I sit there on the stoop in a daze, feeling how numb my whole body is and not from the cold.
Marcus stays with me the entire time, reminding me to keep breathing, even as the police come to take his statement.
They try to ask me questions, but I can’t speak.
It’s like I’ve gone mute with the horror.
All I can see is Luke’s body lying broken and lifeless on the kitchen floor, the image flashing before my eyes every few seconds.
The way he looked at me before he went still…
I don’t know how much time passes before Pete is hauled out of the house in handcuffs, his nose broken and bleeding.
He’s shoved into the back of a cruiser with little sympathy, all while hurling insults at the cops and a few choice words for me.
I stare at him blankly from my perch, unable to muster the energy to feel rage. I’ve completely shut down.
Shortly after, Luke’s mother is taken out on a stretcher. She looks like she may have fainted, but she’s not in any sort of critical condition. Still, they waste no time whisking her away in one of the ambulances that responded to the call.
All that’s left is Luke. And the longer I go without seeing him being taken out, the more my heart crumbles with dread that it’s already too late.
He’s already gone, sure to come out in a body bag.
Everything goes gray, the world losing the color he helped me to see.
How could I ever be expected to see anything in color again if Luke’s truly gone?
Thankfully, mercifully, the paramedics do eventually rush him out—no body bag to be seen.
They fly by like bats out of hell on a mission, and their urgency tells me they still haven’t given up.
There’s still that little shred of hope.
I don’t even get a proper glance at Luke as they pack him in another ambulance and peel out of the driveway, their siren blaring.
After that, everything else is a blur.
The next thing I’m fully conscious of is that I’m sitting on a stiff and unforgiving wooden chair in the hospital waiting room. Awareness of that fact comes to me slowly, mainly as a sharp physical pain in my lower back, like I’ve been sitting in one position for too long.
I shift in my seat, stretching out my stiff muscles, feeling how they scream at me.
“Ethan?” Marcus asks from beside me. I turn my head and see his face relax with my movement. “Oh, thank god.”
I can’t help but frown with confusion. I’m trying and failing to remember exactly how I got here. There are flashes, but nothing concrete.
Glancing up, I find we’re not alone. The entire room is full of familiar faces.
Ben and Laura are sitting at a table across the way with their three children, keeping them occupied with coloring books and videos on their phones.
Liz and Eric are lying back on a couch, their son asleep across Eric’s chest. There are all five of Marcus’s kids here, too—and Ryder’s boyfriend, Justin.
Most of them are still wearing their pajamas.
Marcus and Tiff are on either side of me.
I can’t help but look down at my hands, turning them over to stare at my shaking palms. They’re spotlessly clean.
All evidence of Luke’s blood has been meticulously washed away as if it never stained my hands to begin with.
And when I look even closer, I find I’m also wearing new clothes, the blood-stained garments replaced with fresh ones.
Someone must have gone to my house to get a change of clothes and then helped me dress, probably after cleaning me up. I don’t remember any of this.
“Ethan, honey,” Tiff suddenly says from beside me, grabbing my attention. Her voice is full of soothing concern. I look over at her, then notice how everyone else in the room is staring at me with concern now, too. That’s never a good sign. “How are you feeling?”
I don’t answer right away—I’m not entirely sure what the answer to that question even is.
But immediately, I understand what’s happened to me.
It’s been over ten years since the last time I’d had a catatonic episode, but I’ll never forget this feeling.
The way people look at me when I come out of it.
I thought I had been cured of it forever.
After going so long without the experience, I believed I wouldn’t have to face it ever again.
Maybe that’s not the case. Perhaps a brain, once broken, always remains broken.
“Did it happen again?” I ask softly, turning to look at Marcus with a frown. My throat feels dry and scratchy like I’ve been screaming.
Marcus confirms it with a slight nod and a sad smile.
He remembers what it was like dealing with these episodes before—that’s probably why he’s not freaked out about it now.
I’m a little more freaked out. Maybe he can see that because he says warmly, “We’ll keep an eye on it, but I think it’s okay.
This was a pretty traumatic experience for everyone. ”
“Why is everyone here?” I’m still disoriented. I can tell I’m missing something in the significance.
“They’re here for you, baby.” Tiff smiles, taking my overturned hand and wrapping her fingers around it tightly. “They came as soon as we called.”
I stare at her blankly, my face reflecting my confusion. And then it clicks. They’re here for me. To support me or prop me up as needed. They heard I was in trouble and came out in my greatest hour of need, even though it’s so late.
I don’t know why it touches me so profoundly.
Maybe it’s because I got so used to feeling like every other day was an emergency after my dad died, so the continuous support started to feel cloying.
My constant mental health crises and emotional baggage began to feel burdensome, especially when they all moved on to different stages of their lives with their own families.
I stopped asking them to show up—kept more of my issues to myself to avoid worrying them.
Even though I haven’t had anything significant happen in the last few years that needed their support, the mindset stuck.
You’re a burden. Don’t bother them with your nonsense.
They’re tired of your bullshit. But here they are now, disproving that faulty logic.
Just like Luke’s tight unit out in New York, my friends—my family—will stick by me no matter what. It’s a comforting thought.
Like a flash, I realize the one thing I haven’t asked—the one thing I don’t know. “Luke?” I gasp, my heart rate spiking.