Thirty-Nine
Amelia
Iwake up with the mother of all headaches. I groan, and that’s a mistake. My stomach roils, and I have to swallow hard.
“Oh, thank God.”
I blink open bleary eyes. Van Wyk is in a chair beside my bed, one of my hands clutched in both of his, staring at me like he’s never seen me before. His eyes are rimmed red, his face sunken, and his usually pristine clothing is rumpled to hell and back.
Van Wyk has been… crying? Over me? Impossible.
“I’m going to… throw up,” I say in lieu of a greeting.
“I’ve got you.”
“No, I can manage—”
But he’s already lifting me up in his strong arms, cradling me to his chest, carrying me into the bathroom like I weigh nothing. Bizarrely, there’s a chair facing the toilet already, and I fall gratefully onto it, emptying my stomach into the bowl. It comes out black. Why?
Disgusting.
Van Wyk holds my hair out of the way and rubs my back. But I’m waiting for his noises of disapproval.
Nothing comes. I’m drenched in sweat by the time I’m done, and the only sounds he made are soothing encouragement. A glass of water appears, lightly sparkling, the minerality helping wash away the lingering acrid taste.
He has a damp washcloth in his other hand.
“Thanks,” I say weakly, wiping my mouth.
This is the worst hangover I’ve ever had. I can hardly lift my arms. There’s a band-aid over the back of my hand. My cheek aches, and when I touch it, it feels bruised.
“Did you… slap me?”
“Yes, I did,” he says miserably. “I’m so sorry.”
Oh, Jesus fuck.
Vicky. The pills, the red wine. Van Wyk finding me, screaming my name.
What have I done?
I’m alive, and still trapped. I tried; I failed.
Tears fill my eyes as despair saps my will. My shoulders sag, my arms trembling as I lean on the goddamn toilet.
No escape, just like he’s always said.
What should I be feeling? Relief to be alive? There’s none of that. I feel… robbed. Cheated.
My anger swells, directed at him, and I draw on it for strength.
“Why didn’t you let me die?” It comes out harsh, but I don’t care.
He doesn’t answer, but his mouth turns down, his eyes haunted and filling with tears.
My question sits in the air like the smell of my vomit, and flushing the toilet doesn’t make it go away. I stand up, legs shaky, and he’s there immediately, picking me up again, carrying me back to the bed.
I don’t want him touching me, but I can’t fight. I never could.
He pauses with me in his arms. “Do you want a shower?”
I do, but I can barely stand. “Later.”
“Of course.”
No argument. No forcing me. Immediate acquiescence.
He tucks me into bed and slumps down into his chair.
“What time is it?” I sigh.
He pulls out his phone. “Twenty after four.”
The blackout blinds are down over the windows, but there’s not even a glimmer of light around them. It’s the middle of the night, not the afternoon.
Sixteen hours since Vicky visited and I took those pills.
Sixteen hours of him sitting beside my bed?
That’s when I notice my surroundings. An ECG or something, turned off now. An oxygen cylinder on the dresser. A saline drip, hanging empty.
Shit.
Shame saps my anger. He’s had a doctor here, and I can only imagine who else. Anna? Nat? Bastien?
“I’m… sorry.” It sounds woefully inadequate. And it’s not directed at him, but at them.
“No,” he says quickly. “No. It’s me that must beg your forgiveness. I’m so desperately, desperately sorry, Amelia.” He takes my hand again, gripping it with both of his yet holding it gently. “I swear to you, I’ll do better. Whatever it is you need, you can have.”
He means it, yet it’s worthless, constrained by the inevitable. He means what I need, not what I want; he’s made that clear enough. In his mind, I don’t need freedom, I need a new book. I don’t need something to do, I need only to exist.
I turn away, too weak to argue.
My eyes close, and I don’t bother to stop them. I need sleep, and I don’t need him.
He’s still sitting in that same chair when I wake, and this time there’s light around the blinds.
Barely a second passes before he notices my eyes are open. He smiles like I’m hope personified, face drawn and weary.
He unscrews a bottle of water and pours a glass, offering it to me.
I sit up weakly, then accept it, taking sips. “Time?”
“Eleven-ish. Are you hungry?”
My stomach revolts at the thought and I shake my head. “Have you slept?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn’t. It was merely curiosity.” It’s not true; I don’t know why I say it. Despite everything, I do still care, even though he doesn’t deserve it.
He winces, closing his eyes in pain, then nods. “I’m so desperately sorry, Amelia. I’ll never stop making this up to you.”
I should be ashamed for what I’ve done. For lashing out at him, for putting him through this. For putting others through this—and there, at least, there is guilt. But for him?
Only anger.
“You can’t,” I say coldly. “How do you make up for stealing my life? How do you make up for taking someone’s freedom?”
He flinches. “Let’s talk about this when you’re stronger—”
“No, we’ll talk about it now! Answer me.”
“By… giving it back to them… as a start,” he says hoarsely.
“Like you gave back Juliette’s?” It’s cruel, but I can’t help it. Those thoughts are never far from my mind, even now.
Van Wyk goes still. Then his hand slips into his pocket, and he pulls out his karambit.
I freeze, my blood chilling. Why save me from my dreamless oblivion only to kill me now? Because I asked that question? Because Juliette is such a trigger for him?
He turns the knife over in his hands, then flicks open the blade. We both stare at it, gleaming dully in the light, him blankly, me with dread.
“I can’t bring her back,” he whispers. Is he talking to his knife, or to me? “I wouldn’t, even if I could. Not if she was still ill, not when I can’t heal her.”
My throat spasms as I swallow. I’m frozen, my body too weak to move, waiting for the moment he snaps and drives that blade into me.
“I married Juliette because…” He stops, his lips twisting wryly.
“It was a marriage of convenience. Her father had a failing business. My father bought it out. My parents wanted me to have a wife. She was pretty enough.” He shrugs one shoulder.
“Three years after we were married, she had her first episode. The doctors prescribed antidepressants, which in undiagnosed bipolar only makes things worse.”
I scarcely breathe, listening to every word. I don’t know why he has that knife out; maybe it brings him comfort. How fucked up is that? I force my eyes away from it, to his face.
“She recovered for a while, then had another major episode. By then, I was working with Bastien. He found the best doctors, and they diagnosed correctly: schizoaffective disorder bipolar I with psychotic features.”
“My God,” I breathe.
“There isn’t one,” he says bitterly. “If there was, why would she have been ill?” He turns the knife over in his hands, lost in his memories.
“Over the years, Juliette deteriorated. She’d be fine for months, then without warning attack me.
I thought I was provoking her episodes, and tried to give her space.
” He grimaces. “That only made things worse.”
His voice wavers. “She developed severe paranoia and tried to divorce me. In a lucid moment, she begged forgiveness and pulled the paperwork, then gave me power of attorney over her. She knew the end was coming.”
Van Wyk meets my gaze. “I did love her, Amelia. How could I not, after so many years? But it was platonic, never romantic. Not like…” He trails off with a shrug of his shoulder.
Is that what he thinks we have? But I know he’s not done, and I can’t bring myself to speak.
“Juliette took a knife and cut her own throat. The doctors say it was a paranoid schizophrenic episode.” He falls silent for so long I wonder if he’s finished, save that his brow is furrowed, his expression intense, his memories so painful.
“I wasn’t even there, away with work,” he says bitterly. “But I know Juliette’s choice was inspired by this.”
He slowly raises the karambit, clenched in his fist, the curved blade jutting out, staring at me over it.
“I’m responsible,” he says. “Responsible because of this. Responsible because I couldn’t help her. Responsible because I wasn’t there. And for all my money, all my resources, I couldn’t help her.”
“Van Wyk…” I begin, not even sure what to say.
“The last thing she asked me to do was find someone I could love.” He laughs bitterly. “And look what I’ve done to you, too.”
Wait, wait, wait. Love? That’s twice now. Once implied in a sentence he never finished, once hidden behind Juliette’s dying wish. He hasn’t said it to my face—or has he? Did he say it yesterday? It raises a hazy memory, but does it even count, if he thought I was dying?
What we have isn’t love. How can it be? It’s toxic. It’s twisted. It’s not real.
Okay, it’s very real, but it’s not love.
“Let’s just… uh…”
“I almost killed you, just like I killed her,” he whispers.
He presses the blade to his own throat and watches me over it.
I freeze, staring at him. “What are you doing?”
“You want freedom? Go ahead, say the word. I’ll do it, right now, in front of you. Free you of me.”
“You didn’t kill her,” I say urgently. “She killed herself.”
“My influence, my responsibility, my fault. What’s the difference?”
The answer comes as an echo of what he once said to me. “Conscious and aware versus unaware and not even there? All the difference in the world.”
“I was aware,” he confesses. “I knew it was a possibility. I let it happen, because… I was weak.”
I stare at him, unable to find my words. I can only imagine her desperation, because I’ve felt it.
And with that, comes insight. “Was it a paranoid schizophrenic episode, or was it deliberate?”
His eyes narrow. “What are you saying?”
“A knife to the throat while you were away,” I say, thinking quickly. “Maybe she did it like that to remove all the blame from you.”
He hesitates, watching me.
Yet he’s still holding his karambit to his own throat. Is he planning to use it?
God, we’re both equally fucked in the head. At least we have that.