Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“I don’t want your composure!” I yelled sharply, stepping closer to him.
“I don’t need your composure, Elio. I need to know how you feel; unearth.
Tell me. Explain. Give me something. Anything to make this guilt stop eating me from the inside out because I have spent all this week thinking this is all my fault!
Thinking you tried to hurt yourself because of me, so please, just talk to me. ”
Whatever mask he had been wearing slipped off him instantly as he closed the remaining distance between us, cupping both sides of my face in his hands, thumbs going to my cheeks to wipe the tears before they could fall even farther down.
“No … never … this was not your fault. Please do not blame yourself. You have no reason to blame yourself.”
“It wasn’t the party?”
“No. No, Zahra, of course not. The party was astounding. I loved it. I was happy. I don’t know what happened. I wanted to sleep. I was tired, and I went to take my pills to help me. I took two of them, and then I woke up today and learned I had been unconscious for days.”
“You took more than two, Elio. You took everything.”
Silence followed; he stood watching me for a few beats before he dropped his hands from my face, his fingers raking through his hair, ruining the arrangement. “I have no idea what you want me to say. I cannot remember what I did; my mind has blocked it out because I wasn’t there at that moment.”
“Okay … then get help, get help so that this doesn’t happen again.”
He shook his head, stepping back from me and turning to the bed. “I do not wish to.”
“Why?”
“Because I do not wish to.”
I rushed around him until we were face-to-face again. Unable to continue this conversation in English, I switched to Spanish. “Why the fuck are you so stubborn about this!”
“I do not have to answer to you.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit!” I yelled, shaking my head. “You clearly need help, and you will get it. Whether you like it or not.”
The softness that had been in his eyes vanished. “Who do you think you are?”
“One of the many people who care if you live or you fucking die. You will treat yourself.”
His laugh was humorless. “Honestly, it would do you good to forget it happened.”
“Forget?”
“Yes. Forget it; erase it from your memories because I will never heed your wishes. It is not what I want.”
I nodded. “Right.” My eyes searched his. “That’s all right. But know this: if you don’t get help, I don’t think I can be in this relationship.”
“Of course you would end the relationship just because I don’t agree with you. You’re toxic.”
That had my eyes widening, fury scratching painfully on my skin. “Toxic? I am toxic?”
“As if you weren’t already aware.”
Is this motherfucker—
“You wanna know what’s toxic?” I gave him a pointed glare, sharpening my arrows. Stepping closer to him, I didn’t break eye contact. “You really wanna know what’s toxic, Elio?”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak.
“It’s waking up”—I poked his chest—“in the middle of the fucking night, going to the bathroom, and seeing you lying there … pale, cold, and not breathing.” He didn’t move back as I moved forward, my chest brushing his.
“You wanna know what else is toxic? It’s me using these hands”—I brought my palms before me, placing them on his chest—“to try”—I sucked in a breath—“to try to bring you back to life … over”—I pushed him, and he stumbled back—“and over”—I hit his chest in a push that had him stumbling back again—“and over again!”
“Zahra—”
“Toxic? Toxic is the fucking fear I felt for you! It’s the fucking tears I cried for you! It’s my heart breaking seeing the look on your brother’s face when you were carried out, looking like you wouldn’t make it through the night, Elio.”
I sniffed, wiping my cheeks. “I’ll be damned a thousand times over if I choose to accept your death wish and hold that kind of fear in my heart for the rest of my life, waiting for the last shoe to drop. If you won’t get help, then this is done. I’m sorry, but I won’t go through that again.”
Again, silence reigned.
His gaze was unsteady as he looked at me, something like defeat lingering in his stare; it was heavy, it was dark, it was breaking, and it was sad. He took a few steps away from me before taking off his jacket and dropping it on the bed, sitting beside it, and running his palms down his face.
It was silent between us. Him with his palms covering his face, fingers massaging the sides of his head like he was trying to keep down his headache, and me at the other side of the room, trying to calm the raging beating of my heart.
Then he nodded and spoke. “I understand.” His eyes met mine as he brought his hands back down, his right thumb digging into the palm of his left hand.
“I understand if you want to leave me. I would hate to put you in that position again—I am sorry that I put you in that position—If I could have predicted that it would happen, I would not have—” He stopped, his head dropping as he looked down at his hands and shook his head slightly.
It was silent once more, and my nerves were skyrocketing.
He glanced up at me, eyes sad, dark, red-rimmed—he was holding back tears, trying to control emotions begging to be let out.
He looked back down at his hands, stopping them from shaking by digging his thumb deeper into his palm. The rigid flex of his biceps and the clench in his jaw told me how hard he was trying to hold himself together.
“I understand if you want out. But to be sincere with you … I don’t want you to leave me, Zahra.”
He looked up again, and I caught the glistening in his eyes.
“If you leave me, then I don’t—I don’t know what I am living for.
” He managed a slight shrug. “It’s not Elia because I had already decided to end it all, even with him in my life.
You are my constant, Zahra; if you go, I have no reason to hold back.
” A tear slid down his cheek. “I don’t know how long I’ll last here if you walk out that door. ”
I shook my head. “You can’t tell me that.”
“It’s the truth,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “Eres mi vida, Zahra.” You are my life, Zahra.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Eres mi vida.”
“No. No, I’m not. You can’t say that to me when you refuse to protect the life you claim is mine. Not when you want to take it away from me.”
A frown dropped his brows, hurt swirling in his eyes.
“You think I want that?” he asked. “You think I want to take my life? I gave up revenge because I chose to be here for you; I chose this, I did, I want to live. I had already made that decision when you became a constant, but my mind doesn’t get that I want to live.
It doesn’t understand that I don’t want to die.
My mind wants to die because it’s tired, Zahra.
And I am tired of it; I am tired of my mind.
“I am tired of the person that I am; I am tired of hearing my name. Of this weakness and abnormality, I am just so tired of spending my life being this person who fights daily to be normal. I long to be normal. You have no idea how bad I wish you never got to see this side of me; you don’t know how ashamed I am of even being in the same space with you, knowing what you had to go through to bring me back.
” He looked down again. “I don’t want you to leave me, but I will accept it if that is what you want. ”
I walked toward him, crouching before his body and holding his hand in mine.
“Elio,” I called softly, “look at me.”
He raised his gaze, and I let my hand reach his cheek, wiping his tears.
“I don’t want to leave you either. I want you to let me in. Let me see where exactly the problem is coming from. I want you to walk me through that darkness in your head. Let me in so we can figure this out together. Please, Elio.”
He pursed his lips, and then softly, he nodded.
I sighed in relief as I pushed his suit jacket to the side and took the space beside him.
He intertwined our fingers but didn’t look at me. He was quiet for a while before he finally spoke.
“Sometimes,” he started, “sometimes I have this feeling…” He trailed off, seeming lost. “This feeling like I’m outside of my body, like a stranger, looking in …
it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I become a complete stranger to myself.
And anything I do in that moment becomes action …
without feelings. Without self-consciousness.
I must admit that was how I felt throughout the birthday party.
“When we were together in the shower, I wanted that moment to feel real. I chanted it so many times in my head due to how badly I wanted to make it real … and while it did feel like that for that moment, I lost it again. Everything else that happened … I can’t really remember.
It was like a time-lapse in my head. It all moved too fast.”
It was silent between us again … he wanted to say more, and I waited patiently for him to speak.
He swallowed, tightening his hold on my hand. “I see things, too … sometimes. I see my mother, and I hear her voice. When she touches me, it feels real and familiar, but I know she’s not there.
“I also hear voices from people I’ve met and talked to over the years.
Sometimes, they’re loud; sometimes, they’re just murmurs; sometimes, they make me talk out loud and hallucinate.
I can’t sleep because it brings hallucinations, vivid ones that are …
that are of things that I have done … One particular thing … Elia … what I did to Elia.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
A shudder went through him as he spoke. “He was the first person I ever killed … they were able to save him, but … I can’t stop—I see—I see that version of him all the time; he stands at random places all over the house …
watching me, taunting me … Sometimes, I beg him to leave and tell him I never meant to do it; sometimes, I just pick up my gun and shoot at him until he disappears.
Sometimes I don’t even know if I shoot at him because it’s all in my head, and I am so tired, Zahra. ”
“Do you think it’s something medical? Like an illness?”
He nodded. “Yes. My mother was schizophrenic. Maybe I inherited it? I don’t know, but I wasn’t always like this …
It didn’t start until much later … after the army.
After the fire, everything that happened.
Maybe the stress just woke something that had been sleeping all along?
Maybe it’s not even genetic. Maybe it’s trauma.
Maybe it’s all the things I’ve seen … all the things I’ve done… ”
He looked up at me, the tiredness reflecting in his eyes.
“I sometimes think when my mind can’t cope, and when it all gets to be too much, I have that out-of-body experience, and I do things that I don’t mean to do or say things that I don’t mean to say.
It’s a never-ending cycle, and I really, really want it to end. ”
“You know it doesn’t have to end with you dying, right? You could get help.”
He looked away from me. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I asked, trying to catch his gaze. “Is this because you think you’re undeserving of it?”
“I know I am. I am positive I am undeserving of it.”
“Angelo told me about what you suspect was done to you in the private army facility?”
He sighed heavily.
“Elio, I think they made you believe you’re undeserving of help.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Possibly. My father was hell-bent on never getting me medical help, so there is a possibility that was one part of the special training.”
“So why are you still conforming to it?”
“Because I can’t stop. Because my father is alive and—and I don’t think I will ever stop being affected by what they did to me at the camp—as long as he’s there, as long as he’s still breathing.”
My stomach sank as I watched him, hoping to God that my suspicions weren’t true. “You could put an end to it today.”
His eyes searched mine. “By killing him?”
“Yes. He is one of your demons, the obstacle in your path, and if you don’t kill that demon, I don’t think you’ll move forward, Elio.”
He was listening to me; I saw the resignation in his eyes as he nodded. “Will you come with me? I don’t think I can do it alone.”
I swallowed, and it was almost painful. “Yeah, sure.”