Chapter 6 #2
“There’s no TV here, Ella. Sit.” I shake my head, wishing to sign more, but I end up covering my ears.
It’s like someone is screaming directly into my ear, as dogs bark in the background, and I raise my knees up, hiding my face in them.
Screams, screams, screams, growing into a louder, deafening chant.
The setting shifts, like a theater scene running into the next.
Glasses clink against each other, people with no faces in the background pushing the walls on little wheels, and the food and the plates and everything else as they all stand and just leave.
The decor changes to a gray, concrete box, and I am still curled in on myself.
But there are no more chairs anymore, no more people, nothing.
Just the screams. I shut my eyes really hard, hard enough that it hurts, rocking back and forth.
“No, no, no…” Palms over my ears, I sob, praying anyone could hear me. “Please, not again. Please, please…”
Thick, steady hands grip my shoulders, and I open my eyes at the same instant Tristan steps back, palms in the air like he is claiming innocence after touching me.
“I’m sorry, Ella. You were–I think you were having a nightmare. I’m sorry I touched you. I didn’t know,” he swallows, “I didn’t know what to do.” Clean room, dim orange light from the bedside table, Tristan, windows, sheets, clean smell, a door.
Hospital.
I am at the hospital.
Safe.
With Tristan.
Abruptly, I sit, tugging at the covers, looking left and right, heaving, touching my ear just to make sure that I am not deaf.
Fast and gracelessly, I put my feet down and kneel, checking under my bed.
No one. Then I make my way with difficulty to the window, looking outside, scanning the cars like one could be painted with letters saying here to kidnap Ella Brooks.
Standing next to me, Tristan watches me, silent.
I must look like a crazy person now. I am still wearing the clothes he brought me from his home, the scent familiar and reassuring.
A large tee I am lost in, but now my favorite thing to sleep in, and his sweatpants, rolled twice at the waist to hold up.
“I’m sorry, I…” I sign.
“Nightmare?” he asks out loud, his voice running over my skin like a caress.
“The worst.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I step back to the bed, sitting on it and folding my legs to the side, holding his tee and sniffing it, closing my eyes just to calm myself.
A small chuckle comes out of him, and I stop.
Why did I do that? Stop embarrassing yourself.
But he does not mock me. It is almost as if he liked watching me do that.
“I was back there,” I sign. “In the cell.”
Stoic, he tries, “I know I can’t touch you, but can I sit there, next to you?
It’s killing me to stay away.” He asks, voice low and almost pleading, in his masculine, hoarse voice.
I don't even sign, nodding several times and patting the space at the end of the bed, where he sits, his legs touching the floor where mine wouldn't. His hands rest next to my ankle, and the electricity around us comes alive, but I can’t.
“I know it’s early, but…” He winces. “What happened down there? I have guesses, but I understand if you can’t talk about it right now…” I snap my fingers softly, catching his attention.
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“Anywhere.”
“It would take hours to explain.”
“Thank God, because I’m not planning to leave.”
“I’m not sure that I have, that I have it in me to talk about all of it yet.” He nods, head down.
“Then just what you’re okay sharing for now.”
“What if you end up disgusted by me after?” A tear runs down my face, and I catch him stopping himself from raising his hand to erase it.
“You were there because of me. Everything that happened there was because of me. If anything, I expect your anger and resentment, and I’m sure one way or another it’ll come out, and I’ll be ready for it. I’ll fight until you see how willing I am to fix everything.”
Deep breath. Inhale, exhale. He’ll stay, he said. “They…they held me at gunpoint every night, forcing me to stay upright every twenty minutes, eyes open as a man was aiming at my head, while I was… it was so cold, and I had no clothes.”
“Ella,” he lets out, defeated, his voice carrying the weight of the world, a hand on his thigh, curled into a fist.
“They treated me like, like an animal,” I sign.
“Eating with my hands, weird mixtures from bowls thrown at me on the floor. And the more I ate, the sleepier I became. I think–I’m not sure, but there were drugs in there, because everything was always spinning later.
” I shake my head. “There were days I saw things in the cell that…” A tear rolls over my cheek.
“That weren’t there.” I cover my face in shame.
“You have nothing to hide,” Tristan says between gritted teeth, and I can hear him hate himself in every syllable. “I’m so sorry, Ella. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“At night, I was afraid to fall asleep and never wake up,” I confess, the truth blasting out of me, needing to be heard. “He made me earn a blanket.”
“Earn?”
“I had dinner with him. Cole. In my underwear, in another cell with a stupid romantic setting and candles, and he forced me to eat with my hands, like, like a dog. But I needed the blanket to get warm. I really needed it,” I try to explain as he winces.
“Ella, don’t. Don’t justify. It’s… Anyone would have done the same thing.”