CHAPTER forty
Echoes of Silence on Repeat
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The waiting room is too quiet. Not peaceful—just heavy. The kind of silence that presses on your chest, thick with fear, regret, and unanswered prayers. We sit scattered, barely breathing, each of us trapped in our own stillness, yet bound together by the same aching dread.
I can’t stop replaying those final, broken syllables that fell from Elias’s lips.
They loop in my mind like a cruel echo, fraying at the edges each time I hear them.
I keep trying to convince myself I misheard him.
That he wasn’t trying to say what I think he was, but the truth presses harder and harder, until it finally snaps.
I tried.
The words slam into me with the force of a tidal wave. My breath punches out of my lungs. It feels like those two small syllables crawl beneath my skin, burrowing deep, until they vibrate through every nerve in my body.
He tried.
He tried to be okay. Tried to outrun the past that haunted him. Tried to pretend the darkness wasn’t swallowing him whole. Tried to find light—maybe even in me—but it still caught him. It still dragged him under.
My chest aches with a grief so sharp it feels physical. I press a hand there as if I can hold myself together, as if that might stop the breaking. Because those words don’t sound like a momentary slip or a bad night.
They sound like a goodbye.
They sound like the truth he never said out loud.
He tried… and he couldn’t do it anymore.
Then the doors burst open, and a woman rushes in, her eyes frantic until they land on Cody.
The moment he sees her, something in him crumbles.
He folds into her arms like a man unraveling at the seams. No words surface, just deep sobs as he grips her like he’s clinging to solid ground during a storm.
She holds him tight, rocking him slightly as tears stream silently down her cheeks.
“I didn’t see it, Mom,” he chokes out. “He was okay. He’s been okay for so long. How did I miss it again? How did I fail him a second time?”
His voice breaks, every syllable steeped in self-blame.
“You didn’t fail him,” she whispers, barely audible. “You love him. That’s never failure.”
The guilt in the room is suffocating. I curl in on myself, my shoulders shaking. I press the heels of my hands hard against my eyes, as if that might stop the flood. I knew something was off. I felt it deep in my bones and still—I let him walk away.
Then a doctor appears, cutting through the tension like a scalpel. He walks with a practiced calm, but even before he speaks, we can see the weight he carries. We all rise except Cody and his mom, still on the floor.
“Is he alright?” Grady asks, his voice hoarse, barely more than a breath.
“He’s alive,” The doctor replies, his voice neutral but firm. “But he’s in critical condition. He suffered cardiac arrest twice. He’s not breathing on his own, so we’ve placed him in a medically induced coma. Right now, it’s… too soon to know. There’s nothing more that we can do now but wait.”
The air leaves the room.
“Can we see him?” I ask, trying not to let my voice shake.
He nods once.
“Of course.”
We move as one. Grady and Jasper hold each other tightly. Cody walks with his mother. Sasha laces her fingers with mine without a word.
When we step into the room, everything else disappears.
The only sound is the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor and the hiss of the ventilator.
The fluorescent light above casts Elias in a pale, almost unreal glow.
Tubes line his arms and disappear beneath his hospital gown, wires mapping his vitals in silent pulses.
He has a tube coming from his mouth, his chest rising and falling from the machine.
He looks so still. Broken…distant. I can see him, but he’s not really there. Like he’s slipped behind glass and left the rest of us here, unable to reach him.
I move toward the bed, my hands shaking as I grip the cool metal railing. Slowly, I reach out and brush my fingers against his arm. His skin is warm, familiar, and I hold onto that warmth like a lifeline.
“Please feel this,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else. “Please know we’re here.”
But I can’t help but think that we shouldn’t be here. After everything, after how far he’s come, after all the hope he’s let back in. How did it come to this?
Cody steps forward, his expression hollow as he leans over the bed. He presses his forehead to Elias’s, his hand gripping the thin fabric of the gown, his knuckles turning white from his unrelenting grip.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “God, I’m so sorry, brother.”
And there, in the low hum of machines and the weight of our silence, grief carves its mark on all of us. The solemnity settling around us like a thick smoke.
The doctor’s words still echo in my head:
There’s nothing more we can do right now but wait.
Wait.
As if waiting isn’t its own kind of torture.
He suggested we go home, try to rest. He said someone would call if there were any changes.
But how do you rest when someone you love is fighting for their life?
How do you close your eyes without seeing every worst-case scenario unfolding behind them?
Every time I close my eyes, I see him lying there.
Lifeless. The once fiery embers of his eyes violently extinguished.
I see him trying to speak those words. I tried.
We all reluctantly exit the room, the air heavy around us. Once we are outside of the doorway, Sasha turns to me and pulls me into her.
“I’m so sorry, Ro. It’s going to be okay,” she whispers into my ear as she holds my head. My body heaves with a sob.
I want to believe her, I have to believe her. There’s no other alternative.
She pulls back, her hands on my cheeks, and pins me with her eyes. “We’re going to get through this, okay? I’m here.”
I just nod my head.
Cody’s mom offers me a place to stay while we wait. I accept, though the word recovery feels like a prayer I’m whispering with every breath. I cling to it—desperately, blindly—as if letting go would mean surrendering to a truth I’m not ready to face.
The car ride is silent. Heavy. Cody leans his head back, eyes shut tight like he’s trying to block out the world. His mom hasn’t let go of his hand once, her thumb rubbing slow, absent circles against his skin. I stare out the window, but I don’t see anything.
When we arrive, the street is wrapped in a kind of eerie stillness, like even the world is holding its breath. The porch light flickers faintly as we step out into the night. The grass is slick with dew, soaking through my shoes as I follow them to the door. The chill clings to my skin.
Inside, everything is quiet. Too normal for the tornado we just walked out of.
Cody’s mom shows me to a guest room, right next to Cody’s childhood bedroom.
Before leaving, she wraps her arms around him and holds on like she’s afraid he might disappear.
As she passes me, she rests a warm hand on my shoulder.
It’s gentle, but it feels like the kind of touch people use when they don’t know what else to say.
Cody stands frozen in the hallway. His eyes are distant, jaw tight like he’s holding everything inside.
I step toward him and wrap my arms around his waist. He clutches the back of my shirt like it’s the only thing keeping him standing. I feel his body tremble before I hear the sob—a broken sound that rips straight through me.
Tears burn my eyes as I hold him tighter.
“I’m so sorry, Cody,” I whisper, voice cracking. “I don’t understand. He seemed so… okay. He seemed happy.”
He buries his face into my shoulder, but doesn’t speak. Maybe he can’t. Maybe words would only betray him right now.
I pull back just enough to cup his face in my hands. His bright blue eyes are clouded with grief. Haunted.
“He’s going to be okay,” I say, brushing away a tear with my thumb. “He has to be.”
“I just don’t get it, Ro…” His voice cracks on my name, barely more than a whisper. His head dips, shoulders collapsing inward as if the weight of the world is caving in on him.
“I’ve never seen him so happy… not until you.”
The words cut through me, cruel in their truth. Another sob rips free. It leaves me gasping like I can’t catch my breath.
“He even told me so,” he continues. “Said he never thought he could be this happy. That you made him better. Made him want to be better.”
I reach for his hands, desperate to anchor us both. His knuckles are cold and trembling beneath my touch. My thumb moves over them, searching for something steady in all this chaos.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he breathes, shaking his head. “None of this makes sense.”
I lift his chin gently, forcing his tear-glossed eyes to meet mine. They’re red-rimmed, helpless.
“We’re going to figure it out,” I tell him, my voice low but fierce, as if I say it enough, it might become true. “He’s going to come back to us.”
He tries to smile, but it’s hollow—an echo of something he used to know how to do. It doesn’t touch his eyes. Doesn’t even make it past the corners of his mouth.
“Goodnight, Ramona,” he says quietly.
He turns away, stepping into his room and closing the door with a click.
And suddenly, I’m alone in the hallway.
The silence presses in, thick and suffocating. I can still feel the echo of his sob in my chest, like it left a bruise.
I don’t know how to breathe here.
I don’t know how to hope.
But I do it anyway because it’s all I have left.
I step into the guest room and stop dead in the doorway.
I know immediately that it’s more than a guest room.
It’s Elias’s room.
A twin bed sits against the far wall, the charcoal-gray bedspread pulled tight, lined by a black metal frame. An empty guitar stand rests in the corner. The walls are lined with framed band posters, edges worn slightly with age. A hauntingly intense image of Ozzy Osbourne dominates the center.
I move slowly, like if I take a wrong step, I’ll disturb the ghost of the boy who lived here. The boy Cody and his family took in because he had nowhere else to go. The boy who has survived more than most grown men. The boy who never really stopped feeling alone.
My throat tightens until I can barely breathe.
I sit on the bed, the mattress dipping softly beneath my weight.
My fingers skim over the blanket—cool fabric, faintly textured—and something inside me cracks.
I can almost picture him here: a younger Elias, thin and tired, curled on this exact spot, clutching a guitar he couldn’t afford, sleeping under a roof that was never fully his.
And just when I think my heart can’t possibly ache more, it folds in on itself.
I ease down onto the bed, turning onto my side, hands folded beneath my cheek like a child trying to sleep after a nightmare. My knees draw up instinctively, and the tears come hard and fast, soaking into the charcoal fabric until the shapes around me blur.
I cry for Elias. The child abandoned, the teenager fighting demons no one saw, the man who still carries every bruise.
I cry for Cody, who became family without asking, who built a home for someone who didn’t believe he deserved one.
I cry for the band, who love him loudly but still couldn’t save him from the darkest parts of himself.
And I cry for me because I finally understand how deeply he has woven himself into me, and how terrifying it is to love someone who’s been drowning long before you ever learned his name.
When I wake a few hours later, I finally call my parents and tell them.
The words barely leave my mouth before my mom dissolves into tears, her voice trembling through the phone.
She insists they’ll get on the next flight, but I beg her to stay put—for now.
I can’t handle the chaos of them rushing here on top of everything else.
When I ask how we could have missed this, especially after everything with Gracelyn, there’s silence on the line. A heavy, aching silence that says more than words ever could.
Finally, she speaks, her voice frayed.
“Because it’s something you never want to believe.
Even when I saw what was happening with Gracelyn, I…
I didn’t want it to be true. She was such a happy girl.
We tried so hard to give her a happy life.
And you always think—” her breath catches, “—you always think this kind of thing happens to other families. Not yours. Not your kids.”
“I knew something was off with him, but never thought it could be this.”
A long silence stretches.
“It is odd. We talked to him just before the show, and he sounded so normal.”
My breath catches.
“You did?”
“He called us. He was trying to arrange flying us out for your birthday in a few weeks.”
Fresh tears well in my eyes, and I find it hard to speak.
Her voice softens to a whisper when she breaks the silence again. “I’m so sorry, baby. Addicts… they get good at hiding things. Better than we realize.”