ash. The fabric rips and I drop it. There’s more. Plastic. In my hand. I tear that off, too. My pants are the only article of clothing not killing me. An alarm goes off somewhere close by. The sound sets off another trip around the wheel. Pain crushes in. It’s more than I’ve felt. It’s more, and it’s bigger, and fear is a dog with its teeth clamped on the back of my neck.
I can’t shake it off. Can’t so much as lift my arms to wrestle it away.
Not again. Please, not again. Amen.
Two nurses run in, their blue scrubs blurred at the edges. They come toward me too fast. They’re not going to touch me. No one is going to touch me, not here, not now, when I’m already flayed and bleeding—
“Not another step.” My voice is gravel and glass. The backs of my knees are against the bed. Don’t remember backing up. Both of them stop and look up at me. Up. I must be tall. But I can’t remember—I can’t think—“Another step and I’ll kill both of you. It would be a pleasure.”
“Mr. Morelli,” the first one says. She’s got dark hair. The other one’s blonde. I don’t trust the blonde one. Not for a fucking second. “You can’t be out of bed.”
“The fuck I can’t.” My chest is caving in. One of my lungs isn’t working right. It feels weak, but I don’t remember that from when Eva brought me here. She was driving the car with a halo. No. That was a long time ago. Unless it wasn’t. “You took my clothes. You took—”
“Leo. It’s okay.” Eva comes through the door, both hands up, like I’m a dangerous animal who might do anything.
Another searing breath. I can’t place her. Can’t place her clothes. She wasn’t wearing that when she drove me here.
The blonde nurse puts out an arm to stop her. “Ms. Morelli, this is an unsafe—”
Eva’s shorter than the nurse but the other woman shrinks back at the look in her eyes. “I warned you this would happen. You chose not to believe me. Now look at him.”
Their heads swivel from Eva to me.
“Let me by,” Eva says. I want to be glad she’s here but I don’t know what it means. Whether this is a new nightmare or the same one starting over again.
Eva sidesteps the nurse before she can finish lowering her arm. When she gets closer, my sister puts her hands at her sides. The gesture makes her smaller. Less of a threat. Why? I’m not threatened by her. I’m not afraid of anything. It’s only my heart that’s out of control. Only my body that’s turned to the side, trying to protect itself. I’m not doing that. I’m on fire. Burning down.
“Eva. What—”
The question what year is it dies before it can reach my lips, taken to heaven by the angel who steps through the door.
Haley.
It’s Haley, in a blue sweater that matches her eyes and dark leggings and flats that look like something Eva would wear. Clothes I’ve never seen her in. Her eyes wide with hope and fear and something else.
I move Eva out of the way. Push past the nurses. It hurts like a motherfucker to walk. Every breath is worse than the last one. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting to her. Haley moves another half-step into the room and then I’m on top of her. One step back, on instinct, because I’m taller—I can tell how much taller now. Her hands splay out on the wall like they did that night, the first night I saw her. An angel. A sacrifice.
A shattering relief.
That relief rolls into me and detonates. Cuts through the fear and pain like a bullet. Like a rushing wind.
My knees hit the floor first and she’s there, she’s there, I can feel her.
I put my palms on her hips, press my face to her belly, and breathe in new clothes and the scent of her skin. The relief is beyond measure. Relief that I’m here, in the present, and not in the hell of the past. Relief that she’s here. She’s alive. She’s alive. Haley’s hands come down on my head. My shoulders. She touches me softly. Like I’m not a monster.
New pressure builds around the knife wound in my lungs. It’s bigger. More expansive. It moves up into my throat and aches there. A balled-up tension I haven’t felt in a long, long time. The kind that can only be