His Town

by Ellie Danes

  I had somehow gone from going over contracts and paperwork, to writing out emails to the board and even to the CEO of an affiliate company. I felt accomplished. I almost felt proud. No matter how much shit I seemed to have trekked through that morning, I was still able to get some work done.

  I smirked and checked the clock on my computer screen. Shit. I was going to be late if I didn’t leave soon. I immediately slammed my laptop shut and smiled. It was finally time to pack up.

  It was time to see the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind if I tried.

  I slid my computer gently to the side and started gathering my things. Just the essentials. Wallet and keys. And a whole lot of nothing else. I was leaving everything where it was — with the exception of my overcoat. It was still damn cold outside.

  With my stuff in hand, I pivoted on my heel and grabbed my overcoat off the back of my chair and slung it over my arm. My desk’s wooden surface began vibrating.

  I glanced over, only to see Kate’s name come up on my phone screen. Sadly, I still didn’t have a picture loaded in her contact info.

  I swiped to answer and smiled just before pulling the phone up to my ear.

  “Hey!” I shouted with more enthusiasm than I intended. I sounded almost too eager. “Where do you want to have lunch? I’m leaving my office now.”

  “I’m calling to tell you I can’t come,” she said quickly.

  Her tone was different, and I couldn’t place it. Disappointment? Panic? I wished I knew her better, so I could figure it out easier. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt my stomach jolt.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “I just got a call from Claire’s school.” Her words were quick, panicked, and choked as if she was holding back tears. “She hurt herself.”

  I knew by her tone that she didn’t mean that her sister had just gotten herself into some sort of crazy accident. She meant that Claire hurt herself…on purpose.

  “Oh, god,” I said. “Is she okay?”

  I remembered Kate telling me about Claire the other day, that Claire was usually a huge topic of interest between her and their dad, that she played a big role in their many fights. I remembered that she was important to Kate. Really important.

  Knowing that Kate had chosen to teach kids like her troubled sister was enough for anyone to know how important Claire really was to her. Kate must be absolutely freaking out.

  “Kate,” I said, “where is she? Where’s Claire, and where are you?” I focused only on Kate’s voice, and not on the several people that littered the halls. I listened intently as I raced down the hall toward the elevator.

  “She’s in the emergency room at Mount Sinai,” she said, and it sounded like she was running. Her words were shaky, and her breathing uneven.

  “Can I do anything to help?” I was worried and my volume was a lot louder than I had intended. I felt a lot more worried than I had ever been for anyone — let alone a person I had only known for a few days. But I’d do anything for Kate.

  “No, I’m getting my dad to come down,” she said. “I don’t think it’s too serious…at least, I hope not. I just always panic when Claire’s involved.”

  I heard sounds of the street whirling around her in the background. I knew that she was likely trying to hail a cab.

  “Let me come and get you,” I said, quickly, not even thinking about how illogical it was. Even though I didn’t know exactly where she lived, I knew the neighborhood. Our last lunch was near her place. And what she hadn’t known was that it was also near mine.

  I was clear across town from that area.

  “No, no,” she breathed out, the sounds of running no longer there. “I just thought she was over this kind of behavior.”

  “She’s done it before?” I asked, leaning against the wall next to the elevator.

  “Yeah, it’s something she used to do quite a bit…but that was before she started seeing a therapist and changed schools.”

  “I’m so sorry this is happening,” I said.

  “It shouldn’t be. She’s in a good school now.” She sounded almost distant and in disbelief. “Which is why this is such a huge setback for her.”

  I felt terrible. All I could do was swallow and try to ease my mouth of the dryness that had taken over. I had no idea what to say, no idea what to do. Kate sounded destroyed.

  I was mad at Claire for doing this to Kate, but no matter how much I didn’t want to, I also felt bad for Claire. I had no idea what it was like to feel the need to hurt myself, to be so depressed I believed that hurting myself was really what I needed.

  I punched the button on the elevator again, willing it to hurry up. I breathed out heavily, my shoulders feeling suddenly weighed down.

  “I really need to go, Ian,” Kate said, her voice still hurried. “My cab is here. I’m sorry about lunch.”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t be sorry about that!”

  I couldn’t have possibly given less of a shit about lunch. I was worried about her. I was worried about her sister. I wasn’t worried about a damn sandwich.

  “Keep me informed,” I started to say, but she hung up before I could finish.

  I stared at the empty elevator in front of me, the doors open, waiting. But there was nothing I could do.

  “Fuck,” I growled. I just wanted her to be okay. I wanted both of them to be okay.

  I hated not knowing what was going on. I hated feeling helpless.

  I sighed and walked back to my office. It was no use rushing off to help Kate like some knight in shining armor. She had her cab to get to the hospital, and her sister was probably fine, she’d said. I should get work done here while I waited for news. I doubted I’d get anything else done for the rest of the day, though. I wasn’t just worried about Claire—I was worried about Kate. I wondered if she was as all right as she said she was.

  Because she definitely didn’t sound all right.

  Chapter 17

  Kate

  I couldn’t help but wonder who found her, and what they saw. I was horrified to think about what she looked like laid out on the floor, motionless. I felt my throat clench, and my breath become ragged just thinking about it. My eyes burned as tears threatened to fall.

  It sounded like it would be a vicious nightmare to witness.

  It sounded like I would have been scarred for life if I had been the one to find her.

  Hell, I was pretty sure just seeing her now, lying in a hospital bed, was enough to scar me for life. Life was funny, wasn't it? In times like this, I could know about something. I could understand it to its absolute core, what really happened. But there was something about seeing the destruction that made it new and even more horrible. Seeing it made it worse.

  I was just thankful that someone had found her quickly, no matter how badly I felt for the person.

  I heard the sirens off in the distance as I looked at my sister. Another ambulance coming in. Another family on edge.

  I was tired. I’d been crying since I’d arrived and a young doctor gave me a brief summary of her injuries.

  I thought I’d cried so hard, and so long, that I had completely worn myself out. Because now, I was drained.

  I almost never cried. But I guessed there was something about seeing my baby sister pale, her skin looking cold as ice as she lay unconscious right in front of me, that brought out the real tears. Just thinking about her surrounded by a pool of crimson…it gutted me.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen this coming, why I hadn’t realized she hadn’t been taking her meds. But before, there had been signs. She’d be evasive. She’d trap herself in her room and sit at her computer, all by herself. She’d skip out on dinner, avoid my calls. No appetite, no desire to chat.

  But that hadn’t been the case this time.

  Hell, I had just stepped on a shit ton of god knows what in her room. The girl had an appetite—there had been food everywhere.

  But I still should have known. I was her sister and her best fri
end. I still should have seen it coming. There had to have been some signs, and I’d just been too blind to really notice them.

  I’d been distracted lately. That was it. God, the guilt. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with Ian, I might’ve paid more attention to my baby sister. I sighed as I looked over at her from the curtain of the cubicle, and remembered the doctor coming out and talking to me as soon as I first got there. The doctor had blond hair, and she was thin. She wore plain blue scrubs with neon orange shoes. Her face was pleasant, with deep gray eyes that glistened with sympathy.

  In fact, every single word that left her lips was sympathetic.

  She had sighed before she spoke. She truly felt bad for me — and bad for Claire. But I didn’t think too much of it. She probably felt something for all of her patients. Or she was just really good at pulling out sympathy when she felt it was needed.

  “Claire’s sleeping,” she’d said. “No severe blood loss. Nothing too deep, just a good amount of damage to the skin.”

  I’d barely nodded, only able to stare at the door leading to Claire’s room. I didn’t want to wait any longer before seeing my sister.

  “She should be awake soon,” the doctor continued. “But once she wakes up, it’s our policy to keep her here with us for a while to place her on suicide watch. And then we would like to have her evaluated by a mental health professional.”

  I knew the drill. I nodded and cleared my suddenly dry throat. “I’ll call her therapist immediately.”

  She smiled faintly and nodded back at me. “You can see her,” she said, just before leading me to Claire’s curtain and pulling it to the side.

  I’d walked in. Alone, of course, since neither my dad nor my brother was here.

  Claire was lying on the bed, almost zombie-like, with her arms at her sides. She was pale, and sweat beaded off of her face as well as what little bit of her chest was exposed from the gown. Her leg was halfway out of the blanket, and I saw the gauze wrapped tightly around her thigh. I’d immediately cringed.

  Now, I walked over and sat down on the single chair beside the bed. It took me a minute of heavy breaths. In. Out. Back in again. Just to take one of her hands in my own.

  I couldn’t speak, and I could hardly even move as I watched her lying there unconscious. All my silly, overactive mind could do was consider the what-ifs.

  What if no one had found her? What if I’d paid more attention to her lately? What if I’d looked inside her backpack? What if I’d monitored her meds?

  “Why?” I choked out. My nose was congested, and my throat clenched tightly as I struggled to breathe. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

  She was silent, asleep. Looking so small and frail in her bed.

  My tears were flowing, stinging as they streamed down my face. “Damn it, Claire. You’re everything to me.”

  She continued to sleep. I knew the relaxation on her face was a guise—that inside, her mind was as tortured as I felt right now—but that didn’t matter at the moment.

  “Do you know what this would have done to me?” I croaked. “Do you even care?”

  My questions were getting angrier, fiercer by the second. And even though I asked them all, I knew the answer to each question: she was depressed. And that was all that there was to it.

  I knew I was being ridiculous with how angry I was getting. I didn’t know what it was like to be her or to feel like she did. I had never felt so depressed that I felt like life wasn’t worth living. And I knew that because of that, being mad at her wasn’t the answer.

  I just felt so many emotions, that I didn’t know how to deal with them all. And the one I felt the most was fear…I was fucking scared to death. I didn’t want to lose my sister. Just because I hadn’t lost her this time, didn’t mean I wouldn’t. What if we weren’t as lucky next time?

  “Next time,” I whispered under my breath. “What if there is a next time?”

  In reality, I knew that there wasn’t a “what if.” If we didn’t get her on the right path, I knew there would be a next time. It was entirely possible that if she continued, she might very well fall to the illness.

  I looked down at our hands and smoothed the back of hers with my thumb. I was heartbroken. Absolutely heartbroken.

  I sighed and leaned forward. “I love you so much,” I whispered, hovering just over her forehead.

  I placed a single kiss on her head and hesitated there for a second. I found myself taking in her scent. The smell of her shampoo. Brisk and spicy, like men’s deodorant, almost. She’d been using it for years, and it suited her. I sat back down and closed my eyes for a second.

  I wanted it to be a nightmare that I could be woken up from, but I knew that it wasn’t. I knew that I was here in this hospital room — and this terrible scenario was real. I just wished she’d wake up. Waiting to talk to her, to get over the part where she sobbed and apologized, was torture.

  Almost as if she could hear my thoughts, her hand tightened around mine, and she gave a small groan.

  My head snapped up, and I watched as her eyes squinted open and her lips curled in pain.

  She had to have felt groggy. In a sense, she literally was death warmed over.

  “You’ve been out for a while,” I said quietly.

  She was starting to stir even more, and her head fell slowly to the side so that she could look at me. But only for a second. Because as soon as her eyes met mine, she closed them and sighed.

  I stood up and roamed to the other side of the cubicle, pacing, unsure of what to say.

  “So can you handle telling me what you remember?” I didn’t want to seem like I was grilling her, but I wanted to hear what she had to say before we saw her therapist. I wanted to hear it from her.

  “Let’s not do this,” she whispered, just before a single tear fell down her ghostly pale cheek.

  “We need to,” I said.

  “I went to the bathroom at school!” she snapped back in anger.

  But then, something changed. It came just as suddenly as her outburst had. Her breath became shaky, and a stream of tears rolled down her cheeks. Choking sobs sounded from deep down in her throat. I knew that she didn’t want to do this.

  I knew she was sad — ashamed even. I knew she was having a difficult time telling me what happened. I knew she knew how fucked up it was.

  “Before I got there, I spent all class…” Her lip was quivering. “…trying to break the metal piece off my ruler.”

  I cringed, but I’d asked her to tell me about it. The least I could do was listen without judging her.

  “When I finally got it off, I just stuck it in my pocket and asked permission to go to the bathroom.” She was trying to steady her shaking breath. I could tell it was hard, reliving it all, retelling it. Especially to me.

  “When I got to the bathroom, I had already made my mind up that I was going to cut myself.” Her voice had returned to normal. It was matter-of-fact. She was trying to shut off the emotions, to act like it wasn’t a big deal. In some way, it was probably the only way she could deal with it.

  “And what happened then, Claire? Can you tell me what you did?” I didn’t want to push her, but I didn’t want her to act like it didn’t matter. To act like she could just go her entire life not talking about it.

  “Stop, Kate,” she groaned. “Please, stop. You know.”

  I did know. But I wanted her to say it. I wanted her to admit it to me.

  “I fucking cut myself! I cut the hell out of my thigh! Carved pieces of my skin out, and then went deeper and deeper!” she yelled. “There, I said it. Does that make you feel better?!”

  She balled her fists and pressed them to her drenched eyes. Then she punched the bed beside her, sobbing. Her chest heaved up and down, and even though I hated to see her cry, I knew that she had to be forced to face reality. To face what she almost did.

  “Shh,” I soothed, moving toward her bed.

  I sat down just beside her, at the edge of the mattress, right where the side r
ail opened. “I love you,” I whispered, pulling her quivering body to me. “I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. I don’t want to make it worse, honestly. I just love you, and I know you, and I know you need to talk about it.”

  I wasn’t going to leave her alone. She knew that by now. She closed her eyes again. I knew what she was doing — it was what she always did. She was pretending to be asleep. But she couldn’t do that forever, not with me.

  I rose from the bed and paced the room some more, just before turning back to her. I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I was prepared to stare for as long as it took.

  “Can you please not look at me like that?” she growled. “I can feel your eyes still on me!”

  “My eyes are always going to be on you!” I said loudly, not caring who heard our conversation. “I love you.”

  We stared at one another with anger, sadness — and a mix of a million other emotions unknown to either of us.

  I wanted to take my ass to bed and just cry it out until I didn’t hurt anymore. But I knew that I couldn’t. I knew it wasn’t that simple. I knew that I had to be strong. I knew that if she saw me break, that she’d break right there with me.

  I knew why she didn’t want to look at me—it was because she didn’t want to see the sadness, the disappointment, and the fear.

  “Can we really just drop this for right now, Kate?” Her eyes glistened with tears.

  “We really need to talk about this now.” My voice was sharp, but no longer angry. I knew that I had to ease off. I had to keep my cool and hear her out. I had to be here for her.

  I eyed her bandages. I knew she felt numb. I knew she felt empty. And that scared me…but what scared me the most was how numb and empty I felt at that moment — at just the notion of losing my baby sister. And I hated that she knew me so well that she could feel how empty I felt.