Page 105 of Take My Hand

I take the seat next to the bed, the plastic crunching underneath my weight.

“Well, would you look at who's here.”

Will’s words startle me, and I shoot my attention to him, only to see him still lying there with his eyes shut.

“How long have you been awake?”

He scoffs and peels open his eyes, staring at me with irises the same color as my own.

But what sends a slicing blow to my system is the haunted look that is sunken deep behind them. A look I saw in the mirror every day for a very long time. A look I know well and never wished to see reflected in the eyes of someone I love.

A look of someone who is exhausted by their mind, refusing to let them free of the demons that it clings to so tightly.

35

HAYDEN

“How are you feeling?” I ask, handing Will a cup of water.

“Like shit,” he says as he adjusts the bed into a semi-sitting position.

“That’s what happens when you drink half your body weight in booze.” My words come out with more venom than I intended. I mean yes, I’m pissed at him. How could he put his body through so much destruction? How could he do that to my parents, to Lucas, to me? If there’s anyone that understands what he’s trying to run from, it’s our family. We were all there that day. We’ve all struggled in the aftermath.

But for some reason, he didn’t think he could come to us to talk about it. Couldn’t come to me, his older brother, to talk about it.

And I think it’s the hurt of that fact that overshadows my anger, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to be angry than to acknowledge the hurt.

Is that how Reid has felt all this time?

I shake the thought from my head. My brother needs my focus now.

“Please, it wasn’t half my body weight. Even I don’t have that kind of tolerance.” Will snorts, as if this is some sort of joke.

“This isn’t funny. Do you see where you are?”

Will turns his neck to the left, then to the right, surveying the room carefully.

“Oh wow, I hadn’t noticed. How did I miss them hooking me up to all this shit?”

His sarcasm has me gritting my teeth, trying to hold my tongue and not lash out at him. He’s hurting. I can see it on his face, in his slumped shoulders, in his default to trying to play this all off and not let the full weight of what happened sink in.

“Will, talk to me.” I scoot my chair closer to the bed, resting my elbows on it. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, that’s not a fucking acceptable answer anymore.”

He whips his head toward me, indignation lighting his face. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Fine, you want to know what happened? What happened was that some sicko decided to shoot up my graduation and I watched my classmates die in front of my fucking face. And then I’m just expected to move on, go about my life like normal, and watch it happen over and over again to other people?”

I open my mouth to interject, but he cuts me off.

“And I’m just supposed to sit in my classes on campus and not worry about the same exact thing happening again? I’m supposed to listen to a professor lecture for an hour in a hall of a hundred students and try to focus on what I’m supposed to be learning and not be scanning the room the entire time, watching for someone to move funny or reach into their bags and not panic?”

“Will…”

---