Page 114 of Switch!
“I couldn’t see anything,” Patrick says. “I could only hear the desperation in her voice. Imagine sitting there, thousands of miles away in an office cubicle, and listening to your wife’s terrified screams.”
Serena is close to us now, her face full of wild abandonment. I can hear a roar behind us, and when I glance back, I see a wave. A big one. Serena notices it too, her eyes growing wide. She finally stops swimming and treads water, the joyful expression replaced by uncertainty.
“She only wanted to swim with the mermaids,” Patrick says, kneeling down next to her.
His daughter doesn’t see him. She isn’t comforted by his presence as her chin tilts upward and her eyes become wide, a shadow covering Serena as the sun is blocked from view.
I can’t take it anymore. I flee from the black box. When I return to the world of the living, I find myself sprawled out on the bed. I shove myself off the mattress and scurry away in a panic. When I look around the room, I see it all in an entirely new light. The crayon drawings taped to the wall, the dainty princess shoes that she used to totter around in while laughing, the love-worn teddy bear that will never be cuddled by a little girl again… So many happy memories, each of them ripping through my chest and cutting straight to my heart where they cause unbearable anguish.
“Are you okay?”
Trixie is kneeling on the bed. She must have been watching over me. I can only groan in response as I flee from the room. I make it to the bathroom and retch over the toilet, but nothing comes up. I wish it would. My insides feel like they’re full of jagged glass.
“Hey. Travis.”
I flinch from the hand that touches my neck. When it moves down to gently rub my back, I don’t pull away. Instead I turn, let Trixie take me into her arms, and begin to weep.
Twenty-seven ↔ Chapter
“Feeling better?”
I’m sitting on the living room couch in my bathrobe while holding a steaming mug. Not of tea, coffee, or cocoa. We don’t have any of those things, but Trixie insisted that something warm would help, so she microwaved some water. As ridiculous as it sounds, the heat radiating between my hands is comforting.
“It’s hard,” I say, my voice cracking as I fight off another round of tears. All I’ve done is cry while attempting to tell Trixie what happened. Guys are pressured to repress such emotions, which is probably why I feel the need to explain myself. This wasn’t simply upsetting information that I learned. I could feel the same emotions Patrick did. “I didn’t know what it was like to be married, or to have a baby, and I never imagined how it must feel to…” My shoulders shake as I struggle to hold back tears. “-to lose them both. Now I can’t forget, even though I want to, because it’s all in here.” I tap the side of my head.
“You have access to his memories now?”
I nod glumly. “All of them. How he felt when the phone shorted out, cutting him off from his wife. The hours of uncertainty, waiting to hear from her again. How long it took to find the body…” I shake my head, my chin trembling.
Trixie exhales and leans back. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I never should have snooped, but I was worried about what he had hidden in that room. I figured I could look without him knowing and tell you what I found. I couldn’t ask what you thought of my plan without tipping him off and… I feel terrible.”
“Don’t,” I say. “It was a good idea. I would have wanted you to try. Patrick wasn’t hiding anything from us. He had reached a point where he wouldn’t let himself think about any of it. He literally couldn’t function anymore, so he shut every reminder of his old life in that room and tried to do the same in his head. It didn’t make him any happier. Instead he felt dead inside.”
“Jesus,” Trixie breathes. “That must be what drove him to attempt suicide. How’s he feeling now?”
“I don’t know. He’s still in the black box. He’ll probably stay there now that we forced everything out into the open. Especially since we’re talking about the very thing he wants to avoid.”
“He needs to face this,” Trixie says. “I understand why he doesn’t want to, but nothing will get better until he talks to someone who can help. What about his wife? What happened to her?”
“Laura?” Just saying her name makes my lips tremble. I can still feel how deeply Patrick loved her. The intensity makes what Sarah and I had seem like a mere crush. “Serena’s death drove them apart. Laura wanted to talk about it. She went to therapists and support groups. Patrick felt there was no getting around the irrefutable fact—in his mind at least—that he had failed his wife and daughter. Laura tried to take care of him during his breakdowns, but she already had so much to deal with. Patrick realized he was only prolonging her torment and making it harder for her to heal, so he drove her away. On purpose.”
“Idiot!” Trixie hisses, but she sounds more frustrated than judgmental. After a heavy sigh, she asks, “What are we going to do?”
“Deal with it for him,” I say, steeling myself. “Everything you and I do together is stored as a memory. He gets them when he resurfaces, so if we can—I don’t know—process it all for him, maybe that’ll help.”
“Are you sure?” Trixie asks. “You’ll have to live through his grief for him. That’s going to hurt.”
I swallow, knowing that she’s right, but I try to make myself sound brave. “It already hurts, so I might as well bear this burden for him. It’ll be my way of paying the rent.”
Trixie puts her hand over mine and squeezes. “Not tonight, okay? You’ve already been through enough. Maybe we should try getting some sleep.”
“Let me check on him first. Then we’ll call it a night.”
I set the mug on the coffee table and lean back. When I close my eyes, all I can see is Serena’s vulnerable expression as a wave grows in height above her. Patrick wasn’t there to witness that, but he imagined what must have happened over and over again. To punish himself. I can’t banish the image, but I move past it to travel deeper inside myself.
When I enter the black box, I’m in Patrick’s teenage room again. He’s standing at the window, staring across the street at the house where Laura lived. Seeing him there triggers a memory: After the first day of a shared class, when they joked around so much they got in trouble with the teacher, Patrick had looked out his window like he did every night. Except this time, she was already there, standing at her window and staring back. Laura dove out of the way when noticing him, but she reappeared again a few seconds later, her face bright red as she waved. Patrick waved back while trying not to laugh. That became one of his favorite memories of her.
“Hey,” I say, wanting to attract his attention.
