Page 19 of Splintered
What if Evan wasn’t well enough to move? What if he couldn’t take the job? The job of his dreams, a career move that would propel him to the top?
What if he had to stay here? With Ben? In the house?
The wine glass shattered. Wine spilled over his hand, spreading on the marble like seeping blood.
* * *
Steadily,Evan turned into a stranger before Ben’s eyes, an untranslated ancient language, something that on the surface appeared to be understandable, but at the core was not.
Day by day, he watched Evan slip away.
That Wednesday night, they made love again, the first time in months, and Evan seemed to move back into their bedroom, fleeing his self-imposed exile in the living room. They kissed sweat-tinged skin and stroked overheated muscles, pressed panting lips together and tried to crawl inside each other as they cradled close in the afterglow. Before they fell asleep, Ben held Evan’s hand while Evan took his first doses of clonazepam, the anti-epileptic, and his first paroxetine, the anti-depressant.
Thursday, Evan seemed to hibernate against the world. He was a snoring lump when Ben extricated himself from bed and got ready for work, and he seemed only slightly better when Ben returned home that evening. Dark shadows hung under his eyes. “I feel so drained,” Evan had said.
“It’s probably the meds. It will take some time to get used to them.”
“Mmhmm.” Evan had fallen asleep against his shoulder minutes later, slumped on the couch.
Dust settled on the dumbbells, the treadmill. Something heavy shifted in the house. Melancholy seeped in with the winter chill, holding its breath. Darkness waited, hovering in the corners, behind half-stripped wallpaper in their unfinished rooms, boundless and infinite.
Ben caught himself looking over his shoulder in his own home. Or twisting on the stairs and staring behind him. Looking upward. Closing his eyes and holding his breath.
He watched Evan, too. Watched every breath and shift in his sleep, watched him as he drooled into his pillow, as he shoved his earbuds in and shifted through playlist after playlist. “Any better?” he’d ask. Evan would shrug.
One day he came home and found Evan shivering in the bathroom, curled in front of the toilet, hugging his knees as he groaned. Vomit stained the toilet bowl, more than he’d seen before. As if Evan had spent the entire day hurling nonstop. He flushed and pulled Evan to his unsteady feet, guiding him first to a warm bath and then to bed, dressed in fresh boxers and a sweater.
“Headphones,” Evan pleaded. “Please.”
“You still hear things?”
“All the time,” Evan whispered. A tear rolled from one closed eye down his temple. “Make it stop.Please. I hate it. I hate it so much.”
He’d found Evan’s earbuds on the bathroom floor, rolled under the cupboard and drained of battery. While they charged, he held Evan from behind and stroked his chest, talking to him, keeping up a running babble of his day and his students and the ongoing war of teenagers against common sense and the universe. Evan held his arms like Ben was keeping him tethered to the planet, like his voice was the only thing he could lean on.
As Ben’s voice grew hoarse, Evan started whispering under his breath. Ben couldn’t make out what he was saying. It almost sounded like nothing, like gibberish. Maybe it was just scattered breaths.
He convinced himself it was just noise.
Every night, he sat up and watched over Evan, made sure his slumber was deep and peaceful and free of nightmares. Bags grew beneath his own eyes, but if his sentinel guard over Evan helped in any way, he’d go with only three hours’ sleep for the rest of his life.
Evan went ten days without a night terror, without waking up shrieking.We’ll get through this. No night terrors. No seizures.The voices, well, that was simply an adjustment of medications, wasn’t it? They’d tackled two out of the three big problems on their first try. Many more people weren’t as lucky when they tried medications.
They’d get through this.
Together.
* * *
Screaming,again, like Evan’s throat was being scrapped raw with a cheese grater. Ben jerked away, tearing at sheets and blankets as he tried to find Evan. He seemed a million miles away, and also right there, shrieking in Ben’s ear so loud the sound was coming from inside Ben’s bones.
He scrambled, knocking over the lamp on his nightstand before racing to the wall switch, pounding it with the flat of his palm. The light blazed and then popped, glass shattering over the bed. He cursed and ran to the bathroom, stumbling, trying to turn any light on, see anything.
The glow from the bathroom cast narrow slivers into the bedroom, one long sickle that stretched across the bedroom floor. Outside the light, as if covered by the darkness, Ben spotted a writhing mass of sheets and blankets on the floor.
Evan, fallen off the bed. Trembling, shaking.
Seizing.
