Page 20 of Splintered
The screaming was palpable now, loud enough to press against him, a thing with presence. He crawled to Evan like he was pushing against the roaring tide, waves breaking furiously at the Half Moon Bay beachhead.
“Evan!” He tugged at the sheets, unrolling Evan’s cocoon, reaching in and grabbing hands and arms and legs and trying to wrench him free. Up close, this looked less like a seizure. More like a night terror. The shrieking, the writhing. Evan was trying to escape. “Evan, it’s me! I’m here!”
“Help me!” Evan wailed. “Fucking help me!”
“I’m trying!”
Evan kicked, punched. The sheet wrapped around his fist, flew over his face. Twirled around his neck. Evan thrashed harder, boxing an invisible opponent, seemingly fighting for his life with his eyes squeezed shut.
The sheet twisted around his neck pulled tighter. He gasped. Wheezed. Choked.
“Evan!” Ben grasped the sheet in his unbroken hand and yanked. It seemed made of iron, not 800-thread-count cotton worn soft through a hundred washes. He couldn’t budge the fabric, couldn’t rip it free from around Evan’s throat. “Evan, you have to relax! Put your arms down!”
Wet, hoarse chokes burbled from Evan.
“Evan!” He leaned in, grasping the sheet wrapped around Evan’s neck in each hand, and wrenched. His broken hand twanged like a guitar snapping a string. Gritting his teeth, Ben pulled, and pulled—
And the sheet finally tore, the old fabric brittle in the middle, shredding and fraying. Evan was free.
Evan scrambled backward, gulping down lungfuls of panicked oxygen mixed with snot and tears, pulling himself into a ball in the corner of the bedroom under the window seat. A streetlight outside skimmed the surface of his face. The top of his nose, his chin. The glimmer of his tears.
Ben crawled to his side, holding out his casted hand. “Evan? It’s me. It’s Ben.”
Nothing. Just the snotty inhales, the shaking exhales. Evan stayed in his ball, knees pulled up to his chest. A smell hit Ben’s nose. His knee, crawling through the sheets that had tangled Evan, landed in a warm wetness. Urine. Terrified, primal, stinking piss.
Ben crawled to the corner slowly, his hand still outstretched. His fingers landed on Evan’s knee. Evan flinched, but didn’t withdraw.
He crawled the rest of the way, curling himself around Evan and holding him. He cradled Evan, his hips pressing into Evan’s urine-soaked boxers, his arms wrapping tight around Evan’s sweat-drenched shoulders. “Evan,” he breathed. He leaned his forehead into Evan’s temple.
Softly, just barely over the sound of Evan’s shaking breaths, Ben made out the faint shape of Evan’s whispers. Quivering, formless sounds, a rhythmic cadence. Susurrated and heaving, discordant and atonal. Was it gibberish? Or was that a language?
* * *
Evan finally fell back asleepat dawn, after standing in the shower for an hour while Ben changed the sheets and scrubbed the hardwood floor and vacuumed glass shards from the busted lightbulb. He put a flashlight on his nightstand and another on the dresser. He also called in sick at the school, telling Principal Chen it was Evan, again.
“Definitely call your doctor back,” she told him over the phone after hearing what had happened the night before. “You guys might need more tests. I’ll put in for a sub for your classes tomorrow as well. Do you want to think about filing for FMLA leave?”
“Not yet. I’m hoping to just use sick and vacation time for now.”
Shehmmed. “Keep me updated. I’ll do everything I can to support you through this, but I do have to think of the school first.”
“I get it. Thanks, Ms. Chen.”
Three cups of coffee and one minute after Dr. Kao’s office opened, he picked up the phone and dialed. She answered on the first ring, that warm voice pouring over the line and wrapping around him with her simple “Hello, Dr. Kao speaking.”
His voice clenched. His eyes prickled, flooded. The words wouldn’t come.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Kao, it’s Ben Haynes.” He cleared his throat. Sniffed. “You’re treating my partner, Evan Lombardi.”
“Yes, Ben. How are you? How is Evan? We have an appointment to check in on how the medications are progressing in two weeks, right?”
“Yeah, we do. But something happened last night. And—" His eyes closed. His fist clenched. “And things aren’t really getting better.”
“What makes you say that?” If he could have, he would have collapsed into the cradle of her voice.
“He’s still hearing things. All the time, he says. He begged me to make them stop. He’s wearing those earbuds like he can’t live without them. And he’s sleeping all the time. I don’t know what to do.”
