Page 31 of Splintered
He held a towel over Evan’s sliced belly as he dialed 911 on Evan’s cell phone. The operator picked up after two rings, her voice cold and clinical, almost robotic. Ben heard himself answer, his voice equally detached, exhausted and broken. From outside himself, he watched the call, watched himself hold pressure over Evan’s wound, heard himself describe Evan’s symptoms, the treatment he was undergoing. He kept pulling further away, a man lost at sea watching the horizon disappear.
His voice choked off. His words broke.
Over the line, the 911 dispatcher radioed for a psychiatric emergency and a domestic violence disturbance.
“Is he still a danger to you, Mr. Haynes?”
“No,” Ben said. He struggled to speak. He knew how this would end. He almost couldn’t continue. Like something deep down inside of him didn’t want him to speak, to let this out. “No, he’s unconscious now. He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s passed out. I’m holding pressure on his wound.”
She had him take Evan’s pulse to relay to the ambulance and then stayed on the line with him as he listened to the sirens draw closer. Red and blue lights painted the neighborhood again, stabbed into their bedroom and smeared along the walls before falling out of the window. “Tell them to come in. I don’t want to let pressure off his wound. They can break through the door. It’s locked.”
Wood splintering. A bellow, a cop shouting they were coming inside. He shouted back, telling them to come up the stairs.
Footsteps thundering up the stairs.
The cop came through the door first, his weapon drawn, pointing low and ready. He flicked the light switch and his eyes scanned the scene, taking in the blood covering Ben, covering Evan, covering the bathroom the thick trail leading to their bed. His eyes went wide. “Is this Mr. Lombardi?”
Ben nodded. “He’s hurt. He hurt himself.”
“Step back, Mr. Haynes,” the cop ordered. “The paramedics need to take over. Are you injured?”
He shook his head.
“Then come with me.” The cop guided him from the room as a team of paramedics rushed in, cursing as they saw Evan’s naked body on the bed.
* * *
Chapter Ten
The cop—OfficerVelasquez—turned on every light in the house. Every single one, from the amber chandelier at the top of the stairs to the recessed lights in the living room, the shivering crystal overhead in the dining room, the buckets and hanging pendants in the kitchen. The glow burned through the house, hard enough that Ben squinted as he hunched over the kitchen counter.
How long ago had Evan made him a messy scramble and set the plate right here? It couldn’t have been that long.
It felt like a geologic epoch.
Velasquez sat him down at the counter and positioned another cop in the kitchen doorway, watching and guarding Ben. “Don’t move,” Velasquez ordered, “and watch him,” he said to the cop standing guard.
Heavy footfalls echoed around the house, through the rooms downstairs and up. Velasquez’s deep voice slithered through the walls as he spoke with other officers and the paramedics.
Ben picked at the dried blood on his arms and he listened to the radios chirp on half dozen cops’ shoulders.
Velasquez returned, standing on the other side of the kitchen island. Ben tried to sit up, but his bones were too weary, the strings that had held him up for weeks now cut loose. His skin itched. Evan’s blood was drying on him, burning everywhere it touched. He wanted to slough off his skin, molt out of his body. Reappear somewhere—anywhere—else.
Velasquez took photos of Ben on his phone, his blood-covered arms, his cast, his scratched chest. Bruises on his wrist, his shoulders, his cheek. Red palm prints on his neck. Scratches that gouged his back. “Now,” he said, turning on a voice recorder on his phone. He set it beneath Ben on the counter. “Walk me through what happened tonight.”
He shifted, squirmed. His tongue cemented to the roof of his mouth. What had happened in these four walls was theirs, their life, their struggle. Not even Dr. Kao knew everything, how what was happening with Evan was also twisted and warped around the unspeakable thing they couldn’t mention to each other. Was this, was Evan’s sickness, drawing them closer together or ripping them apart? Was New York still on the table? Or would Evan stay here with him? Forever?
Something shifted inside Ben, something dark and slimy.Evan belonged here. Here, in the house! This was going to take Evan away from him!
And then he could speak, and breathe, and the first words came fumbling out about Evan’s blackouts and his hearing voices and Dr. Kao and the medications. About the other two incidents waking up in the middle of the night.
Velasquez blinked.
He stumbled through what had happened, his words catching, scrubbing raw on sobs that bubbled out of his throat. He buried his face in his hands. Velasquez made him repeat the incident, and then again. Every moment Ben could remember.
“How is he?” Ben choked out. Snot puddled on his upper lip, salty with the flood of his tears. He didn’t bother wiping them away.
“The paramedics are evaluating him upstairs. He had some kind of seizure shortly after they arrived. They’re taking a lot in right now. They’re on the radio with their own medical control.”
