Page 33 of Splintered
Voices from above. The paramedics, their boots on the landing, squeaking the wooden floorboards. Footfalls on the stairs, radio calls and voices moving in coordination. Calls to lift one end and elevate the head a bit.
Ben padded to the kitchen entrance. Six paramedics carried a backboard down the stairs. An ambulance stretcher waited inside the front door. Emergency lights strobed through the house, through the front door, through the windows, twirling over the walls and the paramedics’ faces in reds and blues.
“On three,” the lead paramedic said. He counted off, and they lowered Evan gently to the stretcher, strapping the board to the metal frame before they backed away.
Ben’s chest caved in as his breath escaped in one gut punch. His mouth moved but made no sound. His thoughts skidded to a halt, crashed and seared into the gray matter of his brain, etching into every fold of his cerebrum, down into the dura mater and the primal center of his being.
He’d never forget this sight.
They’d strapped Evan down, his arms, his legs. Thick bandages covered his hips and groin. He had an IV in one arm. Blood still covered his skin, dry in places, sticky and smeared in others. His head was strapped down between two foam blocks, a neck brace keeping him immobile.
“Ben?” Evan’s voice was thin, sliced through with fear.
“I’m here.” He moved, grabbed Evan’s hand, rested his cast on one of the foam pads. Leaned down. Before he blinked, he was at Evan’s side. “Evan, I’m here.”
Tears poured from Evan’s eyes, pooling on his cheeks, running down his nose, off the side of his face and into the foam block and down to his ears. “Ben, I’m so sorry—" He hiccuped, choked. “So sorry. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I never, ever want to hurt you—"
“I know.” Ben pressed his forehead to Evan’s, his own tears falling in Evan’s face. “I know, I know. I know it wasn’t you.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” Evan said, his voice a broken thing. “I can’t keep anything straight. I don’t know where I am, or when I am. Or who I am. The voices, they’re there all the time now. I can’t get rid of them. It’s either them or the darkness. And when it’s darkness…” He gasped and tried to grab Ben. The restraints held him down. “I never know what I’ve done!”
“We’re going to get through this, babe. We’re going to. Iswear.” Ben kissed his forehead, his closed eyes.
“I’m so scared,” Evan whispered. “I’m melting away. I’m disappearing. I’ve lost something that can’t ever come back. I’m not all here anymore.”
“Yes you are.” Ben kissed him again, stroked his hair. Behind him, the paramedics were through with their stalling, their packing of their medical kits. They’d given them a few moments together, but that was over. It was time for Evan to go. “You’re Evan, the man I love. You’reyou.”
Evan smiled, and he pursed his lips, waiting for a kiss. Ben leaned down—
“You should have fucked him when you could have,” Evan hissed, that guttural, shredded darkness that had seized his voice in the bathroom pushing out of him. “You should have put him down, smashed his brains into the cabinet. You should have killed him, because he’s going to kill you! You swore you’d always be with him! I’m going to hold you to that fucking promise until I’m bathing in your blood!”
Ben reared back. He hit the wall outside the kitchen.
Evan struggled, trying to turn toward him, trying to see. “Ben? Ben?” His voice was back to normal, pleading, frantic. “Ben!”
Ben stayed immobile against the wall. He watched the paramedics wheel the stretcher out of the house and down the front steps. Evan’s pleas for him trailed back inside, weak and trembling, his voice wavering as he called Ben’s name over and over.
Velasquez appeared before Ben. Both of his hands landed on Ben’s shoulders. He shook him gently. Sound faded in, a rumble that broke through the echo of Evan’s pleas, the way Ben’s name had fallen from his lips and shattered into a billion pieces. “Mr. Haynes? Are you all right? Mr. Haynes?”
He tried to shake his head. He bobbled, his head moving in time with the way his body trembled, shook, and tried to shake apart. He slid down the wall, falling to his knees on the floor, Velasquez’s hands on his shoulders the whole way down. “It’s going to be all right, Mr. Haynes,” Velasquez said, from a million miles away. “It’s going to be all right.”
It wasn’t.
How could anything ever be all right again?
* * *
Chapter Eleven
They left like the tide,a great sucking retreat of life and sound and light. There were a dozen people in the house and then there were none, and Ben was left alone in the kitchen, bathed in the humming glow of the lights and listening to water drip in the sink.
Evan wasgone.
Emptiness filled the house and filled the inside of him. His mind was lost in a void that he seemed to be falling into without end. He’d been clenching and waiting for the crash, the impact, for weeks now.Thiswas pain without end. He’d hoped for answers, for help for Evan. Healing.
Instead, he was left with a hollowness that seemed to swell inside of him, rise over him and yank him into the dark.
He hadn’t lived alone for years. Evan left on business trips, sure, but there always had been his presence in the house. Ben’s cell phone chirping with texts from him. Memories of their moments together scattered on the couch and the floor and in the bedroom. Pictures on the wall that shrouded Ben in happiness.
