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I was fine.
I was breathing.
I needed to know about them.
I needed answers.
But all I got was sedation.
Over and over again.
Each time I woke up, the panic would bubble up, I would freak out, and there came the needle again.
Sometime after the fourth time, when I woke up again, I wasn't alone.
My mother was standing by the window, looking off at the water, her arms curled around herself, hugging her elbows. Cyrus was leaning back against a wall, his foot cocked back on it, head ducked. And Wasp was in the only chair, her long legs pulled up close by her chest, a giant red sweater completely swallowing up her body.
They all looked pale.
Worried.
Almost sick.
My tongue moved out, wetting my lips, as I tried to swallow hard a few times, force some new saliva into my dry mouth so I could speak.
When I did, my voice wasn't loud and hysterical.
It was just fucking broken.
Because I knew.
Even without knowing, I knew.
"What happened to them?" I asked, watching as all three heads lifted, all sets of blue eyes scared, not one of them wanting to say the words.
In the end, the burden fell on Wasp, someone who, even at her age, was always more able to handle ugly.
"Mikey passed away, Reeve," she said, moving off the chair to come sit off the side of my bed, reaching for my hand as she told me things I knew. Of course he passed. I had seen the bullet split his head open. I had watched his life leave him. Even just the idea made my stomach pitch. But there was nothing inside it to throw up.
"Erica," I said, hearing no hope in my voice.
And that was when I knew it was bad.
Because Wasp, the most badass girl I had ever met, couldn't even hold my gaze. Her head dropped slightly, looking at the small plastic tube sticking out of the crook of my elbow.
"She was..."
"Wasp, no," our mother scolded, either thinking I was too weak to hear it, or that Wasp was too young, too innocent to repeat it.
"She was beaten, raped, and shot," Wasp said, lifting her head, voice strong, but wobbly a bit at the end. "She survived for eight hours. Died on the operating table trying to remove the bullet."
And just like that, the whole world ended.
They didn't sedate me anymore after that. They didn't need to; I was practically catatonic, just a breathing shell of a person as people moved around me, poking me with things, pulling things out of me, pushing food at me that I ate because the alternative was a tube down my throat and to my gut if I refused. Nothing had any taste. Chalk and cardboard.
The pain meds went away, and clarity came back.
And clarity, yeah, it was an ugly fucking thing.
It made everything bright. It made the memories in high def, Technicolor detail. It sharpened all the edges. It made the contrast so painful that it hurt my eyes.
The cops came to talk to me, somber-toned and sad-eyed, apologizing for having to hear the details, apologizing for getting in the way of my recovery. As if I gave a shit about my recovery.
"There was nothing you could have done, son," the older detective told me, putting a hand on my shoulder before turning out the door.
Nothing I could have done.
Fucking idiot.
There was plenty I could have done.
I could have talked to Erica - Ronny - more than I fucked her. I could have demanded to know the secrets of her past, made her realize she could trust me with them. I could have gotten her out of that hellhole with her information on the lease, and taken her to my place where no one would have found her. I could have told her to pay back the money to her ex so it didn't cause any problems. I could have told her that I would sock money away for Mikey's eventual care needs.
I could have fucking fought back.
Instead of just fucking standing there and kneeling there.
I could have taken down the guy behind me and went for the gun pointed at Mikey. So the fuck what if it got pointed at me instead? At least it wasn't on him anymore.
In the commotion, maybe Erica could have grabbed Mikey and gotten away. Maybe they could have survived. Instead of me. That would have been a fair trade.
But them for me?
That wasn't fair.
The Earth went off its axis that day.
The scales went unbalanced.
"I'm sorry, son," the detective said on the day I was discharged. "Normally, we would never ask you. Not in this situation. But there is no one else."
No other relatives.
At least none that anyone could find.
And Erica - Ronny - and Mikey needed to have arrangements made, they needed to be laid to rest.
Even just that turn of phrase made my guts twist.
