“Theo?” she calls out, finding the cot empty.
Panic jolts through her until she rounds the threshold, then her gut twists, and a gasp catches in her throat. He is on the floor, clutching his head as he slams it into the wall, blood dripping down his temple. She was gone for all of three minutes and he’s already ten times worse.
If she didn’t know better, she would assume he had been attacked. She freezes for a moment, horrified and uncertain of what to do. Uncertain of her place. They are only new friends at best. She isn’t the one who should be here with him now. But she is here, and when the sickening crack of his skull against the wall echoes again, she snaps out of her stupor.
Quickly, she bends down and reaches out a hand to slip her palm between his head and the wall, her voice a soothing half-whisper. “No, no, no. You’re hurting yourself, please stop.”
He must be so out of it that he barely registers her at all, still trying to knock himself out into oblivion even as her hold on him prevents it and his blood starts to seep onto her fingers.
“Okay, it’s okay. Lean the other way.” She sits on her knees on the cold tile, spreading them enough to allow him room and encouraging him to fall against her instead. “Lean on me. I’ve got you.”
Maybe the rhythm of that tapping against the wall lulled him into a false sense of tranquility because the moment he can’t cause more pain to cancel out the headache already deep inside, he screams.
What the fuck is she doing? He can’t sit here and suffer. She can’t allow it. There is no one who can help, though, and leaving him even for a moment feels impossible, so she holds on as hard as she can as if he might splinter in half against her body. His face tucks into her neck, and his tears wet her skin, prompting her own against her will. It’s all she can do not to cry right along with him as he shivers in her arms. They can’t both fall apart. She can’t help him if she crumbles too.
There is a litany of mumbled requests spoken into her collarbone that beg her to make it stop, as if she has that sort of power.
“I can’t, sweetheart. I can’t. I’m here with you, just breathe.” It’s a frivolous request that is largely ignored in favor of twisting the back of her shirt into his fingers.
She does not overthink the random endearment that fell from her lips. Of course she called him sweetheart. He’s in the middle of one of the worst moments of his life, if she had to hazard a guess at the severity of this situation. The least she can do is whisper sweet nonsense in his ear. That’s all it means, she reasons. All it can ever mean.
All at once, what she needs to do becomes clear. This isn’t going to stop on its own, at least not for a long time, and he may not last until then.
“I’ll be right back. You stay here. Do not slam your head against the wall while I’m gone. Do you hear me?”
The moment she shucks out of his grasp, helping him gently back up into bed again, he reaches for her, panicked as if she’ll never return.
She grabs his face between both hands, her voice stern. “Look at me! I’m going to get you something to help, I promise, but if I come back and I see you’ve bashed your head in, I will never forgive you. Do you understand? You better be in one fucking piece, or else.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he grinds out in reply, and the fact that he doesn’t ask her to stay or warn her against leaving the building is telling enough about the kind of misery he’s wallowing in.
She leaves quickly, or else she might lose her courage. Grabs her coat and gloves, a knife, and the gun, and slips out into the cold in the direction of the pharmacy.
Chapter 14
There are levels to his headaches that Theo uses to classify the level of misery he’s feeling. It goes from only an annoyance all the way up to oh shit, I’m fucked.
Right now, he’s flying past that final destination into whatever new layer comes after. In all the years he’s suffered from this affliction, it rarely reaches the point where he wants to bash his own head against the nearest wall. It’s gotten close a few times, but he’s had medication to dull the ache enough to avoid self-inflicted harm.
Cluster headaches are what the doctors call them. Another mark left over from his time in the wilderness with his brother, as if the mental ones weren’t enough. No one knows how exactly it happened or if it’ll ever be resolved, but he’s suffered with it for so long that he’s given up hope by now of ever living a normal life.
One fateful day at the river changed everything for him. Now all he can do is try to keep surviving.
It’s difficult to focus now that his vision has blurred and everything blends together into a mottled mess. He can feel the mattress of the cot under his back and smell the dank air of the police station, but when he opens his eyes in between throbs, everything in front of his face is unrecognizable. When he’s even able to open his eyes. Which isn’t often. He twists on the bed, wishing for the sweet relief of the wall against his skull. For amoment, the extra pain eliminated the source of the problem in favor of another, but Nora said he couldn’t do that again, or she would be angry with him. He promised he wouldn’t.
He can’t go back on a promise.
Nora.
He can’t remember where she went or when she left. He only knows that she’s gone. Suddenly, that knowledge hits him as hard as his head splits at the base of his neck, and he curls in on himself, yanking at his hair with a trembling groan, wishing for her touch, her voice, any part of her he’s granted again.
Maybe she left him for good, like everyone else. He knew it might be coming. Did he tell her yet that he has no money left? That his trust fund is gone, and he can offer her nothing but the fractured pieces of his heart? If he did, then that might be why she left him, since it was enough for his last fiancée to do the same.
He is nothing without the family wealth at his back. Nothing that anyone would want to keep around. He should have made it all clear from the jump, he thinks, sinking his teeth into the dirty pillow in a silent scream as another wave of agony rushes over him. He should have told her every detail of his breakup so she knew that he is nothing and no one.
Little pieces of his brain start to shuffle, moving his memories like cards in a deck before plucking out one of the worst to revisit as the agony shatters his thoughts. One moment, he’s in the sheriff’s office, and the next, he’s on the riverbank with a torn shoulder and blood cascading from his temple.
* * *
