“Why won’t she wake up?” Is that Blaine? Help me, please B… please. Why can’t he hear me? There are more people, and it sounds like murmuring. Are they leaving me here? No. A scream funneled deep within me is welling up. I need them to help me. Help Embry. She’s coming, she’s coming…
A flash of a light and a slight pain in my arm. Fuzzy and bright. Beeping. What’s happening to me? I squeeze my eyes tight and order myself to open them again. Open up. I don’t know this room, but it’s clearly a hospital room. I’m hooked up to a machine monitoring my heartbeat. There are three people in scrubs standing around my bed and talking about me. “…she’s coming around. Check her O2.” Handing articles back and forth over me… bandaging? I turn my head looking for Blaine. I know I heard his voice. He’s hovering partially behind the doctor and reaches around him to grab hold of my hand.
“Oh my God, there you are, Ed. Fuck.” His eyes are red and watery. “It took forever for you to wake up, sweetheart.” When the doctor shifts to the side, Blaine moves to me. Without concern over the IV or monitors he pulls me to him. Crushing me to his chest as he whispers, “Fuck, I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were gone.”
“Be careful of her IV,” a no-nonsense nurse admonishes Blaine. He doesn’t ease up but looks at where his arms are clutching me.
“If you thought I was clingy before, Fuck, Ed. I’m going to be like super stick cling wrap now.” He fiercely kisses my head. “If someone is coming for you, they get us both.”
I hold onto him and we cry on each other. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. Much less be in his arms again. The arguing we were doing over my mental health feels petty right now. I don’t care if he thinks I’m nuts. I’m willing to admit that I need him. It’s not a weakness to want a person to belong to you and to belong to them in return. I’ve just never had it besides Anna, my foster mom.
“Blaine… what about Keir? Is he okay, where is he?” Blaine pulls back a fraction and wipes at his eyes. He bites his lip and clears his throat.
“He’s here.” He lovingly strokes a hand down the back of my head. “He hasn’t woken up yet, Ed.”
Why can’t I remember what happened to us? “I don’t understand. What happened to him?” Blaine moves to hold me at his side and to avoid my searching eyes.
He stares at our intertwined hands as he says softly, “I found him with a head injury in your room. I went back to the Center an hour or so after you kicked me out. You were gone. So were all your things.”
No matter how much I concentrate and try it’s a black void. I can’t remember. How? I didn’t sustain a head injury did I? “Why can’t I remember… the last thing I remember…” My hand flies to my mouth. Keir knows who Embry is. We were talking about my foot scar. Then he… there was a knock at the door. Then… nothing… “Caleb?!” I jolt up a bit in bed. “Where is he? He was in the woods with me, he was trying to help me.”
“He’s okay. He’s here, too. A little worse for wear, but he’ll be fine. He’s more upset about you. He can’t remember anything, either.” Our attention is drawn to the door after a brief knock, and it cracks open.
“Can I come in?” Matt asks, after sticking his head in. “I’ll come back if you want.” Not a chance. I need to lay my hands on him, in my last moments before passing out I regretted the way I kicked him out of my room and the fact I hadn’t let him talk.
“Come here.” I hold my hand out.
In three large steps he’s taken me from Blaine’s grasp and has me locked against him. The only clue he’s crying is the way his chest is heaving. “You had us all terrified,” he says into my hair. I drink the smell of him in. He always smells like expensive cologne and a hint of cinnamon from the Altoids he sucks on.
“She doesn’t remember what happened,” Blaine says to him over my head. I wonder if they’ve worked their issues out, but the fact that Blaine stiffened at the sight of him would indicate that their truce is for my sake.
He pulls a chair up on the other side of my bed and settles there, gripping tightly the hand Blaine doesn’t possess. “I told you we’d protect you and I failed to do that. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.” His eyes glisten with tears as he continues, “I want you to move out of the Center if you stay in the study. I have room for you in my rental. I don’t think you’re safe at the Wellness Center at all.”
“I doubt I’m still in the study. Right?” I look at Blaine. “I had Keir and Caleb in my room. I…” Swallowing is getting a little harder, I could use some water. Without having to say a word, Blaine grabs the ice water and cup on the tray near my bed and pours me a glass.
“Thank you,” I rasp out and drink down the glass, trying not to choke. “I’m sure I’ve lost my graduate school status, too.” If I hadn’t just had a brush with death, I’d be devastated by that, but right now I’m just happy I’m above ground and in close proximity to two men that have moved into my heart.
“I don’t know. The Center covered up the whole thing. You’ll have to talk to Hart I’m sure, that’ll be a blast.” Blaine rolls his eyes. “But you could fight that all your things and you were gone. So technically, Keir wasn’t found in your room, and they can’t prove Caleb was there.”
“You said that before. What do you mean all my things are gone?” I don’t have much. Even in my tiny closet of a walk up back at home, it’s sparse. Now what little I traveled with is gone? That might mean the stash of money that I keep tucked in a hidden pocket of my suitcase. It had grown in the last few years to several thousand. Gone?
“Cleaned out. Gone. Nothing of yours was left in the room. Like you’d never been there,” Blaine explains and Matt sighs and rubs my hand with his thumb.
“Someone wrote ‘Time is Now’ on the wall in what looked like blood, too.” Matt’s voice is hushed, but he almost looks like he’s assessing my reaction. Like I know what happened, but don’t want to say. When I try to pull away from him, his grip tightens. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just telling you what was found.”
Tears build in my eyes. Why can’t I remember? It’s one thing to forget a person’s name, or whether you read something… but whole events. Terrible events? When I feel like my mind might be as faulty as Blaine and Matt were suspecting, I recall that Caleb can’t remember either. “Caleb… he doesn’t know.”
“No. In fact, he was convinced Keir was in the woods with the two of you.” Matt leans forward resting his elbows on his knees. “Hutton happened to have a couple of cameras in your room. Which didn’t make me happy, but we were able to see you answering the door and it cut out.”
My face reddens when I think about masturbating and having sex in that room. With Hutton watching. “Cameras? Oh my God.” I’m kicking him in his junk the next time I see him. Between the weird memories my mind has been making up about him and now this. “You couldn’t see who was at the door?”
“It looks like only Keir, and you did. Caleb was in the bathroom. Then he came out and was attacked from behind. The recording blacks out after that.”
“I want to see Keir and Caleb. I need to see them both.” I look down at my thin aqua hospital gown and the bandaging wrapped around my upper thigh. “Can I leave my room?” I direct the question to Matt because I automatically assign authority to him. Why do I do that?
“That’s not wise. You need to get rest and you have an IV in…,” Blaine says next to me. Matt just shakes his head no.
I’m not new to loss. Pieces of me have been chipped away with new losses my entire life. Embry, foster homes, friends and acquaintances, boyfriends, and now most of my possessions and the money I was going to use to start a new life. Once I found Embry, I planned on finding us a home. Regain some footing in this life. What’s causing my heart to ache right now is the fact that I could have lost Caleb, Keir, or both. Those losses would have destroyed my heart completely.
