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I grimace, reacting viscerally to the sight.
It’s as if now that we’ve stopped moving for more than the time it takes to piss and gas up the car, all the little aches and pains are making themselves known. My head throbs, probably protesting the lack of food and water and the blood loss on top of everything else.
I’ve pushed my body and my mind to the breaking point over the last day or so, and it’s not like we were all that well rested before we got to Mexico.
“Yeah,” I mutter finally. “You might have a point.”
Malice jabs a finger in the direction of the bathroom, and I go without argument, closing the door behind me and standing under the glow of the harsh florescent lighting.
The bathroom is small but relatively clean, and I undress quickly, leaving my dirty, sweat and bloodstained clothes in a heap on the floor. No point in folding them now.
The water hisses from the shower, icy cold at first, but then gradually heating up as it runs. I can hear the pipes clanging a bit as steam starts to fill the little room.
I hiss when the hot water hits my hastily stitched up wound, and I look down at it, examining it more closely. The stitches are uneven but good enough. It’s definitely going to scar, but that was unavoidable, really.
All I can think about as I run my fingers over the bumps of the stitches is how that night went. How I tried to step in front of Willow, to protect her. How it was my instinct to keep her from being in the line of fire. I would have taken more bullets than this one to keep her safe, but in the end, it didn’t even matter.
I got shot, and she still got taken.
I can see it, almost like it’s playing out in slow motion every time I close my eyes. The angle is twisted and wrong from me being on the ground, my head swimming, my vision a little blurry. But I could still see clearly enough in that moment to see Willow being snatched.
I can remember every second of it.
The look on her face of shock and absolute terror.
The way her scream split the night air and echoed even after she was taken.
My eyes snap open, and I realize I’m breathing hard. My heart is racing in my chest, pounding with force against my ribs. I force myself to take a deep breath and then another, trying to focus on what I can control here and now.
I grab a wash cloth from the rack next to the shower and lather it up with the hotel soap, starting from the top and moving down as I clean myself. The water runs murky as grime and blood start to come away, and my eyes zero in on the sight of it.
It doesn’t help.
Nothing helps.
I just keep picturing Willow’s face.
I keep hearing her scream.
I keep seeing her being driven farther and farther out of reach, until I can’t see her anymore.
The emotions are like a tidal wave, and once they reach their peak, I don’t have a hope of outrunning them. It all crashes over me, threatening to drown me under the weight, and I gasp for breath.
Willow has always been intense for me. Her emotions mixed with mine, the way I feel about her. It’s not like anything I’ve experienced before, so I have no defenses against it. No defense against the anger and the bone-chilling fear I’m feeling, wondering if she’s okay.
I clench my jaw hard, trying to focus on breathing in through my nose and then out through my mouth. I count each breath in, four seconds. Then hold for another four and exhale for the same. But it’s not really helping.
I add tapping my fingers to the mix, against my thigh, against the tiled wall, managing to do enough that I can finish showering off and then step out of the shower.
It’s all just so much. It’s all too much.
Nothing I’m trying is working the way it usually does, and there’s none of that familiar settling as things start to calm down. If anything, it just whips my emotions into more of a frenzy, like a hurricane in my head and my chest, everything moving too fast and too chaotically for me to be able to grab ahold and shove it all back down.
The bathroom is suddenly too small. The dingy white walls are closing in, and I whirl around and punch one hard. The pain sends a jolt down my arm, and that cuts through the static in my head a bit, so I do it again.
I start counting, lining up my breathing with each punch. In, out—one. In, out—two. In, out—three.
The world narrows to the pain in my hand and the feeling of the paint from the wall under my skin, sticky with humidity from the shower. The count climbs higher, and I start leaving bloody streaks on the wall from where the skin of my knuckles splits, but I don’t stop.
