Page 38 of Reaching Ryan

I guess you can probably guess what happened next.

“Not really.” My voice sounds flat. A low, single-note monotone that barely bridges the distance between us. I always sound like this afterward. Feel like this. Flat. Still. Like my bones are made of lead. It’s always been an unsettling sensation, probably because in the back of my mind, I know it’s not normal. It’s not normal to feel this way. Like I’m floating and sinking all at once. Like—

“Rich is in the hospital.”

I look up from my hands again and scowl at her, irritated because she’s still here. Still bothering me. “Good,” I say, before I go back to staring at my hands.

Good.

I’m glad.

Not because I put him in the hospital but because I didn’t actually kill him the way I thought I did. And not glad because I didn’t kill him. Glad because if I had, I’d probably never get to see Grace again.

Grace.

Her beautiful face flashes in front of me, covered in blood, so vivid the flash becomes fact. It becomes real. A memory.

I did that.

To her.

I hurt her.

I—

I feel my lungs constrict. My ribcage begins to crumble under the weight of my chest and I only manage a single breath before it collapses completely.

Fuck.

That’s the last thought I have before I go under. Start to drown. Feel the black wrap itself around me and pull me deep.

Ryan.

Ryan.

Ryan.

Each time she says it is another whip lash across my back, the sting of it making it easy for me to believe that she’s begging me to stop.

Stop walking away from her.

Stop hurting her.

It’s hard to decide which one I did.

Which version of what happened is real.

That’s the bitch of TBI. When you’re in it, you have no idea what’s real. If it’s safe to ignore the demons screaming at you. If the screams carry truth or lie. So it all becomes truth. It all becomes real because the second you let yourself believe the demon is a lying, it proves you wrong.

Swallows you whole.

Jesus, I can’t breathe.

I can’t fucking—

“Ryan.”

The sound of my name cuts through the black and snaps my head up. Henley’s kneeling in front of me in her fancy clothes, her stranger face tense and pale with worry.

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