Page 97 of A Mistake of Worth
No one objected.
“Just stopping by, or are you staying?” Lucas asked, his hand settling more securely around Jean’s waist.
“Staying,” Jean said, making himself more comfortable in Lucas’s lap. “Ellis is reading with Peter, so I thought I’d see what you’re all plotting down here.”
Gabriel’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly. “Jean, nothing that happens in this room gets repeated to Ellis. Nothing. He’s not ready for any of this information.”
Jean’s posture straightened, his flippant manner evaporating. “I know. I would never... Gabriel, I’m not stupid.”
“I know you’re not,” Gabriel said more gently. “But Ellis is fragile right now. More fragile than you realize.”
Michael had seen enough evidence of that in the past week to understand what recovery from prolonged trauma really looked like. Ellis appeared in the common areas hit-or-miss. Sometimes, he curled up in a reading chair with a book, lost in pages that seemed to provide a refuge from his own thoughts. Other times, he disappeared for hours into the upstairs library, and Michael would catch glimpses of him through doorways, just the edge of his silhouette by a window.
The therapist, Dr. Sarah Chen, a petite woman with kind eyes and infinite patience, had been to the house twice since Michael’s arrival. The first visit had seemed routine, a scheduled appointment that ended with quiet conversation and Ellis seeming more settled afterward.
The second visit had been different.
Michael had been in the kitchen making coffee when he heard it. A sound that might have been sobbing, or screaming, or both. It had started as a low keening that built into something raw and desperate, the kind of sound that came from somewhere deeper than pain.
Michael stepped out of the kitchen to see Gabriel rushing past, heading toward the entertainment room. He followed, drawn bythe urgency in Gabriel’s movements and the sound of distress echoing down the hallway.
In the doorway of the entertainment room, Jean stood with tears streaming down his face, his hands pressed to his mouth. Inside, Ellis was on the couch, his body rigid and shaking, eyes wide and unseeing. He was trapped somewhere else entirely, reliving something that made him whimper and flinch from invisible threats.
Gabriel knelt beside him, speaking in low, soothing French, his hands carefully positioned where Ellis could see them. “Tu es en sécurité, mon cœur. C’est Gabriel. Tu es à la maison.”
“Out,” Gabriel said sharply to Michael and Jean without turning around. “Everyone out. Now.”
Michael backed away, pulling Jean with him into the hallway. The younger man was shaking almost as hard as Ellis, tears still falling silently.
“What happened?” Michael asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Jean whispered. “We were just talking, and then... Lucas came in and accidentally closed a door too hard, and Ellis just... His eyes, they went completely blank, and then he started screaming.” Jean’s voice cracked.
Lucas appeared at the end of the hallway, his face pale and stricken. “I need to tell Gabriel I called Dr. Chen,” he said quietly, guilt heavy in his voice.
He moved past them, opening the entertainment room door just enough to slip his head inside. “Gabriel,” he said softly. “Dr. Chen is on her way. Twenty minutes.”
Gabriel’s voice was barely audible. “Thank you.”
Lucas closed the door carefully, the soft click barely a whisper, and returned to Jean’s side. His hands were shaking as he pulled Jean against his chest.
“It’s my fault,” Lucas said, his voice thick. “I closed the door too fast, and he just...” He swallowed hard. “I should have known better.”
Jean pressed his face against Lucas’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have,” Lucas repeated, his arms tightening around Jean. “After everything he’s been through, I should have been more careful.”
They waited in the front parlor while Gabriel’s voice continued in the other room, steady and patient, trying to guide Ellis back to the present.
It took nearly half an hour for Dr. Chen to arrive, moving quickly through the house with her medical bag.
Michael watched through the doorway as she joined Gabriel on the floor beside the couch, speaking in calm, clinical tones while Ellis continued to struggle against memories that felt more real than the room around him.
It was another twenty minutes before Ellis seemed to recognize where he was, his breathing gradually slowing, his body going limp with exhaustion.
Only then did Gabriel carefully lift him, Ellis’s face buried against his shoulder, sobbing with the kind of weariness that follows surviving something terrible all over again. Dr. Chen followed them upstairs, and the house fell into the particular silence that lingers in the wake of crisis.
Jean explained more afterward. Ellis’s nightmares that left him screaming Gabriel’s name. The way he sometimes dissociated so completely that Gabriel would find him standing in doorways, staring at nothing, unreachable for minutes at a time.
