“You suffer from depression.” I shook the empty pill bottle and stumbled out of my mother’s bathroom, stopping when my knee hit the stained glass window she had propped between two chairs to let dry.
My mother sat on the couch, a glass of iced tea in one hand and a picture of Aires in the other. She took a methodical sip. Her eyes darted from my own empty glass of tea on the coffee table to me. Her wild red hair fell from its clip. “I know.”
I swayed to the side as the entire world tilted. “What did you do?”
She took another sip of tea. Everything inside of me became heavy as steel. “What did you do to me?”
“Don’t worry, Echo. We’ll be with Aires soon. You said you missed him and would do anything to see him again. So would I.”
The room flipped to the left. I struggled to stay upright and overcompensated to the right, but I fell regardless of my efforts. The world collapsed in on itself. The sound of glass shattering accompanied searing pain and screams. Screams from my mother. Screams from me. I opened my eyes and watched as a shower of red and blue followed me to the floor. A fleeting thought ripped through the pain … I’d loved that stained glass window.
Blood.
Blood poured from the exposed veins on my arms. It soaked my clothes and stained my skin. It pooled at the crook of my elbow and a small river streamed out and flowed toward my mother, who was now lying next to me.
“I’m bleeding!”
A strong hand gripped mine. Noah came into view. “No, you’re not.” Behind him, white lights glared and a beeping noise kept in sync with the pounding of my heart. He spoke with unwavering determination. “Focus, Echo! Look at your arms!”
He held my arms up. Clear tubing gently rubbed against my skin. I’d expected blood, but there was none. White scars. Raised scars. And no blood.
“Noah?” I gasped, trying to understand through the screams in my head.
“I’ve got you. I swear to God, I’ve got you,” said Noah. “Stay with me, Echo.”
I wanted to. I wanted to stay with him, but the shouting and screams and glass breaking in my mind grew louder. “Make it stop.”
He tightened his grip on my arms. “Fight, Echo! You’ve got to fucking fight. Come on, baby. You’re safe.”
Noah wavered in front of me and swirled. Pain sliced through me and I screamed again. A nurse pulled glass out of my arm. My father wiped the tears from my eyes and kissed my forehead. Blood soaked his white button-down shirt and smeared his face. “Shh, sweetheart, don’t cry, you’re safe now. You’re safe.”
“You’re safe, Echo.” Noah rubbed the scars on my arm.
“She can’t hurt you ever again.” My father held my bandaged hand, tears pouring down his face.
“Go to sleep,” my mother cooed, lying on the floor next to me, my blood creeping toward her on the floor.
My father scooped me up and cradled me in the hospital bed. “I’ll scare the nightmares away. I promise. Please, just sleep.”
And the constant screaming stopped and I gasped between shallow breaths and a cold, calm hospital room blinked into view. A woman in blue scrubs finished pushing something in an IV line and gave me a small smile before walking away.
My eyelids became heavy and I fought it.
“Go to sleep, baby.” Noah’s voice soothed like balm on a wound.
I swallowed and turned my heavy head to the sound of his voice. “She drugged me.”
He gave me a sad smile and squeezed the hand he held. “Welcome back.”
My voice was slurred. “She put all of the sleeping pills in the tea without me knowing and she gave me a glass.”
His lips pressed against my hand. “You need to rest.”
My eyes flickered. “I want to wake up.”
“Sleep, Echo. I’m right here and I swear I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”
NOAH
“Still here, Noah?” Mrs. Collins strode into Echo’s hospital room. “Mr. Emerson said you brought her in.”
I raked a hand through my hair in an attempt to wake my brain. Echo had slept through the entire night. I spent most of it staring at her, holding her hand, and sometimes drifting off in the chair. “Yeah.”
Mrs. Collins’s blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore blue jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Dragging a chair to the other side of the bed, she took Echo’s hand. “Has her dad been down?”
“He stayed here for a couple of hours last night, but they’d already put her to sleep before he showed. He talked to the doctor before he went back to help Ashley feed the baby.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“That he’ll know if her mind cracked when she wakes up.”
She let out a brief sarcastic chuckle. “Is that how he put it?”
“That’s my own spin.” My thumb caressed Echo’s hand. She slept on her own now. They hadn’t given her anything else to keep her calm or help her sleep. Nothing to do now but wait. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”
Mrs. Collins cocked an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you asked. You know better than I do that she’s a fighter.”
I relaxed back in the chair. It felt good to hear someone else say it. But still, after watching her fight for her sanity last night … How much could a mind take?
“Did you know she saw her mother yesterday?” asked Mrs. Collins.
Muscles tensed again. “What?”
“Yep. She sure surprised me. I didn’t know Echo had it in her to defy her father. Guess you were a bigger influence than I gave you credit for. She used her trips to different art galleries to find her mom. Left letters for her everywhere until her mother finally agreed to meet.”
“How do you know this?”
“I guess the meeting didn’t go well and her mother called her father and told him to find Echo.”
Damn. Just damn. And she’d tried to save me. Echo wanted to know what happened to her, but had been terrified to remember. I’d never really understood. Yesterday must have pushed her mind over the edge—seeing her mother, fixing Aires’ car, almost becoming a felon. I knotted my fingers with her lifeless ones. I promise, Echo, I’ll take care of you now and forever.