Dissolution (Breach #1.5) (3 page)

He pulled back and studied my face.
“What are you talking about?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, diverting
talk away from me. I didn’t think I had it in me to tell him I’d destroyed my own heart and an innocent one in the process.

“I got a call, one of my patients. Poor girl’s had a breakdown
, it seems.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her in months and now this. She’s so fragile; I always wondered when she’d break.”

My eyes widened and
my stomach dropped. “Lila Palmer?”

He blinked at me. “Yes. How did you know?”

“He’s the fucker who broke her,” Andrew said from behind me, sticking his hand out for Darren.

“Hey, Andrew, how are you doing?”
Darren asked, trying to hide the momentary look of frustration toward me, regarding my actions that caused all of the fuckery that was going on. His eyes shifted to Andrew.

I exhaled and my shoulders rounded forward, crumpling in on myself. Every moment away from Lila made my bones ache and my muscles tense up. Yet
, there I stood—rooted in place, helpless to do anything to change any of it. In addition, I was reeling from the information that Darren was both mine and Lila’s therapist.

Andrew’s lips were set in a thin line.
“I’d be doing a lot better if Lila was at the office.”

Darren nodded in understanding.
“I take it you know what happened.”

Andrew jerked his head in my direction. “
Like I said,
he’s
responsible. You’ll need to ask him.”

I tried to meet Darren’s gaze, but I couldn’
t. I was drowning in my shame.

“
What is he talking about?” Darren turned to me. “Look at me, Nate. What the fuck is he saying?”

“I had to.
” I managed to choke out the words.

“He left her this.” Andrew handed
Darren the note, and I cringed.

Darren gasped as he read it. My eyes flickered over to him
, and I could tell he was furious.

He looked back at me
, anger and pain in his expression. “You just undid six years of therapy in four sentences. Four fucking sentences!”

He stormed off down the hall to her room, leaving me to drown in my growing self-hatred.

It was not what I wanted.

We stayed for a few hours, but Lila never woke up.

Darren and her other doctors came out, looking for her family. None of us were, but Caroline lied and said she was her sister. Darren knew better, but he didn’t correct her. They were sisters in spirit.

Self-induced
psychological coma, they told Caroline. Lila had retreated into her own mind, unable to take the pain and harsh, new reality I’d created.

Days passed and Lila was
still unresponsive, trapped in the recesses of her mind. For the second day in a row I found myself leaving the office at five and rushing over to the hospital.

Work was utter hell. I hated being away from her.

Nothing changed in the ten hours since I’d last been there. I walked into the room with quiet steps up to the bed. She looked so peaceful, like an angel. The constant beeping of the machines, along with the low rise and fall of her chest, put to rest the creeping fear that she was gone. Each breath and beat I clung to.

She was still there, alive, and she would return.

I hoped.

My hand reached out to move a stray strand of hair from her face, but I stopped myself. It was one thing to see her, to smell her, and to feel her presence, it was another thing entirely to touch her.

This was for the best
, I reminded myself.

I turned and walked back out to the hall. Once there I leaned on the wall
and stared at the room across the hall. A shiver ran down my spine and my body shuddered as memories flooded back to my mind.

I pushed them away and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. My mind turned over to the beeping of the machines that let me know my Lila was still with me. After a few minutes my heart began to beat in time with hers.

I sat there listening, thinking, feeling, until after midnight when a nurse came by and told me I couldn’t stay any longer.

When I returned the next night her door was closed
, and through the small glass window I could see Darren and a few other doctors looking at the monitors and talking.

Taking my position again I slid down the wall, coming to rest on the cold
, hard floor. I closed my eyes, my head tilted back and I listened to the steady beep of the machines.

I heard the door to her room swish open then click closed. I didn’t know if he saw me or not, but he knew I was there.

He sighed. “Why are you sitting out here? If you came this far, why don’t you go in and see her? She knows you’re here, after all.”

My head snapped up. “She’s awake?”

I watched Darren turn to look at me, a sad smile on his lips. “No, not yet.”

“Then how do you know she knows?”

“Her heart rate’s been steady all day. It picked up about fifteen minutes ago,” he said, then quirked his brow. “How long have you been sitting out here?”

I stared up at him in wide-
eyed shock. “About fifteen minutes.”

“That’s what I thought.”
Darren slid down to sit next to me. “What are you doing?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Here. Why are you here? You broke her, yet you come by every day and sit outside her room.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I just… I feel such a pull to be near her.
I hate that I did this to her…but it’s better this way.”

“Better than what?
You may be saving her from the possibility of being harmed by Marconi, but what do you call that in
there
? Three fucking days she’s been unresponsive.” He hitched his thumb toward her room. “In that room they’re talking about moving her to a facility I don’t want her to go to. She has no next of kin... Well, none that would come. She just has you and a small handful of friends. Friends who have lives. What do you have, Nathan?”

I sat there, staring at the room on the other side of the hallway.

He answered for me. “Nothing. You have nothing. You had her. A beautiful, broken woman who would have done anything for you. A woman who loves you, and you were selfish.”

“
Selfish
?” My voice rose in indignation, my head snapping to look at him.

“Selfish. You did this for your protection more than hers. The thought of losing her the same way you lost your wife crushes you, doesn’t it?”

“I… How do you know she loves me?”

“Way to deflect there, Nathan. Don’t worry, I won’t forget. And I know, because if she didn’t love you, she wouldn’t be in her current state. And if you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t be sitting out here in your expensive suit
, on the floor, outside her door in a
hospital
.”

I cringed at the word, just as he
probably knew I would.

After spending months in a hospital after the accident, I hated them. The smell alone made m
e sick. Especially there, in that wing, sitting across the hall from the room that had once been my home.

There was a sudden shrieking plea that rang out from her room. Lila was screaming, begging. Darren jumped to his feet and threw the do
or open, rushing into the room.

I
turned, my fists slammed on the wall while her screams echoed around the hall. My eyes were screwed tight, but the tears leaked through as I listened to my Lila cry out.

Her screams and pleas cut through me, tearing me. I wa
nted to run in and take her in my arms and never let her go. I wanted to chase away her fears and self-doubts. Declare my undying love, want, need, and support.

“No one wants me!” she wailed.

My heart splintered. “
I
want you,” I whispered into the wall. I held my body tight and tense to keep me from running to her, to keep my heart from ruling.

I felt a warm hand on my fist
, and I looked up through bleary tear-filled-eyes to find my mother staring down at me with a sad expression on her face.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Nathan
.”

“Yes, it does. She’s safe this way
…without me in her life.”

I continued to listen to her pleas and sobs as Darren worked on calming her. It was my punis
hment. I had done that to her, I needed to hear it. Every cry and sob I created. I broke her.

My chest tightened, constricting my breathing.

It’s better this way.

She’s better off without me.

I repeated those words over and over in my head, trying to convince myself that I had done what was best for her in the long run. A mantra, as I remained in the hall, listening to everything that poured out of her. My heart broke more the longer I listened, but it was my punishment. I had to hear her pain, because she was what mattered most.

But if I walked through that door a
nd saw her I might shatter. I’d much rather sit outside, listening to her scream, and let her be comforted by Darren. He knew what to do. He always did. I couldn’t offer her any solace; I didn’t have it in me anymore.

All my
fucking fault. All of it.

They released Lila the next day
, and I was left without any outlet to her. At least in the hospital I could be near her, but it was much better that she wasn’t there any longer. However, I was not better.

The beast
within me paced, and I grew restless. Sleep evaded me, and I was lucky to be getting three or four hours a night. It was never in one shot either; forty-five minutes here, thirty there.

When Monday
rolled around, I was anxious yet elated. I would see her again, and maybe that would soothe me some. I was happy she was returning to work because that meant she was awake. Over the previous few days I found out just how much I’d grown used to always being around her, how much I was addicted to her.

I arrived at
the office early, as the insomnia had me up before five, and anxiously awaited her arrival. I was a nervous wreck and had no clue what to do or how to act. I just knew I was miserable and I guessed that she was worse.

Worse
was an understatement when she arrived a little while later. What walked through the door and into our office was not the Lila I knew. My heart ripped again. She looked…different. Almost as if she’d reverted back to that time in the parking lot. Her eyes were directed to the floor, hair down. She didn’t look my way. She didn’t acknowledge my presence.

It was diffi
cult to look at her, knowing I’d done that to my Lila, but it had to be that way. Didn’t it?

I could smell
her and a calm spread through my every nerve. She was there, she was alive. That was what mattered.