He's Come Undone (11 page)

~ Valerie ~

“We’ve been getting some alarming reports about side effects of this new anti-depressant your brother has been taking,” the heart specialist told me as we stood outside Julian’s room two hours after my brother’s collapse. I was only partially processing my surroundings and the doctor himself. Middle-aged, short, with a red beard.

“Will he be okay?”

This wasn’t happening. My mind just wouldn’t accept it. Not Julian. Not when I’d tried so hard to keep him safe. To protect him. And then the next words I had to say: “Is he going to die?”

“He’s in excellent health, so I think he’ll come out of this with no heart damage—unlike other patients who’ve taken the drug. Personally, I’d like to see it pulled from the shelves, or at the very least, a black-box warning slapped on it.”

I was half-listening. Julian would be okay. Those were the only words I cared about right now.

“We’ll keep him overnight for observation, then he can go home.”

Home. I wasn’t sure about that. “He’s not been doing well. Mentally. I’m worried about him, and I don’t know if he should go home. I’m not sure I can take care of him.”

“Are you worried that he might harm himself?”

“Yes.”

“Has he ever done so in the past?”

“No, but I think he was close.” I told the doctor our history, and about how fragile Julian was. I didn’t tell him about the girl, Ellie, the girl who seemed to be the trigger to this downward spiral. “I don’t think it takes much for him to tip.” My voice trembled. I put a hand to my mouth, and I realized I was shaking. “I think he needs to be someplace where he can be taken care of around the clock.”

The doctor nodded. “We have several good facilities in town. Will he go willingly?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll have to go through the proper channels to get him committed. My assistant can help you with the process. It can take weeks, but with your brother’s history and the fact that this incident could have killed him due to a reckless disregard for his life, I think we can rush things along. Until then, all I can do is put a seventy-two hour emergency hold on him. It’s almost like an arrest, but in a hospital setting.”

I nodded as a feeling of relief washed through me. “Thanks, doctor.”

Julian was asleep when I stepped into his hospital room. They’d given him something to slow his heart, and they’d given him something to knock him out after he confessed that he hadn’t slept in several days. Another side effect of the anti-depressant.

He looked so pale, with oxygen tubes in his nose, the IV drip, the heart monitor. I’d sworn to take care of him, but I’d done a shitty job. We probably shouldn’t have come to Minnesota, but I’d thought it would be good to get Julian away from New Hampshire. And we had no home back there anymore. I’d sold the house, because how could we possibly keep it? I was surprised when someone actually bought it, but it was in a good area of town, and they’d gotten a deal. I hated to think of other people living there, and I wish we could have just burned it down. Just burned it to the ground. And so here we were, rootless, homeless, our parents buried back there in a cemetery we’d rarely if ever visit.

This wasn’t working either.

A new start.

Was there really such a thing?

Was there really ever such a thing?

I wanted to wrap Julian in a blanket and take him home. At the same time, I wanted to lock him up so he was safe.

Safe.

Was there really such a thing?

I must have made a sound, a sob, but I hoped not; I tried so hard to be strong for both of us.

“Valerie,” Julian whispered from the bed, looking at me from under heavy lids. He gave me a sheepish smile that caused my heart to dive. I knew that smile. I loved that smile.

“Sorry I gave you a scare.”

“I’m just glad you’re going to be all right.”

“Yeah.” He glanced up and behind him, realizing he was tethered to a monitor and IV rack. “When can I go home?” He hated hospitals.

“Um,” I hedged. “They want to keep you a few days.”

“A few days? The doctor said overnight.”

“I think he’s changed his mind.”

He was going to be so pissed when he found out about the emergency hold. He’d come close to hating me last time I had him committed. What would he do this time? Never unhate me?

There was a light knock on the door. We both looked up to see Coach Rice standing there. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

“I’ve been told I’ll live,” Julian said.

“Great, because we want you back as soon as possible. You did good today, kid.”

I had to leave. I couldn’t listen to them talking about Julian going back out there, running again. Wasn’t going to happen, but I didn’t feel like telling the coach right now. Or Julian. Let them both think life would return to normal. Which it wouldn’t. Which it never would.

I walked down the hall to a sitting area. Upon seeing me, two people jumped up, and I instantly recognized Ellie Barlow. Just behind her was a guy with a huge Afro.

“How is he?” Ellie asked. It looked like she’d been crying. Join the club. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Is he going to be okay?” I repeated. “No.” I gave a small and assured shake of my head. “He’s not going to be okay. He’s never going to be okay.”

Don’t cry. Not in front of her. Not in front of this person who did this to him.

“Julian told me what you did,” I said. “He told me all about it.” Really, I wanted to kill her. I imagined grabbing her by the throat and holding her against the wall.

Ellie let out a sob. “Can I see him?”

“What?” I stared at her in disbelief. “Hell the fuck no, you can’t see him.” I must have said that pretty loud, because heads behind the nurse’s station popped up, and conversation in the area stopped.

“Don’t ever,
ever
come around my brother again,” I said. “If you do, I’ll call the cops. I’ll get a restraining order.”

Ellie didn’t react. Not at all. Although what could she really say?

Her friend put his arm around her. Put his arm around
her!
Like
she
needed comforting! I was the one who needed some damn comforting, not the bitch responsible for this.

“Come on, Ellie,” the guy said.

Numbly, Ellie looked up, seemed to recognize him, then her gaze drifted back to me. “How not okay is he?” she asked. “I have to know.”

“You have no right to know.” I pointed at her, and now I was getting wound up all over again. A second ago I wanted her out of my sight, now I didn’t want her to leave. Not just yet. “You broke his heart,” I said. “Literally and figuratively.”

Her mouth trembled and her eyes turned red and flooded with tears. She shook her head. “No.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t even like me. Not like that, anyway.”

My eyebrows lifted in disbelief. Was she delusional? Or was it all part of her game?

I heard footsteps, and looked up to see a male nurse standing beside me. “We’re going to have to ask all of you to leave.”

“That’s okay,” Ellie said. “I’m going. We’re going. Let her stay.” She turned to her friend, gave him a nod, and they walked off down the hall to the elevators.

~ Ellie ~

Back home, I stood in the living room in front of the television I normally never watched. It was tuned to WCCO, one of the local news stations, and I was waiting for the promised report on Julian’s condition. Behind me, stood Devon. I don’t know if he knew it, but he was massaging my shoulders as we both stared at the screen.

The commercial ended, and the husband and wife news team dove into the story. They talked about the marathon, and how Julian had come close to breaking some long-standing records if a person were to consider his time in the first 10K of the race. They interviewed someone who supposedly kept track of this stuff, and the guy said what Julian had done was close to superhuman.

“Which might account for what happened after Julian Dye crossed the finish line,” the female reporter said. And then they showed a video of Julian’s collapse, and showed him being lifted away by gurney, an oxygen mask on his face. That was followed by an interview with the heart specialist who treated him.

“At this point we’re relatively certain he’s going to be fine,” the doctor said.

“Define fine.”

“No residual damage.”

That was followed by some talk about the drug he’d been on, and that was followed by talk about Julian’s past, something that would be covered in-depth during a later broadcast.

Next story.

“Did he say fine?” I asked. “Did I hear that right?”

“You heard right,” Devon said, rubbing my arms, then giving me a final pat.

“Oh, my God.” I dropped into a chair. Just dropped straight down like the pull of gravity had increased times three.

“That bitch,” Devon said. “Making you think he was dying.”

I shook my head. “I don’t blame her. I’d hate me too if I thought I was behind Julian’s collapse. But she’s wrong. I was just another lay for him. That’s all.”

Devon opened the refrigerator, pulled out a couple of beers, opened them, and handed me one. “Are you sure about that?” He took a long swallow, then sprawled on his back on the sofa, one bare foot crossed over a knee. Skinny jeans, tight T-shirt.

Like someone who’d crawled across a desert, I drank the beer while running Devon’s question through my head. “I’m not capable of breaking a heart. Not me. Not Ellie Barlow.” Several more gulps. “That other girl, the girl with the blond hair and the Victoria’s Secret bra and the red dress—
she
might have broken his heart. Some girl who doesn’t even exist.”

“Okay, you told me about the bar stuff, and you said he didn’t even look at you until the fight. That you were striking out.”

“True.”

“So, that tells me it wasn’t how you looked that attracted him in the first place.”

I thought about that with my head tilted back as I polished off the last of the beer, got up, and went for another.

No.

Couldn’t be.

I kept drinking, and while I drank I waited for the ten o’clock news to see if they had any additional information on Julian. They did.

“This latest just in about Julian Dye. Unknown sources have told us he’s going to be kept under a seventy-two-hour mental health hold for further evaluation. These holds are used to protect a patient who might be a danger to himself, and the patient can either agree to be held voluntarily, or be placed under involuntary hold. Which raises a lot of speculation about the true nature of what happened today. We’ll have a more thorough report on Julian Dye in tomorrow’s broadcast.”

I shut off the television and looked out the window at the river below.

“That didn’t sound good,” Devon said.

“I need to see him.”

“That’s not gonna happen since you didn’t have much luck the first time. I kinda think they’ll be keeping an eye out for you.”

I swung around. “Let me use your laptop a sec.”

Devon handed it to me, and I did a quick Google search of seventy-two-hour mental health holds. It looked like both involuntary and voluntary patients were allowed visitors.

They wouldn’t let Ellie Barlow past the nurse’s station, but they might let someone else. I just had to decide who I wanted to be.

~ Julian ~

The doctor, a guy with light red hair and light red beard, stood next to my bed, explaining things to me. The words that jumped out were seventy-two-hour emergency hold. “It can be voluntary or involuntary,” he explained. “I would advise voluntary because voluntary involves more privileges and is less of a stigma.”

As if I gave a shit about stigma.

Then he went into an extended explanation of how I needed a full psych evaluation. Once he said that, I knew what was going on. This had nothing to do with my heart and my collapse. This was all about my mental state. I’d been here before. They were looking to commit me. Involuntarily, courtesy of Valerie.

Jesus.

Last time, I hadn’t cared. I’d been shut off and thought maybe it was what I needed. Now I wasn’t so sure it had been the right choice. Now I suspected Valerie hadn’t been thinking straight either. She’d never been the most practical person, and suddenly she’d found herself thrown into the role of caretaker for her nutty little brother. Lock him up.

Later she told me she was afraid I was going to kill myself. And hey, I’d thought about it, because I couldn’t get the images in my brain to shut off. And the pain of grief—I just hadn’t been prepared for the endlessness of it. So I’d started doing stupid things. Getting arrested for drugs and drunk driving, mainly. So I got why she’d done it. I’d been a danger to myself and others.

But now…

I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the numbness. Not after getting a taste of the world again. And running. I couldn’t cope without running. And even when I thought about the shit that had happened with Ellie
… I’d felt so alive with her.

Yeah, she damn well broke my heart, and I’d messed up by stopping the drugs cold turkey. The doctor had explained all of that to me, but it was no reason to lock me up.

And now, thinking about how they’d been plotting all of this shit behind my back, I flipped.

Just lost it.

Right when I should have been trying to prove I was the sanest person in the room, I ripped the oxygen from my nose, pulled out the IV, and went running from the room, screaming like some madman, truth be told.

Up until that point, it had been hard as hell to get anybody’s attention. When I wanted a drink of water or wanted something to eat or when my IV bag was empty and beeping, I’d push the button and nothing would happen. Nobody ever responded until an hour or two later when some nurse would saunter in like every day was Sunday.

But once I shot from that room, nurses came out of the walls. Some big dude, who must have had training for just such an event, jammed my arm behind me and brought me to my knees. Another pushed my face against the cold tile floor. From behind and above, the doctor yelled for him to let me go. It was a lovely scene. Really white trash.

An injection was ordered STAT, a needle hit my ass, and in no time at all my eyes rolled back in my head and I didn’t care if I ended up with a life sentence. I didn’t care about anything.