Bound by Affliction

by Ryan Michele

  Tears fall down my face as the sadness envelops me.

  “Fine.” It comes out choked.

  “Liar,” he grumbles. “I’m sendin’ the nurse and your momma back in to get you out.”

  Sighing, I say nothing because no matter how much water and soap I coat myself with, it will never wipe away the filth those men did to me. Never, because those memories keep playing in my mind like a never-ending movie that I want to throw out and burn to the ground.

  After being lugged out of the shower, Mom helps me dress and covers me before Green comes back in. My legs are weak and unsteady from laying still for so long, but the doctor says I’ll regain my strength in time with therapy. I feel useless.

  The look of deep-rooted sorrow grips Green’s face. My parents leave us alone, and I’m scared of what to say to him. In letters, I never worried because words just came to me, most of the time. Now, everything is a mess and I can’t sort out words, let alone feelings for him.

  He sits in the chair next to my bed and grabs my hand, his warmth spreading throughout me like a lifeline. I take it needing to hold on to a shred of hope that this will not take me down. That there’s something inside of me that won’t be broken because of this, but it gets harder and harder to believe in the more I’m awake and the more the memories assault me.

  “How are ya feelin’?” I want to laugh because it’s an asinine question. What does one say—‘fine’? Because I’m not fine. Everything hurts. The memories are concreted in my brain. Images flash before me, and none of it goes away.

  “Peachy.”

  Green chuckles, “Yeah, I know. Fuckin’ shit pisses me off, Leah, but they’re gone. They’ll never hurt you again.”

  Looking at Green, I see it in his face. Those three are gone—gone. Like never coming back—gone. After witnessing what the Ravage MC did for me and Bristyl at the rally, I have no doubt that what I’m seeing in him is true. Relief swarms me, but it doesn’t stop the visions. It’s rapid fire in my memory, every touch, every cut, every punch—all of them playing on a reel continuously. Tears fall from my eyes, burning as they fall down my cheeks to the bed below me.

  “Hey, promise you. Nothin’ is going to happen to ya. Swear it.” The confidence in his words almost makes me believe him. Almost. I want to, don’t get me wrong, but everything right now is too raw and too fresh. It happened once, what’s to say it won’t happen again.

  I’m not sure I’ll ever feel completely safe again. I’m not sure I’ll ever be right again. In fact, in this moment, I’m not sure of anything.

  9

  Green

  She’s quiet, which isn’t like Leah one bit. She’s so full of life and energy, but this isn’t my girl. Luckily her eyes are physically fine, but the light I’d grown accustomed to in them has dimmed, and I catch her more than once just staring absently at the wall. It’s so intense that even when her father stepped in her line of sight, she didn’t budge. It was as if she checked out and wasn’t in the same room as us.

  Not going to lie, she’s scaring the shit out of me. How this woman got under my skin in only a few months, I’ll never know, but she did and hell if seeing her like this doesn’t kill me. She’ll talk, but nothing like she used to. There is no smile in her voice or hell, even a tone—only sounding monotone. There is no life, where before there was so much. When we met up she couldn’t stop smiling and talking. always wanting to know more and so damn interested in what I had to say. This woman in front of me is a shell, and I fucking hate it.

  “Well,” the doctor comes in all smiles, which is so different than before. “Are you ready to go home?” he asks Leah. Her eyes widen, igniting a spark and the fire fizzles as she clears her throat.

  “Yeah.” It’s a lie. She doesn’t want to go home to her apartment and she can’t go to her parent’s home because that’s where the attack happened. They are currently living in a hotel and getting ready to sell the house, stating they couldn’t live there any longer. She doesn’t feel safe anywhere and who the hell could blame her.

  The doctor looks around then his gaze lands on me. “Are you staying with her?”

  “No,” Leah says a little too quickly, and the hell if it doesn’t piss me off. I haven’t spent weeks in this hell hole with her in a coma and now a week with her out of it to not take care of her at home. Fuck that. She may say she doesn’t want me there, but I know her better than I’ve known any other woman in my life. All of it through letters, but I swear I got more out of her through those than I would have being face to face with her.

  “Yes, I’ll be with her.”

  A noise escapes Leah’s throat. “We need to talk,” she whispers softly.

  “We’ll do that after I get you home and settled.” Even though this is a terribly difficult time and she’s having a shit time processing it all, it doesn’t matter one damn bit to me. This means I take care of her by any means necessary. When I care about something or someone, it’s full throttle.

  She gives up easily, another trait that she’s picked up since waking up. Normally, she’d be all over me giving me attitude—that I love, mind you. I’m missing it, badly. This is the exact opposite. I worried for days if she was going to wake up, but didn’t put much thought into her being so damn different from herself. Yes, I knew she’d have a tough time dealing with what happened, but this complete one-eighty is a hard pill to swallow.

  “Right. She has pain meds, but most of her cuts are healing very nicely.” He goes through the procedures of taking care of the wounds and the therapy exercises that she has to do at home. She’s doing very well with her movement, getting a lot of her strength back. It’s another reason after a week waking up, she’s about to come home. Which also tells me that there is still fire inside of her and a strive to make her body better. We just need to get her head on board as well.

  “We can go to her apartment with her,” Stella says after the doctor leaves, giving me an out that she knows I won’t take. It’s hard to miss the changes in her daughter when they are smacking you right in your face.

  Leah says nothing.

  “I’ve got her.”

  Leaving the hospital is like a damn circus. Someone had to push her in the wheelchair to the patient loading area. Which I went to the wrong one. Hell, it’s not my town, but you’d think for as long as I’ve been here I would’ve known better. Not to mention, her car is little as shit. I barely have room even with the seat all the way back for my long ass legs, not to mention my head against the roof.

  After finding the right place to get her, the guy who wheeled her out tried to help her and I about ripped his damn head off for touching her.

  The trip took the energy out of Leah, and she’s currently laying in her bed while I sit on the couch watching her.

  She’s peaceful for quite some time, then she begins to toss and turn, mumbling in her sleep. I kick off my boots and climb into bed with her. Her body jolts when I wrap my arms around her. “You’re okay. I’ve got you,” I whisper as she relaxes into me. This is how we sleep, and it’s the best damn night’s sleep I’ve had in quite some time.

  “Do you need help?”

  Leah freezes, the towel clutched tightly to her body that is still covered in her clothes. She’s only worn long sleeves and pants since she woke up. I’ve already seen the marks, but she’s hiding them, not sure if it’s from me or from herself considering she hasn’t said a word about the attack since the cops came to interview her a day after she woke up.

  “No. I’m good.” She darts into the bathroom, shutting the door and I hear the shower turn on. I wait for any loud thuds, hoping like hell she doesn’t fall and hurt herself anymore. She’s too damn stubborn to let me help her. I’ve given her this play. One because she’s so damn raw, and two because I know she’s embarrassed about the way her body looks now. It’s not the time either for me to push it.

  Grabbing a cup of coffee, I sit at the table and keep listening. Yesterday, she mostly slept and I did too, for that matte
r. It was so damn nice being in an actual bed instead of a chair, that my body finally relaxed after days of fear putting me in a deep sleep. Luckily, with my arms wrapped around her, she didn’t cry or thrash in her sleep, giving her a peaceful rest as well.

  With the new morning light though, everything is coming back into play. Leah’s barely talking and the life that shined so brightly in her eyes is so damn dim that I’d love to take a turn with those three fuckers, only to take them to the brink of death, revive them, and do it all over again until they are begging to die.

  Since that can’t happen, I have to keep all that shit in check and deal with the situation at hand.

  The door opens and Leah steps out, fully dressed from top to bottom. The only tell that she even took a shower is her wet hair that’s still missing clumps, a vivid reminder of what those assholes did to her.

  The yellows around her face are subsiding a bit, but I can still tell exactly where she was hit or slit. Her eyes aren’t swollen anymore, but she does have a small cut above one of them and sees just fine according to the doctors. Keeping my anger tapped down is difficult, but I know it’s not what she needs right now.

  Lifting the coffee mug to my lips, I take a drink of the burning liquid as it sears going down my throat.

  Leah makes her way into the kitchen and pours a glass of water out of the tap, all the while not saying a word and barely making eye contact with me. She glides into the living room, sitting on the couch and putting her legs underneath her. Then she does the thing I hate most, she stares off in space like she’s not in the room with me, the same thing she did in the hospital. Like I’m some fucking figment of her imagination and don’t exist. Well, baby, I do exist.

  Rising, I move to the couch and watch as her body tenses when I sit down at the other end. She never once flinched at my proximity before; it’s another thing those assholes took from her.

  “What are you hungry for?” I ask, setting my mug down on the side table. She gives me a noncommittal shrug; hell, at least she’s listening to me. “Alright, frog legs it is.” Her head shoots to me and in the briefest of seconds I see her spark. Fuck if it doesn’t make me one happy as hell sonofabitch.

  It dims too quickly as her shoulders slump. “I don’t think I have anything here.” And what she doesn’t say is there’s no way she’s leaving, and I don’t blame her one bit.

  “I’ll order somethin’. Have it delivered.”

  She shrugs again.

  “There’s gotta be a pizza joint around here, right?”

  Still staring off, she answers, “In the drawer by the sink is the menu.”

  Remembering that she hasn’t had anything spicy for a while, I decide on cheese for half and everything on the other as I pull out the menu and order.

  Moving back to the couch, I ask, “Did you hear me readin’ to ya at the hospital?” I don’t miss the small flinch then deep exhale of air.

  Is it bad of me that I want her to get angry? That I want her to scream and pace and stomp on the floor like a toddler. I want her to cry—hell, sob—and hit me over and over again to get out the pain that she has trapped inside of her. It’s right there under the surface just begging to come out, but she’s holding it back. And I want it. May make me a sonofabitch, but I don’t give a fuck.

  “I heard something, but I’m not sure what.”

  At least the doctors were kind of right with the whole talk to her and she’ll hear you thing. “I read you the letters you wrote to me.”

  Her chin falls to her chest as she presses her legs to the floor. “That was nice,” she says softly, her arms wrapping around her body protectively.

  I open my arms. “Come here, baby.”

  The hesitation kills me, spearing me deep in the heart. Even the first time I met her when she was man-handled by those assholes, she melted right into me like we’d known each other for years instead of mere minutes. She held on to me like a life preserver, and I was the one keeping her afloat. The wait kills me, but eventually, she comes into my arms, curls herself into a ball, and I hold her like that, kissing the top of her head.

  We sit in this position until the knock on the door comes for the pizza. After getting the pizza on plates and handing it to her, she sniffs it then begins to put it in her mouth. The plate in her hand shakes and I’m not sure if it’s because she fears food or that she’s just weak. In the hospital, she didn’t eat much, but who the hell can blame her when that food sucks.

  I try small talk, but only get a few word answers. She asks me nothing and only eats once piece and is done. Me, I finish off the entire half. Never thought pizza could taste this good, but after the shit food for me too, I’ll take it. After eating, it takes every bit of energy for me to get Leah to do her exercises, but she finally complies.

  “You really should go home, Green. You don’t need to be here.” Those words are the most she’s said to me since she woke up and, of course, it had to be about me leaving.

  “Nope, you’re stuck with me.”

  “There’s nothing you can do now,” she fires back with a small glint of anger, and I pull on it.

  “Yep, I can feed ya, bathe ya, and take care of ya. So I’m staying.” I want her to fight back. I want her to get mad at me and try to push me out the door, but nothing. She gives a long sigh and falls to the bed where she sleeps for a few hours.

  This is our routine for the next few days. Her parents stopped by while I ran out for groceries, stating when I got back they had no more luck with Leah than I have.

  I need to push her to talk about what happened. Not once since she woke up has she grieved for what was done to her. She tuned the doctors out when they talked about her injuries, and I understand why—she was dealt a shit hand. She needs to get it out, though. It won’t fix everything, hell it may not fix anything, but it will help open her mind to move on from this. At least the doctors confirmed those assholes didn’t rape her with some kit they did on her when she came in. One good thing out of this clusterfuck.

  It’ll make me a dick and she’ll hate me for it, but it’s what needs to be done. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps going around and around and around. I’m a patient man, but damn, this shit needs to be out.

  She’s so broken inside, and I refuse to allow those fuckers to win and take my girl with them. Whether she’s pissed at me or at them, at least it will be some reaction instead of this walking zombie she is now. Leah is full of life and spark—she needs that back.

  10

  Leah

  Why won’t he just leave? Laying with my eyes closed I pretend to be asleep and even out my breathing so it appears right. I’m not sure how long I’ve been home now. The seconds tick into minutes that tick into hours that tick into days, all blending together with no distinction. It’s weird how wounds can heal on the outside, but on the inside, everything is still so raw and cut open like everything happened just yesterday. Add all the memories and it’s a dangerous concoction.

  The flashes hit me all the time. When I walk to the refrigerator, when I lay in bed, when I move to the couch—hell, when I breathe. The pains from the knife slicing me still come out of nowhere and I feel as if my flesh is getting torn open once again.

  The only consistent thing is Green. I want to feel elated that he’s here with me. I want to feel like my heart is leaping out of my chest. I want to feel the passion I felt in the kiss he gave me once upon a time, but now… now there will be none of that.

  There will be no more letters.

  There will be no more phone calls.

  There will be no more meet-ups.

  There will be no more rides on the back of his bike.

  There will be no more of anything.

  There’s nothing that I can give him any more, and he’s wasting his time here helping me when I won’t ever be able to return anything to him. He deserves so much more. And me, I’m not it. My body is defiled. My thoughts are corrupted. The dirt and grime on me will never go away—ever. No matter how many time
s I try to clean myself with soap and water, it doesn’t help because I still feel disgusting.

  All I want to do is curl into a ball and forget life exists.

  “Made ya some eggs and toast. Come eat,” Green says from the kitchen where I’ve listened to him milling around for a while now—me, lost in my thoughts. When I don’t move quick enough for him, he comes over to the couch and reaches out his hand. I want more than anything to take it and have him wipe everything away, but I’m not stupid and know he can’t. There isn’t a single thing on this planet that can erase what has happened to me.

  The fool I am, my hand reaches out to his and he leads me over to my small table then piles up food on two different plates. My stomach takes that moment to growl and if it weren’t for Green, I would have starved… to death. I pause at that thought.

  Death.

  I prayed for it and thought the end was coming all those weeks ago. Prayed that the pain would go away and sleep would overtake me never to wake up again. Yet, here I am—but not here in the same breath. The trouble is I don’t know what to do right now, besides hide.

  It’s a vicious reel that just won’t stop playing in my mind or on my body, and I don’t know what to do, but Green—he won’t leave. He needs to because he’s wasting his time with me. Even in my state, I know that much.

  “Your family must miss you.”

  His fork stops midway into his mouth, penetrating eyes coming to me. “Yeah, they do, but that doesn’t mean I’m leavin’.”

  Brushing a napkin over my lips, I push deeper, “Why? Why are you staying here?”

  “Baby, because you need me.”

  A fire resonates deep in my belly, spreading like shattered glass and splintering out in every direction. Need him. I never needed anyone, ever. Yes, I love Bristyl, but I never needed her. I wanted her around—there’s a huge difference. For him to say I need him, no—screw that.