Any Other Name

Chapter 20

She wanted to call him—Tesey. She had woken in the middle of the night suddenly terrified, locked in a room stained red with a demon staring down at her. She had woken so suddenly that the air caught in her lungs and she started to gag. When a hand reached out and touched her back she screamed.

"Hey, hey, hey," Marshall said, suddenly upright and pulling Eliza into his arms. "You're okay, you're alright."

She fought him, her entire body shaking. She pushed at his chest and flailed her legs underneath the covers. Marshall's grip just grew tighter.

"Eliza, really." He wrapped his arms so tight around her that she felt pressure in her collarbone and his hands were touching his elbows. "Calm down, you're alright."

She settled down because it hurt so much to move. Though she had been home several weeks and had ditched the sling, her collarbone still hadn't healed all the way.

He moved one hand to hold that of her neck while he pulled away to look at her. He made her look him in the eye and adjusted her head anytime she looked away. "You're alright. Elly, look at me. You're okay. Honey, breathe."

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on breathing through the pain in her chest. It felt like the demon in her dream was still there, in the corner of the room by the window, and she buried her face in Marshall's neck trying to hide from it. She felt Marshall sigh more than she heard it and was worried he'd push her away when he started swaying gently side to side.

They stayed like that until she fell asleep.

The fogginess she had left the hospital with still hadn't faded. She was running low on her pain medicine but was starting to think that she could handle life without it. She didn't want to become hooked on it like the commercials suggested people did and she wanted to be able to walk River again without heaving to lean on her when the trees outside the window started to jerk back and forth.

There were two piles of books knee-high in the bedroom now, apology gifts from Marshall. She had read one stack already and was working her way through the second in the chair by the window with River sleeping at her feet though she could feel her head lolling side to side after just an hour of reading.

She had stayed up the night before thinking of what Tesey told her in the hospital. If she didn't take Marshall into account, would she stay? Would she go? She vaguely remembered saying that she would leave, that she would go with Tesey, but honestly, Marshall had been good to her. It was as if he had put a worm into her ear and she couldn't get it out.

A question: should she leave before it got worse before it went back to how it used to be, like Tesey said?

Oh, she didn't know. It wasn't just Marshall she'd be leaving behind, but probably River, too. She didn't want to risk Marshall taking his rage out on her.

But she could at least recognize that she needed to go. Tesey had offered to help her, and even if that was a lie, even if something happened and he couldn't help, she could go home to get her parents. She could take River, or come back and get her when Eliza had everything settled. She'd explain it to Marshall that she wanted to break up, that she still loved him, that she didn't want to be hurt again.

She'd go ahead and pack, even though there wasn't a suitcase for her to pack her things in. She'd go ahead and call Tesey and maybe he could help her go through the things in the house, remember what was hers and what Marshall had bought. She would have to have Tesey there because she wasn't sure she had the strength to actually leave without him.

Before she lost her nerve she went about trying to find her phone. It would have still been in the box, still downstairs. She just had to get down there and call him, and maybe her resolve would strengthen.