A Sliver of Infinite

chapter 28

The drive back was silent. The kind of silence that eats your heart up little by little until you feel an emptiness that makes your core ache.

I waited for him to explain himself, explain to me that he was just overreacting to a jealous feeling that came over him and that everything was fine. But it never happened.

At one point he looked over to me as I glanced over to him, our eyes connecting for a span of a few seconds. I thought he was going to say something, I waited for my explanation to the madness, but instead, he rubbed his forehead, shook his head, and looked away.

Pulling up to his house, I feel a whirlwind of emotions that I just don't know what to do with. The silence is deafening in the most frustrating way, so I speak.

"Please explain to me what's happening," I ask in the calmest way possible, swallowing my nerves.

After a brief pause that feels like forever, he finally responds.

"I just can't believe you," he says in a small voice, almost inaudible.

"What?" I ask, confused as ever. I'm sure I misheard him.

"How you could entertain that, those men. It's just disgusting to me," he replies with a sharp tongue, venom in his words.

He won't even look at me. He's just staring straight ahead, never once turning to face me.

"Dane..." I start, wanting to clarify his misunderstanding, thoroughly confused.

"And the things that were coming out of your mouth? Jesus, you really don't love me, do you?" he asks in a cracked tone, tears filling his troubled eyes. "That fucking hurt. It hurt so bad. I fucking trusted you."

Shaking my head in total bewilderment, I try to talk.

"Dane, I—"

"Dakota, get out of my truck," he says abruptly, zero emotion coming through him.

Tears form in the corners of my eyes. My stomach aches at the tone of his voice and the use of my full name. This isn't like him.

"Wha—" I breathe out, all of the air leaving my lungs.

"Get out of the fucking truck!" he screams at me with cold eyes, causing me to jump abruptly.

I hurry out of the vehicle into the cold night, slamming the door and turning to face him. He smashes his hands on the steering wheel and screams out in frustration before running his hands down his face.

I sat there in disbelief, looking into the truck window at the person I thought I knew. With my hand over my mouth I attempt to hold it together. After a minute of staring into oblivion, he puts the car in drive and starts down the road. To where? I had no idea.

He left me here, tears streaming down my face, an empty body with hope leaving me just like the cloud of warm breath into the chilling air.

It wasn't him anymore.

Anger fell over me. I made a direct run for his place. Getting to the top of the stairs, I pause, heart beating wildly out of my chest. I close my eyes so tight, wishing, praying, hoping that I am mistaken, begging for the possibility of the wrong kind of intuition.

I entered the dark, desolate space. A space historically filled with love in the light of day and passion in the midnight hours. But this time, the vast darkness holds a different mood altogether.

I'm sure I will pass out, I'm shaking so hard. The nervousness plaguing my system is so intense. As soon as I enter, Tator wakes and meets me in the middle of the floor, almost sensing I need his support. He licks my arm then lays back down on his bed, watching me curiously.

I go straight for his desk. I knew if he had met with Gordon, he would've left some papers, some information on a campus, something out for me to confirm that my suspicions were wrong. His desk was cleared on top, nothing out anywhere. No pamphlets, no papers, no nothing.

I open the top few drawers of the desk and feel a sharp pain drive straight through my chest, causing me to gasp. It's like someone had drained the joy from my depleted body.

There it was. All of it.

Hundreds of papers.

Hundreds of secrets.

Hundreds of wrinkled up pieces of falsehoods he had believed to be real.

I grab for them frantically, each of them containing chicken scratch in Dane's handwriting. Numbers, names, circled photos of random people, places. The name Gordon is written again and again and again in various places and fonts, underlined and circled frantically.

I can't decipher half of it, it's unreadable, something only a manic can make sense of. The papers keep coming as I search through all of the drawers. I make my way to the bookshelf where I start frantically tossing books, finding papers tucked here and there, writings all over the words of Fitzgerald and Tolstoy, Bronte and Twain.

His illness has materialized again and this was the proof. The evidence, directly in front of me. There was no college in his future. The plans he had made for himself were all in his head. Gordon was yet another Martin, sent to him to cause him pain and confusion by his own undoing.

I collapse into the floor clutching the papers to my chest, sobbing into them. Raking my hands down my face, praying this is just a dream, wishing my reality wasn't real. The pain hurts tremendously as the realization hits. Then I saw it. The bottle of medicine, full of untaken pills, hiding behind the book that explained us and who we were. Jane Eyre.

He took himself off his medicine.

He wasn't getting better, he was stalling. Stealing time for me. He took the chance, took the risk. He had decided that he wasn't going to succumb to the inevitable seizures, the nausea, the risk of falling back into a never ending sleep. No, he decided he was going to try and fight this on his own. Defeat his own mind with what other than his own intellect. But it was a civil war of sorts, an internal fight, one in which there would never be a winner.

I lay there, in the middle of the floor, the Persian rug underneath me, crumbling into it, screaming out in frustration that only an incurable disease can make you feel. I sit there on the floor in my pool of pain and confusion, staring up at the bookshelf holding all of his terrifying thoughts. His mind was running rampant. He was hearing things that weren't being said, feeling suspicious of everyone around him, questioning every situation he was in, seeing people who were never there.

I'm sucked into my cloud now, the darkness and realization of my subconscious correct. I couldn't will this away like some sort of child playing pretend. No, I needed to swallow the pill that was reality.

How do I reach the mind of a sick man? The mind I fell in love with, the mind that held the memories only we knew. His disease was taking the thing I loved most, who he was.

The man I loved is sick.

And now, I had the impossible task of getting him to realize he was.