Ashes // l.h.

1. the beginning

X Ambassadors- Unsteady

1. the beginning

I remember the sound of his cries.

I remember running up the stairs, taking two at a time to see what was wrong with him.

I remember I started to panic when I tried to push through his bedroom door only to find that it was locked. He told me to leave, but I wasn't going to neglect my brother. I knew something was wrong. The urgency and desperation in his voice scared me and after all these months of him acting different... I knew this was not good.

"Noah, please," I begged him. "Just open the door. You can talk to me." Tears were already streaming down my face.

"You were always good to me, sis."

"Noah!" I screamed now. He didn't answer. "Noah!"

I kept shoving into the door with my shoulder until my adrenaline suddenly increased and finally, it budged.

His blood splattered on my skin.

A strong ringing noise took over my hearing and there laid my brother's lifeless body. He had the gun still in his hand, blood was pooling around his head.

I was a second too late.

Just a second.

There's so much we were supposed to do, so many places we were supposed to explore, so many people we were supposed to meet.

But now, my brother is dead.

How was I supposed to know he would do this? How could I have known? It's unfair. One day, you're looking at a person with that beautiful sting in your chest knowing you love them so much and you're smiling together and laughing and God, you hope they never leave.

Then, they do.

I'm left with all these questions like: How can such a good person put a gun to their head? How can they pull the trigger?

My brother is dead.

And a part of me died right along with him that day, too.

•••••••••

The shrink.

Part two of piecing yourself back together.

They say the first part is allowing yourself to grieve. I've done that and now there's this; discussing the grief that still remains.

I sit in the leather chair and listen to him talk. There's not much else to do in this office, but like to Dr. McKinley talk and pretend I am absorbing his words efficiently enough to be fixed.

He's an older man in his mid-forties, resembling George Clooney and for a while I called him just that; George Clooney, but he had a certain distaste for the nickname, so I dropped it after I grew comfortable around him and began to form an odd friendship with the guy.

More often than not, I get lost in my own head. Even in situations like these, I tend to zone out and think of how I got to this place. Not the office, but this place in my life where I feel as if nothing is real anymore and everything I once knew has changed into something unrecognizable.

"And allow yourself to move on from this, Andie."

Does he understand how difficult that is? I'm sure he does not. I'm sure he never had to see what I did...go through what I did. I wonder if Dr. McKinley has ever even felt that kind of bone aching, chest contracting, internal and external pain. Damn psychology and their tendency to either want to simplify or complicate everything.