Saving Anna

Chapter Four

**This has not been edited or proofread.**

Ryan

How could I have let so much time pass without checking on her? An entire month—I'd let an entire month pass before I finally gave in to the urge to see her. I'd thought maybe she'd been focusing like she always did. Ross told me when things happened that overwhelmed her, she tended to bury herself in other things, which just made her anxiety spike and her depression worsen.

Instead, sweet Anna had been doing something so much worse. She'd let her depression take over her life. Survivor's guilt was eating her from the inside out. And beneath all of that, I could tell she blamed herself for the accident.

But God, it wasn't her fault. Ross loved her to pieces. His entire world revolved around her. Every decision he made, he made it with her in mind. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He wanted to spend as much time as he could with her. He needed her just as much, if not more, as she needed him.

I hated it so much that she was placing all the blame on herself.

Mom and Dad had sworn up and down that Anna had just needed space. They kept telling me to let her have it. I'd listened to them—trusted them. I mean, they'd been around her more than I had at some points. Surely, they would actually know best, wouldn't they?

But I should have known that space was the last thing Anna needed.

I could hear Ross as if he were sitting beside me in my passenger seat, telling me how to take care of her now that he couldn't. He vented to me about her a lot, but not in a bad way. He was always worried about her. I never completely understood why because I'd never been super close to anyone that suffered from anxiety and depression.

Anna has a lot of bad days, Ryan, and on those bad days, she needs extra love and care.

I understood it now. The moment Anna had looked at me yesterday, I'd known. Everything Ross had said to me finally made sense.

Anna was suffering, and she was letting those demons inside of her kill her.

How many times had my little brother canceled our plans because Anna had needed him? I'd never understood it. I knew depression was a silent killer. Ross had tried explaining how bad it was when it was coupled with anxiety.

God, my gut still clenched when I pictured her broken expression. I could still hear her crying. The way she broke down—I knew she wasn't coping. There was no way she was coping if she'd broken down like she had. Inside, my sweet Anna was dying, and I was on a tight time constraint to save her. My gut told me that much, and it had yet to let me down.

Every time I'd seen Anna over the years, she'd been calm and collected—happy even. I guess that was why I found it so hard to understand what she was going through. She hid it from all of us. The only person she allowed to see all the pieces of her, even the ugly ones, was Ross.

But yesterday, I'd seen the ugly side to her depression. And like Ross said it could, it was destroying her. And she was letting it. She'd given up on her will to live. Survivor's guilt was plaguing her, dragging her farther down into a deep, dark pit.

I had no idea how I was going to save her.

But I was going to try. I had to. I'd already lost Ross.

I couldn't lose sweet Anna, too.

And I knew that if she died because of this, I'd live with that guilt forever. My dead, little brother would haunt me for the rest of my life. I'd let her down once already by not coming to check on her after the funeral, but I wouldn't be letting her down again.