Save Me (DTRTI Sequel)

Chapter Eighteen

Sirens...I hear sirens.

I hear sirens and a panicked voice...a familiar voice... the voice of my Liliana...

Too bad they're too late...

I am surrounded by my own blood and a deep scarlet carpet as far as who knows.

"Chres? Baby?" I hear the panic in my wife's voice as she rushes in. I hear her gasp. I feel her fingers along my face as she checks my neck for a pulse.

But I am too far gone to reply. I'm too far gone to look at her...to apologize...to beg her to come back to me.

"Chres?" She calls for me again and I feel something wet hit my cheek.

She is crying.

"Chres?" She shakes me, her voice shaking between sobs. "Chresanto?"

But I cannot move. I cannot answer. All I can do is continue to fade away.

Suddenly...I see a bright light. It is beckoning me...it wants me to come. So I begin to drift toward it.

It is blinding...but so beautiful. It promises me peace and happiness. It promises me a life without pain. It promises me that I'll see my family again.

I lift a hand when I am close enough to touch it...my finger just about to grace its beauty. I am so close...so close...

And then I am awake.

The light is gone and all I hear is beeping. I hear Ava's voice and I neglect to open my eyes. I don't want to see it...the disappointment on her face.

"Chresanto...Chresanto please." She mumbles the words, making me feel worse as I hear her sniffle. "Chresanto."

I take my chances and allow my eyes to open, groaning as I try to sit up. A foreign pain shoots through my body as Ava pushes against my chest lightly. "Don't sit up." She tells me.

I disobey and sit up anyway, inhaling sharply. "My... everything hurts." I mumble.

"They said you had internal bleeding." She tells me. "I think you hit a vessel."

I shrug and she scoffs. "Really? You don't care?!"

"No..." I tell her, raising my gaze to hers. "I don't. Why would I care?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe because you have a family!" She raises her voice and this time, I am the one to scoff.

"Oh, the one you're tearing apart?" I ask. "I hardly even see my kids anymore, Ava."

"It's better if we wait until after you deal with this." She tells me, holding up that damned envelope.

"Well shit, give me the damn papers then!" I snap. "I thought that when you married me, you vowed to be there through thick and thin...til death do us part...." My voice is sharp. I'm angry. I'm angry that she saved me. This time, I wished she had let me go. "And look at us now."

She sighed. "Now is not the time, Chres. If I hadn't come over when I did, you'd be dead."

I think that statement is what sent me over the edge. Because that was what I wanted. I wanted to die.

"THAT WAS WHAT I WANTED!" I yelled, so loud that I was sure I could be heard across the continent. "I wanted to die!" The second statement is not as loud. "Why do I need to live?" Ava looked surprised and hurt.

"Because I love you, that's why." She answered softly.

"Bull fucking shit." I rolled my eyes. "You left me. You're still fucking leaving me." I point to the envelope that she still hadn't handed me. "You want a divorce. You don't love me." I can feel my heart breaking over and over again but I ignore it. "I just... I only wanted one thing." I mumble. "I just wanted to die. Why couldn't you let me have that?" My vision is beginning to blur with tears once more and I sigh deeply. I'm tired.

I am tired of crying...tired of begging Ava to stay...tired of fighting for something she is so easily letting go.

Tired of trying to live. I just want to die. And she won't even let me have that.

"Chresanto..." Ava's voice is soft as she speaks again and I sigh once more.

"Ava, give me the papers." I sigh, my gaze resting on the bright orange wristband the hospital has attached to my wrist. "I'll sign, if that's really what you want." At this point, as these words leave my mouth, I have gone numb. Because like I said, I'm tired...I give up.

Ava doesn't move. So I look up into her tired eyes to find that she has been crying. "That's not what I want." She admits. "That's never what I've wanted."

But I don't believe her.

"Then why did you bring them to me?" I ask. "Why did you ask for a divorce if it's not what you wanted?"

She falls silent and glances around the room. We are the only two here so I wonder why. She stands and goes over to peek out the door. "It's not what I want." She repeats. "It's what they want."

I don't ask her who, because I already know the answer. I don't ask her how it happened, because I don't want to know.

But even that information...even knowing that her family had a hand in what happened...even that doesn't make me want to live.

I lower my gaze back to my wrist, flipping the right one over to trace the words I carved into my skin only to find that they have bandaged it.

My eyes linger on the bandages and I turn over my other wrist, finding that this one had been bandaged as well.

"Where are my kids?" I ask after a while.

"With your mom, Imani, and Sadie in the waiting room." She tells me. "Chresanto, I'm so sorry."

"Ava, you didn't even let me see him." I say, my voice so low that I am not sure she can hear it. "My son....I didn't get to meet him for three weeks." No words can explain the hurt I feel as I utter these words.

She hands me the envelope. "Open it." She tells me.

"Are you serious?! No!"

She snatches it back and opens it herself, shoving papers into my hand. "Read." She tells me.

My eyes scan the page in front of me and my eyebrows furrow deeply. "What is this?"

They're not what I thought they were. They're not divorce papers. Before I can say anything else about the papers I hold, Ava speaks again.

"They threatened to kill you like they killed Tristen." She tells me. "They threatened to kill Lily...to kill Junior." By now, her head has fallen into her hands and she begins to sob. "I-I d-d-didn't want to d-do it." She sobs.

I sit up more, ignoring the pain as I pull the IV from my arm and pull the cords to the heart monitor from my chest, hearing the machine beep as I slide closer to Ava and embrace her. She rests her head on my chest, sobbing into the hospital gown.

There are only three noises in the entire room: her sobs, the steady beep of the disconnected monitor, and me quietly encouraging her that everything will be okay.

"I-I t-th-thought you'd b-be safe." She sobs. "I didn't know...I d-didn't know this would h-h-happen."

"It's okay." I tell her. "Everything is okay."

But that's a lie. It's not okay.

I'm not okay...we're not okay....nothing is okay.