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.
But by the time she got to the stairs, River pressing her weight against Eliza's thigh when she wavered, she wasn't quite so sure. She was still uneasy about facing these stairs, the pain ghosting over her skin, the panic tugging in her mind. If she tried to leave, if she told Marshall beforehand, he'd make sure she could never leave.
River started to howl quietly and it made Eliza smile. She was going to call Tesey at the very least. And she would do it now.
He picked up on the fifth ring. "Tesey Summers speaking."
The nerves that had been building since she found his name in the contact list seemed to explode out of proportion. "Uhm, hi, Tesey."
"Anne?"
She couldn't help but smile sheepishly at the name. She realized she would have to tell him her real name soon. "Yeah."
"Are you okay? Did something happen? Did--"
"I'm okay," she cut in. "I'm alright. Nothing's happened. I just...wanted to see if your offer was still on the table?" God, she felt like she was messing this up, going too far and not fast enough. What time was it? How long until Marshall got back?
"Yes! Of course, of course." There was the sound of something clattering to the ground, papers being shoved. She hadn't even considered that he might be working right now. "I can--i can be there in ten minutes. Do you need help packing?"
She felt flustered. She wasn't ready to just up and leave. "I...I'm not leaving him, not right now. I want to talk to him--"
"Don't, Anne. He's manipulative and will convince you to stay."
"You're trying to convince me to leave."
"For you, not for me."
She covered her eyes with her hands. This wasn't how she thought this conversation would go. She wanted to hang up without saying anything and go back to bed but knew she couldn't.
"Please, Anne," he pleaded, "have the strength to protect yourself before it gets worse again."
She felt something welling up behind her eyes, pressure in her stomach. She bit her tongue to stabilize herself and lied, "He's home, I've got to go."
"Okay, be careful."
"Okay."
Hanging up didn't make the pain in her chest go away, and neither did River brushing up against her leg. Suddenly the image of being up on the roof, a dream she used to have, flashed through her mind. She could make her way up there, slip, plummet, and let all of her worries fly away.
Or she could get her head on straight and act right; stop being so foolish the moment something--Tesey--comes along and tells her lies. Yes, Marshall hurt her sometimes; no, she didn't want to be hurt, but a conversation had the chance to clear everything up and she needed to give him that chance. He'd been nice for so long, why would she leave him now?
She worked up the courage to ask Marshall about it a few days later when she could stand without grunting and didn't constantly feel the need to sleep. It was after Marshall got back from walking River, when they sat down to dinner. She waited until his mouth was full of spaghetti before she asked, "Marshall, why did you hate Francis so much?"
He chewed slowly, swallowed. "Francis? That guy from when we first started dating?"
Eliza stuffed a forkful of noodles into her mouth as she nodded.
"I didn't hate him, Elly, I just didn't like him. He was coming onto you every chance he got. I told you, guys don't ever want to be just friends."
She chewed on that. From what she remembered, Francis never tried to "come onto" her, not in any way that she recognized. At the time, she had just thought that Marshall was jealous of when she would go out and play video games with him at the local arcade. Then Marshall had forbidden her from seeing him again, she disobeyed him, and he locked her in her apartment. When Marshall came back his fists were split and bruised and he had a heady, crazed look to his eyes. She'd never heard from Francis again, and he'd blocked her on all his social media sites.
"Why do you ask?"
"I'm worried...that the same thing will happen."
He reached over and covered her hand with his own, rubbing his thumb across her wrist. "You don't have to. I'll make sure Theseus Summers will never hurt you."
She looked him in the eye. "I'm not worried about him."
"Elly." It was a warning; she was going too far. She bowed her head and pressed her lips together when Marshall sighed. "Elly, I don't mean to, I really don't. But I worry, and sometimes you just make me so angry, I—" He stopped himself suddenly and shook his head. "I don't tell you I love you enough, but I do."
"I love you, too."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. But, Marshall..."
He looked at her kindly, like he'd do anything she wanted of him so long as it got them off of the conversation. "Yeah?"
"I think...I think I need a break."