I lock up the house and make sure it is secure. I bring the rifle into the bedroom and place it beside an old antique dresser with crystal knobs and elaborate carvings of deer. I climb into bed behind Cherie; I place my arms around her. She begins to shake and shudder violently. I try and hold her closer, thinking that she is cold—she feels cold.
“I’m being shocked…” Cherie says as she squeezes my hand tightly—almost too tightly.
It then dawns on me… I feel foolish for not noticing it earlier, she is going through withdrawals. Of course… anything that messes with your mental state is going to have withdrawals. I remember from back when I was on Clonazepam… after my parents died. I was only on the medication for a few months and I thought I was going to die, if I hadn’t tapered off slowly there was a chance I could have.
“You’re going through withdrawals,” I whisper as I hold onto her tightly. There is nothing more that I can think to do. “We’ll make it through this though.”
“Make it through this… though.”
11. Withdrawals
The next day I force her to eat some soup. She has a difficult time. After she manages to keep it down, I pour out a couple of Ibuprofen from the bottle and she takes them with a large amount of water. All I can think is—this would have been a good thing for Noah to warn me about. Then again I suppose he had to cram as much information as he possibly could—especially once we had to run.
“Well, you’re fever has gone down,” I say, although I know it doesn’t make her feel much better. She still looks absolutely miserable.
“What have you done to your hair?”
“I don’t want people to be able to recognize us,” I reply, I guess it is a bit more noticeable than I had thought.
“How do you feel today?”
“I feel…” Cherie pauses. “I feel sick… but I feel clearer. My mind is clearer.”
“That’s at least good, I mean that’s something.”
“It doesn’t make me very happy though,” Cherie says as she looks out the window. “The view… it reminds me of my apartment—with the tree right outside the window. That’s strange.”
“Yeah,” I say as I nod. “I noticed that.”
“Is it early?”
“It is actually late afternoon,” I say as I sit beside her. “You’ve slept for nearly twenty hours.”
“Is this where we are supposed to be?”
“That…” I say as I shake my head and put my arm around her. Her arm still feels cool to the touch. “That didn’t work out. The place Noah wanted us to be—well the people who are after us found it first and burned it down.”
“I’m sorry,” Cherie says as she rests her head against my shoulder.
“We’re alright here thought,” I say as I kiss her cheek. “For now, we’re safe here.”
“Did you buy me new clothes?’
“You had a fever, I had to get you into something simple,” I say. As strange as it seems I miss her unique fall outfits, she was much happier then. She didn’t have to carry so many worries or have to go through such terrible pain. “Plus, it will help us fit in if people start poking around.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Cherie says as she begins to rock back and forth in the bed. She begins to cry. “Where… am I?”
“You just need to rest,” I say as I help her back into a flat position. She curls up and goes through a few shivers. She looks at me with those sad eyes that tend to leave me feeling heartbroken. She doesn’t deserve this.
“Tell me something about your past…”
“Of course,” I say as I nod and lay down behind her. I try and think of something interesting. My mind is filled with sad thoughts so it is difficult. “Before everything changed, the night before everything changed actually… I was doing something really stupid. My life wasn’t going very well and I had been drinking. I decided to go out—so I took my parents car while they were asleep. I ended up driving it into a lake… pretty far from the house. I remember sitting in the car—being half aware of what was going on. I just started laughing. I’m not sure why really. I think that I was just going to go down with it…”
“What stopped you?” Cherie asks as she squeezes both of my hands and inches closer against me.
“I thought about my life—I didn’t have many friends at the time. They had all gone off to do things, while I was doing absolutely nothing. I had no motivation, no talents… anyway, I saw a glimpse of my own funeral and I realized that hardly anyone would be there. No one would really care if I died that night—and I thought that would have made me want to leave more… but instead it didn’t. I felt this feeling like, just hold on a little longer and things will be different. So I broke out the window and I swam my way up. I walked home and arrived home that morning. All those hours I spent walking, I just went over and over in my head about how I didn’t know what I was going to say to my parents—that I had basically sent their car to the bottom of a lake… that I as drunk. When I got home though, they were both… just gone.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die…”
“It was hard, because I just had that moment where it was like… something was telling me to hold on and wait—but I waited, and waited… nothing good happened for years. I quit drinking completely, but I… I just lived half asleep like I did before that night. It was a lot of waiting until I actually felt really important or really alive again—which was when I met you and Noah. Sorry that’s not a happier story. I probably should have come up with something happier… next time, I promise.”
“No that…” Cherie begins as she rests her head against my chest. “…that actually makes me feel better. Although I’m sorry I made you wait so long. I’m sure if Noah was still with us—he’d be sorry too.”
“That’s not even anything that you should be sorry for,” I say as I laugh. “That’s why I was so worried when you took off yesterday morning. Without you, my life would go back to me just… barely getting by, barely living. I’d be alone again and I’d be back in that dark place.”
“I thought it was best,” Cherie says she yawns. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”
“Not your fault,” I say as I kiss her forehead. “Things have sure changed in the past week and a half…”
Cherie is asleep. I think of getting up—it has been an entire day without checking the news… however she is resting against me so comfortably I cannot bring myself to leave. Although I am not tired in the least, and feel that I should be doing something productive—I stay. I watch her sleep for a while. Every now and then she shudders, but then it passes. She smiles every now and then. I hope that she is at least having good dreams. I stare off at the window. The view does bear a striking resemblance to her apartment window. Once again I am left with the thought—why me? I just cannot wrap my mind why Noah would ultimately risk his plan by bringing me in. I am glad for it; I would have never met Cherie had he not gotten me in. I just do not understand his purpose. He had people on the inside, he had a network that he was in contact with… he had to have been working with someone… I mean the car, and the money, all the technology and the guns. It just doesn’t add up because I was the downfall—I was his mistake. Maybe he trusted me because I was a friend—but then again, I never got proof that he remembered me… sure he knew I lied when I applied for the C-Shapes Program, but he probably found that out from sneaking around their system when he got me approved… maybe he wasn’t normal. Just, very lucid and off his medication for years… the thought of it all starts to give me a headache. The more I try and figure out an answer—the more questions I come up with. The more I try and figure out my role… the more I realize I really don’t think I have one. Maybe going through his paperwork will bring me some much needed answers… or just pile on more questions. Even though I am not tired, I eventually allow myself to nap.