She knocked softly at Leonard and Sheldon's door, and then she felt the first of the blows, the first of the kicks to the stomach. It was just Sheldon's apartment now.
It had to have been Howard who told her to come in, because Howard and Raj were sitting on the couch. There was no one else in the room. They both looked like they had been crying, but they weren't crying now. Penny knew she was still far from tears. There were only the very beginnings of cracks in her numbness.
She looked beyond them into the small kitchen, it was empty. She looked toward the window and the eraser boards with the bizarre equations on them. No one was there. She walked over to one of the boards, not sure if it was Sheldon's or Leonard's. There were symbols on these boards that meant nothing to her. There were numbers, and there were letters she was familiar with from high school algebra like X and Y, but there were symbols and probably Greek letters that meant nothing, and she could never understand how they seemed to interweave into these numbers. She shook her head. Looking at these boards was like looking into Leonard's mind. Was it all that was left?
She felt the numbness wanting to crack, a crack as big as the San Andreas fault. She could imagine the numbness falling off of her like huge chunks of ice, like chunks of the glaciers floating away into the sea. She felt this wall of tears suddenly behind her eyes, and she knew she was in danger of being overcome by it. She grasped around in her mind, groped toward something to save her from feeling this, to save her from dissolving away into nothingness. Sheldon. If she could focus on Sheldon than she wouldn't have to think about herself.
"Where's Sheldon?" she said, her words drifting over their heads. Raj looked at her with his stunned eyes and open mouth, unable to respond. Howard turned toward her, his eyes bloodshot and red rimmed, the tip of his nose rubbed raw.
"He's, he's in his room,"
Penny marched toward his room. There was a rule that she knew of, one of the myriad of rules that Sheldon had set up around himself, and one of them was that no one could be in his bedroom. But she had been in there before.
She knocked three times and said his name, and repeated that pattern, unconsciously mimicking his way of knocking. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed around it. She leaned her head against Sheldon's bedroom door and whispered his name.
"Go away," he said, and his voice sounded muffled. She imagined he was speaking through his pillow.
"Sheldon, it's me," she said, and she wasn't thinking of Leonard and his being gone, and she wasn't thinking of how she would never have Chinese food with him again, and she wasn't thinking of how she would never see him push his glasses up his nose, and she'd never see him shrink inside of those sweatshirt hoodies he liked to wear. She was thinking of Sheldon.
"I'm coming in," she said after getting no response. She pushed on his door and it opened. He was sitting on his made bed, fully dressed, wearing the black collar shirt under his superman T-shirt. He was hugging his pillow.
"Sheldon," she said, reaching toward him but he pulled away.
He stared straight ahead toward the blank wall, and she sat down on the bed next to him. She licked her lips, hugged herself. She knew Sheldon's father was dead, but she didn't know any details, didn't know when he had died or how, didn't know how Sheldon had reacted. But this was worse. She knew that. Sheldon had gone away to college at 11, had been away from his family for years when his father died. His father's death wouldn't have effected his daily routines.
Sheldon was very good at shutting everyone out in the best of times, but now, she sensed the wall of silence that was around him, like her numbness. Was he protected in the silence just as she was in her numbness? He stared straight ahead, expressionless, his blue eyes looking almost vacant. Where was he? She knew she had to reach him, she had to bring him out of that shell if anyone was going to be saved, her or him or both of them. They were both unanchored, she knew it.