"How do you do it?" Ethan asked. Exhaustion had quelled his anxiety for now. For the first time in a long time, his knuckles weren't white as he gripped his coffee cup. "I lay in bed, and it's like I'm too tired to sleep. I don't have the energy to do anything but stare at the wall, while my mind just races. I must've slept six hours in the past four days. How do you do it?"
"I don't know," Madison said thoughtfully. "It's been a part of my life so long, I guess I just figured out what worked for me over the years." She paused and pensively sipped her coffee. "Have you tried going to a motel?"
Ethan began shaking his head before she had finished her sentence. "I can't go back there, to a place like that," he said coldly. "It's hard enough being with my thoughts while I'm awake. I don't need the nightmares to be worse than they already are."
Madison smiled with poignant understanding. "You can't just boycott sleep, Ethan. You need to rest."
"I've done a fine job so far, haven't I?" he asked. To Madison, it seemed like he was asking for her approval as both a friend and an insomniac. He turned and watched the grey sky spit onto the world. "Six hours is better than nothing. Maybe I just need time. Processing it all."
"I'm glad to see you out of bed, and returning my calls," she stated, changing the subject. "I was worried about you these past couple days. I wanted to be able to help you, like back in the motel, but…" she trailed off and watched the clouds in her coffee swell and ebb. "I didn't want to impede on any time you needed to take, after the warehouse. I can't imagine what you're going through."
A familiar itch twinged in the back of Ethan's mind. He didn't know for certain, but impulse took over as he asked "is that why you called the cops?"
Madison twisted her mouth to the side and sighed through her nose. A cool collectiveness firmed her tender brown eyes. It was enough of an answer to send Ethan's mind into static.
"It was you wasn't it?" he insisted. A fire he hadn't felt since the trials began to overtake him. For days, he had been completely numb, like every piece of him down to his essence was coated in a thick layer of snow, muffled and frozen into dull, unfeeling stiffness. In contrast, this indignant anger was unprocessable. Neither Madison nor Ethan could predict which would be more destructive. "God, Madison, how many times are you going to try and expose this story? I can't get through a day thinking about it. I can't get through a day, and you… what, you're trying to make a quick buck? A look inside the mind of the Origami Killer's most recent victim!"
"Ethan-"
"A look inside the mind of the father who risked his life five times, and for what?"
"Ethan, please-"
"My son is dead, Madison!" he yelled, speaking the fact out loud for the first time. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears. His jaw tightened. His lips quivered. He bit his tongue to focus on a pain more familiar and easy to bear. "That's all anyone needs to know."
Madison surveyed the man that sat across from him and wondered why she no longer recognised him. She knew him when he was the fixation of the killer, toyed with and forced to jump through the hoops that had been set up for him. She knew he was the type of man who was determined to the point of self-sacrificial, if that's what it came to. He was a father who gave the world to try and save his son. She swallowed her conclusion like a pill. He was a father, and she wondered if that was something that could ever leave a person, even after their children were gone.
"I'm sorry," she said so calmly it only demonstrated her professionalism. "I wasn't after your story, and I didn't call the cops to get it either." She looked him square in his eyes so strongly that Ethan averted his to the coffee cup in his hands. His knuckles were white again. Madison spoke slowly and tapped her nails on the table with each word: "I meant well."
A long silence ensued as her phrase hung in the air. The fire that had started within Ethan simmered down to embers in an itchy persistent anger that could only be self-directed.
Madison took a long sip of her coffee. "When I met you," she stated gently. "You were in bad shape. Broken ribs and a huge gash on your forehead, exceeding doses of pain meds. Every time I saw you, you were worse and worse off. I didn't know how bad you were willing to let yourself become."
Ethan looked down at the burn holes in his sweater. "No one can help me," he said decidedly. "Not the police, not my therapist, not even you. You're the closest thing I have to a friend, and I'm sorry, but there's not a lot I can trust anymore." He checked the clock in the in the kitchen and saw that it was a little before four. Almost time for Shaun's snack blasted into his mind like a bullet, and his eyes shifted to the half-erased chalkboard before he could stop himself. He kept his eyes on as he said "you should go" so softly it seemed to be only to himself. Then, suddenly shaking himself out of his trance, he added, "Thanks for stopping by."
"Hey, anytime. I was thinking of leaving soon, anyway. I'm sure you have a lot to do before tomorrow."
Ethan's eyes widened with a sharpness in them that, briefly, brought him into the reality he had distanced himself from for so long. "Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Sunday?"
"Yeah," she confirmed, rising from her seat and putting her jacket on. "I thought you knew."
Ethan put his face in his hands and exhaled heavily through his nose. Cold clamminess from his palms permeated through his overgrown scruff. "I didn't realise…" he muttered muddy syllables through his hands. "I lost track. I lost track again."
Madison hesitated before asking gently "are you oka-?"
"I'm fine," Ethan answered a little too quickly. He blew a drawn out sigh and stared through his coffee cup. "I'm fine," he iterated, this time more convincingly, and met her concerned gaze. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"If you need any help with anything…" she offered, with no need to finish the statement. "I'll see you tomorrow." She backed towards the door with her hands in her pockets, so as to get one last glimpse of him before she turned her back.
The door shut with a gentle click behind her and once again, Ethan was in complete solitude. He put his face in his hands again, then slid them to the back of his neck, tugging his beard and pushing his bangs out of his face in overwhelmed exasperation. He set his forehead on the table with both hands on the nape of his neck and vocalised a groan from the very depths of his soul. "Okay," he whispered. "Okay, okay, okay-okay-okay-okay," he repeated to himself over and over again, thinking that maybe if he said it enough, it would be. Then, he sat up suddenly like a man possessed, and got out of his chair. By the front door, amongst the piles of unopened mail, ignored sympathy cards, junk mail, and bills, was the paper he needed. He sifted pile after pile, becoming more frantic and feverish with each item until he found it. He dialed the number and shut his eyes while it rang. It rang.
Rang.
Rang.
"Agent Norman Jayden."
"Agent Jayden, it's Ethan. Ethan Mars," he clarified, trying to prevent his thoughts from getting ahead of him.
"Oh, Ethan. How are you?" his digitised voice asked, "Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, everything's" he searched for the word, "fine. Listen, You worked my son's case, and you helped me escape the interrogation room when Blake was questioning me. You were trying to solve the case, and you were helping me to do the same." He squeezed his eyes tighter and nervously drummed his fingers on his crossed arm. His voice remained calm and even as he continued, "Shaun's...funeral is tomorrow. I would like for you to come, if you can, after everything you've done for us. For me."
"Without question," Norman replied. "I only wish I could have done more."
While Norman had done everything he could, and so had Ethan, it didn't change what had happened. Ethan couldn't bring himself to say that he had done enough. As he thought about this, he sensed his silence was becoming too long, and said "you'll be there?"
"I'll be there," he replied with reverent sincerity.
Goodbye lingered in the air, impending over live air. Before it could come, Ethan said, "Norman?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
After a brief confirmation and exchange of goodbyes, Norman set his cell phone on the desk and buried his face in his hands. A confession sat like a marble on the tip of his tongue that he wished he could just spit out. Now is not the time, he emphasized to himself. His heart felt like a cantering horse. His breathing elevated to accommodate his racing blood. "Oh, God," he groaned into his shaking hands, knowing his vision would be doubled and blurry when he removed them. He bit the marble at the tip of his tongue to prevent himself from saying the only thought that looped around his swimming head. I can't take this anymore. I can't take this anymore. (I'm going to pass out hovered more in the background). I can't take this anymore. I-can't-take-this-anymore!
He fumbled in his pockets for that little blue tube that glowed electric and saintly in his hazy wavering vision. It slipped slightly in his balmy hands as he struggled to twist the top off. Beginning to panic and uttering a tense "come on" to himself, he pulled the cap off in one final, desperate motion. He held the tube to his nose and breathed in the powder before the cap had even clattered to the floor. The chemical filled his nose, throat, and lungs. It polluted and cleared his mind, and he pressed the heel of his hand to as to not let any escape. When his eyes focused on the overhead lights, he let his hand fall over the armrest of the office chair, so the little red lipstick stain in his palm dripped silently on to the white tile.