The hotel room has better central heating than the apartment they live in.
The walls are good at keeping the sound in and the cold out, and the furnishings are simple and nice. Lisa thinks that if she could, she'd move the boys somewhere like this in a heartbeat.
Given the suddenness of their booking, the only room Lisa had been able to obtain was a single. The boys are so exhausted from being dragged from terminal to terminal, they don't have the energy to complain. At the head of the bed, James is curled up tight, with his brother clinging onto him.
After the longest day of her life, Lisa finally has silence. And she hasn't a clue what to do with it.
In Boulder, the walls had been thin. There wasn't a quiet night's sleep to be had for the three years they lived there. But at least then, when the day was over, she had somebody to talk to. Half of the time, if not most, Lisa didn't know what Waylon was talking about –he always got so specific and technical when he was excited, but it was his overwhelming enthusiasm that kept her listening.
She turns onto her side and finds her cell phone charging on the night stand.
In any case, he is always there. The tremulous breath at the end of her line, overexposed, like an x-ray. Lisa wants to call him. And even if she doesn't –she will. It is inevitable, like the rise of a wave, squeezing breath from blood cells.
Waylon doesn't get specific anymore. Even in the happiest moments of their communication, he always sounds as if his voice is new, and being tested, stock phrases and words repeated over a tanoy. Rehearsal, not rapport. Lisa recognises it because that's how Colin sounds, only just starting to form sentences –getting the syllables out first of all.
Sometimes she doesn't recognise the voice, or even the mouth it comes from, and it scares her.
Of everything she saw –all the footage of anything salvageable, Waylon's silver mirror, he lost a few fingers. But his reflection, her man –how much did he lose?
What did he lose?
Eventually, as would always have been the case, she plies the phone from the nightstand and calls for New York, prepared to hear the stranger she loves still, and is tied to. The dialtone rings out softly, and the line breathes, it's breath hitching for a second, and that's all it takes for Lisa to get through.
Her voice trembles in the open silence. "Waylon?" She can hear him swallowing. It's enough to know he's there. She hears herself talk to him as if to one of the boys, slowly, simplistically. "It's alright. I got us a hotel. I'm not-...I'm not giving up that easy."
His voice is so strange when he does finally talk. "Are you s-" Waylon sounds as if he's struggling desperately for the right words. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
Lisa doesn't understand him. It's everything she wants –they both want. It's all they have talked about for weeks.
"Of course it's what I want. Waylon, this was –don't you want us to come up?"
He makes a noise that is inaudible, and Lisa wonders for a second if he's tired, or disinterested or somebody else entirely until this very small whimper breaks through his invincible winter. "I-I'm scared, Leese."
Of all the things Lisa saw in his footage –the cannibal, the necrophilia, the threat of death or mutilation or worse, and Waylon kept it together through all of that. To hear him say that the prospect of his family scares him makes Lisa feel cold.
"I'm not –I'm not better -I thought I would be by now, but I'm still...s-still..." By then, he's practically in tears, and Lisa has never heard Waylon cry before. Not at any film they watched together –not when they were married, or when the boys were born. She knows how truly terrified he must be –how irrefutably broken he is if he's crying.
Lisa can't think of what to say right away. But it comes to her, eventually.
"You're not sick." She says, softly. "You just need time to –to forget. It'll be easier, when you're back home." Lisa desperately hopes that it will somehow soothe Waylon, because the thought of him unhappy, and lone, all that way away makes her feel so awful.
She waits in agony for his response. For any confirmation that he's alright.
After an eternity, Lisa hears him say, "What if I hurt you –you, or the boys...I don't know what I'd do if..."
The words are unbearable to hear. "Everything will be okay." Lisa says, as sincerely as she can muster. "We have time, and you don't have to come home if you're not ready. I'll..." She swallows. "I'll wait for you, Waylon. You know I will."
"You shouldn't have to."
Lisa turns onto her side and searches for some answer. They both know that there is none –at least none easily available, but it's all she can do to feel useful. She wishes more than anything that she could do something, but she feels universes apart from Waylon, and utterly useless.
She settles on the best words she knows. "I love you. That's all that matters to me."
That's all Waylon would ever have needed to hear before. If he got down about the debts, or working overtime and never seeing the boys, she could tell him they loved him, that she loved him, and the sadness would dissolve from him steadily. Now, the end of the line is a breathy silence. From the wreckage, Waylon Park is unsalvageable.
After too long a time, Waylon manages a reply. "I love you too, Leese." His voice is steadier now, but only by a little. "Goodnight." He breathes.
Lisa doesn't want to say goodnight. She doesn't want to sleep knowing that he is alone in a city where she isn't, having seen all of those things, having no guarantee he will be alright.
But when she speaks, all she can manage is, "Goodnight, Waylon."
The call ends then, the line going dead as if off at the root. Lisa watches her boys, clinging to one another in their sleep. If something terrible were to befall them, either of them, Lisa knows they would recover because they have eachother.
It is a worse punishment to be alone than any suffering, she thinks.
Save for suffering alone.
-
When Waylon wakes, shivering, he is reminded of his childhood.
Not in a vague way, but a strong, direct memory triggered by the tune steaming down the hall under the roar of the shower water. Not just a tune –a hymn, that his mother used to sing around the house that made Waylon feel steady as a child.
The memories of yesterday make him feel stiff and nauseous, but the calm of the tune overcomes it. It's always sunny in his memories of his mother, and despite the cold of the room he feels warmer for the hearing.
Miles is, by no stretch of the imagination, a singer in any right, but it is enough.
Waylon dresses listening to it, taking care with his uncast leg, having to guide his ankle down and out. His movement hasn't really returned to it, and now and then it aches. The limp makes him think more and more about getting his crutch back or something to make standing less awkward. Not a cane. He's not even thirty, and God's bread, Lisa would laugh-...
Lately, Waylon tries not to think of Lisa. Yet, it's all he can think about.
He fears he was cocky when he didn't listen to his therapist, and that the man is right. What if Waylon has changed beyond recognition, and she no longer loves him, or knows him? What if it all falls apart?
Lisa is the only one left with her finger in the dam. If she leaves him, flooding is inevitable.
His wedding ring doesn't even fit him anymore. It used to, and he'd glance down at it every so often when he was typing away at work. It helped to remind him what he was working for. Now, it's too big. His fingers are thinner and there is less of him in the world. What is he working towards now? Is it Lisa: for a chance to play at normalcy? To pretend he is the man in the family photographs?
Lately, he finds it hard to believe they are him, and not some dull rumour of another man, with softer features, and a gentler look at the world.
The worst part is that he loves her. Still.
The song continues, getting louder as Waylon limps out into the hall and down towards the kitchen. His pills are by the fridge, and he takes them dry, one after the other as if desperately seeking salvation.
And then, in a moment of genuine interest, he picks up a bottle of pills that belongs to Miles' and reads over the label. Waylon has to wonder if he's being given placebos, or sugar, because they both survived the hell of that place, and Miles seems to be the only one making a recovery. The drug –Zoloft, seems no different than the ones he takes, but Waylon gives serious thought as to why they are being treated differently for what are essentially the same symptoms.
In the midst of his pondering, Miles wanders out of the shower, a monogrammed towel slung low around his waist. The moment he realises that Waylon is awake, and standing in the kitchen, his humming trails off, and he nods to the pills Waylon is still holding.
"They work for me." Is what he opens with. "If you're still feeling –I don't know: take them if you need to."
Miles doesn't stand his ground like he used to. At the very sight of Waylon, he seems saddened, and withdraws. As tempting as it would be to take Miles' pills, as well as the contents of the fridge and whatever he can find going for under thirty dollars on the streets of New York, Waylon has never had to take antidepressants or behavioural medications before, and he doesn't know the rules.
It's like being a child again, he thinks, in that he doesn't hold the reins on this one at all.
He has never been very good at putting his trust into other people. It was enough to trust Murkoff to pay him –only to condemn him to their experiments and keep him away from his family. It is enough to trust the therapist who says the drugs are a 'long-term' solution while not saying a word on Waylon's suicidal thoughts. Why should he trust any of these people?
Too tired to be angry, he tries to put himself through the ordeal of breakfast, getting less than a third of the way in before deciding against the whole thing. He leaves the plate out while he goes for a shower, the bathroom still warm in the wake of Miles' voice.
As the water begins to build in pressure, he hears himself humming the same tune from earlier, catching only the last few words on the line "...down to the river to pray."
All of the family on the side of his mother comes from Kentucky, or thereabouts, and Waylon remembers them being churchgoers. He remembers one of his cousins being baptised in a river, and when he asked, his mother explain that 'the water washes away everything, if you let it'
Waylon has always liked that idea. He wants to believe that there is some kind of redemption for the things he has seen and done, but he never went to church, and he knows that a little splash of warm water isn't going to change anything.
He towels off and tries to keep himself busy until his therapist arrives, having mixed feelings about the entire thing. It's not fair to expect instantaneous results, especially given the severity of Waylon's pathologies, but he also holds onto the belief of his father. That therapy is for rich people –'poor people have things to be getting on with'.
The therapist is early when he arrives, and comes in with that tight smile and short, sharp phrases. Waylon still isn't sure what to make of him. But he follows the paradigm of their sessions regardless, determined to get something out of his time.
"How're you feeling today, Waylon?" The therapist sets up as he usually does, and opens with a nice vague question. "It must feel good to have the cast off."
What can he say? There is one single thing on his mind, heavy enough to choke him, as if being pulled under an entire ocean. Waylon can no longer go on pretending to this man, or tell he what he wants to hear. Like a parasite tearing through his skin, the truth worms it;'s way out of him, and in a hideously calm voice, he hears himself say,
"I thought about killing myself, yesterday. I couldn't think of a reason to live."
The therapist goes slack.
Right away, too. It's as if he can't really believe that Waylon, with all of is pills and his progress and compliance and smiling would have the nerve to regress.
But that's not what the man expresses when he says, "Is this the first time you've had suicidal thoughts?"
One shoulder shrugs. It's something Waylon can stay calm about. "I think so."
"And are you still experiencing these thoughts?"
He pauses. "I don't make plans about it. But –sometimes I'll think of ways to do it, and they don't seem like such bad ideas."
It sounds so preventable and juvenile to say it aloud. Waylon thinks they ought to give him a lobotomy or something –anything to stop him from thinking all the time, and inventing new scenarios in his head where he gets to die. In reality, Waylon doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to do that to Lisa and the boys.
Then why does it plague his thoughts?
The therapist looks equally at odds with the situation. "Are you feeling worthless or destructive?"
Waylon shakes his head.
"Can you think of a reason to stay alive now, Waylon? Perhaps you could tell me a few." It's a stupid exercise, Waylon thinks. If he never thought of a reason to be alive, he wouldn't be alive, much less sitting in the session. But he plays along anyway.
"I don't want-...I don't want to make my wife a widow. I don't want to miss my kids growing up." Then, he thinks of Miles' words, and the man's whole foolish attitude towards it. "I don't want to let them win." He says.
The therapist pauses at that answer, as if it is unsatisfactory, and writes something else. "All of your reasons concern pleasing or spiting other people. Unless you focus on yourself, any progress we make in these sessions will not benefit you."
Waylon doesn't know what to say. If he were alone in this world, like Miles, he would have died in there. The memory of Lisa kept him going forward. Alone, he would have sunk, like a gutterball.
"It isn't uncommon for people who are new to antidepressants to feel worthless or suicidal. And citalopram has been linked to suicidal thoughts in the first few weeks of taking it."
Waylon doesn't understand. "So why are you still prescribing it to me? Why not something else?"
That doesn't please the therapist. The man bites his lip, before saying, very calmly, "Suicidal thoughts are a symptom of PTSD and depression –not the antidepressant itself. It would be impossible to establish causality without putting you at risk."
He continues. "I don't hesitate to remind you that you were assigned zyprexa and citalopram by the psychiatrist who carried out your initial evaluation, and not me personally, Waylon. If you really feel they are not benefitting you, I can prescribe you something else for your treatment."
"Just tell me how to make it stop. If you can."
The therapist makes a face of bemusement. "Waylon, I'm afraid it isn't as simple as-"
"It was for Miles!" He isn't even aware of how angry he is until he's shouting. Waylon is a very quiet person, he always has been, and it has been a long time since he has shouted like this. It's jealousy, he thinks. That everybody else gets to enjoy normalcy. That it had to happen to him, and not someone more deserving.
"There has to be-" Halfway into shouting, he comes to his senses, knowing that his fury will solve nothing. Suddenly, his throat dries up, and his voice is a spooky whisper when he despairs. "There has to be something you can do."
It doesn't seem it -but Waylon is desperate. He can already feel that before anything gets any better, things are going to get worse. The free-falling has started, and he has reached terminal velocity, no wings, no parachute.
Maybe he is better off reaching the bottom.
-
At the bottom of the swimming pool, Miles has something of a revelation.
He has been thinking –for days and weeks and months, ever since leaving that place, of how to describe things now. It's a habit for him. Even in the midst of the atrocities, he kept writing, convincing himself that he needed something to publish, because telling himself he wasn't going to get out meant he never would.
Every cliché and truism falls short of his life now –it is practically indescribable. That is, until he opens his eyes at the bottom of the pool, and sees before him some kind of great, terrible flood.
It is as if the water has wiped out all of the life before his eyes, familiar landmarks and crests of home disappearing as the dark wave swells, leaving nothing but bones in it's wake. And Miles is the only one left alive, to witness these things.
It is as if he is all alone, aboard the ark.
When the burn in his lungs gives, he propels himself to the surface, taking in a great mouthful of air. Yes, he thinks. That's what he is. Him and Waylon both: alone aboard the ark.
The water has always helped to clear his head. Today is no different. It makes him feel light and clean and peaceful, a continuous baptism. It washes all of the blood and dirt and sin from him, and Miles likes the feel of the water sustaining him. When this trial is over, he wonders if he'll get enough compensation from Murkoff's dismantlement to buy a house with a swimming pool.
It seems childish enough, but he'd like that.
It plays on his mind when he changes into some dry, loose clothes and enters the foyer. The hotel is a mix of the upper-class and hotel staff, all of whom are constantly well-groomed and immaculate. Miles does not belong among their number, and finds the pretence irritating. Though, he can feel something of a cold starting in the back if his throat. If his mood goes further south, it may just be that.
Sniffing, he avoids the elevator, as always, and climbs the six flights of stairs to 103, heaving a small sigh as he unlocks the door, and lets himself inside.
He is startled by Waylon.
The man is sitting at the kitchen table, facing the door, and the moment Miles comes in the other man's eyes fix on him. He feels like a criminal under that gaze. One day he will be away from Waylon's sad eyes and slumped posture and misery, coming together like a whirlpool that Miles doesn't want to get sucked in to. The sooner he leaves, the better.
Unable to be scrutinised, he heads towards the television and sits down, searching for the remote. It feels so horribly cold that he even abandons the search after a while and brings the sheets from his bed. The chill is horrifying—even the sheets hardly defend against it. He has to wonder how Waylon can sit in a cotton shirt without so much as shivering.
Miles wants to complain at him to adjust the thermostat, but feels he at least owes the other man his concern.
"You alright?" He gets out, quietly. Waylon's gaze shifts from the laptop in front of him over to Miles, under the myriad of sheets. An almost unperceivable nod is followed by Waylon's gentle voice. He's always so at peace with the worst of things.
"I think so." He says, quietly. "I won't-..."
"That's good." It is unspeakably easy for Miles to be supportive about it. They have been exposed to the same nightmares, thereabouts, and if Waylon can't think to live through it, what hope is there for Miles? It is selfish for him to think that way, but it is adaptive. He is built to survive.
Waylon keeps his eyes heavy on the other man, and for a very long time says nothing, until the words escape out of him as if on their own volition. "How do you –how do you forget about it?" The man gives a desperate little laugh. "It never goes away, for me. I never-" A sigh. "I never stop."
There is no shut-off switch. There is no easy road to catharsis. But Miles must have some kind of answer.
"I haven't forgotten." Miles says. "Jesus, I wish I could, but it's not –it doesn't work like that. I mean, I don't know. I just try to keep myself busy." He sits up, and extends his arm so Waylon can get a good look at the marks he left for himself. "It's not like I don't still think about it."
That gets Waylon's real attention. Like some great myth disproved, Waylon stares at him, looking a mix of confused and angry. Is Miles a hypocrite for this? Does that matter?
"At least if I'm busy, I don't think about it, because there's so much left to do, y'know? But –but when I'm not, it gets...harder. It's not something you ever turn off."
Waylon isn't sure he likes the sounds of it. His medications make him too apathetic to be busy, and he tires so easily. And when his timetable clears, it will all be for nothing.
"What do you do when you're not busy?"
Miles frowns. "Lots of things. I don't know. If I'm thinking about –that place, I try to imagine how it would've gone if I had a gun." His laughs, then, but it is filled with something besides mirth or actual amusement. "I like the idea that if something like that ever happened again, I'd be fucking ready."
He sighs again. "I go to confession. Like, I don't even believe in God. It's kind of fucked up, but it makes me feel better."
"Is that where you heard that song?"
Miles frowns. "What song?"
Waylon shrugs one arm. "The one you were singing earlier. That one about the river."
Miles smiles at that. He nods, enthusiastically. "Yeah." And then, softer. "What do you want to die for, anyway?" Of course, Waylon has no answer prepared, and he prefers to listen, rather than talk. "You got a nice life, y'know? A wife, and kids, and all that."
That's the only thing that makes Waylon smile –and it's a nice smile, too, serene and gentle. "I know." He says, quietly. "I'm lucky."
They fall into silence after that. Miles lays down, ignoring the way his head spins, either from the chlorine of the pool water or the cold creeping up out of his throat. He is practically drowsing, listening to the soft noises that Waylon's keyboard makes. It reminds him of late nights that turned into early mornings, finishing articles for deadlines. It hadn't been much, but he had been happy.
The situation has Miles at odds with himself. Waylon is still the whistleblower –he is still the reason that Miles has seen all of the things he has. Waylon is still the reason Miles doesn't sleep –or has fits in the street, and scares children with his eight fingers. But he's also the reason Murkoff is in the ground now.
It's strange to say, even for Miles, but he's sort of comforting. Like a friendly apparition, kind enough to remind Miles that he isn't alone in the world.
Effectually, the noise keeps him drowsy, but it's loud enough to distract him from actual sleep. He becomes conscious and lucid again, after an hour, if not more, of laying there, half-aware of his surroundings. The room has gotten discernibly colder, and the first thing he can think to do is to noisily clear his throat. It hurts.
The tapping at the keyboard has become more incessant. Miles can't ignore it.
"What're you doing?" he says, his voice croaky enough to surprise even him. As if his larynx has rusted over in the matter of time it hasn't been used.
Waylon only pauses to give an answer. "My therapist thought it might be a good idea if I wrote down what I was thinking about. It's not so bad." He pauses, and then heaves a little sigh. "Do you still write?"
Miles rolls onto his back and sniffs. The ache in his head is now fully present, but he presses. "Not really."
That seems to disappoint Waylon, who withdraws a little, nodding, resuming the hammering of his fingers on the keyboard. But the strokes aren't as confident as they were before, and sometimes he outright pauses, as if searching for the right word, but being continually eluded. He casts glances at Miles once or twice, debating whether or not to speak again.
It makes no difference to Miles. He is distracted by a new pain –a sharp, convulsive twist in his gust that threatens to flare. How can Waylon sit there without a jacket on? It's freezing in the apartment, cold enough to make him physically shiver. He shouldn't have swallowed so much damn pool water –or had any of the mixed nuts from that damn bar.
Turning onto his side, Miles murmurs in pain and shuts his eyes, attempting to will away the distraction for an hour or so of sleep. It's practically impossible.
"Miles?" Waylon's whisper is surprisingly direct, and it has Miles' attention. Miles isn't great with pain –and he doesn't have the adrenaline that the asylum had in constant supply to keep him oblivious. "Do you know what happened to that walrider project?"
Despite the intensity of the pain, Miles sits right up.
He tastes the name in his mouth. "Walrider? There was no-..." But he cannot deny the familiarity of the name. He can see it, behind his eyes, written a million times over in blood, and then darkness –nightvision, a smoothie of innards all over him from whatever solid remained of Walker.
Miles feels as if he is going to have an aneurism. He remembers –he remembers something. Hazy details, but visceral in their contents. He remembers the worst pain of all –hot, searing pain hitting his body all over in sharp pinpoints, and then consuming darkness before some great rise into madness.
He remembers some fall. Some magnificent fall where consciousness tore itself from him, wrending every fibre of his being in half.
He is so consumed by the headache of memories violently bringing themselves to light that he only just hears Waylon's terrified voice, elevated from a whisper.
"Miles—your nose!"
He doesn't really hear the words until he tastes blood, and his eyes close of his own accord. He tries to grasp every abstract memory that flashes before him, uselessly."I remember..." He says, helplessly. "I don't –I don't understand what I remember..."
He hears the hard grate of a chair on floor and some more squawking from Waylon, but it is a million miles away, and it fades into darkness long before Miles can get a hand to stop himself.
Another hard, long fall.
-
When he comes to, feeling even more worse for wear, he's sweating grotesquely.
He blinks into consciousness as if surfacing from water, the world fuzzy at first, and he can't bring things into focus right away. The sharp pain in his stomach hasn't ceased, and the headache is only worse. Miles still feels terribly cold.
The shapes come into further detail, and he realises that there are a pair of hands lifting his head, and then he feels a pillow underneath him.
Miles groans. "It's fucking cold."
There is some more shifting and Waylon's face comes into view. He lays a hand on Miles' brow despite the other man trying to shake it off. "It's not cold, you're just feverish." There's a hollow sound and he can see the rim of some kind of bucker being pulled into view. "If you feel like you're going to be sick, do it in here."
Miles doesn't like the feel of being babied –he isn't used to it, and fights against the gaze. "You don't need to look after me." He grumbles.
Waylon, still cautious to the other man, rises gradually and turns to leave, with a gentle sigh. But the moment he has turned around, a hand fixed on the leg of his pants, and Miles mumbles into the pillow. "Thank-you."
It gives Waylon pause. He turns, half-alarmed, and says, "You're welcome." In his characteristic whisper.
By then, Miles is already asleep. But he's welcome nonetheless.
