Page 33 of Anxious Hearts

Chapter Twenty-seven

Finn awoke suddenly. His head was pounding so hard he could barely move.

But if he didn’t move, the pain would pin him and crush him to death.

He placed a palm down, lifted himself on an elbow, dragged himself to the wall.

It was dark and quiet. Only the dim light from outside allowed him to make out the small pool of blood on the floor. But Kelly was gone.

He tried to stand and the pounding beat like machine guns on the front line. Relentless. Merciless. Devastating. He pulled himself up and leaned on the kitchen bench. ‘Kelly,’ he said weakly.

‘I’m here,’ she said softly.

Finn turned to her voice and saw her sitting on her couch. She was dressed in the same clothes as earlier but her left thigh was wrapped in a white bandage that had a faint line of blood visible through the dressing.

‘What time is it?’ Finn whispered, his own voice a hammer inside his skull.

‘Two a.m.’ Kelly stood and walked to Finn.

He began to rub his temples with his fingertips to try to ease the unfathomable pressure.

‘Migraine?’ Kelly said clinically.

‘Yes.’

She left the room and reappeared a moment later with a small pill. She placed it on the bench in front of him and poured a glass of water.

‘What is it?’ he asked between lightning bolts of pain. Finn didn’t take medication if he didn’t know what it was. What if he took something and he lost his sense of smell or ended up paralysed or in kidney failure?

‘Triptan. Prescription only. It’ll knock you around, but the pain will be gone within half an hour.’

Still Finn hesitated. It was wrong to take other people’s prescription medication and possibly even illegal. He could get into a lot of trouble. He could even get Kelly into a lot of trouble. She could lose her right to practise forever. He couldn’t add that disaster to her life.

But if he didn’t do something, he was going to pass out again.

So he swallowed the tablet, then stumbled in the semi-darkness to Kelly’s couch and sat there completely motionless.

With his eyes closed, he could hear Kelly moving around the apartment.

He didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t have the clarity of thought to figure it out. She didn’t say a word.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when the pain mercifully started to subside. A fog descended over his mind and he felt an almost deathly fatigue settle upon him but he forced himself to stay awake. He had to help Kelly. Had to stop her from doing any more self-harm.

‘This has to end, Finn.’ Kelly was sitting opposite him. She rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands. She looked serious. Angry even. Her eyes red rimmed.

Finn fought as hard as he could to put coherent thoughts together. It was like trying to breach the surface of a dark ocean with weights tied to his arms. ‘What has to end?’

‘This. Us. This fucking disaster we’ve created.

’ She leaned back in her chair and a fleeting look of sadness crossed her face.

‘I needed you tonight and you couldn’t help me.

Couldn’t protect me from myself. I ended up looking after you, as I always do.

I can’t do it anymore, Finn. I don’t have the energy to keep your life in one piece while I’m trying to stop mine falling apart. ’

‘I’m sorry, Kel. It was just … the knife, and the blood—’

Her expression softened and she placed a hand on his knee.

‘I know. I wasn’t thinking straight. But that’s the problem, Finn.

I can’t protect you from what your dad did forever.

It’ll always be there, and no matter how much we try to push it down, it’ll always come back up again.

You can’t rely on me any longer to be the one to rescue you when it does.

So that means you can’t rely on me at all. ’

‘What does that mean?’ Finn sat up straight to fight off the heavy blanket of fatigue.

‘It means we need to get our shit together. I’m supposed to be sitting a clinical exam in seven weeks but I’m not allowed to examine patients to prepare.

How the fuck I’m going to do that is going to take every piece of mental capacity I have.

I’m just not going to have enough left over to deal with your crises as well.

Maybe I never should have. Maybe, by trying to protect you, I’ve just made it worse for both of us. ’

Finn felt a deep sensation of dread. ‘What are you saying, Kel?’

‘I’m saying we should spend some time apart. Work on making ourselves better.’ Her voice was weak and raspy. A tear ran down her cheek.

Finn’s eyes filled with his own tears. ‘But you’re my best friend. How can I live without you?’

She sniffed loudly and wiped the tears from under his eyes. ‘I’ll always be your best friend, Finn. We’re the warriors, remember? We just need to fight our own battles for a little while.’

Finn sank back in the chair, dropping all his defences.

The medication-induced fatigue swept over him and he let himself go under the waves.

Before he closed his eyes, he saw Kelly watching him, tears running freely down her face.

His Kelly, who he had known and loved for so long. Who he had now lost, perhaps forever.

The darkness overwhelmed him once more.