Can You Keep A Secret?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

-Rye's POV-

"You go through certain stages when you sleep, and the most important of those is REM, in which you dream. The body needs REM, and if it's deprived of it for too long, you can go into REM rebound, in which you get nightmares and even night terrors. In your case, where you haven't been sleeping at all, the body can start to produce REM when you are awake, which explains the hallucinations. It's nothing too big. You'll be okay, you just need a good night's rest. And, as a professional, I would strongly recommend that you speak to a psychologist about what you've been feeling." The doctor spoke in a tired, know-it-all way – The façade of a man who spent night after night facing traumas, so that nothing shocked him anymore. He seemed impatient, like he should be with a dying patient, and not just some sleep-deprived idiot.

"We were given a card for Dr. Stevens the last time we came here," Blair spoke for me. Everything was hazy, blurry around the edges, and I was simply too tired to fight back against being forced into therapy. But I wasn't crazy. I wasn't crazy, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't crazy. Even if I had very vividly seen the shooter make his way through the crowd to me, until he was front row. He gave me a cold, emotionless smile, and made the gun sign with his hands, and pointed to me whilst motioning being shot in the head, before pulling out his real gun.

He'd jumped over the barrier effortlessly, and nobody moved to stop him, and you know why? Because nobody else saw him there. Because I was so damn deep in my own fucking head that I saw things that nobody else saw. And you know what I'd done? I had run from him. Hadn't moved to stop him at all. He could've killed everyone in that place, all the people that I loved, yet I still moved to save myself first. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

"He's good at what he does. I'm not going to prescribe a sleep medication for him, because, as few people realize, they deprive you of REM sleep, which is what he needs to catch up on. But if he continues to struggle with this, then they might be a good starter to help him sleep on his own." His voice sounded distant, far away in the fog that I was stranded in. I tuned out their voices completely, about ready to curl up and fall asleep on that skinny hospital bed, with that crinkly white paper as my blanket.

I stayed like that, in a half-asleep daze, until I felt Blair's hand on my back, saying "Rye, we can leave now." He kept it there as he guided me out the door. I stuck close to him as he filled out the paper for me to leave – In my opinion, A&E was way too full of those. You couldn't come or go without somebody having to document how many times you fucking blinked during your visit there.

I didn't want to go back to the others, sort of like a shy child hiding behind their mother's legs. I was ashamed that they knew I broke down, embarrassed that it was not clear to everyone that I wasn't as brave or as strong as they thought I was.

The ride back to the flat was silent expect for Blair telling us that we'd be going on a break for two weeks after this – That we'd been given tomorrow to clean and pack up, but that there was no use fighting against it, that we all needed it – But I knew that it was mostly because of me.

I managed to stay awake until we arrived back – But my legs felt like lead as I dragged myself up the stairs, and I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.