Chapter 264 : The good and the brave... made him cry.

Mi

Emmet hesitated at the door as he watched my broken body lied on the floor being pelted with the jets of water. His expression was pained as he fought with himself for the best way to react. He wanted to help me but he didn’t know how which left us all at a loss. I needed him to take over, to stop things, to put on the bandages that would heal much more than the physical wounds.

“Can I come In?” He asked his voice as strained as his face, he sounded almost angry as he watched me unravel.  I sobbed harder against the floor and brought my head up and banged them against the tiles. It was a basic instinct to make the images go away. If I damaged the part of my brain that remembered them and felt them with such intensity… then I would feel… well hopefully I would be dead.

“No, no Mi, I’m sorry I can’t let you do that,” Emmet said reacting to the head banging as he kicked off his shoes and came over to where I laid on the floor and turned off the water before sitting down next to me. He remained silent for a few more second before he growled “fuck it” under his breath and easily scoped my body up from a lying position and into his arms. I coiled myself in as close as I could get to him not even able to care how the blood from my nose would ruin his cloths or how the whole bathroom smelt funny after the smell of my vomit mixed with the steam of the shower. Nothing perturbed him when it came to the feelings and the heath of others. Everyone would have understood if he allowed the hopeless situation’s to knock him on his ass. Everyone would look the other way if he left the ECA and didn’t come back but he wouldn’t. He cared more than that.

“My nose is bleeding,” I cried scared at every little thing that was happening to me. “I feel really sick .. and … and… I can’t stop shaking.”

“Your body’s stressed and it reacting to that in any way it knows how. I know it feels horrible but it might be helpful to think about it from a physical point of view. Your flight or fight instinct was triggered and your body reacted by getting you ready to do either by sending in adrenalin which makes your heart beat faster and your breathing to get quicker, this also increases your blood pressure and that is why you have a nose bleed; there are a lot of very tiny blood vessels there that are easy to rupture. Adrenalin also explains the shaking and the feeling sick and anything else that happened you feel worried or embarrassed about.” I guess he was talking about the fact that I had wet myself before throwing my guts up.

I nodded before wiping the blood from my nose. In my hands and watching as it dripped of the end of my fingers and onto the showers floor. I was thankful for his patience and understanding. It would have been so easy for him to laugh at me or to walk away and not come back. He didn’t need to be here. In the ECA I would have been considered safe anyway. I loved him for his effort but his words were not enough to ease the embarrassment… but he was something to hold onto even though everything was falling apart. I snuggled in close to him further letting his heat sooth the rapid beating of my heart.

“The steam won’t be helping your nose to stop bleeding. It stoops the blood from clotting. So could we get you back out into the other room and sort that out. You can come and have a shower after the bleeding has stooped if you want, then at 12 you have an appointment with Doctor Jordan in his office. I think the aim is to try and get you out of the ECA today and possibly off one to one observations, of course that is his choice though but I will be meeting him a few minutes early to discuss my thoughts with him. I think Jacob will be there too and Esmee has written her thoughts down.”

I cringed at the thought of Jacob knowing as much as Emmet did. Jacob was the opposite of what Emmet was, A human being first and a nurse second. Crystal was exactly the right choice for Jacob as was Esmee for Emmet. There coldness and solid heart made anyone feel inferior and that was what they enjoyed. It wasn’t the caring that made them love their job, it was the power that came with it. They chose what happened to people and enforced it with plastic card keys, verbal demands and physical force. Jacob would ask for the opposite of Emmet and Esmee wishes because he could, my safety meant little to him.

“Come on Mi, let’s get you sorted,” Emmet announced giving me no time to tell him that I didn’t want to move from the shower, or support my own weight, or to let go of my monster grip on his t shirt that was now covered in my blood before he got to his feet. I instantly went after him like my body was pulled on a string. I wasn’t sure right then how to survive without him, I would have followed him anywhere. He seemed to be making the demons a bit more bearable then my head trying to cope alone.

“Sit down on the mattress for me Mi and just hold this tissue to your nose for a bit. It should stop on its own, if not I will go and get an ice pack in a bit to help it along its way.”  

 “I am sorry about all of this you know,” I said gently after Emmet sat down on the mattress next to me, spreading his colossally long legs out in front of him. “There are no words to describe how sorry I am to be doing this to you.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong. I would ask you not to use me as a weapon to hurt yourself again because I hate to think of me hurting anyone but other that I don’t think I need an apology from you. I think you have been very distressed and said some distressing things but that isn’t bad. I think it’s a result from being human and having some things happen to you that are just awful. We are creatures of emotion we can feel intensely. I believe that sometime such intensity is a bad thing, but that dose not mean you have done something bad. Do you what I mean?”

I nodded slowly. I know what he meant but I didn’t really feel that way. I remembered what I said to him. I knew how it would have made him feel. “I was testing you,” I said gently, “in a way. I wanted to know if you would, hurt me, if you would still be able to touch me or even look at me if you knew about some of those things inside my head. I know you would never rape me or play games like that, but… it would make sense to me if you did. I could understand that. I could probably even forgive you. Does that make me terrible?”

Emmet shook his head and gripped his hand tightly into the mattress while wiping his face roughly with the other. He then turned to look at me with a smile on his face even though his eye where sparkling and there was a ring of moisture around them.  

“You’re not terrible honey, Emmet said in a gulp before he stopped and looked away again. “You’re good and brave… I’ve got to go for a bit OK.” His voice broke on the last words before he slapped both his hands on the mattress and got to his feet making a beeline for the door. I just heard a faint sob and saw his shaking shoulders as it clicked closed behind him.