Rion was caught in a whirlwind of movement and people.

After Jesse brought him back to his room, there was complete chaos until they moved him. Even the move to his new room wasn’t much better. Everyone treated the situation so seriously. He couldn’t do anything to stop the whirlwind around him and his protests fell on deaf ears.

There wasn’t a window in the new room and the only furniture was a bed which had a frame molded into the floor. He wasn’t tied up or restrained, but he wasn’t given anything sharp and there was a nurse in the room with him. He’d been told several times that there was security just outside the door.

Dr. Maes came to see him, then his dad. Rion didn’t have much to say to either of them. He didn’t feel ready to talk. He tried to give some weak assurances, tried to lie, fake a smile and tell them that he was okay and just had a little overreaction. No one believed him. His dad hugged him and cried for a long time.

Rion felt the worst about that.

But then it got late. He slept and woke the next day.

He forced himself to eat what they brought for breakfast. It was a mistake. He threw up. Then he felt disgusting and embarrassed that someone had to come in and clean up after him.

Rion didn’t understand why Jesse dragged him down from the roof.

Jesse should want him dead, right? He should have been fine with it. He should have understood. Why would he want someone like Rion out in the world, living his life like everyone else? All he had to do was boost Rion onto the ledge and walk away.

Jesse said to live with it… Maybe he thought Rion deserved to suffer more? There was some truth to that, but it would be easier for everyone if he was gone.

If Rion could get out of the hospital, he supposed he could throw himself at Eric. Things were muddied with Sarina, but Eric and Kyle were something else. They would jump at the chance to hurt him. He just had to piss them off enough, to make them hurt him more than normal. It would be like adding gasoline to a fire.

But that was assuming he could get out of the hospital. It didn’t seem like it was going to happen any time soon.

He didn’t have a way to fix anything. He kept screwing everything up. He couldn’t do the right thing. He couldn’t make anyone happy.

He couldn’t do anything else for Noa.

Rion couldn’t see Noa. He couldn’t talk to him. He could only hope the others wouldn’t tell him Amber had been pregnant. He didn’t think they would, but he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. It was out of his control.

At least everyone could hate Rion now. It was obvious how horrible he was. Even if they found out about what Noa did, about how Amber slipped, Rion still did something worse than that. As horrible as he was, he’d given Noa one final piece of protection.

They couldn’t hate Noa. He’d made sure of that.

So…

That was it.

Rion couldn’t do anything else. He was out of options. All he could do was sit and see nurses and doctors and be sick over breakfast.

When Dr. Maes stopped by, Rion didn’t want to see her. But he didn’t see the point of turning her away either. Fighting was useless, so he resigned himself to discomfort.

“Hello, Rion,” she said, taking a seat next to him on the bed. She didn’t even risk bringing an extra chair with her. “Are you up for a chat?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

He’d taken to picking at his bandages. They’d wrapped him up even better than last time. He didn’t pull anything off again, even though he wanted to see his scar and stitches. Now more than ever.

It was a reminder of Noa. And he didn’t know when he would see Noa again.

“Should I come back later?” Dr. Maes asked.

Rion shook his head. “There’s no point.”

“Your comfort is the point,” Dr. Maes told him. “If you’re not ready to talk, then you’re not ready. That's why our last talk was so short.”

“It’s not that I’m not ready. We just want different things.”

“I want you to get better, to feel better. You don’t want that?”

“I don’t think it’s possible.”

Dr. Maes was silent for a moment and then asked, “Do you want to talk about what happened on the roof?”

“Not really,” Rion said. Then he thought about it. “It was really nice up there. It was too cold, but… The view was great.”

“You can see the whole town from up there,” Dr. Maes said.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can. It was… Yeah.”

Thinking about it made him emotional. Which was dumb, but he couldn’t help it. He blinked rapidly to stop any tears from building up.

“Last time, you told me you were overreacting,” Dr. Maes said. “Do you still feel that way?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I mean… Fine. I’m not okay. I can admit that. I’m fucked. But there’s no fixing it, and I… I don’t know what to do. I hate it.”

“What can’t be fixed?”

“Just… Everything.”

“That’s pretty vague. I think there’s a lot going on right now. We’ve had several conversations and I’m sure there’s some specific things that are bothering you.”

She was right. Rion told her pretty much everything. He told her that he was gay and it didn’t bother her. She didn’t find him gross or weird or anything like that. And it was…

It was really nice. He felt better around her than most people.

“I was told something I didn’t know,” Rion admitted.

“Who told you?”

“Peter… Well, Sarina too. But I don’t believe a word that comes out of her mouth. Peter confirmed it.”

“And what did they say?”

Rion closed his eyes, trying to stay composed. Just thinking about it made him miserable. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to make it any more real than it already was.

“Amber…” he started and heaved a breath. “Amber was pregnant. She was… And I… What I did was already so fucked, but… I didn’t know! I didn’t…”

Logically, he knew that even if he had known, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Would he have still put Amber in the tub with the blow dryer? Maybe. Maybe not. She’d been hurt really bad. He thought she was dead. And he’d been so scared for Noa.

But it made his skin crawl. It made him hate himself more than he already did. Because it didn’t matter that he didn’t know. He’d still done it.

“I knew.”

Rion blinked and looked up at Dr. Maes.

“You… What?” he said.

“I knew Amber was pregnant,” she said. “I’ve talked to the Murphys.”

“You… You knew this whole time?” Rion said.

“I did.”

Rion stared at her. He felt…strange. He was thrown off. It stung and left him feeling lost and sick, but…

She knew this whole time? And she didn’t hate him? She’d been so nice to him…

How?

“But… You get it, right?” Rion asked her, voice wavering. “You know that I’m… You know.”

“I know you’re Noa’s best friend and that you’d do anything for him,” Dr. Maes said. “Maybe you’d even do too much for Noa. But it comes from a good place. And I know that you loved Amber. I can tell. I know that you never meant to hurt her.”

“But I still did,” Rion said, vision swimming with tears. “I killed Amber. And I killed her baby. I… I’m horrible. I’m worse than horrible.”

“You did a bad thing,” Dr. Maes said. “You did an awful thing. And it hurts.”

“Don’t you think I deserve to die?” Rion asked.

“No, I don’t.”

“Why? I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“When you die, you leave people behind. You might not feel like they care, but they do. Your father would be devastated if he lost you. Noa would be heartbroken. All your friends would irreversibly hurt. When you take your own life, it always has an impact on other people.”

“But… But my dad would just go back to work, and… Noa doesn’t want me around anymore. The others hated me for six years, and… They wouldn’t care if I was gone.”

“You’re wrong.”

“How can you be so sure?” Rion asked, reaching up to scrub away the tears that escaped. “How can you know?”

“I talked to your father. He told me over and over that he didn’t know what he would do if something happened to you,” Dr. Maes said. “He’s very hurt. He’s very worried. He loves you a lot. He dropped everything to be here. And your friends… They can’t all come and see you, but I know they’ve visited as much as they can. They’re very worried too. And Noa has been asking after you since he first came here. He wants to see you more than anything.”

“But…” Rion began.

His words failed him. His thoughts were too jumbled. He wanted to deny it.

It couldn’t be true.

“Jesse saved your life,” Dr. Maes said. “He wants you to live. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“He said… He said I need to live with what I’ve done…” Rion said, voice wavering.

“Is he wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with it. I hate myself. It’s been really hard for so long…”

He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. He was miserable. He hated it. And to top it off, he began to feel so guilty. He began to feel like he was being a selfish jerk, feeling sorry for himself. Because he was, right? That’s what he was doing right now…

He shouldn’t complain. He should shut up and deal with it. It was his fault. That’s what he deserved.

He deserved to be hunted down by Sarina and her friends. He deserved to be called names and slurs. He deserved to be beat up. He deserved to be hated.

He didn’t deserve friends or comfort or any of that.

“Rion, can you do me a favour?” Dr. Maes asked.

It was a strange request, because of where he was and how things were. He blinked up at her, eyes damp and cheeks wet.

“What?” he said.

“I want you to tell me everything,” she said. “Just vent. Just let it all out. Because I think that you’ve been feeling a lot for a long time and you’ve been holding it all in. Do you think you could do that?”

“I don’t know where to start,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Start anywhere.”

“But I’d just be feeling sorry for myself.”

“Sometimes we have to feel sorry for ourselves. It doesn’t need to be all the time, just for a little bit. And sometimes when you talk about it, you realize why you’re upset. I think you should try.”

Rion wasn’t sure he should. He felt bad for it, guilty. But at the same time, he had ten million things to say. And Dr. Maes was safe. He could tell her. She knew everything anyway. Really, he would be repeating what she already knew.

He closed his eyes, clenching his hands into fists, taking a breath.

He opened his mouth and started to talk.