We're Coming Home Now

this story contains mentions of blood, eating disorder, ocd, & hospitals.

Silas remembered the bright white lights after everything went black on the side of the road as he bled out. He remembered the cold, the pain, and then nothing. Now he was here, waking up in his childhood bed in his mothers’ house. Weird. He looked down at himself, seeing no mark of that night. Was it all a bad nightmare? He should be dead, yet here he was. Then, he thought of Astrid, his little sister hurt, her face so clearly still in his mind when she held him, soaked in blood. He threw the covers off and stood, getting up and running to her bedroom a few doors down. It was pristine, nothing showing that she had been there. “Astrid?” he asked. It felt like there was no one here, not even a sign of them, yet this was unmistakably his home.

Home.

Yet, this still wasn’t fully home, this wasn’t his apartment, this was where he grew up. He thought for a moment: is this what death was? Being back in the place where you felt the most safe? He walked down the hall. The house was quiet, too quiet. He couldn’t remember the last time the Berry home wasn’t bustling with people and life. That was his favorite thing growing up, the rise and fall of their home, the family dinners, the fights over the TV remote, and the hours where everyone returned to their respective bedrooms to do something quietly when his eldest sister, Saskia, needed a break from the noise and stimulation, a break that he found he needed also even though he didn’t fully know why at the time. The quiet was unsettling. His bare feet were cold on the hardwood floors, his finger trailing the wall. As he passed through, his fingers glided over photos throughout the years, family smiling in every one, old school photos, graduation photos, even ones from a time he wished he didn’t put his family through.

He made it to the living room, finding the photos on the end table next to the couch. One of them was him with his high school volleyball team, trophy held above their heads. There was a huge smile on his face, but the look in his eyes told a different story. Silas winced at the thought. He didn’t like to remember that time. That look held so much fear and pain. One where he was there physically, but he wasn’t there mentally. Mentally he was lost in a spiral of thoughts. He shivered, back in those moments again, and he fell onto the couch. He remembered this day, feeling so elated about winning, for him and for the team, but he remembered as he raised that trophy, he wasn’t thinking about his achievements, he was thinking about what he could’ve done better, that that night after they all partied, he’d run ten miles on a treadmill. He had convinced himself that they won because he had run twelve miles the day before the game and pushed himself near the brink of exhaustion, and if he didn’t, they would not have won, he wouldn’t be an asset to the team. He would not have succeeded.

This had been at the height of his eating disorder. Every meal, every second he wasn’t working out, he was a failure, he would die alone and unneeded. In the back of his mind he knew it was irrational, but he couldn’t get himself to believe that, it had become a beast in itself, something that controlled him more than he had control of it. A few months later he’d be in the hospital with a broken ankle and a long awaited breakdown, followed by an inpatient stay at an eating disorder treatment program. He knew that he couldn’t control some of it, but he still hated that he put his family through that.

He put the photo down, standing back up. “Momma? Umma?” he called out, as if they would answer, but the silence was deafening. The silence made him feel like a child again, crying in their arms when he told them he was struggling, when he would spend hours crying when his therapist worked with him to refuse a compulsion. Sobbing, begging for them to let him do it, that he needed to, that if he didn’t, something bad would happen. And they just held him tight. He was scared. He wished that he had the comfort of their hugs.

He walked into the kitchen. The table was perfect, and that was even more jarring. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw the surface of the table like this for more than an hour. If it wasn’t covered by Umma’s research for her next book, it was covered with Momma’s art supplies, or Saskia’s medical books, or Zara’s nail polish, or his and Elara’s homework, or Astrid’s CDs. Silas walked over, settling himself into his normal seat, one he almost never moved from, feeling comfort in it, as if him sitting down would bring his family here.

This seat saw so much through the years, it saw happiness with family dinners, starting regularly when he got home from inpatient to help him feel safe to eat and hold him accountable. It saw the craziness of their mothers scolding him and Elara for throwing peas at each other like children. It saw Zara coming home after leaving her ex, safe with them again. It saw the day that Astrid completed their family, his youngest sister, sixteen when she was adopted. More happiness when Saskia told everyone about her girlfriend, Caliphe, and then when she brought her to dinner for the first time. It saw when Kiri joined their family and another baby was seated at the table again.

This seat also saw episodes of anger and fear when Silas was too anxious and out of control to eat, and he couldn’t run because of his ankle, because he was supposed to be getting better, because the only way for him to get it away was shove it across the table like a child. If he couldn’t run it off, he didn’t have the appetite to force it down. This seat saw his tears as he struggled to sit there for an hour after meals, trying to distract himself with homework instead of getting rid of the food he ate. The sobbing episodes he had when his mothers found out he wasn’t taking his meds once because after getting a stomach bug. He had convinced himself that the meds were contaminated, and they put them in front of him to try and get him to take them. This led to a new med that he still takes to this day, one that actually turned out to help better. He remembered the first time taking them, how his brain was so quiet, finally manageable. This table, sturdy and trustworthy. It saw a lot, but most of all, it saw the love the Berrys had for each other.

In that moment, he felt a pang in his abdomen, a pain, and he touched where he should be missing flesh. Suddenly he was back to that night. Silas screamed in pain, collapsing off the chair. His brain flashed between his home and that night. Everything hurt, everything felt fuzzy. It was like shocks were being sent through his system. He was in his home, he was staring up at Astrid, he was on the floor next to the table, he was reaching for his sister. A back and forth. She was safe, she had to be safe. The flashes lasted for a minute, and he was back in the quiet.

It left a dull ache in his body as he was registering more and more that this was wrong. He needed to get to her, to his little sister. To the girl that fought off their attacker. To the little girl he used to help with her homework, who he used to ask teachers about to make sure she was doing okay. To the girl he used to call down to his office to check on her and drive her to and from school. To the one he screamed like a maniac for at her graduation in the staff section. This wasn’t his home, his home was with her and his other siblings, and his mothers. He put a palm on the floor, pushing himself up, groaning in pain as he did. He ripped open the front door of the house, and instead of the outside, he stepped into the bustling halls of hospital.

He watched as nurses bustled around, nurses that he knew through his sisters, Elara and Saskia. Who both worked here. These were nurses and doctors he would bring coffees for when his sisters had long shifts. He ran through the halls in search of Astrid, making his way to the ICU. At the desk, he found Grace, a surgical resident who worked with Saskia and his now sister-in-law, Caliphe. She looked a bit worse for wear. “Grace!” he yelled, running up to her, “Have you seen Astrid? Saskia? Caliphe?” She didn’t reply, in fact, it didn’t seem like she even heard him at all. No one was looking at him. Grace looked exhausted, any other time, he’d be getting help by Caliphe’s brother, Ford, to bring all of them some coffees from Cool Beans Café. Instead, he watched as Atlas, another one of his sister’s co-workers, came up behind her, and handed her a cup of coffee.

“Grace, you should go home, shower, rest, you worked through some of the most major surgeries lately,” Atlas told the other. “No one would fault you if you passed his care off to the nurses for a bit. he’s been out of the woods, Jon doesn’t think he’s going to code again.”

“If this was Jon, or Lucas, or Kris, or hell, even Parker or Felicity, what would you do? What would Saskia do? Caliphe?” Grace asked. Atlas stayed silent, that was answer to her enough. Silas didn’t know Atlas much, but he knew Saskia and Caliphe, and they gave their all to their patients, and they wouldn’t let it go until they were all home, especially if it were one of their siblings. Grace readjusted herself, taking Atlas’ silence. “Exactly.”

“Then let me take over,” Atlas said. “At least for a few hours.”

Grace shook her head. “Astrid has a follow up on her wounds, you need to be there.”

“You’ve barely been home since they came in,” Atlas said.

Grace raised her eyebrows, “Did Zenobia snitch on me to you?”

Atlas raised his hands, “Fine, but the offer stands whenever.” That, Silas saw coming. Atlas was never one for conflict and Grace was stubborn as a horse. “I gotta get in there though anyway. After my shift, I’m going to drop by Saskia and Caliphe’s and drop off some more food.”

“Can you just check on his vitals while you’re in there?” Grace asked.

Atlas nodded. “Yeah, I got you.”

Silas followed Atlas to wherever he was going, hoping it would lead him to Astrid. If he was here, maybe that meant she was okay too, even though Silas still wasn’t sure what he was right now. Stuck in a place between reality and death. He got to the room, glass walls to be able to see in at the other and he stopped in his tracks. There he was, on a bed in the ICU, he would think he was sleeping peacefully if it weren’t for the tubes that were connected to him. So… he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t sure he was alive either. Next to his bed sat Astrid, she could barely look at him, but she was there. She was alive. She looked like she’s barely slept and like she’s been through hell, but she was alive. He watched as Atlas bent down next to the chair she was sitting in and held out some water and what looked like jello, giving her what looked to be a sincere statement of needing to eat and drink something. She must be on a liquid diet because of her own abdominal injuries. He sighed, she should be resting, not watching over him. The look on her face, sent Silas into a panic. His brain started to spin. He was doing this, he was putting his family through all this pain.

Again.

How could he do this to them all again? He was the problem, he always was. He was a teenager again, letting everything else take over. He was trying to be brave constantly, but always failing, always making everything worse. Silas heard beeping, and everything was back to that night again. It pulled between watching Atlas usher Astrid out of the room as nurses and Grace ran in to help whatever machine was making that noise. He was on the road again, watching with pride as Astrid tore the attacker off of him, as she fought for the both of them. He was back in the hospital watching as his mothers gathered around Astrid, watching through the glass in horror as Grace spouted directions. He was back on the road again, feeling cold but no pain, he was here with his family. He was back in the hospital, watching as they were pulling the tube out from his throat. Why were they pulling the tube out? He watched them replace it with just a cannula.

He collapsed to the ground, he couldn’t breathe, he was panicking. He was dying, dying, dying. For one moment he thought, he could just let it happen. He could give into this instinct of never taking a breath without the tube. Just give up, and something told him, just give up. He would never be perfect, he was poison to his family. He watched as Elara and Zara joined his mothers and Astrid. Then… he thought, where was Saskia? Then, he remembered this was her hospital, her safe place. It wouldn’t be that after. Silas saw they had each other though, his family. He knew that Saskia had Caliphe and Kiri.

Silas was back on the road watching as the red and blue lights flashed, saving him and Astrid. Saving him. A memory flooded his brain, he wasn’t sure from where, a woman’s voice saying, “You don’t get to quit on her, not tonight.” He looked at a blurry version of Astrid. He wasn’t going to quit on her. His brain actively fought against him, but he knew he was strong. He wasn’t going to quit. He gave into the beeping.

The world went to white and nothing. Then, he took a breath, and another, a soreness running down his throat. Then there was pain, just all consuming pain with each small movement. He fought against the darkness trying to consume him, fluttering open heavy eyelids. He saw the face of Grace first, watching as she took a sigh of relief. “There are those brown eyes,” she said with a smile as he fought through the fear. He struggled to speak, it coming out jumbled. “It’s okay, it’s okay Silas, you’re safe.”