“Mike!” I called out as we rushed in and up to the desk. “Have you seen Lila Palmer today?”

“Lila? No, she hasn’t come down yet,” he replied, a bit bewildered by our entrance.

I began to shake, Andrew had begun pacing, and Caroline was biting at her fingernails. None of those were good signs.

“Can you ring up and see if she answers?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Thorne.”

He let it ring nine times before hanging up and shaking his head.

“We need your help. Lila didn’t show up to work and her car is still here. We’re unable to reach her by phone and we’re worried there’s something very wrong. We need to get into her apartment and make sure she’s okay; can you help us with that?”

“Well, we do have keys for emergencies,” he said, his voice shaking and his jaw tense – making it obvious he was now infected with the same worry that plagued us.

“This is definitely an emergency.” My voice cracked with the force of emotions.

Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. My inner beast that had been silent, brooding, was whimpering and pacing.

Please, please, be all right.

Mike unlocked a hidden safe behind the desk and pulled out a bundle of brass keys. Andrew wouldn’t stop pushing on the elevator button, all in hopes it would get there sooner, and when it finally did, we all rushed in.

The soft elevator music could not dissolve the building tension as we climbed up to the twelfth floor. Mike was out first, and we followed behind to Lila’s door, anxiously awaiting him to unlock it.

I was trembling, my stomach knotted. I felt like I was on edge and afraid of what we would find on the other side.

The door swung open and we burst through, all of us calling out for her.

“Lila!” I rushed toward the family room. In my peripheral I watched Andrew head right toward the kitchen and Caroline make straight for Lila’s bedroom.

I stared after Caroline and a few seconds later her voice broke the fear. “In here!”

I stood frozen, afraid of what I was about to see. It shattered when I watched Andrew run out of the kitchen.

I rushed after him, my eyes frantic in their search for her as I entered the threshold.

The sight before me caused my knees to go weak, my legs threatening to give out, and my balance shifted my weight backwards into the door frame, my hands grasping it for support to keep me from falling.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no! No!

Please! Please, Lila, please!

No, no! Please be okay, please be okay!

My mind was frantic, begging for hope.

Lying on the floor near the foot of the bed was Lila; her hips were twisted, shoulders against the floor, arms splayed, head tilted to the side. She was naked, just as I had left her the night before.

Her pale skin showed the deep bruises of my body’s assault on hers. I had been too hard, too rough, too much. I was out of control, and I knew it.

The world stopped – everything stopped – when I reached her eyes. Her beautiful gray-green eyes were open, the lids unable to close. They were glazed over, empty, flat, void.

Images of a night years before, another set of eyes, flooded my mind.

Empty.

Void.

Dead.

My stomach turned, and I propelled my body to the adjoining bathroom to heave into the toilet. I hadn’t eaten so only bile and acid were expelled; my stomach retching to purge my mind.

My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t hear anything that Caroline and Andrew had said from the moment I saw her lying on the ground.

Caroline’s voice erupted, breaking through. “Mike, call 911! Oh, Lila!”

“Is she breathing? Please say she’s breathing!” Andrew begged.

“She is! Lila? Can you hear me? Lila?”

I wiped my mouth and walked back into the bedroom where my Lila laid alive, but unresponsive.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” Andrew roared before his fist collided with my jaw.

I stumbled back against the wall. His hand grabbed at my suit and brought me back up to face him.

“This is what you f**king said to her?” He held up the letter I’d left her. “I thought you understood her. I thought you cared for her. You f**king destroyed her!” He looked at me with absolute contempt and his tone was murderous. “You f**king stay away from her. You don’t talk to her, you don’t f**king look at her.” For a moment I got a reprieve from his animosity as he turned to look at Lila’s lifeless form. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“It’s better this way,” I whispered as Caroline covered her body.

“Like f**king hell it is! She was getting better, we could all see it. That was your doing. You were healing her. Now…she’s barely functioning.”

My stomach clenched again, my breath catching. “I warned her from the beginning. I begged her to go. I hurt her, Andrew.”

“You did this to her. She trusted you. You know what happened to her and you just confirmed everything they ever told her. You knew how broken she was and you went and f**king crushed her. You were healing her, and now? She may not recover from this.” He was seething, glaring down at me, his nostrils flared.

The room remained quiet after Andrew stopped yelling at me. We waited on pins and needles for the paramedics to come and take her away. I couldn’t drive, and Andrew wanted nothing to do with me so he grabbed Lila’s keys and took her car, while Caroline shoved me into my car and drove us. We arrived at the hospital not long after the ambulance.

Since I wasn’t family they wouldn’t tell me a thing no matter how many people I cursed, yelled and spat at. It was a nightmare, one from which I was afraid I might never wake up.

Sometimes it was good when members of your family worked at a hospital, but sometimes it wasn’t. The times when you screwed up and destroyed a beautiful woman – there they were without invitation.

My mother looked at me with such pity, while my father looked disappointed.

We’d been there about an hour when a familiar form was walking down the hall toward us.

“Darren?”

“Nathan?” Darren Morgenson, my therapist and friend, wrapped his arms around me in a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I f**ked up.” The words slipped out, because that was all that was going through my head.

He pulled back and studied my face. “What are you talking about?”