Do Not Make This Harder

"Anyways. I just ordered some food, in case you're hungry. Meds, gauze, and all that stuff Ezra gave you are on the nightstand. Tell me when you need anything until then."

With these words, he turned around and went back into the other room. He seemed like he needed a few minutes for himself, and she would not take that from him. 

With a silent sigh, she slowly laid back down and stared at the ceiling.

A murder without a proven motive, a frenzied beast running around attacking people, never to be seen again. Nothing made sense to her. And it frustrated the hell out of her.

The doorbell ripped her out of her spiraling thoughts a while later. She could hear how Ethan went to the entrance and briefly talked to somebody, then came back to the living room with what sounded like the rustle of plastic bags. Her stomach growled when she smelled the food. It was the first time this day that she felt the inevitable hunger she was supposed to feel many hours ago.

She slowly peeled herself out of the blanket and thought about how to proceed best to get out of the bed without triggering any extra pain than the one she was already in.

"Going on an adventure by yourself?" Ethan stood at the door to the bedroom, his eyebrow raised. "People who don't want any help, even if they need it are a mystery to me." He shook his head but one side of his face drew upwards into a smile. "Come on now, dinner is ready." 

He came closer, held out his hand, and made sure she got out of bed and to the couch as comfortable as possible. "I did not know what you want, so I ordered a bit of everything." The couch table was full of different take-out boxes of food. 

"Are you trying to feed a family of four?" she jested but was again surprised by the amount of food the man next to her would wolf down in the upcoming half hour.

"Say...", she spoke after they had eaten. Ethan had put away the empty containers and made his way back to the couch. 

"You and the Doc seem to know each other well. He told me you two went back a lifetime or something?" Victoria curiously glanced over to Ethan who had sat down and leaned into the backrest, arms crossed behind his head. She already knew that he had moved here, just like he had told her back then on the porch. If they went back so many years, they must have known each other before. 

Ethan closed his eyes for a second and huffed with amusement. "Ezra told you? Yes. I knew him since I was a kid. He was the one that dragged me all the way here." He opened one eye and looked at her. "Fuck, he was barely an adult when he started taking care of me. Took me in, and finished his degree over in Alaska while I somehow struggled my way through high school. We made it work." He shrugged his shoulders, then stretched out his arms over his head. Victoria, who had followed the story with genuine interest, shuffled around on the couch to get into a more comfortable position. Her side hurt but she wanted to know more about him and who he was.

"Let's talk about this another day, hm?" he then said to her disappointment and handed her the tv remote with a small wink. She nodded, happy that the topic was not all the way off the table, and browsed around to find a movie. After carefully curating and hoping to meet his taste, she chose an action movie classic and sank back into the big couch.

They did not talk, but she did not mind it. The last twenty-four hours had been disastrous and she was just glad to have company.

Still, every once in a while she glanced over to him, watching his face illuminate softly in the flickering light of the tv. His eyes seemed dull, tired even and the normally so perfectly set few day's growth of beard looked a little wilder than usual. It seemed like he had been through a long and sleepless night himself. Victoria had been so focused on her own issues, that she started feeling bad for not asking him how he was been feeling.

While she had lost herself in thought, staring at him, he turned his head and locked eyes with her. "You okay?" he asked and ran his hand through his hair. 

"Yeah," she replied softly, smiling the faint smile she had left in her, "I think I'll go to sleep and let you get some rest too. I kept you up long enough." She slowly pushed herself up from the backrest and quietly winced when the pain of the cracked rib took her breath away. 

"Don't worry about me. Just concentrate on getting well," he reassured and got up on his feet to help her up. Her wince had not gone unnoticed, as he carefully but determined scooped her up to carry her over to the bedroom.

"You did not take your pills, did you," he drily commented, probingly looking down at her in his arms. "Do me the favor to not make this harder on yourself than it has to be."

"Sorry," she mumbled and did not meet his gaze. The last thing she wanted to do is to act ungrateful after all he had done for her.

So she did take the painkillers after he had set her down on the bed and watched him leave the room. The thump on the couch and the continuing silence reassured her, that he had fallen asleep the moment he had laid down.

Her night was bad. Every cell in her body yearned for her to sleep, but she could not. A million thoughts in her head kept her awake. When she finally managed to shut everything out and dozed off, it was either chaotic fragments of dreams that woke her up, or her injuries reminded her to best not move at all. 

When she finally decided to take another load of pills she fell asleep for good.

When she opened her eyes again, the sun was already shining through the window. Victoria knew that something was wrong when she felt an increasingly stabbing pain in her side. She had full-on laid on the wound and only now slowly rolled over on her back. Bracing herself for a moment, she slowly pulled the blanket off her and saw the grey hoodie she was still wearing tainted in a faint red.

"Shit," she quietly brought out and sat up. A couple of careful movements later and she peeled herself out of her hoodie. The tape and gauze on her side had loosened and revealed parts of the freshly stitched and gnarly-looking wounds. Now that she was assessing the extent of it she swallowed and just stared down on herself for a while, pulling the rest of the bloody dressing off in measured movements. 

It seemed like one stitch had loosened, but the rest were still in place. With one hand she fished for the box of fresh materials. 

"Geez, why is everything so goddamn hard?" she mumbled frustratedly and rummaged through the things Ethan had left her on the nightstand. Cleaning up the blood from her skin alone proved to be an unbearable challenge and left her frantically scraping on her aching, discolored skin, tears slowly welling up in her eyes. She hated breakdowns, but she knew she was way past the point of denying her plain desperation.