For a moment, I’m not entirely sure that I’m not still in bed, having a nightmare. Alexandre is on the floor in front of the sink, his back to it, a huge shard of glass on the floor next to him. His arms are flopped out on either side of him, and in the dim moonlight, I can see black pooling out around him, bleeding out from his wrists onto the tile floor.
Oh my fucking god!
I’m motionless, entirely unsure of what to do. Then somehow, I feel myself propelled forward, as if by something outside myself.Alexandre is dying,I think, and some instinct pushes me to go to him, crouching down. There’s no doubt of what’s happened, that he’s slit his wrists and is bleeding out in front of me, and I hesitate.What do I do?
I could try to call for help, although I’m unsure of how to do that here. But if I do, I’m not entirely sure I won’t be blamed for it. I have no identification, no way to prove who I am. I could be accused of hurting him.
I won’t be able to get back to Georgie, then.
I’m not sure that there’s even time for that. The bleeding looks significant, and I have no idea how long he’s been here. Panic floods through me as I leap to my feet, grasping for dish towels, napkins, and anything I can find on the counters. I kneel back down, wrapping them tightly around his wrists in an effort to staunch the flow of blood.
The following minutes feel like they’re happening in a dream, outside of myself. I wrap his wrists and forearms tightly, leaving him there for a moment as I flee to the downstairs bathroom, looking for a first-aid kit. With one in hand, I manage to wrap his forearms better, bandaging them tightly in an effort to slow the blood even more. I change out the towels wrapped around his arms once, and then when it looks like the blood is slowing—whether from my efforts or because he’s dying, I can’t be sure—I start to try to move him.
I know it’s foolish. I know I could hurt him more, but I don’t know what else I can do.I can’t leave him here to bleed out,I think dizzily, and I almost laugh at myself, because I feel half-crazy.
No one knows I’m here. I could run. I could leave him here and try to go home.But even as I say it, I know it’s impossible. I have no money, no passport, and no way of getting out of France. Kaito knows I’m here. If Alexandre dies, he might find out and blame me. He might think I did it to try to escape.If I go home, and he tries to hunt me down, it’ll put Georgie in danger.
I don’t know what was going on between Alexandre and Kaito, who Kaito really is, or why Kaito would gift him something like me. I don’t understand any of it, but I know I’m in far over my head, and that if I run, I’m not sure I can go home. I’m not sure of anything.
I’m not sure I can leave a man here to die, no matter what he’s done to me.
I have no idea what I’m doing as I try to tend to Alexandre. Somehow I manage to get him into the bed on his back, and I strip his sweater off, trying not to look too closely at his muscled, dark-haired chest. I try not to think of earlier, of the feverish heat behind me as he’d stroked himself while I bent over the bed, and to be honest, all of that feels so far away now. It doesn’t really feel as if it happened just earlier today.
I don’t know if I’m helping or hurting as I dig through the first-aid kit, cleaning Alexandre’s wounds, wiping away the blood, wrapping layers upon layers of gauze around the wounds, and taping them. As I do it, I notice something else—a healed and scarred wound in one shoulder and, in the other, another wound, still half-healed and greenish around the edges. It looks like what I imagine a bullet wound might be, and I remember the healed, scarred wounds on his knees that I’d seen, that look very much like the one on his other shoulder.
“What happened to you?” I whisper as I work on the wounds on his arms. “What could possibly have happened?”
Even after everything he’s done, my heart aches at the idea that he might have tried to kill himself. I can’t imagine the depths of grief and pain that could drive someone to such a thing, to wipe out all other possibilities. Even in my father’s illness, I’d never seen anything as violent as that scene in the kitchen, the floor drenched in blood. I look down at Alexandre, his face pale and waxy, and I see nothing of the man who tried to hurt me earlier tonight. I feel that wave of pity again, the desire to somehow help him.
All I can see in him now is a man hurt so severely that he can’t stop himself from taking it out on others, a man who felt the only way hecouldstop was to remove himself from the world altogether.
When I’ve bandaged him up as best as I can, I clean up the remnants of the first-aid kit, setting it aside in case I need it again or for when his bandages need to be changed—if he makes it that long. I hesitate to leave him, unsure if hewillmake it through the night. It feels wrong to let him die alone, if that’s the inevitable end to this.
He tried to do just that,the small insistent voice in my head whispers.Maybe you should let him.
I push it away, moving to the other side of the bed instead. I lean against the pillows next to him, looking at his handsome, still face in the moonlight. Some of his dark hair has fallen into his face, and I reach out, gently shifting it to one side the way I’d dreamed he’d done to me earlier—if it was a dream at all. It occurs to me that he might have come into my room before he went to the kitchen to say goodbye while I slept, and my chest aches at the thought.
I know he must regret what he did. The sight of him crumpled on the floor sobbing was enough to tell me that. I don’t know if that’s enough forme, though—if it’s enough to forgive all I’ve been through since I came here. He’s clearly lost something or someone along the way that broke him—but so have I. I’ve lost a great deal, and I have no idea how I’ll get it back.
When I peer down at the bandaging on his arms in the dim light, it doesn’t appear as if the wounds are bleeding through. I relax a little, watching his pale face and his chest for signs of breathing. He’s alive for now, and I feel a wave of exhaustion settle over me, a reminder that I was woken up in the middle of the night, after not very much sleep.
If I'm being honest with myself, I’m a little afraid to fall asleep. The idea of waking up next to a dead man creeps me out more than a little, and I still feel unsure that Alexandre is going to make it to sunrise. I’ve never seen a dead body before—my father had passed and the home nurse had arranged to have his body transported before I made it home from work that day—and the idea of waking up next to one feels even more horrifying. But I don’t want to leave him.
Slowly, I stretch out on the bed next to him, not touching but close enough that I can feel his warmth. I lay my head against the pillows, facing him, and before I can stop myself, I reach out to carefully twine the tips of my fingers with his.
“Don’t die,” I whisper, leaving just my fingertips touching his hand nearest me. “You’re not allowed to die like this. Not when I don’t even know how I can get home.”
The last sentence feels a little selfish, but it’s how I feel. He’s not freeing me by doing this, if that’s what he thought—just leaving me in a different kind of prison with no easy way out. If he wants to let me go, he needs to do that—and give me a means by which to go back home.
His hand is still just warm enough to let me know there’s life left in him, and I close my eyes. I’ve never slept in a bed with a man before, and it feels strange for this to be the first time, next to one who is just this side of a corpse.
All of this, every moment I’ve spent in his house, has felt like a strange fever dream. And now, I feel strongly that one way or another, it’s coming to a close.
When I fall asleep, strangely enough, I don’t dream. And when I finally do wake, it’s to sunlight streaming through the windows, and Alexandre still lying next to me. Bleary-eyed, I lean towards him, trying to see if he’s still breathing. It’s hard to tell, and I reach out, pressing my fingers against his throat to try and find a pulse.
There’s something there. It’s faint, but I feel a flicker of life, his heartbeat continuing despite everything. And as my hand presses against his cool skin, his eyes suddenly flicker open, hazy and blue in the morning light.
“Noelle?”