Hansel 4(11)

One second, he’s crouched there by the counter. The next, he’s moving, stepping through the glass and headed toward a glass-walled shower stall. I rush after him, grabbing a towel from a wall rack as I do, and tossing it on the floor. I walk over it, pull the shower door open, and find him in a corner, covering his head with both his arms and breathing in big tugs.

Shit, he’s hyperventilating.

I lunge for him, sink down on my shins, cup my hands around his mouth, and cover his lips with mine. I grip his head between my hands and hold his eyes with mine.

“I’m here. I’m here with you. I’m here. Leah is here.” His cloudy gaze clings to hers, and I’m wrenched by the desperation there as I chant, “Leah is here, baby. Leah is here.”

His body, so awfully taut and frozen, starts to tremble violently again, and the gasping starts anew. I press my lips against his cold ones. When his mouth opens, I open mine as well, so he’s sucking air out of my lungs. Even as the gasping sound quiets, his shaking seems to intensify. Gripping his upper arm, I rise on my heels and turn the shower on, pointing the showerhead across the way from us and setting it on HOT in the desperate chance the steam might stop his shaking.

Facts congeal inside my shocked brain: we’re in a bathroom I think; something terrible is going on; we shouldn’t have come here.

His hands, hanging in between his knees, are swollen and dripping blood. The blood gleams more than I think it should, and I realize with a splash of bile in the back of my throat that it’s because there’s glass all in them both.

I start to sob as I try to check him over, needing to see where there’s glass in him. Wondering how to know if he’s in shock or what is wrong.

“I don’t know what to do. Don’t want to hurt you. I think you need a doctor,” I cry. “Oh God.” I want to hold him, but I’m scared to touch his arms or hands. I grab his head and pull it to my chest. His shivers vibrate through the both of us.

“I’m sorry I told her. I’m sorry,” he gasps.

‘Sorry I told her’…?

A shiver rips through me. “Hansel, is this Mother’s room? Her dressing room?”

His big eyes hold mine, and he holds his hands up. “Pull the glass out. Pull it out!”

“Is it hurting you?” Of course it is!

“Pull it out, please. Please!”

“Okay! Hold on!” Out of the shower and back into the funhouse. I can’t tell one part of the room from another; all I see is shards of mirror everywhere. I start throwing cabinet doors open, and a second later, there it is again: the awful gasping. After a few doors, I see a small, red, plastic box and scoop it up, then dash across the room with no care for my feet, which are stinging by the time I’m back inside the shower with him. I’m greeted by his wide, wild eyes. “Liquor,” he gasps. “Cabinet.” He nods once at me, and I dash back to the cabinet where I found the kit. He’s right: I find a handle of Vodka there and almost fall carrying it back to him.

I open it and hold it to his mouth, spilling it all over both of us as I pour it in. He chokes and gasps.

“Sit down.” He shifts back into the corner, and I dump a bunch of vodka on my hands—something I remember from an old western movie.

I tear into the first aid kit and find some bandages. No tweasers or anything of the sort, so I grab his right arm at the elbow, ease it over my lap, and sob some more as I look into his eyes.

I don’t know how to get it out.

“I don’t know how.”

“Get it out,” he gasps. “It hurts.”

That’s all the incentive I need to start pulling the shards out of his hand. One, two, three, four… They clink on the tile, and blood drips faster all around me. He moans as I extract a dozen awful, gleaming slivers of the mirror and grit my teeth to keep from throwing up.

“I can’t get it all,” I cry.

He shuts his eyes and pulls the hand I’m working on away from me. With the other arm outstretched, he leans against the corner of the shower stall with his eyes shut. “More vodka,” he says in a voice that vibrates.

I bring it back to his lips, worried by how much his right hand is bleeding in his lap, worried by what the fuck happened in here. With his right arm raised, so that it hovers over his mouth, his eyes find mine. “You can go. Can you? Leave me here,” he rasps.

“No way. No. Come with me.” I grip his shoulder. “We need to leave. I love you, Luke. I will never leave you. Just get up and come with me.”

He starts to shake so violently again. He’s holding out his left hand now. It sparkles as it trembles.