Saved From Suicide, Sold Into a Lie novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bleed

He cuts off his phone, collapses in a hotel with blood in his mouth, and Leanne will not believe the nurse on the phone.

I answered on the fourth ring.

"Where are you?" Leanne asked at once. "You weren't in the apartment."

I leaned my forehead on the elevator wall and laughed once, a dry sound.

"I came to see my nephew."

She did not say a word.

I listened to her breathe on the other end of the line.

"Why did you lie to me, Leanne?"

"Come home," she said. "We'll talk there."

"Home?" My voice cracked. "Do I have one?"

"Tell me where you are. I'll come and get you."

"No."

My fingers shook on the phone.

"Every night you watched me hold her picture and cry. Did you think I was pathetic? Did you think I was easy?"

"No," she said.

"Did you ever once think about telling me?"

She went quiet.

It was the longest silence I had ever heard from her, and I understood it was my answer.

"Connor," she said at last, softly.

She did that whenever I was angry.

She said my name softly, and it had always calmed me.

For five years it had worked.

"Come home tonight," she said. "There's a party for the baby tomorrow, and I'll tell you everything after."

The baby.

She had said "the baby" to me out loud, and nobody had ever told me there was one.

My chest went cold and stayed that way.

I hung up and broke the phone's case open in the lobby.

I took out the SIM card and dropped it through the grate of the storm drain on the corner.

I was not going back.

If I went back, they would find a way to turn the lie into a warm meal and a clean bed, and I would eat it.

I took a cab to the first hotel I saw and paid cash for one night.

I got as far as the middle of the room.

A pain tore across my upper stomach, hot and deep.

My vision went white at the edges, and a cold sweat broke over my face.

I caught the dresser and doubled over.

Then a metal taste filled my mouth.

I coughed into my hand and looked down.

My palm was red.

There was a lot of it, thick and dark.

My knees went out and I hit the carpet.

I crawled for the door with the one arm that still listened to me.

I got it open and slid out into the hall.

A maid with a cart was at the end of the corridor.

She looked at my face and her own went gray.

"Sir? Sir, oh my God."

"Call an ambulance," I said. "Please."

She ran for the phone on the wall.

I lay on the hall carpet and counted the lights in the ceiling.

I tried to think of someone to call, and no one came.

My mother had known.

My brother had known.

My wife had known, and my wife's sister had known.

Everyone who had ever loved me had been in on it.

The paramedics came in what felt like a very long time.

They lifted me onto a gurney and put an oxygen mask over my face.

One of them asked about my medications, and I gave them in pieces.

Another asked if there was someone to call.

I opened my mouth to say there wasn't.

The number came out instead.

It was the only one I knew by heart, and my tongue had learned it better than my head.

They called it from the back of the ambulance.

I watched the paramedic's face while it rang.

"Hello? This is the county emergency service. I'm calling about a man named Connor Ledford."

A pause.

"Yes, ma'am, he is conscious. He's vomiting blood. His stomach may be bleeding internally, and we need next of kin at the hospital."

The paramedic's face changed.

"Ma'am?"

I could hear her voice through the speaker, thin and fast.

"That's not possible. He was fine an hour ago. Are you sure you have the right person?"

"Ma'am, we have his ID in front of us."

"He's playing a game," Leanne said.

"He's trying to get me to come."

I closed my eyes.

The paramedic held the phone out toward my ear.

I tried to speak.

The line clicked off before I could.

For five years she had been the one person who could tell when I was going under.

Now I was going under, and she thought it was a trick.

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