Tyler woke up lying on a hospital bed. That evening when Tyler was telling the police officer about what his aunt said to him; he went into a complete frenzy and started having severe anxiety and started to cut himself with a knife that was in his pocket. The police officer tried to restrain him, but they couldn’t do it by themselves, so they had to get the other police officer and had to call for backup because of how erratic Tyler’s behavior was.

There was a knock on the door.

“Mr. Wilson, are you awake?” A woman says.

He didn’t respond.

“Alright, I’m coming in.”

A nurse walked in to see Tyler dazed and confused as to what happened and he got in the hospital, to begin with. She walked over to the end of his bed and picked up his medical chart. She looked surprised to see that Tyler was admitted for severe anxiety and self-harm when he looked completely innocent at that moment.

Tyler groaned and reopened his eyes to see the nurse standing at the end of his bed.

“Hello? Mr. Wilson?” The nurse asked.

“Yes?”

“Hi, I’m the nurse on call for today and tonight. I was just checking your medical chart and it said you were admitted for severe anxiety and… potential self-harm. Would you like to tell me about that?”

Tyler looked up at the ceiling trying to formulate an answer for this nurse that just came in and tried to ask him a bunch of random questions.

“Well, first… who are you? The last time I begin to open up to someone I didn’t know, I ended up in the hospital.” Tyler said.

The nurse laughed and grabbed the chart with both hands and pulled it to her chest.

“Well, if I give you my name, will that make you feel better?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

She was a little taken aback by his blunt response, but she wasn’t all that surprised because of the anxiety and self-harm and the notes that were left by the police officers and social workers saying that he was talking to himself and was aggressively pacing back and forth. But she held her composure.

“My name is Kaiya Holland.” She said. “I’m… also not a registered nurse. I’m actually in medical school right now, so I’m just an intern. Or a medical student. I just wanted to say that I wanting to actually talk to you.”

“Oh, great. Another person to cause me to lose my shit again.”

“Oh no, I’m studying psychiatry. You know, mental health and things like that. I just like pretending to be a nurse.”

Tyler thought that this girl was completely crazy and was basically playing a prank on him. He wasn’t sure whether this girl was a legitimate person or if she was just trying to get under his skin and get all into his business.

“So, why do you want to talk to me again?” Tyler asked more aggressively.

“W—well, I just interested in why you ended up here. Maybe I can help you.”

“You want to help me? Alright, sure.”

She put the chart down on the counter behind her and sat down in the chair next to his bed. She was determined to make him trust her because she had a feeling that he wasn’t as crazy as the social workers or police officers made him out to be. She just needed him to believe her and trust her, but she didn’t know how to do so.

“Look, you may not believe me or trust me. But please listen to me. I believe your story; you seem too much like a caring brother and son to make up a story like that. Most people that come up with the child abuse story that come in here or report it to the police or child protective services either get ignored or don’t believe them because they’re lacking the proof that they need to make a case for them.”

Tyler flashed back to the police officer asking him if he had proof of his sister getting abused and how that led him to have that extreme episode. That caused him to start having a panic attack and he sat up and started to feel his heart race and his blood boil. He was breathing very heavily and was started to tear up.

Kaiya was sitting there with a confused yet concerned face because she didn’t know what to do in that situation. She wished that she could help more, but she didn’t know what to do. She was speechless and started tearing up herself. But she didn’t know that saying that lacking proof of abuse could cause such a negative trigger.

“Well… maybe if you can tell me your story, I can make sure you can get the help you need.”

Tyler looked at her with a menacing glare. Kaiya sunk into her seat with fear, not knowing if she said the right thing or if she caused another trigger. His face loosened up and his glare disappeared into a neutral melancholic face.

“What will telling you do?” He asked.

“If you let me go with you, I can write down the events that took place while you were still leaving with your aunt and sister. And then, if we can try to track down your aunt, we can potentially confront them.”

“You really expect us… to go out of our way to find my aunt and where she went. And then when we happen to find her; confront her? Are you fucking stupid or what?”

Kaiya’s happy and optimistic attitude was quickly shattered and dwindled into a melancholic depression.

Tyler noticing this started to feel bad because he realized that this person is willingly giving up her time and potentially her life to helping him find his sister. No one has done such a thing for him or his sister as long as they’ve been alive. They literally had to fend for themselves ever since their stepfather died when Tyler was around eleven or twelve. Desi would have been too young to remember since she was only three or four when he passed away. The only reason that she even knew about her father’s passing was that her mother told her about it when she got a little older. But that still didn’t take away the pain that she felt afterward. And Tyler seeing this pain enraged him because he didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know who was to blame for that situation and why his sister was in tears constantly.

So, when he finally realized that he was starting to take his aggression out of this person that was willing to help him; he started to tear up.

“L—l—listen,” He said. “I—I—I’m sorry. I appreciate you offering yourself to help me, I can’t thank you enough.”

Kaiya got out of her chair and walked up to Tyler’s bed and kneeled on been the side of the bed.

“There’s no reason to feel sorry. You are hurt, yet you are so protective over your family. Who am I to not want to help you?”

“Most people at this point would be like, ‘yeah, that’s nice and all, but how does that help me?’”

“Well, I can do my best. I can at least give you that much. If you’re willing to take it.”

Tyler sat back in his bed.

“Might as well.” He chuckled. “Who can turn down free help?”

“Now if you say it like that it sounds like I’ll be doing all the work.”

Tyler realized that he got himself into an awkward predicament.

“Well, how about this; I do the talking and bash people skulls in. And you do the searching.”

“Orrrrr… you can try to not get us arrested, please? That would be nice.”

“Wow, you really took the fun out of this.”

They both laughed.

Tyler started to feel that maybe this girl was a blessing in disguise. Albeit, in his mind, that term is a bit of a cliché, but it worked for him.

***

Tyler was eventually released from the hospital after some more days of testing and blood work. And after seeing a psychiatrist, he was given medication for those thoughts and for depression.

“Hey, wait up!” A girl yelled.

Tyler turned around to Kaiya running up behind him waving her right arm signaling him to slow down and wait for her.

“Hey Tyler, what’s up? *Breathing heavily* WHEW! I’m exhausted!” She said gasping for air.

“Oh, hey, Kaiya…? What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be interning with some doctor or something?”

“Oh, that? Don’t worry about that. I took a year off. I was starting to lose my shit whilst in classes.”

“I see. Well, at least you’re doing better, right?”

“Nope, I admitted myself into the psychiatrist hospital a few weeks after for sleep deprivation, delusions, depression, suicidal thoughts, nightma—”

“Alright, alright…” Tyler interrupted. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”

Kaiya composed herself and took a deep breath and then let out an exhale with a major exaggeration.

Tyler had a feeling in the back of his mind that he was going to have two major problems to deal with. One was finding his aunt and his sister. And the second was this new “friend” that he just made.

“Oh! Hey, you want a ride? I got my car; we can get lunch if you want.” Kaiya said eagerly.

“Sure, I guess. Thanks.”

They started walking towards the parking lot. Tyler held out his hand and let the snowflakes just fall and melt into his hand.

He sees Kaiya walking beside him and can’t help but stare at her. This girl, who seemingly came out of nowhere, offering her help to him. Either she was an undercover social worker herself, or she was actually a med student that actually wanted to help him. But at the same time, Tyler couldn’t help but have his suspicions about her. After all, she came to him out of nowhere. No one had done that before. So, to Tyler, this was making him pretty paranoid.

But he could help but look at her face, he actually started blushing a little bit. He just wanted her to look in his direction. She wasn’t in a nurse’s uniform, so to see her in her causal outfit was something that he hadn’t seen before.

She glanced over to see that he was kind of lost in her eyes.

“Hey? Tyler?” She asked.

Tyler immediately realizing that she was looking at him, quickly looked away in embarrassment.

“Oh, sorry. I was just looking at your… hair. Yes, your hair, I like the way it’s styled.”

That was a lie.

“Oh, you think so?”

“Yeah, it looks great.”

Now he couldn’t back out of the situation, he had to continue with the lie that he started. Quickly, he tried to switch topics to something else as they approached closer to Kaiya’s car.

“Welp, this is it,” Kaiya said presenting her car to Tyler.

Flashes of his aunt flooded into his mind; she had that same car model when he was younger. They got into a car accident when Tyler was about eleven or twelve. There was no one on the road that night, it was just Tyler and his aunt.

That face.

That look she gave him.

He looked at that car and saw that accident right before his eyes.

It was intentional, wasn’t it?

No, it couldn’t have been. That would’ve been absolutely absurd.

Wait, wasn’t it when he was sixteen? He couldn’t remember. He just remembered those moments leading up to that accident, then…

Nothing.

“Hey, Tyler?” A voice said.

He snapped back into reality to see that Kaiya was standing close to him, looking at him with a concerned look on her face.

“Something must’ve happened to you, you went all mute and zoned out on me.” She said.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Everything is fine, we can go.”

He quickly walked around her and walked up to the passenger side door and waited for her to unlock it. He got in the car and then it hap—

“So, are you ready to go?” Kaiya asked eagerly.

“Y—y—yeah…, sure.”

“Where would you like to go eat?”

“Somewhere that’s not here, anything is fine with me.”

“Great, I’ll just surprise you.”

She started the car, and they began driving to wherever Kaiya was taking them. It didn’t help that Tyler had literally just said that he didn’t care where they ate. With that notion, she could have been taking them anywhere. Tyler tried to not get too concerned because he knew that she was driving to get something to eat, right? To think that she wasn’t going to get something to eat would have been a complete misjudgment.

But at the same time, what choice did he have?

He couldn’t just turn this person down, right?

Right?

Tyler was sick to his stomach; he couldn’t formulate any coherent thoughts at all. He was starting to sweat. His legs were fidgeting, his eyes were twitching. His thoughts started to race.

It was happening again, that same situation. He didn’t want to look to his left.

He took a deep breath and slowly turned his head to see that Kaiya wasn’t in the car at all. She just disappeared.

Tyler anxiously looked around to see where she went, but he couldn’t find her. He couldn’t move his body at all, almost like he was glued into the seat. He started to panic; he knew he had to get out of that situation.

He started to move his body around to try to break free of the seatbelt, but nothing was working. The car looked like it had been just sitting in the middle of nowhere. All of that was weird to Tyler, he couldn’t comprehend what was going on.

He finally was able to break free from the seatbelt. He tried for the door.

Locked.

He jiggled the door handle. Nothing.

He looked outside to see if anyone was around; there was no one.

As a last-ditch effort, he took his elbow and shattered the glass, and quickly crawled out of the car. He was hyperventilating, he was scared, he didn’t know what going on. He walked for what seemed like miles (it was only a few hundred feet). He walked into the middle of the road.

Silence.

He could hear his thoughts vividly. He could hear his sister’s cry for help, he could hear his aunt telling him that he’ll never see his sister ever again.

He kneels down and covered his head; he was losing it.

Then suddenly he looked up and everything went black.

***

Tyler opened his eyes; he wasn’t feeling all that great. He stared at the ceiling for what seemed like an eternity.

There was a little girl that walked into the room, he didn’t realize who it was at first.

“C’mon Tyler, mommy’s waiting for us.” She said.

He remembered that voice so well, it was her voice. He finally found her. He quickly sat up and jumped out of his bed and immediately followed his sister down the stairs into the kitchen. He saw his mother and his stepfather.

“So, I must’ve gone back in time to when I was twelve. Before all this happened.” He thought out loud.

Then there was a sudden flash.

Maybe it was just his imagination.

He sat down at the table and ate with his family, but then again; it felt off for some reason. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. But he didn’t care, he just got to see his sister and mother again.

“Hey, Tyler,” Desi said. “I wish you could’ve saved me sooner.”

“W—what do you mean?” He said confused. “You’re fine, sis.”

“Mmm… well, at the moment, but something is going to happen, and I don’t know what you’ll do to fix it.”

What compelled her to say that? There was no reason to say that; she’s fine. Right?

Right?

She’s only four years old, why would she say something so outlandish like that? It was very strange. There had to be a reason for that.

Tyler tried to talk to his mother, but she was so exhausted from walking all day at the hospital going from appointment to appointment. Since she was so sick and was literally dying at every waking second, she had to expend her energy in places that she really needed to use it. But Tyler still wanted to say hello to her. He did love her a lot, but she wasn’t the most approachable person because of her sickness, but she did love Tyler and Desirae equally and very much.

“Hello mom, it’s me, Tyler. H—how was your day?” He said anxiously.

She looked up at him as if she was somewhere else in her mind. She smiled.

“Hello son, it was fine. How was your day at school?”

Tyler didn’t recall going to school today. He’s still questioning how he got there and what was going on. But he knew that his mother would’ve been disappointed that he didn’t go to school that day.

“It was alright. Just a typical day.” He said.

That was a lie, obviously.

“How were your appointments? Hopefully, we have some good news…?” He said.

She shook her head in disappointment and a tear started to shed from her eye. She always tried to shield her sadness from Tyler and Desirae. But she wasn’t the best at it.

Seeing his mother cry always made Tyler so angry with the world, he could never understand why those things were happening to his mother. If he could fix it, he would. But he slowly started to realize that it would’ve been harder than he expected it to be.

Tyler tried to spend as much time with his sister as much as possible that day and at that moment.

It was finally time for her to go to sleep; she rubbed her eyes and yawned.

“Tyler, I’m sleepy. Can you read me a bedtime story?” She asked.

“Of course.” He said smiling.

He picked her up and took her to her room. He tucked her into her bed and wrapped her up in her blankets. He picked out a book that he thought she would’ve liked. He sat down on the edge of the bed next to her and cleared his throat to start reading. He opened up the book and saw that there was only one sentence that was on the first page.

This is not real.

That wasn’t supposed to be there. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes and looked back at the page again. The sentence was gone and the actual words to the book appeared there.

He told a deep sigh of relief and looked at his sister who had drifted off to sleep without him knowing. He chuckled softly and smiled. He rubbed her forehead and a tear fell from his eye; he was just happy to see his sister again. He couldn’t believe that he was about to see that she was okay. He closed the book and put it back on her shelf, then he walked back over to the bed and gave her a kiss on the forehead. He turned off her light and quietly walked out the door.

“Tyler…?” She said groggily.

He turned around and looked at her from the doorway.

“Yeah, Desi?” He said.

“I love you. And I miss you. I hope you’ll find me someday.”

He laughed and tried to brush off the comment.

“Oh c’mon, Desi.” He said. “I’m right here, you’re fine. Nothing will happen to you, I promise.”

Desirae then rolled over to face Tyler, but her hair was covering her face. He could hear her silently crying. He walked over to her bed to reassure and comfort her. He lifted her hair out of her face and literally almost jumped through the wall in terror.

“Desi! W—w—what the fuck? What happened to you?” He said in horror.

Desirae’s neck had rope marks wrapped around it, her eyes were filled with tears and her mouth was dripping with blood. Tyler had a vision of this same thing, but it was when he was a lot older. He didn’t know where it came from, but it was terrifying him.

“Desi? Desi! Please, are you okay? Say something…” He said tearfully.

She wasn’t moving. He couldn’t believe it. She was dead right before his eyes.

He ran out of the room screaming. The walls were closing in around him, everything was becoming claustrophobic, and he couldn’t escape. Then suddenly, black.

“Tyler, are you alright?” A voice said. “It’ll be all over soon.”

***

Tyler screamed as he sat up in a panicked state. He quickly looked around to see that he was in someone’s apartment. How did he get there? Who helped him get there? Why was he there?

“Hey Tyler, are you alright?” A familiar voice said.

Tyler managed to look to his right to see that Kaiya was sitting in the chair next to him. She overheard him scream out of his sleep and that in itself scared her out of her sleep. As soon as she heard that he was awake, she quickly got up and made some tea that would hopefully calm him down.

“Kaiya, h—h—how did I… get… here?” He asked.

“Well, the important question, is ‘are you alright?’” She said. “You were literally talking in your sleep and then suddenly I heard you scream at the top of your lungs, and it literally scared me out of my sleep! What happened?”

Tyler was having a lot of trouble putting together how and when he got into this apartment. Kaiya looked to be in her pajamas, so it was safe to assume that this apartment belonged to her, right?

“Where am I?” Tyler asked.

“I will tell you what you want to know when you tell me if you’re alright or not.”

“I don’t know how I am.” He said. “Everything has just been so… crazy.”

“Well, I guess I’ll get some more out of you soon enough.” She said sternly yet softly. “But to answer your questions. Firstly, you’re in my apartment. Second, how you got here? Oh! I literally found you lying in the middle of the street in some other part of the city. It wasn’t hard to find you, you didn’t walk very far. You collapsed before some car almost hit you. Can you believe that?”

Tyler was so confused as to what she was saying. What he saw was an empty white void with a four-way intersection. And he was certain that a car did hit him before he blacked out.

“What are your car window and your seat? Are they damaged?” He asked.

“Nope, not a scratch. Why did something happen?”

He couldn’t believe what he just heard; he swore that he broke that window and broke that seatbelt to escape from her car. But now she’s telling him that nothing happened to her car. What was going on?

“Kaiya, I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” Tyler said tearing up. “I can’t seem to fix it. And it literally kills me that I can’t. But I saw her face.”

“Your sister’s, hmm?” She said softly.

Tyler nodded his head and started crying softly. He couldn’t believe that he was opening up to this person that he had never met before, what was he supposed to do in that situation? He was literally exposed to this girl. He tried to be strong, but he couldn’t. She got up from her chair and sat on the couch next to him and held him while he cried in her lap. That was the first time that Tyler was able to just let his emotions out. He had always kept his emotions sealed in for his sister because he didn’t want her to see him cry because he didn’t want her to start crying either.

“I saw your face when you looked at my car today. Did my car remind you of something?” She asked.

He was already in a vulnerable position, and he felt that he could slowly open up to her. He wiped his eyes and positioned himself to where his head was in her lap, and he was stretched out on his back. He opened up his eyes and looked up at her.

“Do you really want to know?” He asked. “It’s a long story. And there’s something else that I saw too that also startled me out of my sleep.”

She was brushing his hair and looked over at an adjacent wall.

“Well, I’m basically running on adrenaline at this point, and I did say that I would help you.” She said smirking. “I’m all ears. Let’s start from the beginning.”

Tyler looked up at her in disbelief; finally, a person who was willing to listen to him and not judge him.

“Well, it started out like this…”