Chapter 7: The Rehab Visit
The smell of the clinic was on her. She’d driven straight from her shift, the lingering scent of rubbing alcohol and purell clinging to her scrubs like a shroud. She’d tried to leave it in the car, but it followed her into the stark, white-tiled corridor of the Austin Rehab Facility. It wasn't the same wing as the ER, but it was close enough for the memory to tighten her chest. A different kind of emergency, frozen in slow motion.
She held a thin paper bag containing the first three volumes of One Piece’s Water 7 arc. An impulse buy, a hopeless peace offering. She’d stood in the comic shop, feeling ridiculous, her hands trembling on the glossy covers. What did you get the man who’d just lost his legs because, in a cosmic chain of cause and effect that could be traced back to her, he’d drunk too much and tried to drive home from a party where his cousin’s fiancée had just been carted away in an ambulance?
The door to Room 317 was propped open with a plastic wedge. She knocked lightly on the frame.
“Yeah?” The voice was Mark’s, thick and tired, but older, hoarser.
Alexandra’s blood turned to ice. She nearly dropped the bag.
But when she stepped into view, it was just Leeland. Of course it was. She saw the resemblance now, or rather, she saw the echo of his cousin in the weary set of his jaw, the dark circles under his eyes. He was propped up in the mechanical bed, both legs suspended in a complex web of straps and braces under the blanket. A laptop sat idle on the rolling tray table, a paused game of something she didn’t recognize on the screen.
“Alex,” Leeland said. His surprise was a slow, painful unfurling. He didn’t smile, but the grim line of his mouth softened. “Holy shit.”
“Hey, Lee.”
He glanced at the bag. “They finally send you to discharge me? Because I’m ready.”
The attempt at a joke, familiar and dry, was a lifeline.She grasped it. “Not quite. But I brought contraband.” She lifted the bag. “Luffy and the gang. For when you’re tired of… whatever that is.” She nodded at the screen.
“Splinter cell. Old school.” He gestured vaguely to the lone visitor’s chair, a cracked vinyl thing.“Park it. You’re making the room look untidy.”
She sat, the plastic creaking under her. The room was quiet except for the hum of the bed’s motor and the distant squeak of a nurse’s shoes. On the nightstand, next to a plastic cup with a bent straw, was a framed photo. She recognized it instantly. Mark, maybe sixteen, his arms slung around a teenage Leeland and a girl with high-ponytailed braids and Alexandra’s own grin. The county fair, cotton candy stains on their shirts. Her heart gave a violent, aching thump.
“You kept that,” she said quietly.
He glanced at it.“Mom brought it. Said I needed a reminder of a time when my biggest problem was trying to win you that giant stuffed Chopper.” He let out a short breath. “Took me thirty bucks and I still had to beg the guy.”
The memory, unexpected and vivid, tightened her throat. She’d slept with that ugly, lopsided reindeer for years.
“Leeland,” she started, her voice losing its steadiness. She looked down at her hands, curled tightly around the paper bag. “I… I don’t even know where to start. I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” His tone was neutral, probing.
“For…” She gestured helplessly at the room, at his suspended legs under the thin blanket. “For that night. I know I’m a part of the… the domino chain. Sabrina.You. If I had just…”
“If you had just what?” he interrupted, but gently. “Not come home? Not answered your phone when he called? Told him to go to hell when he showed up on your doorstep?” He shook his head slowly. “Alex, I was there that night. At the launch. I saw Sabrina checking her phone every two minutes. I saw the look on her face when he didn’t answer, again and again. That was building long before you showed up. That’s on him.”
“But I was the final brick,” she whispered.
He was quiet for a moment. The hum of the hospital seemed to grow louder. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But I was the idiot who, after watching a woman have a public breakdown over my cousin, decided to drain an open bar and then get behind the wheel of a car. That one’s on me.Solely. Don’t you dare try to take credit.”
A watery, choked sound escaped her—half laugh, half sob. She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “You’re a terrible patient. Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, angrier?”
“Oh, I’m pissed. Mostly at the light pole. It came out of nowhere.” He shifted slightly, wincing. His facade of humor faded, leaving something more raw. “I’m scared shitless, Alex. They talk about pins and grafts and nerve damage. They don’t know if I’ll ever walk right again. So yeah, I’ve got anger. But it’s not for you.”
She nodded, unable to speak around the knot in her throat. She set the bag of manga on his tray table.
“Thanks,” he said, glancing at it. He was quiet again, his gaze drifting to the cracked mirror on the wall across from him, where his reflection was fractured. “He’s wrecked, you know.”
Alexandra froze.
“Mark,” Leeland clarified, as if there were any other ‘he’. “Comes by, tries to make jokes. But he looks like a ghost. He won’t talk about it.Any of it. Sabrina’s gone. Signed an NDA and everything, clean break. The group’s treading water, posting old content. The fans… they’re brutal. They smell blood in the water.”
“His mom came to see my mom,” Alexandra said, the words tumbling out. “She’s worried. She asked me to call him.”
Leeland’s eyes snapped back to hers. They were sharp, clear. “Are you gonna?”
“I can’t.”
“That’s probably smart,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. He sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to come from the very bolts holding his bed together. “You know, for all the cameras and the fans and the whole… empire,” he said the word with a hint of old contempt, “he’s still just the kid who used to hide in your treehouse when his dad was yelling. The spotlight didn’t change that. It just gave him bigger places to hide.”
She remembered the treehouse. The scent of dry pine and moss. The way he’d clutch a well-worn manga volume like a talisman.
“He loves you,” Leeland said, his voice quiet, certain. “Not in some tragic, epic romance way. In the ‘you’re my favorite person and I don’t know how to be a person without you’ way. Sabrina was… she was a set piece. A prop for the life he thought he was supposed to build.”
“Don’t say that,” Alexandra murmured, but it held no heat. It was the truth she’d felt in her bones, the bitter, ugly truth that made everything worse.
“It’s true. And he knew it. That’s why he was so messed up. He traded the real thing for the shiny thing, and the second you reappeared, he realized the shine wears off.” Leeland shifted again, his face contorting briefly with pain before he smoothed it out. “His problem isn’t fame, Alex. It’s that he’s terrified of being seen.Really seen. The camera lets him perform. You…” He looked at her, his expression softening. “You always saw him. Even when he was performing for you.”
She looked at the floor, the speckled tiles blurring. “What does that even mean, Lee? What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Nothing. Today.” He reached out slowly, painfully, and tapped the bag of manga. “Today, you’re the friend who brought me comics. Maybe next week, you could be the friend who plays Mario Kart with me. They got this rigged-up controller I can use. I’ll still wipe the floor with you.”
She finally looked up, managing a real, shaky smile. “You wish.”
He smiled back, a genuine one this time, cracking the weariness on his face. “That’ s the spirit.” His expression grew serious again. “He’s going to call you, Alex.Or show up. When he hits bottom, you’re the gravity. Always has been.”
A cold dread settled over her. “I told him not to.”
“And he’ll listen,” Leeland said, “until he doesn’t. And when he doesn’t, you need to decide if you’re going to be his safe place or his lifeline. Because he needs one. But you…” He let out a long breath. “You get to decide what you need, too. For what it’s worth, I always thought you were good for him. Too good, sometimes. Made the rest of us look bad.”
She stood up, her legs unsteady. “I should let you rest.”
“Yeah, the physical terrorist comes in at four. Can’t wait.” He sank back into his pillows, the brief energy fading. “Thanks for coming. Really.”
She paused at the door, her hand on the cool metal frame. “He’s lucky to have you, Lee.”
“Tell him that,” he mumbled, his eyes already closing. “When you see him.”
The drive home was a blur of wet asphalt and streetlights clicking on in the early winter dusk. Leeland’s words echoed in the silent car. You’re my favorite person and I don’t know how to be a person without you.
It wasn’t romantic. It was a diagnosis. It was a dependency. The thought should have repelled her. Instead, it settled over her with a terrible, weary familiarity. She thought of her own return home—running back to the known, the safe, the scent of lavender and worn oak. Were they so different?
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder. A local number. The clinic maybe. She picked it up.
“Alexandra Sinclair.”
Silence for a beat. Then, a voice she hadn’t heard in weeks, but she knew it instantly. It wasn’t Mark. It was Benjamin, from RDC, his usual playful cadence stripped raw.
“Alex.Hey. It’s Ben.”
“Ben. Hi.” Her grip tightened on the steering wheel.
“Listen, I…” He trailed off, and she heard a muffled sound, like he was pressing his palm to his face. “I’m at his place. I don’t know who else to call.”
A cold finger traced her spine. “What’ sull says something happened.”
“He won’t open the door. He’s in there.I know he is. The lights are on, but he won’t answer his phone, won’t respond to the intercom. Desmond’s out of town. Aff’s trying to manage the Twitter hellscape. I just… I’m worried, Alex. After Leeland, and everything…” His voice cracked. “I can’t lose my brother.”
When he hits bottom, you’re the gravity.
She was already signaling, making a U-turn in the middle of the empty suburban street, pointing her car back toward the highway, toward the city.
“Give me the address,” she said, her voice strangely calm, a nurse’s voice. “I’m on my way.”
[CONTINUATION OF CHAPTER 7]
The address Ben recited was the penthouse, of course. She remembered the soaring view, the cold leather. The digital keypad. She didn’t recall the code.
Her knuckles were poised over the heavy, oiled-bronze door.
“Just knock,” Ben said behind her, his voice frayed at the edges. He looked younger than his online persona, hunched in a puffer jacket, hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“If he doesn’t want to see you, he’s not going to open it for me.”
“Try.”
Her first knock was polite, a visitor’s tap.Nothing. The silence from within was absolute, denser than any apartment should hold.
She pounded with the side of her fist, the sound harsh against the polished wood.
“Mark!” Her voice rang in the hushed hallway. “It’ commodeth.”
A beat of stillness. Then a click, electronic and heavy. The door swung inward a few inches, held by a chain. A slice of Mark’s face appeared in the gap, his eye bloodshot, his skin pale and waxy under the stark hallway light.
He looked past her at Ben, his expression flat.“Go home.”
“Not until I know you haven’t done anything stupid,” Ben said, his voice low and urgent. “Let us in, man. It’s cold.”
The eye flicked to Alexandra, and something in it shifted. A recognition, a deep, bottomless fatigue that seemed to pull at his features.
“Just her.”
“Fine. I’ll be right out here,” Ben said, exhaling in a frustrated cloud. “Yell if you need me.”
The door closed, the chain rattled, and then it opened fully.
The air inside was stale and too warm, thick with the smell of unwashed clothes and leftover food. The soaring windows were opaque, the blinds drawn tight against the city’s glitter. No view, just grey fabric striping the dark.
The room was a disaster. Clothes were scattered across the floor like fallen leaves.
Empty pizza boxes formed a small, greasy tower on the kitchen counter. A dozen coffee mugs, half-full with dark, congealing liquid, sat abandoned on every surface.
He stood in the middle of the chaos, wearing a rumpled RDCWorld hoodie and pajama pants. His hair was a mess. He shoved his hands in his pockets, a defensive, shrinking posture.
“He shouldn’t have called you.”
“Someone needed to,” Alexandra said, stepping inside. She felt the door click shut behind her, the sound final. She didn’t move further into the room, an island of order in a sea of his collapse. “Leeland told me you were going downhill. I didn’t realize it was a sheer cliff.”
A ghost of a smile touched his chapped lips. “Poetic.”
She took him in—the tremor in his hands, the defeated slope of his shoulders. This wasn’t romantic self-destruction. It was clinical, unglamorous decay. “When was the last time you slept? Actually slept?”
He shrugged, looking past her shoulder as if answers were written on the wall.
“Let’s skip the small talk, Mark. I told you not to call me. You sent your cousin, your mother, and now your best friend. That’s not respecting the boundary. That’s a siege.” Her voice was calm, analytic, but it carried through the still, thick air.
He flinched.“I didn’t send anyone.”
“Your silence did. Your radio silence to them is a deafening scream, and it’s pointing everyone in my direction.” She finally stepped closer, kicking a stray t-shirt aside. “Look at this place. Look at yourself.”
He finally met her gaze. The raw vulnerability there was disarming, worse than any anger.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” he said, and his voice was just a thread of sound, thin as spider silk. “Any of it. Leeland’s legs. The channel tanking. What I did to Sabrina. What I did to you.”
“To me?” She gave a short, sharp laugh. “I’m fine, Mark. I’m back to work. I’m re-watching skits .That’s functional. This…” She gestured around. “This isn’t you hitting bottom. This is you digging.”
Her words seemed to jar something loose. He turned and walked to the couch, as if the six feet had exhausted him, and sank into it. He rested his elbows on his knees, his head hanging low.
She remained standing.
“Tell me what happens next,” he asked the floor. “In your world, as a nurse. When someone’s bleeding out and you can’t find the source. What do you do?”
A medical question.A metaphor. She answered it literally, grounding them in procedure. “You apply pressure to the largest wound first. You pack it. You stabilize the patient for transport.”
“Okay.” He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. “So be my nurse.Just for tonight. Apply pressure. I can’t… I can’t do the transport part myself.”
It was a confession of helplessness so profound, it stole her breath. All her resolve, the righteous anger she’d nursed, wobbled. Leeland’s warning echoed in her skull. Safe place or lifeline?
“First step,” she said, her voice softer now. “You’re going to take a shower. You’re funky.”
A surprised, choked sound escaped him—part sob, part laugh. He ran a hand over his face. “Real professional assessment there.”
“I’m off the clock. Go. I’ll find you something clean to wear. And for god’s sake, I’m dumping this liquid despair.” She picked up a mug from the coffee table. The cold, sludgy coffee smelled sour.
He stood, movements slow and stiff, and trudged toward the hallway without a word. As the bathroom door clicked shut and the water began to run, Alexandra set the mug down.
She took a deep, steadying breath. The enormity of being here pressed down on her, the gravity well Leeland had described. She started to tidy, not to clean his life, but to clear a physical space so her mind could think.
In the hallway by the bathroom door, Ben’s voice came, muffled through the door.
“How are the errors?” Ben asked, his voice tired.
She leaned against the wall. “He’s in the shower. It’s… bad, Ben. Clinically so.”
A heavy sigh came through the door. “He was just… there for it, you know? Making our Hī want gets. And then Leeland crashed, and Sabrina was all over the gossip blogs, and he just flicked off.”
“I told him you’re staying in here tonight.”
Ben’s silence was thoughtful. “I can talk options. He locked me out of the shared drive. The guy made NDA hell for the rest of us from his boy”
The water was running inside. Her heart was thudding against her ribs. The water shut off after a while, a few minutes later, quiet stretching the room.