Chapter 6 - THE BOY WHO TRIED TO STAY AWAKE
Elliot woke late the next morning.
Not fully.
Not for long.
But enough to know where he was.
Enough to notice Daniel at his bedside for the first time in longer than either of them wanted to admit.
Enough to see Jalen sitting in the window chair with his knees pulled up, pretending not to stare.
Elliot’s throat was raw from the procedure and the oxygen support. His voice came out in dry scraps.
“Did they get it?”
Daniel leaned closer.
“Yes.”
Elliot’s eyes moved to Jalen.
Jalen nodded once.
Then Elliot closed his eyes again and whispered, “Good.”
Later, after the nurse adjusted his fluids and Daniel stepped into the hallway to take an unavoidable call from his board chair, Jalen moved closer.
Elliot didn’t open his eyes.
But he spoke anyway.
“She said it was for sleep.”
Jalen swallowed.
“The red stuff?”
A tiny nod.
“Did it always hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why didn’t you tell your dad?”
Elliot opened his eyes then.
The answer was so small Jalen had to lean in.
“He was always leaving.”
The words sat between them, simple and devastating.
When Daniel came back, Elliot was asleep again.
Jalen didn’t repeat the whole conversation.
He repeated enough.
Daniel stood still at the foot of the bed, one hand braced on the metal rail.
Then Keisha said what he needed someone to say.
“This wasn’t just about medicine.”
Daniel looked at her.
“This was about making a child easier to manage.”
That afternoon, a former Ashford housekeeper named Marisol texted Keisha after hearing through another staff member that Elliot was still in ICU.
You were right, she wrote. He used to hide the night dose in napkins.
Attached was a photograph dated two months earlier. A bathroom trash can. Three wadded tissues stained with the same burgundy liquid Mallory had shown them.
Daniel saw the picture and sat down hard in the chair beside the bed.
He did not cry.
He did something Jalen had not seen him do before.
He looked ashamed without turning it into anger.
“I thought Celeste was helping,” he said.
Keisha didn’t rush to comfort him.
“She may have thought that too.”
Daniel looked up.
“Then why does this feel so wrong?”
“Because help doesn’t require secrecy from the parent who should’ve been asked.”
Jalen looked from one adult to the other.
He understood something Keisha was being careful not to say.
Celeste might have crossed lines.
Monroe might have blurred them.
But Elliot had still spent night after night swallowing something because the adults with power found quiet easier than pain.
And Daniel, billionaire father with the glass offices and charitable galas and private doctors, had built a life where he could be informed without being present.
At sunset, Linda Chen returned with a preliminary report from the pharmacy.
The compound had been refilled four times.
Under Daniel’s account.
Authorized through Dr. Monroe’s concierge care plan.
Jalen watched Daniel take the paper.
Then watched the color leave his face.
May you like
Because the record had just moved the story one step closer to something much worse than a careless girlfriend.
It moved it toward consent.
