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After thirty years, Ed possessed a natural familiarity with his wife’s unspoken thoughts and feelings. Instinctual recognition, in a way, of Lorraine’s behaviors -- whether or not she actually liked the person they’ve just met, if she was actually listening when he spoke to her, or if her mind was off somewhere a hundred lives away. If she was really up for that neighborhood dinner party. If that smile was real or not.
It was an awareness that came naturally with years of love and frustration and chaos and peace.
It also meant that Ed could awake in the middle of the night and know instantly, deep in some long-reserved space in his chest, that something wasn’t right.
But he hardly needed his instinctual panic alarm when she was already kicking at the sheets beside him in the middle of the night, muted noises of fear fighting through sleep to escape from her throat.
He sat up, quicker than he had the wakefulness for, catching his weight back on an awkwardly-bent wrist. He cast his gaze down to Lorraine’s side of the bed, eyes desperate to search through the dark for what might be wrong.
She laid curled towards him and he made out the frightened twitch of her facial muscles, lip quivering. Her eyebrows furrowed in on themselves. Her fingertips caught weakly on wrinkles in the sheets, clearly getting her nowhere in whatever frightening scene played out in her subconscious.
As much as the image hurt his heart, Ed was far from unconditioned to it; Lorraine’s nightmares became a common occurrence once they began working cases, years and years ago. But since the mess of trauma that was Isla Kastner and the river and the tunnels and the weeks of tears that followed, her psyche hadn’t been strong enough to fight them off.
This was the fifth in two weeks. That he knew of, at least; he had gotten on her dozens of times before for thinking she had to hide them from him, stumbling into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her. Hoping that the panel of wood might be enough to muffle the helpless sounds of panic that always followed.
Sighing, Ed settled a steady hand on her shoulder, rubbing his thumb overtop the smooth satin of her nightgown.
“Hon, wake up,” he said. He shook her arm.
She squirmed for a moment before her eyes blew open, pupils wide and dark and glazed with something other than sleepiness. She gasped sharply. Ed was sure it was enough to cut the back of her throat.
“You’re alright,” he whispered, quieter now. “Just a bad dream.”
If Lorraine understood him, or registered his words at all, she didn’t indicate it. She hurriedly sat up, heels scrambling against the sheets as if desperately trying to escape from something at the other side of the room, eyes jumping around the darkness, looking for something that wasn’t there, even to her gifted sight. Tears soaked her cheeks in an instant. Tiny shards of silver fire, glistening in rivers on her skin.
“Lorraine, it’s just a dream,” Ed insisted. He dragged his hand up her back to rub at the tense spots on either side of her spine. “You’re okay.”
His voice summoned her to look up at him, eyes searching his face. Her chin and lower lip quivered and her eyelids fell again. Tight. She clutched her hand tight to her chest, clawing at the fabric over her sternum. She choked on a shaky breath and her sobs stuttered into panicked, shallow breaths.
Just as Ed continued to rub his hand up and down her back, hoping to ground her somehow, Lorraine turned away from him, looking to where her rosary lay on her nightstand, sparkling in the dark. Her shaking hand darted out to take hold of it, beads clacking together in her palm as she gripped it tight.
Ed’s heart lurched. He reached out to touch her wrist. “Hon, wait —”
Too far gone to listen, she slid off the mattress, falling to her knees on the floor, her tired body still gasping for air and stability through sobs.
She knelt in the rectangular pool of faint moonlight shimmering through the window and her hair shone in it, cold, as she bowed her head over her shaking hands. They clasped together tightly enough around the beads of her rosary to surely leave pink marks, even by the morning.
Ed sighed when he heard the familiar words of prayer begin to slip from her lips. A familiar pattern. A familiar high-pitched, trembling tone to deliver them.
This image wasn’t uncommon, and Ed hated it. He simply could not bring himself to think that Lorraine’s panicked ritual was the solution. She’d done it for years, but ever since what happened in the tunnels, it became a frequent coping mechanism to wake up from the nightmares of fire and knives and to turn directly to the sequence of prayers she had memorized decades ago.
As if pausing for a breath would send her tumbling through the floor in an instant.
Ed wished so badly she would find some other way to soothe herself. Some other method of coping that didn’t involve an action so aggressively compulsive he worried she might completely fall away, lose herself in the stuttering consonants of mysteries, get swallowed up by her shallow breaths. Each time she did this, Ed could only watch, ensuring she didn’t hurt herself. Or worse.
Often, the obsession manifested innocuously. To Ed, wearing the red beads around her hand during cases or forcing herself out of bed for daily Mass during stretches of particular struggle seemed like reasonable methods of keeping her head above water.
He cherished the little rituals that made her feel safe. But this only frightened him.
Ed hated hearing such sacred words uttered this way. Strained through sobs, thickened with tears and shuddered breath. Painted with her fear and panic, dripping from her lips to the beads between her fingers, staining, caught in the beds of her nails.
Despite his trust in the healing abilities of these recitations, something within him could not fathom that this was, in any way, holy.
God help her.
Maybe if his stable mind requested it, it might be so.
From the floor, Ed watched as Lorraine rounded out the second decade of her rosary, and he realized with a sigh that it was a Friday. Far too early in the morning, but a Friday nonetheless. How fitting, he thought, that the meditations of her prayers should be so filled with suffering and lamentation.
The image of her sitting there, kneeling on their old, unforgiving carpet, finally cut through to Ed’s heart enough that he was sure he’d explode if he kept still any longer. He swung his feet to the floor, rounding the bedframe and settling a hand on Lorraine’s shoulder. The ring on his third finger glinted in the light from the window.
“Hon, this isn’t the way to fix this,” he murmured. Hints of sleep still remained in his tone. Low and calm, even as his fragile heart raced with worry.
A sob trembled from Lorraine’s throat, cutting through the space between prayers and beads, and she dropped a hand to the floor, catching herself, as if she might fall right through the ground. She held the rosary to her forehead and a heavy tear fell from her eyelashes. The droplet crawled down the silver chain.
“Just let me do this, Ed,” she begged, words thin, fighting through the air. “I have to do it. Please. Please let me do it.”
“This isn’t healthy, honey.” He slowly dropped onto a knee and brushed her hair back from her wet cheeks. “I’m – I’m scared. I’m scared for you.”
Another sob, and Lorraine gathered both her hands at her face, clinging to her glass and metal comfort. She cried into it on a messy, stuttered loop of, “Please. I have to. Please.”
Ed shut his eyes. He hated, hated that pained sound of her voice, the rattling in her breath, like she begged for a dark relief, a tangible salvation. If only such a thing could come so quickly.
Ed thanked God that it won’t.
He lowered himself to sit with his back against the side of the bedframe and mattress. He reached out, hands gentle on his wife’s waist. She eased against the contact. Even in the deepest of her trauma-induced panic, Ed’s touch felt familiar. Safe.
Carefully, he pulled her toward him, and she allowed it. He encouraged her to scoot up against him, her back pressed flush against his torso, folding her knees up to her chest. He felt her little hiccups, her shuddering exhales. She clutched the rosary to her chest.
“I have to do it,” she whispered again, somehow sounding more defeated this time. “Please.”
“I know.” Ed snaked his arms around her waist. He kissed her temple, his own tears stinging his eyes. “I know, honey. But I want to pray it with you. It kills me to hear you cry like this and I don’t want you alone down here.”
With a couple of sniffles, Lorraine nodded. She tried to settle further into him, desperate for every ounce of his presence and comfort. Maybe she could absorb a bit of the warmth and safety he held. Maybe it would help protect her from those horrifying images flashing through her head. With his arms around her like this, it certainly felt promising.
“Is this okay?” Ed asked quietly, stroking her hair back from her face.
“Yeah.” Her voice came out as barely a whisper, but her tears seemed to pause.
He slid his hand up over hers, entirely enveloping her trembling fingers. Grateful for the feeling of his stability all over, she kissed his knuckles, leaving behind a little trail of tiny teardrops.
As unsteady as Ed felt, he gladly gave every ounce of his security to her.
Lorraine slipped into the third decade of her rosary with him, his body and arm wrapped around her. Warmth flowed into her hair as he breathed out the words of prayer along with her, joining her in the inevitable heavenly battle that she had no choice but to take the strain of.
Ed kissed her head between the shift of beads. One of his hands rubbed soothingly over her belly. She caught her breath.
This was not a perfect solution -- Ed was sure they both know this -- but it would work for now. With the lack of a Bible within a twenty-foot radius to allow them to consult the comforting verses of Matthew or Corinthians, without knowledge of phone numbers for nearby psychologists, and certainly none available at two in the morning -- this would work well enough, for now.
Ed hardly noticed how Lorraine’s voice softened. She must have fallen half-asleep by the time they made it back around to the little silver crucifix, finally soothed back into some semblance of restfulness, eyes only shimmering with the remnants of old tears.
Untangling the rosary from her fingers, Ed brushed his lips against her temple, wordlessly asking permission.
After a moment, she nodded.
The glass and metal clacked together quietly in the thick silence of the room as Ed placed it back on the nightstand. Thick, but not uncomfortable; the quiet felt warm, like the darkness embraced them both. Ed wondered if perhaps it might be enough for Lorraine to find something divinely comforting in it.
Regardless of if she did or not, she turned to him. Weakly shifting her body around, she leaned into him, pulling herself close. She missed holding onto something and made do by bunching up his T-shirt in her hands.
Before Ed could say a word, Lorraine mustered a loud sniffle and said, barely audible, “I wish I wasn’t like this.”
Ed’s mind failed to summon an appropriate response over the sound of his heart fracturing all over again. The instinctual reassurances that came to him were either purely for show or outright false, and God knew he couldn’t ever lie to her. To do so with her in this state would be nothing short of cruel.
So all he could do was hold her tighter, one hand gentle over the side of her head. His arms around her said, I know. I know and I love you so much.
He knew she felt it, because her tired body suddenly tensed and slackened as she released a loud flood of sobs into his chest.
She clung to him so tightly that the only reasonable response was for him to do the same. He ducked down to kiss the top of her head, not quite sure of what it was he offered comfort from, but confident that whatever it was, he didn’t want to let it anywhere near her.
“You’re okay, hon,” he murmured into her hair, hand squeezing her arm. The fabric of her nightgown gave a little under his fingers, taut around the curve of her shoulder. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
She was silent for just long enough to make Ed’s chest tighten. When he looked down at her, half of her face hidden in his shirt, her eyelids fell to conceal glistening blue and squeezed rivulets of tears down her cheeks.
With a sigh full of sadness and heartache, Ed whispered, “Come on, baby,” before slipping his forearms beneath her to lift her easily from the floor.
She made a soft noise of acknowledgement but didn't protest. She knew it was time to return to the comfort of their shared bed and to try again -- to allow herself at least the grace of rest. Even if she didn’t, Ed wouldn’t let her wallow in her sadness on the floor for another minute, anyway.
She clung onto him perhaps even tighter when he laid them back in the sheets. She tucked her head into his chest. He smelled of his earthy aftershave and she let out a shaky exhale.
Struck by the heaviness she had caused in the air, a thin breath caught itself in her throat and she raced to stammer out, “I – I’m sorry, Ed, I wish I didn’t –”
“No, honey, don’t worry about it now.” He cut her off gently with a kiss to her forehead, cupping her cheek in his hand. “Nothing is broken.”
Her voice sounded so small, and selfishly, he couldn't stand it. In so much time of knowing her deep insecurity and worry, he’d never grown accustomed to hearing it shake in her throat.
How many times had they ended up like this, Lorraine wondered, as she let herself accept the comfort that Ed so badly wanted to give her. Following cases, demonic encounters, nightmares, arguments, horrific visions – countless emotional shocks that forced them back into the safe space of each other’s arms.
With the weight of sleepiness letting her mind wander, Lorraine thought back forty years, to when she was a tiny, clumsy thing. Bowing at the altar of the Lord in her scratchy white dress and too-big ballet flats, receiving Him for the first time as He received her. Her hands felt cold in Ed’s shirt as she thought of those prayers she learned so long ago that she had now come to frantically recite out of panic that God had somehow forgotten her.
As if her hurt alone wasn’t enough to bring Him as close as she needed.
Regardless of if she felt the divine presence or not, thirty years of sharing beds and sheets and hugs and tears with her love offered her the evidence that she was not, in fact, forgotten.
The realization summoned a tiny gasp in the back of Lorraine’s throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, stuck somewhere between devastating sadness and unthinkable gratitude.
Hearing the edge of tears in her breath, Ed stroked a hand over her cheek. “Thank you for letting me hold you,” he told her quietly. Just to say something. To ensure she knew that he heard her.
Sniffling again, she whimpered, sure that if she tried to speak, it would all come out as a messy strand of declarations and guilt and love. Instead, she lifted her face enough to nuzzle into his neck and kiss him there. The action alone communicated plenty.
Ed could have said more; his heart felt close to melting with the softness that came with having her so tight against him. He could have recited an endless affirmation of adoration and devotion into the gentle sweetness of her hair, but she didn’t need words now. She needed stillness and quiet. She needed his sturdy form to wrap herself around as blessed rest finally reclaimed her.
As her muscles slackened and her exhales softly warmed Ed’s collarbone, he turned his head to where he had deposited Lorraine’s rosary on his nightstand. He would have reached out to touch it if his arms weren’t committed to embracing her.
Instead, he settled his head back and let his tired gaze drift to the window, where soft beams of moonlight glowed in the air beside their bed. As if to reach out and touch them, to heal them with a loving whisper of cool light.
Ed’s cheek brushed against his wife’s forehead as he gratefully joined her in silent rest.