Sleep, when it finally came in the early hours of Saturday morning, was a shallow, restless thing, a series of feverish, anxiety-ridden vignettes that offered no respite from the waking nightmare of my own making.
I saw Lewis's face, his eyes hollowed out with a despair so profound it felt like a physical presence in the room. I saw the squad, fractured and resentful, the easy camaraderie of the preseason replaced by a sullen, suspicious silence.
I saw the system, its cold, impartial numbers a constant, silent judgment on my own moral failings. I was awake long before the 5:30 am alarm, the crisis with Lewis having reached a temporary, fragile truce in the dead of night.
He had finally answered my fourth call at 2 am, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper on the other end of the line. "I'll be there," he had said, and then he had hung up, leaving me with the hollow echo of his despair and a thousand unanswered questions.
