We Met in the Emergency Room

That stupid nurse came in about an hour ago and took my tray. Her eyebrows furrowed with frustration at the mess I had made, but she just smiled at me and said, “Accidents happen”.

I was so tired of this place. Everything was the same. All the plastic smiles and tape-recorded laughs all seemed rehearsed and perfected for the public. Almost everything had the same phoniness. It was all so fake, and yet they tried to make it seem welcoming, like this would be a place for children to play, lovers to romance, and for families to reunite.

The sad thing was, this hospital did all of those things. About a year back, there would be a little girl playing with her babies every few weeks in the hallway. Turns out, she was an only child, living with her dad after her mom’s death. She came with her dad to get his chemotherapy. A few months later, she stopped coming. I assumed her daddy died.

About two months ago, a newly-wed couple came in. The wife sat in one of our screeching silver wheelchairs as her new hubby scurried next to the nurse pushing her. He held her hand as tears poured down his face. They put the two of them in the room to my left. At night you could hear those muttering sweet nothings to each other, and I could almost picture them lying in the small bed together, his arms around her waste, as they both confessed their love and cried. I overheard later, that she had been stung by a sting ray on their honey moon. After a few weeks she was put on life support and her sweetheart pulled the plug a few days later.

And I had lost count of how many families crowded in the halls, holding each other and hoping that the grave truth was just a sad joke. They would cry and shriek in hysterics as the doctor delivered yet another healthy dose of reality to their sad lives. They would cry as if a few hours ago, they had actually been thinking about each other. I would put money on it that each and every one of them was absorbed in their own worlds before that.

I guess that was part of the reason I hated this shit-hole e so damn much. It was a building bursting at the seams with liars. They all walked along like their lives were suddenly perfect and filled with purpose. But I saw Nicole, the middle-aged brunet nurse, take a few bottles of from the medicine closet at night when she though everyone was asleep.

I doubt she needed those for a headache, more like the cold nights she spent alone after her husband left her.

This entire place was filled with fucking maniacs. And yet, they all wanted to know what was wrong with me. They always give me that “poor Frankie,” bullshit, like they know me. They just want to find someone worse off then they are.

It’s pathetic.

They cart me to therapy and try to spoon feed me their self-pitying habits. Nothing’s wrong with me, it’s as simple as that.

They think just because I don’t cope with tear-filled confessions, means there’s something wrong with me, but there’s not. They just don’t see that. They want to poke and prod at me until my seams pop and I completely unravel.

But that won’t happen. I don’t need them. I don’t need to be here in this shit-hole. And I won’t ever let them get to me.

`Next DOOR~

I spent yet another night lying awake writhing in pain. My nurse, Amy, would come in every few hours in response to my frantic heart rate, and offer me pain pills. But I didn’t want it. I needed to remember this terrible feeling, the horrible pain, not to mention the fever, the dry heaving, and the marvelous sleep deprivation caused by it all. This was all a part of my healing process. This would experience would only strengthen my sobriety.

I rolled over tenderly, tiring not to tug on any of my IV’s. My eyelids were heavy, but I was beyond the point of being tired. I knew if I went to sleep now, I would just be woken up in a few hours by an umber able side-splitting pain. So instead, I just laid there and counted the tiles leading to my open doorway, and observed the bleak color pattern.

Mauve, white, mauve, white.

Over and over again out of my door, and straight to the nurse’s station outside my room.

My mind was drowning in its own boredom, so I sat up and swung my legs over the side of my bed, avoiding the railing.

The tile was cold against the soles of my feet, despite the cotton socks I adorned. I grabbed hold of the smooth metal pole holding my IV and pulled it along with me out the door, trying to scrape the wheels against the floor as I went.

When I reached the nurses desk my nurse, Katie, ran over to me with a wheel chair. As she shuffled across the floor, her wispy blonde hair shifted gently across her shoulders.

“Gerard, honey, you shouldn’t be on your feet. It’s dangerous,” she said as she lowered me down onto the hard, black seat.

“Plus if you fall, it’s a huge lawsuit.” She laughed lightly at her own joke, her eyes shinning.

“I wouldn’t fall Katie,” I laughed, scratching at my neck nervously. It alarmed me at how my trachea felt as it was just under my skin.

“I know Gerard. I’m just giving you a hard time.” She smiled at me, revealing her straight, white teeth. With that, she walked back behind the nurse’s station, and sat down at her desk.

“So what can I do for you?” she asked, chewing on the end of her pen. She leaned in towards me on her elbows, looking down at me so she could make eye contact.

“Well,” I began slowly, “there’s that boy in the room next to me. I think its Frank?” Her pen fell from between her teeth and clattered onto the table top.

She leaned in almost uncomfortably close, close enough that I could smell her strawberry shampoo.

“The little teenager, brown hair, kind of short?” She seemed so intrigued by my sudden question.

“Uh, yeah. I think that’s him,” I answered cautiously. “But I didn’t get a good look at him. What do you know?”

“Well,” she started, glancing around, “I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but I heard he’s been here for nearly two years. He was brought in with his throat slit. Apparently some homeless person found him against a dumpster, bleeding out. They assumed it was an attempted murder. But after they got him the blood transfusions, they couldn’t get him to talk about what happened. So from there, they put him in the psyche ward, but he was too much of a disruption to the other patients. They couldn’t handle him, so they sent him here. He still won’t talk to anyone about what happened, and goes through these fits, where he basically acts like a four year old. He’ll scream and throw things, but he won’t say anything.” She looked over my shoulder into his room.

“No one comes to visit, they never did. He’s always been alone, and since we don’t know where he lives, well, we can’t contact anything. He wrote down his name for us a few nights after he came in, but only his first name. We don’t even know if he’s being honest about that though. We don’t know anything about that kid.”

She looked concerned, whether it was for this kid or for her jobs security if anyone found out she told me.

“I want to meet him,” I stated plainly.

Looking down at me, she furrowed her eyebrows and picked up her pen to continue gnawing on the tip.

“I’m not sure whether or not that’s a good idea Gerard. I mean, he’s not exactly stable.”

“Well by the sounds of it, its not like I can send him into a relapse,” I retorted, sarcasm lacing my words. She shot me a glare and began tapping the pen anxiously against the faux granite counter.

“He’s a messed up Gerard,” she muttered, lowering her voice drastically. “Why do you want to meet him so bad?”

And I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t think of a legitimate reason why I wanted to meet him. And I couldn’t explain to her that spark that went off in me when I saw him. He was just so, appealing.

“I don’t know Katie, but what harm could it do? I mean, really?”

She looked at me for a brief moment, before shifting slightly in her chair.

“Alright, but the second things go south, I’m going to get you out of there. Alright?” She sighed heavily before standing up and coming over to me.

“Gerard,” she said as she wheeled me towards his door, “you know I’m not worried about him, right? I mean,” she paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, “He’s probably going to be here for a long time, if not the rest of his life.”

I tired to look over my shoulder at her, but the angle was too sharp and I gave up, looking forward instead.

“But you,” she continued, “you’ll be out of here soon. You’re going to go back into the world, and I just don’t want him to bring you down, that’s all.”

We had been sitting at the door for a few minutes; well I was sitting of course.

“I’ll be fine Katie. I just want to meet him,” I said, opening the door and wheeling myself into the dark room.