Lasting Dreams.

I don’t want to talk to anybody.

Adrienne’s wheeling me out of the hospital. My face is all blotchy and red and my eyes have this stinging feeling in them like I’ve been stung by a handful of bees. My head hurts and I’m stuck in this false-reality that makes me wonder if any of this is actually happening, or if someone’s fucking with me. I honestly don’t know. All that I do know is that I’ve been crying for an hour and a half and I feel like I’ve been drained completely of all the tears I ever had. I still feel like crying, but I don’t have anything left in me to let out.

I stare at my hands. My vision is sort of blurry and I don’t know what it is that I should be doing with myself. I don’t feel like talking to Adrienne, even though it wasn’t even her fault. I just don’t want to hear her saying anything about it to me, because I don’t want to feel like shit forever. Even though I already do. But it would be worse to hear her saying something about it, because, I don’t know. It just sounds realer when it’s coming out of her mouth.

My wheelchair is really squeaky and rusted and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. At this point, I just want to get up and walk, because I don’t feel like listening to it, or having Adrienne pushing me around like I’m some child.

I start picking at the scab on my cheek. I don’t really even realize I’m doing it until I hear Adrienne telling me to stop or it will scar my face. All I can think about is how I can’t be worried about something scarring up my face when they’re all fucking dead. It doesn’t matter how scarred up their faces are, because they can’t even breathe anymore. It’s like a big slap in the face, like I’m getting the wind knocked out of me all over again. I try breathing. That doesn’t help.

Adrienne sighs, and I can hear her frustration in pushing me around in this wheelchair fuming out of ever inch of her. I don’t blame her, though, because I wouldn’t want to be pushing somebody around in a wheelchair if they could probably walk fine on their own. Her feet scuff against the concrete and I can tell she’s in the forgiving mood today.

I’m not, though. I feel like shit and I’m lonely, even with Adrienne right behind me. And I remember how Adrienne looked so empty in that hospital room after she’d been crying, and how she just sat there with her arms around herself, looking like she’d just done something awful, when it wasn’t even her fault in the first place.

It was mine: I was still alive.

I’m such a sniveling brat. How do I deserve something that they didn’t? It was just a seatbelt, and I was just a man. But we were all together that night, and I can’t believe it, that we’d all been drinking and I’d told George that he could take the wheel. And I don’t even believe it, that I can still remember all of these details from that night. I want to forget them so much. And I just can’t.

Right now, as Adrienne’s opening up the door to that minivan she’s had since I met her, I can’t shake the feeling that everybody’s going to blame me for everything. And I know that I’ll just let them; I know I it with everything that I am that in the end, they’ll all be right. I’m the one that this all boils down to. It’s rightfully my fault and I wish I was dead.

I clench my fists. My fingernails are getting long. I’m going to have to cut them when I get home. And I really miss being home; I know that I’ve been out of it for a while, and I know that it should feel like I was just home last night because I can’t remember anything since the crash, but it doesn’t. It feels like I’ve been gone for just as long as Adrienne and all the doctors say I have.

Adrienne looks down at me, and I can feel her eyes like fire. And she’s just burning holes in my skull, and I can’t do a think about it except look at my fists and sniff and pretend I can’t feel it. Except I really can, and it’s starting to become physically painful.

My heart sort of feels like it’s stopped beating. I’m curious. How am I still able to breathe, or think, or comprehend those lofty thoughts that keep buzzing right in the front of my brain. I’m getting a big headache. I can’t take this anymore. I just want to go home and sleep for weeks, just like I know that I should. My whole body feels just as weak as it did when I woke up, but I think that if I work up enough strength to get up and walk toward the passenger door, I might have a shot at keeping myself all to myself for a few weeks.

I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to look at anyone, or talk to anyone, or even think about anyone besides George and Wade and Chris and Jordan. I just want to cry and cry and as absolutely pathetic as that sounds, I just want to be by myself and mourn. And I know that I shouldn’t have the luxury of mourning, but I need to. God, do I need to just think about them and how I fucked everything up. I can’t even believe I’m still alive.

“Can you get in on your own?” Adrienne asks.

I just shake my head ‘yes’ and force my hands to grip the arms of the wheelchair. I clamp my fingers around them and shoot my muscles down into the cold metal. My eyes squeeze shut tight and my nose gets all wrinkled up at the base. I hear her breathing; she’s worried. I try not to let myself notice too much. So I just grit my teeth and fold my chin up into my chest and hope to God that I can get out of this wheelchair on my own so that I don’t seem like such a pansy.

Her feet start scuffling toward me again. I don’t want her to touch me, or help me, or do anything for me. I just want her to be happy and leave me to suffer through this on my own. I deserve it all and I know it. God, do I know it. And I need it, that pain, however masochistic that may sound. I just can’t stand living like this without paying for it.

Tears start bubbling up at the surface. I contort my face into an even crueler state of misshapenness, my feet planted on the ground like a clumsy child. I feel like a baby that needs to be cared for and burped and diaper-changed and fed and carried and held and cradled. That makes me so uneasy I can’t even begin to explain it.

“Here,” she says. And before I can tell her no, she just takes me from under the arm and throws an arm around me. Adrienne helps me to the door and tries to get me into my seat as gently as she can. And I feel like fuming and throwing something because I’m so goddamn angry I can’t stand it.

But, instead, I’m quiet. I don’t say one word to her, I just go on like I can do the rest on my own. After she shuts the door for me, I pull the seatbelt down around me and buckle myself in. There’s this sense of pride that shouldn’t be there that is, a pride that originates from getting my seatbelt hooked on correctly. It’s something so simple that people do everyday that I’m fucking glowing with this unwanted pride from doing something a two-year-old could accomplish.

I am a child. I can’t even believe myself.

I can’t believe I was such an idiot to let them all die.