Anorex-a-Gogo

It feels a bit like swimming. I can see the light above the water, I just need to swim up. I kick my way out of unconsciousness, breaking through the surface. And then I'm breathing air again, and that light I'd been swimming towards was Gerard's pale face.

It feels a bit like opening my eyes for the first time. My lids slide open and zero in on Gerard. For a moment I wonder if I'm still in Elsewhere, if I'm dead and he might be dead and everything is blindingly white. But it just looks like a regular hospital room, full of beeping machines and IVs and the strong smell of medicine. The walls are light green, wallpapered with cheery flowers.

It feels a bit like being on drugs. Which, of course, I am. They've got me so doped up on Morphine that I find it hard to keep my eyes open and it feels like my left side just disappeared. My head is a fogged-up mess, cloudy and swirling around. I can't even lift it up off of the pillow. My tongue is dry and heavy, sticking like gum to the roof of my mouth. I fidget my arm involuntarily, the one his head is resting on. I guess my body is finally coming back to life. Gerard jerks up, his eyes wild through heavy lids.

It feels a bit like coming home. He doesn't believe his eyes. I blink as he stares at me. And then his hands are on my face, finding every fault and line. His eyes are on my own, diving deeper than they ever have before. And finally, finally his lips are on my own, too grateful to do anything more than softly move against my mouth. I'm thinking, whoever came up with this idea that pressing your mouth to someone Else's could feel like bliss was pure genius. He kisses me so softly, just feathering his lips across my own.

"Thank you, thank you," Gerard breathes across my cheek as he falls to his knees by the bed, burying his face in the crook of my neck. I'm not sure who he's thanking, me or some god, but it doesn't matter.

"What were you thinking, jumping in front of me like that?" he asks. Truly curious. Because he was so ready to take that hit for me, just as I simply decided that I wanted to take it for him.

My first attempt at words are sluggish from whatever they've been dripping into my veins for who-knows-how-long. I swallow and my throat burns raw. "I, um, didn't know that he had a knife," I admit. This is no time to play pretend that I'm some noble hero or anything. We both know how utterly stupid it was that I leaped in front of that pocket knife. Like trying to dodge bullets.

"Pansy, you idiot," he says, but he's too relieved to actually scold me. Instead he presses little kisses to my neck as my fingers dig into his hair, threading down to his scalp.

I glance down at the bandage wound around my torso. Again I'm filled with shame that burns for my mistreated body. I shove that out of my mind as quickly as possible and lift up the covers a little. I'm expecting blood and gore of the World War II variety; all I see is a clean white bandage. The teensiest spot of blood.

"They managed to patch you up pretty good, huh?" he asks. Now that the initial worrying and gratitude has passed, Gerard is all smiles. They light up his face like a fucking parade.

"I'm not dead," I mutter in almost disbelief.

His smile falters. "No. But damn, Frank, I never want to get that close again."

And he tells me what happened. How he'd thought I'd only taken a punch to the stomach. How he'd taken care of Owen (and here he was extremely vague). How my mother had woken up because of all the noise. How she'd come into the room as Owen laughed hysterically and Gerard clutched my fading bloody body to his chest. How she'd called the cops and the paramedics. How Owen had never stopped laughing, even as they placed him in handcuffs and shoved him into the back of the police cruiser.

When I rack my brain for these missing parts of the story, all I can come up with are random blips. The flashing of blue and red lights. A siren in the distance. Gerard's ragged sobs. My mother's scream. Owen's hysteria. But mostly it's just darkness. A black hole where these memories should be, except that I was dying.

He tells me everything. I want to tell him so much, to tell him every word until my mouth runs dry and my tongue falls off. I want to tell him about Elsewhere and the things I saw. I want to tell him that there's still hope for us. Except that I'm just so damn weak that I don't think I could do any more than just nod my head every once in a while. And even that's a chore.

Gerard seems to understand this without me even telling him. Like he can read into my mind or something. "Don't talk, okay?" he murmurs when I try, "Just rest."

I just go one step farther. One step closer to being okay, and one step further away from this nightmare that tried to destroy us. "Love can save us," I whisper.

He freezes as my eyes slide shut again. The strangest expression molds on his face, and I watch him through my eyelashes. He leans back in his chair and simply stares at me for a few long moments. Then he reaches over, brushes some hair from my face, and smiles.

"I believe you," he breaths.

* * *

They tell me I'll be out before Christmas.

And I am. The next day, Monday afternoon, they send me home with a set of strict rules.

No extra exertion.

No standing up for more then ten minutes at a time.

No sleeping on my left side.

No sex.

I try to keep a straight face when Gerard scowls at this and sticks his tongue out behind the doctor's back. Even my Mom cracks a smile.

Gerard wheels me out to the parking lot in my wheelchair and then helps me into my Mom's silver Mazda. He kisses me for only a second and whispers that he'll drop by tonight, and we'll figure out just how far this 'no sex rule' can bend.

I go a dark shade of red. Jesus Christ, I do not want to go and have a spaz attack in front of my mother.

Mom and I are quiet in the car. There's so much we need to talk about, and so much I never wanted to say. I think neither of us even know where to begin.

"Mom--"

"Honey--"

We both end up speaking at the same time, then stopping, then sort of chuckling in embarrassment. Awkward silence ensues where neither of us want to start now that we know the other wants to speak. My side is killing me from laughing, courtesy of the hole Psycho Owen left in me.

"Mom, I'm really sorry," I finally say to break the ice of the awkward silence.

She looks so taken aback that I briefly wonder if maybe I accidentally said, "Mom, I want to fuck Gerard really, really badly."

"You're sorry? For what?" she asks in a disbelieving voice.

"Um...for getting stabbed?"

And she starts to cry. So hard that I'm wondering if it's even safe for her to be driving, so I tell her to pull over. She does, furiously wiping at her once perfect mascara. It's weird, seeing my mother--usually so calm, collected, the image of controlled--in shambles, sobbing against the steering wheel. She grips it so tightly that her knuckles turn white, and she begins to pound her fist against it. I'm brought back to that first day that Gerard kissed me, when he walked away and left me at the river. How painful it was to see him fighting against himself in the car. How much it hurts to see my mother falling to pieces.

My first thought it so reach out and comfort her somehow. But then I realize that if it were me, I'd just want to be left alone to cry, so I just let her cry it out instead. She cries for a good five or six minutes, then sniffles around for another minute or so. Then she finally just sort of fades out, wiping at the thick eyeliner rivers underneath her eyes.

"Oh God, Frankie, I should be the one apologizing," she finally chokes out, wiping her eyes with her sleeves, "I've been the worst mother imaginable."

"No, Ma, you--"

"Please, just let me talk now, okay? Otherwise I might never be able to say what I need to say."

I nod and become silent.

"Sweetheart, Gerard...well, he told me. He told me everything. About Owen, about Mr. Stokes, your...your eating disorder. He told me everything when we were waiting at the hospital." She has the decency to look a little guilty. "But he was only doing it because he wanted you to be okay."

My face goes paper-white, my mouth as dry as bone. I want to be furious with Gerard, but all I can feel is this pulsing gratitude because he ended up being brave enough to do what I never could.

Big sniff. "I'm you mother, dammit! I should have known what was going on. Right in my own house. Now that I look back on it, it was so painfully obvious that you were being hurt. But I just never paid enough attention to you."

"And all of these years...I knew something was holding you back. I knew you weren't happy. But I never...I never even realized..."

Here her voice breaks. "What Owen did to you...Oh God, I can't even imagine. Baby, I'm sorry, so, so sorry. I'm such a horrible mother, a horrible person. It's a mother's job to know these things, and I didn't. T-to protect her children..."

I wait silently for a couple more minutes as fresh tears leak out of her eyes. Tentatively, I reach over and take her hand in mine. She squeezes so tight it hurts, but I wouldn't dare let go of her now.

"He's going away, Frankie. To jail, or a facility to get help. I don't know. But he won't be coming back. I promise you'll be safe." She looks up at me, rubbing her nose. "Can you ever forgive me for being such a fucked-up mother?"

"Only if you can forgive me for being a fucked-up son," I reply, giving her a small smile.

Mom gives me a watery laugh. "We're sort of a fucked-up family, huh?"

And we are. It's not even really all that funny, but what else can we do except for laugh? I mean, yeah, we suck at being a family. But we'll deal with it as we have for the past sixteen years. And who knows, maybe we'll conquer and prosper? Only the future can hint.

She kisses my cheek. "I love you, Frankie. No matter who you are, who you love, or what you do, I will always love you. I'm going to get you help, okay?"

"I don't need help anymore, Mom. Gerard has...well, now you know it too. He's helped me in more ways than you can even imagine."

"I always knew that boy could save you," she murmurs.

And I kiss her hand and grin because I think I always knew it too.

* * *