Mercy

I haven’t seen Rich since the night he carried me into the emergency room, but that hardly feels like it counts. I was out-cold in his arms, probably dying, and I remember nothing of it. The last time I remember seeing him was at some rest stop where he’d whipped the truck into, and in his haste to park, he took up two spaces. Angry travelers looked on in disgust at his careless parking job, but Richie saw none of them. All he saw were the insides of his palms as he cried himself sick. After that, my memory lapsed yet again as a hazy image of me drained the last of the alcohol in my brother’s truck to forget seeing him cry. It didn’t work. I can still see his tears clear as day.

Adrienne tells me no one has seen Richie. I’m not surprised. Ever since our father died, a subconscious fear of hospitals nestled itself inside him to the point where he’ll flat out refuse a doctor’s opinion for himself or others. That might explain why he hesitated so long in bringing me here. He should have the moment he knew of my twisted ankle, mangled feet, and inflamed naughty bits. He should have the night I tried to fly out of his window and into traffic. Not until I stopped breathing for a moment or two in a drunken coma was he prompted to face his fear head-on, but even then he hesitated. From what Adrienne tells me, an ultimatum of me living or dying was what finally broke him.

Now I wonder if he’s ever coming back.

I’m being discharged tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see Richie then. Maybe he’s waiting for me in the parking lot too afraid to enter the building and face whether I’d made it or not, but I’m being a bit naïve. If he was anywhere near the hospital, Adrienne would have seen him. She swears up and down she hasn’t, though part of me believes she’s too wrapped up in her own little world to notice much else.

Adie’s always been like that. Even as a kid she always preferred the little fantasy world in her head to real life. She would make up elaborate stories for the two of us to follow, and I always went along with them. I followed her around like a loyal puppy because I thought being friends with a girl two years older than me was the greatest fucking thing since sliced bread. We were attached at the hip, as my mother used to say, but it was so much more than that. I idolized Adrienne for her imagination and her ability to make even the most mundane chores seem like an adventure. She was my whole world for three glorious months of the year. It was always a nightmare when the end of August came crashing down upon us, stealing my Summer Girl away to her real home in Minnesota. I wanted her to stay forever, to keep making my life an adventure, but I was always thrust back into harsh reality by the time September rolled in, and June would never come fast enough.

There was a specific game she loved above all. It was a stereotypical girly game in which Adrienne played the part of the princess who was madly in love with her Prince Charming. I was always stuck with the role of her prince whether I wanted to be or not. At first, I was too young to understand why I hated pretending to woo her and eventually marry her, and it wasn’t until the first time she kissed me that realization struck. I wished she was a boy. I even presented her with the idea of bringing a third person into our silly world to be Prince Charming instead of me, and I would be the one to save him from the evil princess. Adie didn’t like my idea at all. She beat me up for wanting to marry a boy.

I went ahead and made myself a new friend anyways. Jason. He always liked my ideas for games. All we had to do was wait for Adrienne and her Yankee family to go back to Minnesota, and I had a Prince Charming all to myself for the school year. I didn’t even have to force him to play.

Our fantasy world killed Jason. I was a fool to ever think we could keep our relationship, our sexuality, hidden. I was kidding myself. After Jason died, being around Adrienne became insufferable. With him gone, I don’t want to live in her little world anymore in fear of someone else getting killed because of it. Because of us.

We’re not even real.

I’m a fake hetero. She’s my fake girlfriend. Our son will inevitably be a fake too.

A tear glides down my cheek as my sober frustrations cry out for a beer. Fuck, I’m just as bad as she is. I need chemicals just to survive. If I can’t stand living in her phony world, I escape to my own drunken planet.

I decide I’m not going to drink anymore. I won’t let her keep me under her control. I don’t even care if the ghosts get at me. I’m not going to be a fake anymore.

“Are you ok?” Adrienne whispers.

I guess she sees the tears. Fuck. I hate myself. If the rest of the world is anything like Georgia, there’s no way I actually can be real.

“No,” I croak. “The, uh…the doc says I’m gonna be crippled the rest o’ my life.”

It’s the truth, but it’s not what’s bothering me. I don’t mind walking with a limp until I die. At least I still have two legs to walk on, even if one of them is attached to a bum ankle. I can live with that. What I don’t tell her, though, is that I’m even more crippled than that. Whatever the bastards in the bar did to my dick was severe enough to make me sterile. Their vice-grips around my testicles severed whatever fucking vesicle makes it possible for my little swimmers to escape, and the chances of them ever fertilizing any eggs in the future are slim to none. The little boy growing inside Adrienne is, most likely, the only son I’ll ever have. I’m more than ok with that, but something gnawing at my brain says I should keep this detail to myself.

“Your twisted ankle is that bad?” she demands, disbelief written all over her face.

“Yeah. They say it’ll never heal properly, ‘n’ I’ll have one helluva limp for a while. Hell, they’re even gonna gimme a cane for me to limp ‘round on,” I snigger, trying to imagine myself hobbling around like an old man. The mental image is priceless enough to make me laugh aloud considering I’m only eighteen fucking years old.

“This is not funny, Billie Joe. How the hell are you going to get a job to support yourself? Nobody’s gonna hire a gay cripple!” she snaps as her tiny hands curl into fists.

“Fuck off! With you ‘n’ our kid, ain’t nobody’s gonna know ‘bout my real sexual preference,” I shoot right back, face flushing in sudden anger. She doesn’t usually play the bigot card on me. I mean, sure, she secretly despises what I am because it means I can never love her properly, but she never blatantly harasses me about it.

“What if I took our son away from you? Who’re you gonna hide behind then?” Adrienne hisses, eyeing me with malevolence I rarely see from her. It’s unnerving, but I stand my ground. I know she’s bluffing.

“You ain’t never gonna leave me.”

Adrienne bites her lip and tries to come up with a snarky comeback. She fails. Her fists unclench, and she falls back into her chair.

“I could if I wanted to,” she mutters, gnawing away at her helpless bottom lip.

“You sure could, but you’d always come runnin’ back.”
“No I wouldn’t. I don’t need you.”
“Yes you do. Long as I live ‘n’ breathe, you’ll always come crawlin’ back.”

My princess is scowling at this point with something close to hatred swimming about inside her, but she never quite reaches that level of loathing. She never will. Her unrelenting love for me won’t allow her to.

A grin finally manages to break through her fury, and for an agonizing moment, I have no idea what’s on her mind. It’s frightening. I feel the need to brace myself for a low blow, so I attempt to silence all emotions and lapse into a state of total apathy before she opens her mouth to speak again.

“Richie abandoned you. No one’s seen him for days.”

Wait. Didn’t she already tell me that?

“Joke’s on you, sweetheart. I a’ready had this conversation with you. It ain’t news to me,” I sneer. Her smugness withers into unanticipated defeat within milliseconds.

“This is the first time I’ve told you…” she murmurs before her voice ultimately fades into oblivion.

“First time for you, maybe, but I have a tendency to see things ‘fore they happen.”

Without a word, the evil princess storms from my hospital room, slamming the door shut behind her for good measure. From the hallway I hear a nurse reprimanding her for the noise disturbance. I feel a slight twinge of guilt, but it is tragically short-lived. She was trying to hurt me, after all.