Even If Saving You Sends Me to Heaven

Zane stayed in bed all day. His uncle eventually left, and even his sister went to sleep at a friend’s house. Zane didn’t notice that the house was empty, though. He was too miserable to notice anything.

He found that when he closed his eyes, the headache became a little less sharp. As a few hours passed, his trembles slowed, but when he threw up again they came back.

I was just as miserable as he was. My head hurt almost as much as his did, but that wasn’t the worst part. I felt that as his guardian angel I should’ve been able to do something to make him feel better.

Finally, I resolved to bend the rules for just a minute. I left him in his room to go in search of a glass of water and some medicine. I found something to dull the pain and something to make him drowsy to go along with the glass of water.

When I entered his room, I set it on his nightstand. He was turned away from it, so I was faced with the dilemma of getting him to roll over to see the pills and take them.

It turned out to be pretty easy. I blew in his hair until he groaned and rolled over to see what was going on. Luckily, when he saw the glass of water and pills, he was too disoriented to wonder where they’d come from, and he swallowed them without thinking about it.

I sighed with relief, but he didn’t close his eyes right away. His gaze was locked on a photo of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties that sat next to the glass of water.

As he reached out and picked it up, he thought about his mother for the first time in a long time. Although she hadn’t been the best example to him, he knew she’d loved him very much. And although he’d only been six when she’d died over eleven years before, he had loved her too.

Now he was wondering what she would think of him. He thought she would be upset and disappointed about what he’s done the night before and how sick it had made him now. He amended this thought, realizing she would be disappointed in how he’d lived his life for many years now.

Deep down, Zane knew that he was disappointed in himself as well. He wondered why he cut class and did drugs and drank and had sex when he knew it would eventually hurt him. He shoved the picture away, angry with himself for coming to the realization that he did those things because he didn’t care how much he hurt himself.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, but not quickly enough to stop one lonely tear from squeezing through his eyelids.

I don’t know why it all hit me right at that point, but I suddenly felt slighted. Why should I have to deal with Zane’s pain? I wasn’t even sure if it was his pain anymore. His agony and mine blurred together in my mind and heart in a pool of bitter grief and self-pity to the point where I couldn’t distinguish whish of us the heartache had originated from.

I had to hold back my own tears until my torment morphed into resent. I felt myself hating not only myself, but the God who’d made me stay with Zane. A God that had never made Himself known to me in my lifetime was now forcing me to relive my life through Zane. I knew then that looking at Zane’s life was like looking at a mirror of my own past life. I found this an unjust punishment. Why should reliving change anything?

Even as I thought it, I knew reliving it would change everything because it wasn’t me this time. This time I knew what Zane felt like. I was familiar with loneliness and emptiness and the longing for comfort that I knew Zane felt. And I wanted to help him get rid of it because no one was there to help me.

I don’t think I’ll ever fully know what it was that possessed me to sit next to him on his bed with my side against the headboard. As if I wasn’t there, the bed didn’t make an indent of my shape.

Zane was deep in sleep now, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try to stop his headache. I reached out and started to gently message his forehead to ease the ache as much as I could. Anything could’ve made me do it. It could’ve been my need for company, or it could’ve simply been out of pity and out of wanting to ease my own headache. He didn’t stir, and it did help.

I was only slightly startled when Mara showed up in the evening. I figured she would come to check up on Zane after he’d turned his phone off so the ringing didn’t wake him. It had lit up many times with her name in the caller I.D.

She entered his room quietly. I pulled away only when she leaned in to kiss his cheek to wake him.

Zane opened his eyes confusedly and murmured, “Hey. How long have you been here?” He touched his forehead, his nerves still tingling from my touch. Irrational satisfaction that he had truly felt my hand filled me. I smiled.

“I just got here,” she replied, not at all worried by his question, but worried about his appearance. “That must be one nasty hangover. Are you feeling any better at all?”

“No, I feel just as awful,” he admitted.

“Poor baby,” she crooned, climbing into the spot I had just inhabited for the past few hours.

I felt almost displeased when she began to rub his forehead exactly as I had and he remarked, “Thanks. That helps.”

“I called about your car. It’ll be taken care of. Do you want me to leave when you fall asleep or stay?”

“You can stay if you like,” he murmured, already closing his eyes. She nodded and allowed him to rest.