Give Me a Break

There’s white hugging at the edges of my eyes, warmth seeping in between the cracks in my eyelids. Noises, voices hushed against my shoulders, creep into my ears, fill the silence and drown out the humming of a pounding head ache. Lips chapped, throat caked over with raw dehydration, I can’t speak. Eyelids heavy, I can’t see. I feel warmth and sense bright light, smell sterilized metal, linoleum floors, hear the squeak of rubber on over-shined tiles. Smell coffee. Sense Brendon.
“There’s a cafeteria downstairs.” Ears still waking from their insomnia, I can’t place the voice, too gurgled and muffled against the pillow, the pillow and blankets reaching up my torso, a bed.
“No, it’s fine.”
“You haven’t eaten today.” A pause reaches out into the room, the subtle rhythm of discontented breathing.
“I’ll be fine.”
“I’m going to go get something to eat. I’ll bring you back a sandwich.” No footsteps echo out into the gray area beyond what my sightless senses can create and the two sets of breath, one a half beat off my own, continue to occupy my hearing. “You sitting here isn’t going to help.”
“I know.”
A sigh and then the steady flop, flop of footsteps, the noise dimming as it drifts away until only one set of breathing, one steady heartbeat and the occasional beep of a machine keep my company. I grind my jaw, feel the tension, hear the creaking of my teeth crashing, digging into one another, and I try to force my eyes awake, clenched shut with mucus and tear remains, leftovers from passing out beside a Hawaiian stream in the hot sun.
Flecks crack off and roll in bouncing paths across my cheekbones, every sense more attuned, every inch of skin awake and aware, reaching out and feeling the world in attempt to paint an image on my mind. There’s no wind in this sightless world, no breeze, the tell-tale signs of a self-contained internal room. The beeping. The scent of bleach and pointless attempts at sanitation. The squeaking floor. The linoleum. The obviousness of a hospital ward imprinted onto my mind from nights curled up on a hallway chair, listening to the yells of a drunken father wrapped in the sheets of his bed. My eyes break through their barrier and white light, harsh, unforgiving white light dashes across my pupils. stings the brown color there.
A hospital room. A single with one window, the blinds closed against the black night sky beyond them. Wires and tubes weave around me, plugged into white and gray machines, color buttons, blue and red and yellow, the only signs of life, of color blindness not claiming my vision. A liquid drips itself into a vial, into a tube, down with gravity into a needle dipped into the veins of my right wrist, the suicide scar there gleaming pearl pink, the pockmarks of stitches still shining and an admission bracelet, plastic and unbreakable, clasped loosely along the thin skin. A t.v. hangs from the ceiling corner, silent and black, no static to add to the steady, unacknowledged hum of my heartbeat, my blood pressure, me explained in mechanical words, only noticed if they cease and silence fills the room.
Brendon, slumped over in a chair at the foot of the bed, black hair all I see of his face and shoulders rising and falling in a loose attempt to ease the tension there. He doesn’t notice me awake, watching him, noticing how his long fingers tug at the edge of my bed sheets, remembering, noticing how they’ve always tugged at my shoulders, my arms, my shirts, tugged at me. Salt stains line his jeans and sagging t-shirt, ribbons of sand flowing across his arms, red sunburn clashing against the tan. He’s peeling, faint scars of too much sunlight rise up along his forearms, and the top of his head, in the thin space of visible skull where his hair parts, the skin gleams red there too. He smells like ocean, like wet leaves and open air. Like the stream where I’d collapsed in Spencer’s arms.
I want to talk to him, want to explain why I left, why I ended up there, alone, lost in my illusion, how it meant more than fifty years of talking it out and listening to therapists could have, but in those shaking, tense shoulders trying so hard to find relief, I know better. There’s no comfort to be found in me losing my sanity to comfort, to the reprieve of Spencer’s smile and sharp words. Speaking of hallucinations carrying me from streams, to water, to safety, to silence, would only hurt the boy tugging at my bedsheets, begging me to come back, lost in what Spencer saw and I ignored, lost in my own distractions. Whether I love him or not, whether I’m capable of that anymore, Brendon clings and waits and I decide the truth is not the kind thing to tell him.
So I do not lie, but I do not tell what would only hurt a heart already scarred over.
“Brendon.” I force out, my throat screaming in protest as the word claws its way up my windpipe.
His head shoots up, eyes huge in the composure of his face, mouth hanging open, lips drained of color, of the life he saw fading in me, saw absent in Spencer. In that astonished face, in the moment before his composure calls itself back into focus, before he remembers the snide comments about his enthusiasm and my insistence on propriety. Before all that, I catch a glimpse of it in the subtle curl of his lips, the tightening of his hand upon my bed, a shift in his swelled eyes. There, hidden away the moment it tastes life, I spot Brendon begging for me, begging for an affection he thought possible before my swift descent into broken memories and bones. How did I miss it all this time?
The feeling fades instantly, his hands loosen and he lowers himself the few inches he rose from the chair, the vibrancy dying off his face. He clears his throat and averts his gaze, tries to be serious, tries to be calm. His knees nearly shake with the energy he’s retaining. “It’s not your fault, Ry,” Spencer whispers behind Brendon, faint and etherial, arms crossed and smirking, “Talk to him. Let him help you.”
I match Brendon’s eyes and wait, let true calmness flood over him as the seconds slide smoothly past, neither one of us moving or smiling, caught in the memory of what we said. Brendon, my lingering, beaten puppy, he doesn’t move. He waits impatiently, his mind dashing around between thoughts of what to say, the perfect collection of words to hit at my heart exactly where he needs to. As nothing comes to him, his eyes begin to dance and shine over with a layer of tears. Breaking through the composure, the concentrated determination to not upset me, Brendon begins to fall into un-calculated pieces, jumbled messes of musical chords and song lyrics collapsing against piano keys, a song that tears at me.
He chokes on words he hasn’t said, on thoughts he hasn’t formed, and his hands dance around him, trying to signal what he can’t force his mind to articulate. There should be something to say, a meaningless clump of words to add to serenity and normality to the scene. Maybe if he could just say anything, the hospital bed scene, me saran wrapped in blankets and tubes, swallowed by wires, Brendon suction swallowed into my troubles, maybe it’d all seem less out of place, more like what we should have expected.
He’s been here before, watched doctors and nurses stitch me up, give speeches on the importance of my life. He knows what the smell of blood on metal tastes like along his tongue. He knows the feeling of clammy skin on his palm, of the millions of pens to give millions of signatures, because he was the only one left to watch over me. He knows what the machines do, what they monitor and what they should be reading. He knows what that look on my face means, the drained, sunken eyes melding together with blood-drained lips and pale skin to make an image of desperation. He knows and he understands. But even with all this, with the experience and the comprehension, he’s lost in this moment, staring at me with a begging notion of encouragement, begging me, “please tell me what to say.” and I wish I knew what I needed to hear. I don’t though, so I fill the silence to save him from the obligation.
“Hey, Brendon,” I cough out through a parched throat, my lips cracking along my words. My throat screams for water and I find it on the bedside table, clear water reflecting the white lights.
“No, here, I got it.”
Brendon leaps up, grasping for the cup. It wobbles unsteadily in his anxious hands, the water sloshing up to the brim as he sits besides me and guides me into a sitting position, the head board cold against my back. Tilting the cup forward, my hand holding onto the bottom in case Brendons shaking gets the best of him, I swallow down the water until it runs smoothly across my throat and each roll of a word doesn’t leave me gasping. Lowering the cup, he watches me gently, eyes less wide to show off his composure and the empty cup resting contently in his lap, hands twisting in knots around it.
“How’d I get here?” I ask eventually and Brendon, still wary, still unsure, licks his lips before answering.
“Jon found you.” Of course. I should have known. Brendon continues, focused and calm.“When we woke up and you weren’t there, we went looking. I looked around town, but no one had seen you and then he calls me, saying he found you in the middle of the forest, lying near a stream and I didn’t know what do because I was worried you were dead or dying or trying to die and Jon told me to call an ambulance and so I did and then I met them here after they picked you up and Jon’s getting food because we’ve been here all day and it’s almost tomorrow and Ryan, you weren’t trying to kill yourself were you? Because Spencer wouldn’t have wanted that and your cuts haven’t even healed all the way yet and could you at least have waited until that had happened so I could have a couple of minutes of not worrying about you every second? And why were you out there anyway? Why did you just leave and not say anything? You should have at least told Jon. You like Jon. Jon would have understood like I don’t. Why didn’t you tell him? I-”
“Brendon!” He freezes, suddenly aware that he was rambling and nearly shouting, tears coating his chocolate brown eyes again as I sit up farther, readjust and refocus. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was trying to just let death happen. But I’m....I’m okay right now, Brendon. I’m not better, but....I think I’m okay. I know Spencer wouldn’t want me to kill myself and I know he doesn’t- wouldn’t like who I am right now, or was anyway. I’m not better Brendon. I have a long way to go until I’m better and back to normal, but I promise you I’m at least moving in that direction right now and that’s really all I can promise you.”
Unmoving, eyes bubbling over, he seems unable to decide between smiling and crying and asking more questions. As the silence extends, I add: “Thank you for being there Brendon. I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”
That last sentence breaks the floodgates and rivers seep from Brendons face to crash along my shoulder as he dives on top of me, arms reaching around my thin shoulders. He repeats that I don’t have to be sorry, that he’s happy I’m okay, that that’s all that matters, that everything else isn’t important, and for once, I believe him. I can imagine a life without Spencer, with only the shadow of his ghost to occasionally keep me company. I can see a life where there’s me and Brendon and we’re happy, I’m happy and the world’s not a cold and empty place. I can see myself happy, content, growing older and moving, living, dancing, kissing, loving again and not feeling like I’m betraying my best friend who never got to experience it himself. I can see a place where I exist with the intention of existing for him, to know what he was denied the opportunity to. I can be Spencer’s new life, add new memories to his ghost as it trails beside me. I can be that for him and for me.
The sound of flip flops echo over Brendon’s happy tears and Jon appears next to the bed, coffee and sandwiches held in his hands, eyes blood shot with black bags hanging under them. A smile cracks the edges of his beard as he sees I’m awake and Brendon leaps to his side, all energy and life returning with new found enthusiasm.
“Look!” Brendon yells, bouncing for joy. “He’s up and he says he’s better! Isn’t that amazing, J-Walk! Isn’t it great?”
“Yeah,” Jon says, smiling warmly at me, and I smile back with no hint of sarcasm or bitterness. The smell of coffee reaches my nose as they sit next to me, tossing sandwiches and bags of chips between us.
“So you’re all better then?” Jon asks in between a bite of ham and cheese. I swallow down a potato chip and nod.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I think so.”