One More Time Left to Say Your Goodbyes

I was sitting up in my hospital bed and my curtains were drawn around me. I had the TV on and was watching some old cartoons. I sighed loudly and ran my hand through my hair, looking around the room. It wasn't as white as it was when I woke up the first time. The walls had calmed down and they were more of a creme color. The sheets were a light yellow. The room wasn't spinning and I could actually focus on what was going on around me. That was probably just the drugs leaving me. I still had IVs in my hand, probably just a little bit of morphine being pumped in my blood to keep me alive for a little bit longer. Not that anyone wanted me alive.

A whole fucking week I had been here and Casey hadn't come in the room once. They sent Ronnie in first. And then Charlie. And I had to sit there and listen to them tell me how great I was and if I would just stop all the drugs, everything would be okay again. Right. Because life was so great before the drugs.

Casey had been sitting outside the room quite a few times. Actually, every time she came down here, I am sure that either Charlie or Ronnie were with her. They came everyday just to say hi. Never brought my flowers or candy or anything. But I guess those are the kinds of things you bring to pregnant girls. Or your dying mother. Not your drug overdosed best friend. Or your loser boyfriend. I guess that I was just this waste of flesh lying on the hospital bed. I looked up as I heard somebody enter the room and realized it was Casey.

Funny. I think about her coming in everyday and she finally does. Coincidence? Or did she finally decide to quit being such a bitch? I didn't say anything to her. As soon as I saw her, I looked down at my hands. I wasn't prepared for anything she was about to say. I hadn't prepared myself, because quite honestly, anything she said didn't fucking matter. Nothing fucking mattered to me anymore. I just wanted to die.

She sat down in the chair next to my bed, but not too close. The vinyl squeaked underneath her. She was wearing a pair of jeans and an old t shirt of mine. Her hands were shaking and her hair hung down in rats over her shoulders.

"I didn't come here to tell you how much I care about you." She said softly.

"What a breath of fresh air."

"You know, Max. I don't really know why I'm here. I don't know why I have been here through a lot of things with you."

"Because you love me."

"But you don't love me."

I was quiet for a long time. She was right. I didn't love her. I didn't love anybody. I let out a soft sigh. "Yeah."

"You don't even love yourself. You hate yourself, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said quietly. "I do."

"When I first met you, I fell in love with your personality. I loved being around you. You made me feel on top of the world. You made me feel like I was the only girl in the room." She paused. "Do you remember when I met you?"

"Yes." I paused. "I do."

And I did.

"What do you remember about it?"

"I remember telling you my joke."

"Yes. Your joke."

"The clown one." I paused. "Why don't zombies eat clowns?"

"Because they taste funny." She said softly, through a voice that wanted to cry. "Do you know that I went around telling everyone that joke for weeks?"

"I didn't know that."

She nodded. "Well I did. And that's what I miss. I miss going around and telling people about you. I miss telling them the things that you would send me in the mail. The cute text messages and the way that you were when you hadn't seen me for a couple of weeks." She paused. "You weren't cheating on me then. You didn't start doing it until a year ago."

"How do you know?"

"Because you started treating me differently. When we went out, you looked at other girls. You never called me anymore. And I started to realize that I wasn't the only girl in your life anymore." She stopped. "I started to realize that there were more important things in your life than me."

"Well you can't expect me to be there all the time."

"I can, Max. When you tell me that you love me and that you want me to be your's forever, I consider that feeling mutual and it would make sense that you would want to be mine forever. And I don't fucking share."

"So you want me to just drop the band and everything to be with you."

"No. That's not what I said. And that's not what I meant. And you know that. What I said was that when you tell me you love me, you better mean that you love only me. That you aren't fucking other girls and telling them how beautiful they are."

"I don't say that to girls I fuck."

"I'm sure you've told Charlie she's beautiful." Her voice cracked and she sucked in a breath of air, trying not to cry. She put a hand over her mouth and looked down as tears started to spill from her eyes. "I know that you've told Charlie she's beautiful. And I don't know what happened between the two of you the other night, but I can't put up with that anymore. It's one thing for you to go around fucking random girls, but it's another thing to fuck my best friend. Who also happens to be your best friend's girlfriend."

"She's not his girlfriend."

"Whoever the fuck she is to him, Max! He loves her!"

"Everybody just fucking loves Charlie."

"Regardless of whether or not it was Charlie. If it was some other girl who Ronnie cared about, or some other girl I was close to, it doesn't matter that it's Charlie, Max. What matters is that you hurt both Ronnie and I."

"You guys are just mad because Charlie went crying to you."

"I could give a fuck about Charlie being upset right now, Max. I am upset. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't do anything without thinking about you." She paused. "Do you know how hard it was to come in here today?"

"How hard, Casey?"

She looked up and made eye contact with me. "About as hard as you were when you fucked Charlie."

I looked away from her. "I'm sorry, Casey."

"You're sorry you got caught."

"No. I caught myself. I called you and Ronnie. I wanted you guys to know that I fucked Charlie. I wanted you guys to know how fucked up she was. I wanted the both of you to feel like I have."

"How have you felt?"

"Kicked out of my own life."

"And Charlie did that to you, Max? Charlie made you fuck all those girls on tour and Charlie made you lie to me and Charlie made you treat Ronnie like shit?" She snapped. "You need to stop blaming everything on Charlie. I know that Charlie broke your heart, she hurt your feelings and she fucked you up, Max. But you need to sit down and talk to her about it. You can't keep meddling around in her life, trying to make things worse for her because you're mad about something that happened years ago."

"I just want to be happy again, Casey." I bit my lip. "I want to love life. I want to like playing shows for all those kids. They're so fucking amazing, Casey. All those kids at those shows. They know all the words to our songs and they wait weeks for us to come to town so they can see us and sing with us. And they love us." Tears were streaming down my face again. "I want to love that again. I want to love you again. The things that you do. I want to love your messy hair and I want to love trying to explain something to you at four in the morning when you're half asleep and then you understand in the morning. I want to love how you kiss me, even when I'm not awake to feel it. I just hate feeling like this."

And that was it. I bawled. I cried so hard that my IVs started to slip off my hands. I cried so hard that my bangs were wet and my eyes were so full of tears that I couldn't even see through them. I cried so hard that I could feel Casey's arms around my shoulders and my sobs were trying to push her away.

She ran her hands through my hair. "You need to love yourself first, Max."

"I can't, I can't fucking do it."

She pulled away from me and put her hands on either side of my face. "You can do anything you fucking want. You are fucking beautiful."

"No. I'm not."

"Yes." She grabbed my face. "You fucking are."

I had finally calmed down after what seemed like hours of crying. But considering how much energy I had to exert, it was probably only a few minutes. I looked up at Casey who was using the back of her hands to wipe her hair off her tear stained cheeks.

"Are you going to stay with me?"

She glanced down. "No." She shook her head. "That's what I came here for. Was to tell you that we can't be together anymore. I can't be with you. And you can't be with me. You can't love me until you know how to love and understand yourself. And by us trying to be together, that's only going to make things worse for you." She paused. "I think that you need to better yourself and then maybe we can talk about being together again."

"Casey."

"I'm sorry, Max. I love you but I can't right now." She leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.

I watched as she walked out of the hospital room and practically collapsed into the chair just outside the door in a fit of tears.