I Am Invincible

Zach’s POV

-*~- Three months later -~*-

Cameron was in the hospital for three days after he woke up from his 17 hour coma, before they allowed him to go home. I found out later that if Patrick had been choking Cameron “consistently” (the doctor’s word, not mine) Cam would’ve had severe brain damage. The coma actually helped repair the damage that the lack of oxygen had caused to Cameron’s brain. I found myself being relieved that Patrick had things on his mind other than killing my boyfriend and destroying my life, and I was disgusted with myself. How could I possibly be relieved that some psycho decided to rape my boyfriend instead of just killing him like his original, sick plan?

I thought maybe Cameron would be better in his own surroundings, but obviously I was wrong. After he freaked out when the doctor tried to take his pulse, everybody decided that attempting to touch him would be a bad idea. Except me. I thought that if I could even do something as simple as hold his hand without him pulling away, maybe it would help him get better and more like his old self, because after all, his old self was very affectionate and it would kill me to see that part of him disappear forever. His doctor said that I was wasting my time but I didn’t pay any attention to her. She was a total bitch and I’m pretty sure she was homophobic because she treated me like I was dirt and always had a glare for me when she walked into Cameron’s room.

After a couple of days of trying to take his hand with no success, Cameron finally let me roll his hand over so that his palm was facing up and allowed me to trace patterns on his palm. He was sitting up in bed and I was next to him, talking quietly to him. When I moved my hand towards him, he flinched away slightly, but when my fingers touched his wrist gently, he relaxed a little and allowed me to touch him without a fight for the first time since before … what happened. His eyes were empty when I looked up at his face. There was no light in them at all. The only emotion I saw etched on his face was fear. It broke my heart. Why Cameron? Why the sweet, innocent boy who has hardly spoken, eaten or moved from his bed since he came home from the hospital?

Since letting me draw on his palm, Cameron let me touch him more often. Definitely not all the time, but sometimes when he just looked so broken, he would allow me to pull him into my chest so that he could cry out all his pain. He would let me brush his hair out of his eyes and touch his face gently with my fingertips. He would not allow me to kiss him. Every time I neared his face, he would pull away from me and look at me with scared eyes. That’s understandable. I’m not going to push him. I miss him though. The real Cameron. So much.

He has nightmares. They used to be every single night, but they have started to become less and less frequent. I wake up to Cameron thrashing around under his blankets, crying out helplessly for the demon in his dreams to stop. And every night I hold onto his wrists in an attempt to calm him down as he screams at me to let him go, before he realises that it is, in fact, me and not Patrick holding him down. Usually he calms down after a while and I wrap him in my arms as he cries in desperation and fear. The other night when he recovered from his nightmare, he pulled away from my tear-soaked shirt and apologised for breaking down and asked me why I was still there in his room with him, why I still wanted to be with someone who was so broken, dirty and disgusting, someone used and violated, someone who possibly couldn’t be fixed. I nearly cried when I heard that, but I held myself together and replied that I would be there for him as long as it takes, that I would support him every step of the way and love him with everything I’ve got for as long as he would let me. I then kissed his chapped lips for the first time in months and pulled him into my chest, which is where he fell asleep not 15 minutes later.

Cameron’s doctor at the hospital told Alex and Blair that they should send Cameron back to school, to get some normality back into his life. I think that’s complete and utter bullshit; how can ‘normality’ get back into his life when he has to walk the halls of the school where he was raped and nearly murdered?

But the doctor insisted that we give it a shot. Cameron’s been back at school for half a day at a time for the last week. Alex and Blair drop him off at the start of lunch and leave me, Emilie, Rach and Hanna to look after him. I can’t be with him after lunch, but Em and Hanna are in his classes then so it’s a good time (if any time is a good time) for Cam to be back at school.

He went to the bathroom for a little while during lunch today, by himself. Now, normally for anyone else, that wouldn’t be such a big deal, but for Cameron, it was huge; Cam hardly went anywhere within the school without me. He’d also spoken to two people other than Emilie, Hanna, Rach or me today. Not for long, but long enough for me to notice. I was sitting at our usual table waiting for him and the girls to join me. I saw him standing alone in the lunch line about to buy a carton of chocolate milk (he hardly ever eats anymore) when he leaned towards these two older boys (I didn’t know them; they were definitely younger than me, but older than Cam) and spoke to them for a minute or so. I smiled at him as he came over to join me at the table.
“Who were they?” I asked.
He stared at me with blank eyes. “Um… I don’t really know…” he murmured, looking down. I didn’t push it. He began fiddling with the opening on his milk and we were silent for a minute until Rach joined us, chattering about a photo shoot she’d be doing the next afternoon.

Cameron turned to me. “I-I’m going t-to the bathroom, okay?” he said, getting to his feet.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked as I started sliding my chair away from the table.
“N-no!” he almost shouted. “I-I mean, I think I’ll be okay…” he trailed off.
“Okay, baby. Stay safe,” I said, sitting back down. He nodded, and left, walking with his arms wrapped around his stomach, which is something he’d been doing quite a lot. Rach looked at me, confused and I shrugged. I didn’t have any idea what was going on any more than she did.
“Z-Zach? Is he… How’s he doing?” Rach asked, timidly, looking at me through her black-framed glasses.

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “He… I don’t know. He won’t talk to me, he won’t talk to anyone. I think he thinks that if he pretends it never happened… I dunno, that he’ll forget about it quicker? His nightmares aren’t so bad at the moment. It’s only, like, one every three days or something which is much better than they were. But he apologised to me the other night for being like he has been!”
“What?! Why?” Rach asked, shocked.
“No idea. He asked me why I was still with him…like why I was still in a relationship with him after everything that happened. He called himself disgusting, Rach. He thinks he’s disgusting.” My voice started breaking up and Rach came around the table and put her arm around my shoulders. I rested my head on her bony shoulder. “It was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What else could I tell him? I told him that I love him and that I want to help him get better. He’s so broken, Rach. It hurts to see him like this. But he let me kiss him the other day…”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was only for like a second but it was something. He just sat there but it was more than what he’s let me do in the last few months …” I trailed off when Cameron appeared in the doorway of the lunchroom and made his way over to us. Rach moved back around the table, because she knew that next to me was Cameron’s usual spot. I smiled at him when he sat down.

“Hey baby. You okay?” I questioned.
He nodded. It was silent for a few minutes until the bell signalling the start of the afternoon classes rang. This lunchtime went very quickly, I thought as I stood up, but it’s not often that I get a chance to talk to Rach about what’s been happening with Cam, so I guess that’s why it seemed quick. I was off in my own little world thinking about this until I saw hands waving in front of my face. Rachael had been trying to get my attention for quote: “the last five billion years!”

I pushed her shoulder playfully before walking around her towards the door of the lunchroom, Cameron close by my side and Rach ran after us yelling some sort of rubbish about how she doesn’t know how she puts up with a friend like me and blah blah blah blah blah. I just ignored her like the nice friend I am and turned to Cameron when we reached my math classroom.
“See you after class, hun,” I said and pecked him on the cheek. He flinched at the contact.
“Sorry…” he apologised.
“Don’t be sorry, baby. Hey… I love you, okay? You know that, right?”

He nodded. I brushed the back of my hand over his cheek once before pushing the door open and entering the Room of the Deadly Equations, as some of the students call it, otherwise known as the math room. I was in for a boring afternoon. I really freaking hate math. Why do math teachers insist that they have double periods of math on a Friday afternoon? It’s ridiculous, and then they complain that no-one’s paying attention. Well, duh. Of course no-one’s going to pay attention; they’re all too busy thinking about the weekend. And then the teacher piles on the homework because they think that the students don’t understand. This is what always happens in my class. FML