This War Paint

Butch


I didn’t put the pieces together until she came into the room, and straight away the air just vanished and the cramped space became suffocating. I wondered if I was dying when she sloped her perfect eyebrows into a frown. I wondered if her face would be the last I saw. I wondered about my sanity when that thought brought me nothing but comfort.

My body felt like it was convulsing with every slight intake of breath. My eyes were fighting my body, wanting to close, wanting to stay closed. I yanked them open after blinking, terrified that I might pass out again. Never had this happened after I’d shot up but then I’d never been so desperate to just end something, my life, my suffering, just like almost everything else in my life had bitterly ended.

I was too messed up, lying there on the Hathaways’ family couch, to feel regret. To feel much of anything apart from an intense need to stay awake. Jane was saying something to her sister, the angel who had peered through my windscreen and taken pity on this pathetic fool. They had been arguing, I could taste its aftermath everywhere.

They looked so alike and yet so different at the same time, and I cursed myself for never knowing she even had a younger sister. I wanted all of Jane. I wanted her past and present and future, I wanted to consume her and take her into my completely. I wanted to know her inside and out just so that one day I could point to her amid a hundred faces, point to her and tell everyone that she was my girl.

My joints hurt. Everything hurt so fucking badly! I half moaned, unsure if every sigh I let out would become that – a moan. I hated looking weak in front of her but I understood I had gone far past weak. I was bordering on death all because I’d taken my misery a step too far.

She was saying something to me, crouched down so those azure eyes were so close to mine. I concentrated hard on her words. It took everything within me to hear her instead of just watch her move her beautiful lips, but I managed the word ‘hospital’ before wishing myself back to unconsciousness.

I hadn’t been to a hospital in ten years. I was eight the last time, a child with a broken arm and a few cracked ribs, and the doctors had asked too many questions I wasn’t allowed to answer. How did it happen? Did you really fall down the stairs? Is there something you want to talk to me about, maybe without your Dad here?

I was eight but I wasn’t an idiot, I knew whatever I said to them would be my undoing later when the world was shut back out behind a slammed door. I knew Mom had dealt with worse than me and never breathed a word. I admired that in her. It sickened me now to admit I was proud of her for staying silent. For sticking to the ridiculous stories.

Staring at my angel I wondered if things may have been different now if I’d told the truth then.

“Please let me take you.”

Jane’s voice cracked on the words, and I heard every syllable as clear as if she’d whispered them right into my ear. I stared up at her with eyes I was terrified told her all about my past, about my terror of hospitals and the truth. She could never know. I would never let my demons hurt her.

But I saw it all there – the pain flickering across her lovely face – and realised I had already failed. And I hated myself for that.

So I sat up even though my stomach felt like it was about to combust. I made it out to the car without falling. I let her believe she was helping me just so that I could feel her arms wrapped around me. Then I closed my eyes in her car, breathing her in with one last gasping breath, and died.

But I wasn’t dead, of course. Heaven wouldn’t feel so cold; it wouldn’t be set in my nightmare.

There was the sound of my heavy heart beating for the world to hear on a monitor and I was smothered in crisp sheets which boxed my body in better than any restraints. I didn’t even need to open my eyes so I didn’t. I kept them closed tightly, just wishing that I was anywhere but in Florence’s general hospital.

As I stayed still, half mortified and half still unconscious, I heard the sound of someone’s breathing beside where I lay. I only wondered who it was for a split second, just long enough for my eyes to snap open and for me to take in the girl snoozing lightly in a plastic hospital chair.

Nobody had ever stayed there before, right by my side, in this God forsaken place. My mother had never come with me because she was usually too hysterical to stand upright. My father had always had something better to do while I was there, while some stranger in a white coat was fixing up the wounds he had made. Nobody had ever stayed.

Yet here she was, breathing deeply with sleep, head resting on the white white wall behind her so her mane of red threw off the sanitised colours. I stared for a little while just because I couldn’t quite believe it. Not that I had done something as stupid as overdose. Not that Jane’s sister had found me and taken pity. Not that the girl of my dreams had taken me to the hospital and probably saved my life.

She had undoubtedly saved my life.

I shifted and groaned. There was poison still left in me, collecting at the bottom of my joints, left to drain slowly out. I was no longer on fire but rather the charcoaled remains, the piece of wood destroyed beyond recognition. I didn’t feel the same anymore. I didn’t think I’d ever feel as I did before.

That was good, though. I was sick of being that person. I was sick of being who the town thought I was, playing up to their image, mocking them by doing exactly what they assumed. The drugs had somehow consumed me in ways I’d never before seen. I already knew what they could eventually lead to and, looking down at my body wrapped up in the hospital bed, I saw the path that they had all taken too. I saw that I was on the exact same one.

In frustration I groaned out again, sick to the stomach with self loathing. I’d never be worthy of someone like Jane. Every romance story with every hero was turned on its head here, here where the girl had had to take the sorry excuse for a man to the hospital in order to save his life. Here where she had found him on her couch in the middle of the night. And there was nothing romantic about the way she’d found me – half alive and already hallucinating.

God, if the blood running through my veins wasn’t being pumped so slowly it would undoubtedly have all rushed to my head. What would she think of me now? That I was pathetic? That I was nothing but a failure? That I couldn’t even commit suicide properly? I cringed into the bed.

I had been upset, I remember being so mad and sad that I couldn’t even see properly as I took the drugs. Had I been trying to kill myself? It was a coward’s way out, and I was many things but not a coward. Never a coward. It had just been a desperate attempt to forget everything for a split second, a desperate attempt which had gone desperately wrong.

Now that my senses were slowly being returned to me, I could feel the regret hit me solid and plain right along my chest. It would have winded me if my breathing wasn’t already too short but it had me reaching out like an infant for some touch, some reassurance. I wanted my mother there to tell me I was a silly boy but things would get better from here because together we had hit rock bottom. She was probably in a different country though, far far away. Her rock bottom hit a long time ago.

A hand took my outstretched one carefully, cream fingers cementing mine together. I blinked at the stirring girl and noticed her hand had always been resting near mine, as if she’d been holding it before sleep had taken her. I swallowed at that thought. I trembled when Jane’s warmth spread right into me and wondered how I had ever gotten so lucky. How, despite all of the pain and horror and darkness, there she was.

“How are you feeling?” her voice was husky and didn’t help my trembling limbs calm down any. “The doctors said you’d be pretty shaken up, after all your body was close to shutting itself down, but that you should be okay. The worst is over.”

“Fine, I feel okay. A bit hollow but alive,” I smiled so easily at her. It all came far too easily.

“You don’t have to lie to me Fraser, you’re shaking.” She levelled such a gaze on me that I instantly felt guilty, even if the white lie was for her sake, even if everything I tried to do was for her sake, I had still taken those drugs. I had still been dragged into her house. I had to stop lying to her, even if that meant telling her the real truth.

My hand in hers was lifted over to where she sat and enveloped in both of her creamy palms as if to try to spread out even more of her warmth. My shuddering lessened slowly but only because her eyes brought me back out and stabilised me. Her solid body, so there and soft, levelled my head.

“I’m sorry Jane, I’m so so sorry,” I breathed out, finally breaking away and staring up at the ceiling.

“Please tell me it was an accident Fraser. Tell me you didn’t mean to take that many and that it was a mistake.”

I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know myself. In those ugly moments I had gone crazy and I could have done anything to myself, intentionally or not.

“Oh Fraser,” she sighed out, her breath fanning out over that hand still kept captive.

“Sorry,” I said again just because I would never be able to say it enough.

“Don’t apologise to me, you should try apologising to yourself. I’m not the one you put those awful toxins into; I’m not the one you tried to... hurt.”

“But you had to take me here to this place. You’ll never know how grateful I am that you did that,” I twisted my head to look at her again, red hair falling down her back and rose lips stretched to show me she was fighting to contain all of her emotions. She did that often, around school, around teachers, around David Armstrong.

“Any decent person would have done that,” she justified quickly, trying to deflect this gratitude away as if ashamed. She probably was. She knew deep down that they would have left me.

“No, I would have been left for dead if anybody else had found me. Your sister and you are like little angels, you know that?” I smiled softly, imagining the halo above her head. “I owe you my life.”

“Fraser,” she sounded pleading “you don’t owe me anything.”

“Why won’t you accept that you did a good thing Jane?”

“Because you put me on this pedestal like everybody else, and I don’t want you to be like everybody else. I’m just Jane here; I’m not some angel or some queen or anyone else, just Jane. Please. I took you here because you’re my friend and I was worried. You didn’t want to come but I forced you because I was selfish and I didn’t want you to die.”

She seemed almost out of breath as she looked right at me, through me, into me. She didn’t fool me though. She could never be selfish. She didn’t see herself as she really was.

“And I didn’t want to lose you.”

Her words cut right into my heart, carving out her silhouette and making me hers for even longer than eternity. She didn’t even realise it but she had just made me fall even harder in love with her. She had no idea how dangerous saying things like that could be around me.

I moved my hand back close to me, taking hers with me, and raised it up to my lips. I kissed her knuckles gently because I couldn’t bear to speak. Anything I said would be insignificant and ugly, only acting would let her in on how grateful I was, let her peek at how much I loved her.

She gasped quietly when my lips met her skin and my body had a similar reaction. The poison was gone just like that, in the blink of an eye my entire body was on fire and yearning to pull her into me completely. But I released her hand slowly to watch her snatch it back, cradling it to her chest and sending me a wide eyed look.

“Sorry,” I said one again.

“No it’s... it’s okay you just caught me by surprise,” she stammered out.

She was adorable when she was flustered. With a swell of masculine pride, I realised that I had been the cause of her cute pink tint, and that I did have some effect on her even if it wasn’t a fraction of what she did to me.

“Will you promise me something Fraser?” she asked suddenly after not meeting my eyes for a few minutes.

“Of course.”

She smiled sadly at my answer, at how eager I already was to do whatever she wanted.

“Never take drugs again, promise me you won’t even smoke a joint. I hate seeing how different you are when you’ve had them and... and how close you came to dying. Fraser I was so worried. Please promise me you’ll do that?”

“I promise,” I said sincerely, meaning every word. I could give up the drugs. Hell, for Jane I’d give up my life so the highs and forgetting wouldn’t be too hard. I didn’t want to put her through anything like last night again. Normal people didn’t hurt the ones they loved, I wouldn’t become like my father who only hurt those he loved.

Then Jane smiled a real smile, the one which sent her eyes into a blue so light that I could have been looking up into the bottomless sky. “Thank you,” she sounded relieved.

I just grinned too because it was all I could do to save myself from reaching out for her again. Being with her made everything and anything bearable. I was lying in a hospital bed in the town where everyone despised me and I didn’t give a flying fuck. I would be up to my eye balls in debt for this room and I would only confirm what everyone had been saying about me for years but I couldn’t find it in myself to give a shit.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said softly, breaking our silence.

I only then recognised the weariness on her, the bed clothes underneath a swamping cardigan, the way she would sporadically rub her eyes. She had gotten practically no sleep, up most of the night looking after me in this hospital while I was unconscious. God how could anyone look as beautiful as she did while tired?

“You should get home Jane, I’m sure your parents are worried about you, Helen too.”

She shrugged and shook her head “I’m not leaving this room until the doctors come back and discharge you. I’ve rung home already and told them I’m at Lolly’s house, and texted Helen to tell her you’re doing better. You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she attempted a joke and I smiled because she was so perfect.

I hated that she had to lie, though. I wished she could have told the truth, or half the truth, that she was with me and nobody else. I was already her secret. She’d already snuck out of the house for me and was lying to her parents and no doubt there’d be even more things to come.

“You don’t have to stay,” I told her, needing her to understand that she had no real logical reason to remain. She could be out there – it was a Saturday after all – she could be anywhere she wanted with whomever she wanted. She could go to Lolly’s house so she wouldn’t be lying to her parents. She could go back on with her life and forget that any of this, that I, had happened.

“I’m fine staying right here,” she reached for my hand once again and gave it a reassuring squeeze. It told me that she had a reason, whether logical or not, for wanting to stay with me.