Bones

Jamie dies on a cold Thursday night on the floor of his bathroom. He doesn’t know how many pills he took – one or two handfuls, maybe – but he knows it was a mix of lorazepam and ibuprofen and maybe a few other random pills mixed in here and there. It doesn’t take long for the fuzziness to come on, and it’s not long after that that ataxia starts to set in. He closes his eyes, and for the first time in a long time Jamie relaxes. He lets the drowsiness take hold, curls up on the floor as if he were about to fall asleep, and closes his eyes; now all that’s left is to wait, and there’s something horribly peaceful about how he feels in this moment. He can’t feel his arms or his legs or anything, except the veil of unconsciousness pulling at his eyelids. He chokes as bile rises in his throat, and his breathing slows until his chest is barely rising at all. Jamie doesn’t know it, but his respiratory system is slowly shutting down and in a few minutes his liver will start to fail as well. But by the time that happens Jamie will have already blacked out. Not sleep, mind, because Jamie is still awake and his eyes are still open and staring blankly at the ceiling, cloudy and losing their light with every passing second. He can still feel everything – every miniscule ounce of pain inside his body as it tries fights the poison he threw in his stomach, the crushing pull of his organs losing the power to function.

And Jamie can feel himself dying. More and more each second.

He wants to cry but he can’t, he wants to breathe but it hurts so fucking much that he stops trying. He lets his body shut down, and the last thing he remembers is soft fur brushing against the back of his hand, the click of a lock someplace far, far away, and whimpering a garbled apology.



Nick enters the apartment in a much better mood than when he left. He was only gone for thirty or forty minutes, but nighttime walks have always helped him clear his head and gather his thoughts. The apartment looks the same as when he left – there’s still broken glass and ceramic in the living room, the television is still on and the windows are open – except Jamie’s nowhere in sight. One of the lamps is still on, but it’s the one that they always leave on to prevent running into something in the middle of the night.

“Jamie?” Nick calls, setting his keys down and glancing around the living room and into the kitchen. There’s no answer, but then again Nick didn’t really expect one. In all honesty Nick wouldn’t be surprised if Jamie was still pissed at him, and he wouldn’t really blame him either. Maybe he went to bed, Nick thinks, and begins making his way back to Jamie’s bedroom, but the light from the bathroom catches his eye. The door is cracked open, but he can’t hear the shower running. He glances down as Nilla emerges from the bathroom, long tail hugging the corner. She runs between Nick’s legs, rubbing against him and meowing. “Jamie?” Nick calls out again, pushing the cat out of the way with his foot and reaching to push the door open.

“Oh God,” he mumbles, the words falling from his mouth. His heart drops into his gut and then shoots back up to his throat. “Oh shit.” He sees Jamie on the floor, small and sad looking, limp and lifeless. It takes a moment for his brain to kick into overdrive before he stumbles over to his brother.

“Oh God, Jamie what did you do.” He crouches down and cradles Jamie’s head in his lap, and his brother’s eyes stare back at him blankly. His lips are tinted blue, his skin cold and clammy. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” It takes a few moments for Nick to pull his shit together and check Jamie’s wrist for a pulse. He’s trembling and he doesn’t even know why, like he can’t control his own limbs. He searches and searches and searches, shaky fingers fumbling to find any signs of a pulse even if it’s barely there. It’s gone completely, or maybe Nick just can’t find it because he’s a complete and total fuck up. Jesus you are so stupid Nick, Jamie’s words from long ago pop into his head and he can’t help but agree. He pulls out his phone and dials 999, but his hands are shaking so badly that he nearly drops the phone. The woman on the line talks to him calmly, asks him what’s going on. He explains to her the best he can but he’s fumbling over his words like mad. He’s nearly in tears by now, why did I fucking leave I knew it I knew I shouldn’t have left him alone I’m so goddamn stupid please Jamie please don’t fucking die I am so sorry please.

The operator says that a bus has been dispatched and that they’ll be there in a few minutes. She asks Nick if he knows what Jamie took, and he just shakes his head and cries because there’s pill bottles fucking everywhere and some are only half way full while the others are completely empty and he could have taken any kind of combination he wanted to. Jamie liked his pills; he knew how to cut them, how much to take, and what to mix them with. He knew what was too much and what was just enough and how to get high on fucking anything. The operator asks Nick if he knows CPR, and thank God Nick does, even if the only reason he took the class in the first place was in case something like this ever happened with Jamie. He sets the phone down but doesn’t hang up and starts performing mouth to mouth, checking for any sign of a pulse every minute or so. He’s getting frustrated now, and he doesn’t know if he’s not doing something right or if Jamie’s completely gone. Nick picks up the phone and in a jumble tells the woman he still isn’t breathing. She says that the ambulance will be there in three minutes, and Nick begins alternating between chest compressions and mouth to mouth ventilation.

To Nick, those three minutes are a lifetime. He continues trying to resuscitate him, but Jamie just isn’t responding. He gives up moments before the medics arrive and instead curls in on himself, sobbing over his brother’s body, clutching at Jamie’s hair, kissing his forehead, cheek and lips, apologizing repeatedly for everything, cursing and begging a God he doesn’t believe in at the same time.

Nick is pulled out of the bathroom to make room for the medics, and even though he knows that they’re here to help he tries to fight them away because he will not leave Jamie again. Everything around him moves soundlessly, like everything is moving twice its normal speed. Just like when he wrecked his car and watched every splinter in the glass as the windshield cracked and the hood was peeled off like the lid of a tin can. He doesn’t understand how they can all be so calm about this. This is the most terrifying thing Nick has ever experienced, and he feels like he’s going to have a panic attack just thinking about the sight of Jamie on the floor again. The medics get Jamie loaded onto a stretcher, and Nick can hear them talking to Jamie, trying to get him to respond, but he’s still limp and dead looking. A man approaches Nick, says that his name is Earl, and asks him how he knows Jamie and if he knows what kind of pills he took. Again. There’s a lot of people in his apartment right now, he notes to himself.

“I’m his brother,” Nick says quietly, sniffing. “I was only gone for a little bit, I don’t understand…”

Nick gives Earl as much of Jamie’s personal information that he knows: name, date of birth, medications he took, other health problems. Even in a total state of shock Nick can recite everything wrong with Jamie – in alphabetical order – off the top of his head. Earl tells Nick that he can come in the ambulance with them, that they got Jamie to start breathing again but he’s still unconscious and unresponsive. Nick glances at the clock before following Earl through the doorway and Jesus Christ have they really been there for twenty minutes already? Earl begins explaining to him what they’re going to do to Jamie once they get to the hospital – that they’re going to pump his stomach, and that he can stay in the room while they do it if he wants to. That right now they’re just trying to keep him breathing. Nick nods hastily.

“Just please, please help him,” Nick begs. Because if Jamie’s going to die – again, that is – Nick is sure as hell going to be there.



There’s a feeling of a calm rush in the hospital emergency room. Doctors, nurses, and techs rush around but they all seem to maintain complete composure throughout the whole ordeal. Nick doesn’t understand how anyone could do this, to work in a vocation where people’s lives are literally in your hands.

Jamie’s awake, kind of anyways. He twitches, eyelids fluttering open and closed as the nurse feeds a tube down Jamie’s throat. There’s two orderly’s on either side of Jamie holding his arms down and keeping him as still as possible. They pump his stomach repeatedly, and Nick has a sickening feeling in his gut as he watches Jamie’s body convulse and spasm and this all just seems horribly ironic in some way. His heart rate drops again, and there’s some yelling and rushing, but the actual words go over his head.

Please be okay, please just be okay.

Once they pump his stomach, the doctor feeds Jamie charcoal, just in case there was anything else left in his body. Nick snickers a little bit when the nurse explains it to him, because Jesus Christ, there was literally nothing else in Jamie except pills. He immediately hates himself a little bit more as soon as the thought enters his head. The nurse also tells him that Jamie’s emergency contact – his mother – was contacted and should be here shortly. She tells him that they’re going to run a bunch of tests and check for any damage to Jamie’s organs, and that he’s going to be asleep for a while. They put him on a ventilator for a little bit because he was having trouble breathing on his own, and they got whatever he took out of his body, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was out of the woods. The nurse tells Nick that Jamie is lucky to be alive, and Nick knows that Jamie would violently disagree with her. The nurse, she says her name is Mollie, and that she’s going to be Jamie’s nurse for the night. Nick thanks her and leaves for the waiting room to watch for Jamie’s mom.



There’s a loud THWACK as the palm of Caroline’s hand connects with Nick’s cheek. There’s a short pause across the ICU waiting room, the other people stopping, glancing, and then turning their attention back to their magazine or continuing to count the tiles once they realize it’s something that’s none of their business.

“How could you let this happen, Nick?! You’re supposed to be taking care of him! He was getting better, what the fuck did you do?”

Nick mindlessly touches his hand to his face, fingers brushing the tender skin as the coppery taste of blood tinges his tongue.

“Caroline!” Nick glances up as his dad yells at her in shock, pulling her back a step. Nick wipes the blood on his fingers on his jeans.

“He’s sick, Caroline. You can’t make him change. Not until he really wants to. And I think he does, maybe, but he doesn’t know how. And it’s something he has to figure out. Nobody else can fucking fix him but himself.” Nick sits down in one of the chairs, holding his hand against his cheek tenderly. He knows he probably deserved it, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. Caroline and his dad sit beside him, his dad sitting between them just in case. They don’t talk, but Caroline cries and Nick watches through the corner of his eye as his dad comforts her. There’s a horrible, disgusted feeling in his gut at the sight but that may just be the envy and resentment and hatred he’s buried inside himself.

After calming herself more Caroline decides to go back to sit with Jamie by herself for a while, and it’s just Nick and his dad side by side staring at the wall. CNN is on the television and there’s some kind of documentary about weed on. Nick feels a hand on his back and turns to his right.

“You know this isn’t your fault, son. The two of us could barely take care of him. We shouldn’t have expected you to try to do it all by yourself,” his dad whispers to him, eyebrows furrowing.

The feeling of hatred inside Nick grows and billows and he has to bite back a scoff at the sudden fucking epiphany his parent just had.

“Yeah, Dad, actually it is,” Nick mumbles, choking on the sob that rises in his throat. Before he knows he’s sobbing again, back breaking breaths and a river of tears, and then strong arms around him, holding him tightly and keeping him grounded.

Because maybe, just maybe, Jamie isn’t the only damaged one in the family.



Jamie’s eyes open to a bright light, and he hisses in pain reaching up to shield his eyes from the collision of lights. For a moment he thinks he’s dead – thinks he’s seeing that famous fucking white light, which, in all honesty, makes Jamie rethink some of his philosophical beliefs, but that doesn’t last long because then the rods and cones switch around, the photoreceptors adapt, and he can feel miosis taking place, feels his pupils constrict and adjust.

He’s on a bridge. It’s familiar, this bridge, but he can’t place it. There’s the rush of water somewhere underneath him, but there are no birds, no sizzle on the street. No chattering of the insects of summer, no sounds of traffic. Jamie glances around, searching, and then as his eyes land on the figure sitting about thirty meters away he realizes two things: the rushing of water isn’t actually water, it’s something in his veins – it’s fucking poison in his veins, itching, scratching, biting it’s way out; it’s rage and hate and envy and sadness – and also that the figure he’s seeing, it’s a girl, a waif. It’s Laura, all soft skin and perfect lips, boyishly narrow hips.

He’s in Hell. He’s in Hell with Laura, who kindly gifted him with a non-refundable one way ticket.

“Hi, Jamie,” she grins, waves, kicks her feet in the same manner of a child on a swing, and then slides off the barrier. “Welcome home.”

The poison boils, it spreads, and Jamie can feel it like acid eating away at his bones.

“You fucking cunt,” Jamie seethes, his teeth grinding together as his hands inadvertently ball into fists.

“Oh, Jay,” she frowns, flames dancing in her pupils. “You fucked up. You fucked up bad.” She steps closer to him, her bare feet slipping silently against the cobblestone as she steps toward him, the back of her skirt dusting behind her. “You lost.”

Jamie erupts, and he spits words barbed with hatred at her like lava, “I lost? I fucking lost? You killed yourself. You killed yourself years ago. You jumped off a fucking bridge. You had my name carved into your stomach when they got to you. I watched you fucking kill yourself, Laura. And you know what’s even more fucked up? Huh? Do you know what happens when you jump off a bridge, Laura?” She raises her eyebrows in mock interest. Jamie slows, collects himself and breathes, recalling the facts he has memorized. “Your body goes from 120 kilometers per hour to zero in a mere tick. But, the thing is, your organs don’t stop. They keep going. Your bones break, your organs are sliced open. I saw your body break. I saw the blood in the water. I heard your bones bend and crack and snap. All of this, in a collection of moments. I watched you die, Laura. You were fine one second, and the next you’re crawling over the barrier, walking and teetering on the edge like it’s a balance beam, like you’re joking. And then you’re smiling and holding your hand out to me, and when I refused and told you to get down, to stop messing around, all you fucking did was giggle and wave and then you stepped off like fucking Mary Poppins.”

“You killed yourself, too, Jamie,” Laura says, not missing a beat. And that realization, it hits Jamie in the chest, knocks him breathless – because the truth hurts more often than not. “Except it took you a handful of times to actually get it right. You’ve been killing yourself for years, Jamie. You’ve been killing other people, too – sucking the life straight out of them, sucking up every good part of them. Simply making them wither and die so you didn’t have to be so goddmaned alone anymore.”

Laura pauses, looking at Jamie with a sly smirk. She steps closer yet again, swaying in a grotesque parody of a child’s bashful dance. “I killed myself because I was finally free. My work was done. I won the battle, and it was time for me to move on to better things. You killed yourself to escape. You killed yourself because you just gave up. I was at peace when I died Jamie. You died in chaos. I built you heaven, Jamie. You’re the one that turned it into your own personal Hell.”

“You’re a demon.,” Jamie snarls back at her. “And do you know what you do to demons?” Laura gives him that same faux look of interest, eyebrow raised and lips pursed. “You exorcise them. You kill them.”
His body moves without a second thought, like a reflex, and he wraps his hands around Laura’s throat – squeezing, pushing, splintering, breaking – and she just laughs, the flame in her eyes flickering and burning out. Jamie watches Laura die for the second time, he feels the life drip from her body, the dead weight as gravity pulls her limp body down. But this time there is no regret, no sadness. He lets her go, watches her drop.

Jamie looks around. There’s the whisper of a cricket. And then, somewhere far, far off in the distance is the echo of laughter.



Jamie’s eyes open again to the harsh glare of failure streaming from fluorescent lights. He chokes, crying out as a wave of nausea and pure pain rush through his body. There’s a scratching burn in his throat accompanied by a heaviness that makes even twitching his fingers feel wrong. He blinks, bleary eyed, looking around until his eyes land on two slumped figures in the corner of the room, one talking to someone else while the other stares out the window. He realizes a few things at this point. The stench of antiseptic stings his nose hinting at a hospital; an ICU room. The blurry figures, that’s his mom, Nick, and a nurse. And finally, Jamie realizes that he is alive. That he failed. And then, Jamie starts to cry, the sobs making him hurt even worse because there was something down his throat and now he can’t breathe right. It hits him all at once, what happened and what he did.

The noise catches Nick’s attention first, as her jerks around to look at Jamie. The nurse and Caroline look over at the same moment. Jamie looks at them, sees the exhaustion of sleepless nights and worry on their faces, sees dark circles he knows all too well. And Jamie sobs at the sadness he’s caused.

“I’m so sorry,” He chokes, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m so, so sorry.” And the next thing he knows there are arms wrapped around him, tears on his cheek.

“No, baby, no. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” his mother sobs, squeezing him like it’s the last time she’ll ever touch him. Jamie wraps his arms around his mother, squeezing her back and burying his face into her shoulder.

Nick remains in the corner of the room, biting at his fingernails.



Jamie stays in the hospital for a few more days. They get him stabilized, get his organs back into a functioning range. They eventually take him off of suicide watch. Doctors come and go, asking questions and talking about things like “permanent liver damage” and “arrhythmias” and other big words that have been said enough that the meaning isn’t lost in the jumble of medical jargon.

One of the doctors, she tells Jamie he could have died. They don’t tell him the truth – that he actually did. Jamie doesn’t talk much. He knows. He doesn’t remember it, but it lingers in him; a certain darkness, an emptiness. He doesn’t have much to say other than “sorry” so he doesn’t waste his breath.

Jamie’s dad makes an appearance. His mom tell him, “Sorry Jamie. I had to. I had to let him know.” And Jamie cries quietly.

There’s talk about him going into inpatient, just for a little while. Jamie doesn’t argue.

Nick sits in the corner and doesn’t talk much. He can feel Jamie’s eyes on him sometimes, but he never meets them. He studies his fingernails and picks loose threads on his sweater and does anything but actually look at little Jamie.

We’re going to talk, we are Jamie thinks. But not today.

You’re too tired today. Because that exhaustion, that’s all Jamie. That bitter heaviness is the result of Jamie seeping his way into Nick’s bones. And that thought though, it’s not Jamie’s sadness or sickness or disillusionment.

It’s the truth, and that’s something he’s going to have to live with.