Timer

Of course, Jack, of fucking course, you had to be the one to get the soulmate who needs help on the very first day. Always the protector, aren’t you? Couldn’t be normal, you’ve never been normal, have you? “Someone called, um, Ava, I think, called. She said that you were hurt. I just got off work, are you alright?” He didn’t look alright, that was for damn sure, because he was hooked up to about seven different kinds of life support and he had slightly reddened bandages around different parts of his body.

“I’m fine,” he choked out, putting a hand to the bandage along his throat. “Have a good day at work?” He chuckled for just a moment before he felt the pain of it, the hand attached to a bandaged wrist trying to relieve the pain in his throat. He looked beat up, nowhere near as put together as he had on our first date, and he wasn’t even wearing shoes then. If someone did this to him, I swear to god.

“I’m Ayva, Zack’s friend. Nice to meet you, Jack. Nice names for soulmates, Jack and Zack. Could I speak to you in the hall?” Her shoes squeaked along the immaculate hospital floor and she swung the door open. I followed, hell, what else was I supposed to do? Once we were in the hall, she checked once more to ensure the door was shut behind her. “Okay, Jack, here it is. Zack isn’t exactly,” she paused. Goddamnit, was it for fucking drama that people made these little pauses? Because she sure as hell wasn’t a shy person. “He’s not normal. Don’t get me wrong, that boy is my best friend, hands down. I love him half to death. But when he was a little bit younger something happened, I’ll let him tell you if he even wants to yet.”

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. Congratulations, Jack, you’re meant to spend the rest of forever with someone who doesn’t want to be alive nearly that long. “Did he, uh, do that to himself?” Truth be told, as caring and accepting as I liked to think that I was, I had never actually had a friend who had cut or even thought about committing, at least as far as I knew. So now, having no previous experience, I had to attempt to pursue a serious relationship with someone who was constantly on the edge of life and death.

“Yeah,” Ayva whispered, and that was the quietest I’d ever heard her be. “I don’t really know if he wants you to know, but I figured, like, if you two are going to be serious, you should know, right?” And she was right, but in an instant I imagined how easy my life would have been if I hadn’t had him as a fucking soulmate. We might be out on our first proper date by now, having some drinks or whatever, and getting to have a real conversation. Instead, I’d taken a cab that was expensive as shit to get to the hospital, praying to god that the soulmate I’d known for just over a day would still be alive.

“Well, that’s something, now isn’t it?” I shoved my fists in my pockets. That’s not exactly how things were going to be now, because Zack was young and apparently a lost little boy. And I thought for a moment and realized that it could be me. Fuck, I didn’t know why he had done this, maybe something I did or said had pushed him over the edge. And I wasn’t quite sure that I could deal with that, possibly being responsible for the fact that someone had nearly died. “Listen, I’m going to go inside and talk to him for a minute.”

“Better not,” Ayva said, “Some head of medicine, or something like that, said that he’s not supposed to talk much.” She tugged on a piece of her hair and looked down at the floor, then back to me. “Nevermind, go on in. Just don’t make him talk too much, yeah?” And that was all, because she walked down the hallway I had come down that had the waiting room at the end of it.

“Zack, hey.” I stole the chair from under the doctor’s desk and moved it next to Zack’s bed, not that you could even call it that. The mattress looked like it was about two inches thick, and the blankets were about as warming as paper from the looks of it. “I know you’re not supposed to talk much, right?” That sucked quite a bit, because I really would have liked to get some answers out of him, but his voice was shot.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Jack, would you tell me a story?” His eyes lulled and didn’t focus easily, and I assumed he’d been given sleeping medication to keep him from doing something terrible. But his eyes were so wide and he looked like a little kid on Christmas morning, so I nodded. It had been a long time since I’d told anyone a story, maybe even since I had babysat when I was sixteen. But I figured I would give it my best shot, because there was no reason to not.

So I started a story, but I had barely gotten past ‘once upon a time’ when his eyes were closing. He looked sweet, almost like a kid, lying there on pristine hospital white sheets. But those white sheets were what reminded me that he wasn’t a kid, he was a grown up with grown up problems. But for a moment, I was able to see him as innocent, someone who would never dream of hurting himself. Maybe if I tried hard enough, I could get him to be like that again. Someone who would never dream of hurting himself.