Last Hope

HEART RACING, I PULLED AWAY FROM PAT and quickly walked over to my car, my head spinning as I roughly pulled the driver’s side door open and slipped inside. As the boy I had left on the sidewalk called out my name and dropped his arms tiredly against his sides, I shook my head at him, and then twisted the key in the ignition and maneuvered the car from the parking space.

Without so much as a glance and a wave, I sped off down the road, integrating into the New York traffic as my mind started reeling. My heart was beating against my ribs, and tears wanted to pour from my eyes, they pushed and pushed, sending the burning sensation throughout my body, but I refused to give in. Jonathan Toews had been the reason for tears so much in my life, he didn’t deserve any more.

Half way back to my studio apartment, my cell phone started ringing from the little compartment under the radio. Shaking my head, I ran my free hand through my hair and then quickly looked down to check the number. When my eyes ran across the familiar 312 area code, I felt my heart stop beating completely.

I knew the number. I knew that number so well that it made my bones creak. It made my mind wrap itself up and hide. It was the number that had called me numerous times, on the road, numerous times while I sat in my dorm room alone, contemplating why I was still around. It was him, the same man that told me to basically fuck off.

Why would he be calling? Why would he want to talk to me after everything that just happened? After he just walked away without an explanation? He was the one that, what seemed like forever ago, told me that it was okay. He was the one that gave me the somewhat okay to be with him.

Glancing up, I watched as the traffic quickly stopped. Pressing my body into the back of my cloth seats, I slammed on the breaks and came to a quick stop behind a bright yellow taxi. Luckily the person behind me also stopped, and ended up about a fraction of an inch away from my back bumper.

Shaking my head, the ringing finally stopped, but as soon as it did, it picked back up again, the same cell number lighting up on the screen. As I let my eyes trace the number hoping that it wouldn’t be the same one from a year ago, I felt my body grow cold as every number was perfectly in line.

Fingers trembling, I reached down and grabbed the phone, and then hit the green circle and swallowed hard as I brought it to my ear and slowly eased on the gas pedal, letting my car craw along with the pace of the traffic.

“Hello?”

“What the fuck, Madison?” Every nerve exploded in my body as his voice came through the phone. “Like, seriously, what the fuck?”

“Jon, just…” I paused as the traffic came to a stop again. “Just don’t take it out on him, alright?”

There was a moment of silence before the man let out a long sigh and then a loud thud echoed from the other end of the phone. “I know you would never initiate anything like that, Mads. I just feel like, fuck, do you have any idea how much I loved you?”

Anger flared in my heart, as his words sunk into my head and the traffic started moving again. “No, I don’t actually.” I snapped, my fingers wrapping around the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. “I never had any idea how much you loved me, actually. You had a really shitty fucking way of showing it.”

“Don’t give me this guilt trip now, Mads.” He said tiredly.

I had to grind my teeth together to hold myself back from just screaming into the phone. “Give you shit?” I questioned, my voice louder than I had anticipated. “You fucked me over twice, with probably two different girls while we were dating for what, a fucking week?”

“Madison, listen-“

“No, you fucking listen to me Jonathan Toews”, I was livid as I quickly turned into another lane and sped off down the street. “You broke my heart once, and I forgave you. Then you go and fucking do it again, at the most important fucking moment in my life. Do you have any idea how bad it hurt to know that the guy that saved your life, and who was also your boyfriend, blew off your biggest moment for some fucking whore?”

A sigh came through the other end, and I hoped with every ounce of my heart that his stupid face would leak tears. I wanted him to cry. I wanted him to feel bad about what he did, and how it affected me. It killed me. It almost killed me, and I wanted him to understand that.

“You almost fucking killed me, Jon. You saved me and then you almost fucking killed me again. You left me when I needed you, and then you go get a girlfriend, come back, and then try to fix everything? Do you know how fucked up you are?” I slammed on the breaks, my car screeching to a halt at a red light inches away from the bumper of a taxi. “You broke my heart, not just all at once, but little by little. Every single time you would pull this shit, I would just regress to the point I was before I met you. I don’t want you Jon. I don’t want you to even fucking think about me, because I’m tired of playing your stupid little fucking games. I like Pat, he treats me like I’m worth something, and if you have a problem with that, then you can go fuck yourself.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and hit the red button. As the screen went dark, I tossed the slim piece of metal into the backseat and then placed a hand over my forehead, trying to calm myself down before my anger caused an accident. I had already stopped inches away from cars about four times while talking to Jon, I didn’t need to plow into the back of a car today on top of all of the shit that just happened.

Shaking my head a little, I leaned back into my seat again and pressed the palms of my hands into the steering wheel as I opened my mouth and let out the loudest, longest, and highest pitch scream I had ever done. The anger that was swelling in my stomach was something that I had never felt before, and there was no an ounce of shock in me that Jonathan Toews was the cause of it.



The game was in the second intermission when I had finally decided to turn it on. It had taken me all day painting, three large coffees, and a substantial amount of food to make me feel better and slightly forget about what had happened earlier with Jon. The deep voice still resonated in my head, and my nerves still exploded under my skin at the thought of him, but the hurt was less. The ache in my bones and the sickness in my stomach didn’t surface. Instead, I just felt a small pinch in the bottom of my heart. It was probably because of the small hole he had torn in the layers of muscle. He was the only person that I loved enough to let do that.

My lips parted and let a small groan out into the quiet air of my one bedroom apartment. The urge to continue painting was replaced with the urge to just go to sleep. It seemed that as soon as I moved out to New York, those were the only two things I ever wanted to do. If I wasn’t painting, I was sleeping, and if I wasn’t doing either of those things, I was eating, visiting galleries, or working in the one that exhibited my work.

The intermission droned on, the local channel showing the same commercial what felt like fifteen times and analyzing the play of the New York Rangers. They spoke about the power play, goals, and some players, but nothing ever stuck in my head. All I could do was watch the colors on the screen, watch them morph into people and words, and then let them fall from my mind.

Everything seemed to lose its shimmer as soon as I hung up on Jon. The tall buildings that I had grown to love were now just obnoxious, the brick walls of my loft apartment looked dirty, and the empty night sky that hung above all of the high rise buildings plucked at my nerves. I wanted to see the stars; I didn’t want to see the blank chalky sky above.

I never understood how one person in your life could piss you off so much. I had boyfriends before, we had emotional connections, but none of them had ever managed to twist my organs and puncture my heart like Jon had. No one that I had ever met in my life had that much control over my emotions, and for that single reason, I hated that man. I hated him because no matter what stupid shit he pulled, no matter how bad he hurt me and made me scream and cry, I still loved him. I was still so fucking stupid to still have feelings for him, and for that I hated him with every fiber of my being.

The game started up again. My eyes followed the blobs of color across the ice a few times. One scored and then the other. The words at the top of the screen didn’t make sense in my head, and the few whistles and close ups of players didn’t evoke any emotions or interest from me. I just sat there through the rest of the game, blankly watching the television screen, as my mind kept going back to the day I left, the day I told Pat I was leaving, and then the day that he called, about four months ago.

”You take one in the morning and one at night, alright?” The pharmacist handed me the small bottle of pills and gave me a small smile. Returning it, I grabbed the bottle and nodded, forcing the small smile to stay on my lips.

“Thanks for the help.” I breathed and with a final goodbye, turned from the woman and headed out of the small Pharmacy, the bottle of anti-depressants still tightly wedged between my fingers. As I walked, the small pills in the bottle rattled and clinked against each other, making my heartbeat a little slower.

I had never wanted to grow up to be this way. I knew that from the second I saw my brother dead that I would never be correct, but I never thought that I would turn into this. My dreams consisted of getting better, finding someone and living happily ever after, or just killing myself. It was one extreme or the other.

I didn’t want the in between. I didn’t want to be the woman in her mid-twenties, living alone with a bottle of pills to take from keeping her from jumping off a bridge. I wanted to get better or die, and now that the option for getting better was clearly out of the picture, I just wanted it to be over.

If anything, I deserved some closure.

Tears stung my eyes as I made my way back to my apartment, the bottle never leaving my fingers. A part of me wanted to throw the bottle into the street and watch the cars run it over, crushing whatever was inside to dust that would just mix in with the dirt on the streets and disappear.

In all honesty, I just wanted to disappear. There was nothing special about me. I had no redeeming qualities, my paintings weren’t selling, and I had pushed everyone away. I was alone again. Anyone that I could have ever loved, anyone that could help me right now was hundreds of miles away, living his or her happy lives, not even thinking about me.

When I reached my apartment building, my legs took my body over to the stairs. Climbing every flight, I found myself on the roof about ten minutes later, crying and out of breath. As I sat against one of the boxes that controlled the air or heat in the building, I shut my eyes and pulled my knees against my chest, letting my forehead drop down against them.

I was so tried of trying. I was so tired of doing this and that to get better. I didn’t want to get better anymore.

Dropping the bottle onto the cement next to me, I pressed my hands into the floor beneath me and as I was about to pull my body up, my phone rang, as if someone was watching me and had decided that I needed a little help in making my decision.

Without batting an eyelash, I pressed my back against the metal box again and put the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“It’s Pat.”

“Hey.” I whispered, my whole body growing numb from the sound of his sad voice. “How are you?”

“I’m on my way to New York, and I need to see you. I need to talk to you, Madison, about what happened, about everything. I fucked up, and I want to apologize.” His voice broke halfway through the sentence.

I nodded as a response, and then as soon as I realized that he couldn’t see me, I swallowed hard and pressed my hands into the cement beneath me.

“Now’s not really a good time.” I breathed, my heart pounding in my chest as my eyes danced along the ledge of the building. “I mean, can we-“

“Madison, I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, and I know it’s late, and I know this may be a lost cause, but I think I have feelings for you. I mean I don’t think, I know I do, and-“

“Pat.”

“No just listen”, he begged, “I know you still love him.” Tears welled up in my eyes as his name floated through my brain. “I know he still loves you too, but I miss you. If we can’t be anything but friends, that’s alright, but just realize that I am always here for you, no matter how far apart we are, I’m just a phone call away.”

After his words sunk into my head, I nodded a little, biting down on my lip as I stood up and turned my back to the ledge I had been longing for since I had received the bottle of pills a mere hour ago.

Whispering a small thank you, I shuffled across the roof of my building and opened the door to the stairwell. Taking a few steps into the hallway, the heavy door slammed shut behind me, and as soon as I realized that my life had sunk to this point again, I fell to my knees, and sobbed into the phone.

As I cried, Pat stood on the phone, for an hour and a half, telling me that it would all be all right. He told me that I would be fine, because I wasn’t the weak little girl I thought I was. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that his view of my stability was completely wrong, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

I don’t think I could ever tell him that at the moment he told me I was strong, I was at my weakest.



The familiar ring of my cell phone knocked me back into reality and without even checking the number; I picked it up and held it to my ear, my eyes slowly roaming around the room as I whispered a small hello.

“Madison, thank fucking god.” My eyebrows pinched together as the male voice floated through the phone. “Are you on the way to the hospital?”

“The fuck.” I breathed, my eyes widening at the man’s words. The confusion that had entered my brain was numbing, and all I could do was stare out at the television screen, hoping that the answer would somehow show up.

And as if the day could get any worse, the television cured my curiosity.

It happened in slow motion, not because my brain had made it out that way, but that’s how the clip rolled on the television. A man in a white jersey was working the puck against the boards, and then out of nowhere, a blue jersey skates in and as the two men collide against the boards, the one in the white jersey falls to the ground in a jumble, his body laying motionless on the ice as the trainers rush over. Right before my eyes, the clip changed to a stretched being wheeled off of the ice.

“Who-“

“Were you watching the game?”

“No, not really.” I breathed, the voice on the other end still not ringing a bell.

“It was Jon, Maddie. He got taken out of the game on a stretcher, I know what happened today with us, but-“

“Pat?”

“Madison.” He breathed, his voice shaking, “Are you alright?”

I blinked slowly and looked back up at the television screen. Swallowing hard, I nodded a little and pulled my aching body off of the couch and cleared my throat. “What hospital?”

“Lenox Hill, but-“

“I’ll see you there.” I whispered and then hung up the phone as I grabbed my keys and my wallet and ran out of my apartment, adrenaline pumping viciously through my veins as the thought of Jonathan being wheeled off the ice on a stretcher rolled through my head again.

I wanted to cry and throw up at the same time.

Partially because he was seriously injured, and partially because in that moment, watching him collapse like that, I realized that my overwhelming hate for him still couldn’t cover the fact that somewhere in my heart, covered by masks and false words, I still loved that man, no matter how rude we were to each other.