Hide N' Seek

Coming is an anxiety-inducing thing. There are three different scenarios that can be waiting for me behind the door, and none of them are things I particularly like seeing.

More often than not, what I come home to see is a vacant living-room, blanket bunched up on the couch and TV on full blast while Jack vomits in the bathroom. I can remember a time when the sound of someone throwing up used to make me nauseous; it seems like such a distant memory now, almost like that was never something that affected me.

Taking a deep breathe, I unlock the door and walk inside. The first thing I notice is silence. The TV’s not on and there’s no hints to indicate that Jack had ever been there.

There’s no sound of retching from the next room, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. Kicking off my shoes, I head to our bedroom with my teeth sunken painfully in my bottom lip.

Jack is asleep in the bed with the comforter pulled around his waist and chest, but his legs are out in the open, each bent at the knee, one behind the other. One hand is under his head and the other has a loose grip on a saltine cracker.

There’s a bowl next to the bed on the floor and – to my relief – it’s empty. I run my fingers through his hair and he barely stirs.

I can’t remember the last time Jack took a nap before I came home. Even when he first fell into this pit of despair he can’t seem to figure out how to claw his way out of, he waited for me to get home.

He even used to wait up for me when I first started college and my hours were crazy. None of the psychologists at the hospital wanted to mentor a college kid; none of them really took me seriously and I swapped who I was supposed to be learning from so many times that I lost count.

In hindsight, it can’t be easy to mentor someone in something like this, considering that they couldn’t exactly let me sit in people’s sessions, which is why most schools don’t require so many hours before receiving a diploma. It’s nice though, I guess, because now that I have some experience in what things are like I know I won’t end up backing out on my career of choice.

Sighing, I kneel down and shake Jack's shoulder until he cracks an eye open.

“Hey,” he says sleepily.

I smile a bit and take the half-eaten cracker from him. I toss it in the trash next to us; it was stale from sitting out anyways. I wonder how long he slept for.

“I see you tried to eat some,” I say softly.

He nods and pulls his head off of the pillow slightly.

“I even kept it down,” he says quietly, eyes begging for a praise again.

My smile grows a bit and I kiss his nose.

“Proud of you,” I murmur, “do you think you’re getting better?”

He nods again.

“Do you think that if I make something for dinner you’ll be able to keep it down?” I ask.

He bites his lip, considering it for a bit. I hold my breath while I wait for him to decide, and by the time he does my lungs are burning.

“I think if it’s something light I’ll be okay,” Jack says, picking at the pillowcase, “I don’t want to push it though, you know? The flu is kind of tricky sometimes.”

I let out the breath I was holding, slightly disappointed that he’s still sticking to his BS flu suggestion. I’m not sure why I thought that maybe he would say something different; it’s not like I ever called him out on the lie, or any lie really. Then again, he never really used to call me out on mine either.

“Chicken noodle soup?” I ask.

He scrunches his nose and shakes his head.

“Ramen?” he asks hopefully.

“Oh,” I say, surprised; if he eats, it’s never really anything but chicken noodle. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you want.”

Jack smiles and leans his head back on the pillows, apparently still sleepy. It makes me nervous, his sudden lack of energy, but I tell myself that he’s just getting over the flu; of course he’d need more sleep than usual.

“It’s Friday,” I tell him, knowing all too well that he stopped paying attention to what day it is a long time ago, “come watch a movie with me, yeah?”

He nods and pushes the blankets off of himself. We walk into the living-room and he sits down on his designated spot on the couch, blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. He flips through the movies on demand while I walk into the kitchen and start making him ramen.

I grab a random mug from one of the top cupboards and put the noodles in it before walking back into the living-room and handing it to Brooklyn. He takes it, careful not to burn his fingers and raises an eyebrow.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asks.

I shake my head and sit down next to him.

“Nah. It was one of the patient’s birthdays, so we had a party for them, and I ate pizza there.”

He smiles a little, twirling some noodles onto his fork.

“That was sweet of you all,” he says, starting the movie.

“It was kind of depressing, actually,” I tell him, “the kid’s mom kept crying and whispering about how it might be the last birthday she sees every-time the mom thought her daughter wasn’t listening. Poor girl is only twelve, too, but I guess that’s what I signed up for. What movie did you pick?”

“’Dial ‘M’ for Murder,” he says before slurping some noodles.

The noise would normally gross me out, but it’s more reassuring than anything. I sit back and try to get into the movie, but like with most Hitchcock films, it’s too slow to keep my constant attention until the end.

3/4s of the way through the movie, Jack is up and running to the bathroom. I look down and find his mug to be completely empty.

I squeeze my eyes shut and lean my head back against the couch. I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly from my mouth.

I really thought that maybe he was getting better. Maybe he was, and eating something other than saltine crackers was too much of a push too fast. Besides, the flu doesn’t always go away in a day, right?

Thinking positively doesn’t do anything to make me feel better, and the dread filling my body just worsens when Jack comes back into the room, looking completely terrified.

“Alex, I… I think I just threw-up blood,” he says, crying.