If I had known he was going to die, I wouldn’t have left him there.
I would have stayed and saved his life.
There was no escape from what was going on in my head. It was too late. I’d crossed the line. There were no stolen fag breaks, games of pool, or late-night storm watching. It was just me and my thoughts, in my room, being watched by whichever nurse was sent to supervise me.
I knew I was going crazy and it terrified me. Every now and again I’d stop being scared and I’d get angry instead. Angry with my dad for putting me in the hospital, angry with David for making me tell him what happened, angry with Nathan for stabbing Jake in the leg and killing him.
I knew things were critical when I heard Jake’s voice again.
Not in my head, I actually heard it. Like he was standing in the room with me.
(A whisper): Why did you leave me, Adam?
Go away. Please go away.
(Angry shouting): Why did you leave me there to die?
No, no, leave me alone, no.
(Calm): It’s all your fault.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
I covered my face with the blanket. I didn’t want to see his ghost, I couldn’t, I didn’t, I couldn’t, I–
(Angry): Why did you leave me, Adam? Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?
Stop! Stop! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I couldn’t breathe. I was choking, gasping, spluttering everywhere. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was dying, too.
They came running into the room and gave me an injection.
I fell asleep.
But he was there when I woke. He was there leaning on the sink, with his arms folded across his chest, and he was staring at me.
No. No – go away. I’m sorry, just go away.
(His voice was calm, he started with a sigh): You know, my mum lied to us, when she said there was a place called heaven. You remember, when she said it, after your mum’s funeral on the bench in the garden of remembrance?
I turned to the wall and put my fingers in my ears.
(A shout): Adam.
What, what do you want? You’re scaring me. (I’d wet myself.)
(Calm again): There is no heaven. There’s no such thing as heaven. I’m not living on anywhere. I’m dead in the ground; and there are ants and maggots and worms and they’re eating me, eating my flesh, right now as we speak, and they are crawling all over me and eating what’s left of me.
If that’s true, why are you standing in front of me now? Why are you torturing me like this?
(A wicked laugh): I am a figment of your imagination. A figment of your fucked-up head. I’m not real.
Go away and leave me alone.
They came in again. They saw the wet bed; and they took me, stripped me, and put me in the shower. I sat on the floor, the water falling over my body, and I cried. They had to wash me. I don’t even know who it was, maybe Damian. They washed me, then they took me back, dried me, and put me in fresh clothes.
In my clean bed, they left me, walking away, leaving me alone again and he was still there, still in the corner, still staring at me. Crawling up his legs were worms, and the maggots, and the ants. They crawled up his torso, across his shoulders, over his face and they covered him. They engulfed him while he laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and then he choked. He choked and he fell to the floor, and he couldn’t move because they were all over him.
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.’
They gave me another injection and I fell asleep.
I woke up screaming.
The room was quiet and dense. My breathing was heavy. I paced. My body wouldn’t allow me to sit. The pain was weighing me down, making me light, making me dizzy, making me sick. I was sick, lots and lots, until there was nothing left to come out of me.
I was banging my head against the wall when they brought my dad in. My fists clenched.
‘Adam,’ he cried. His hand to his mouth, he fell to his knees and he cried out. ‘Do something for him, please, do something for him.’
They said: Anti-psychotics. Benzodiazepines. Constant monitoring.
‘What’s happening to him?’ He was crying. ‘What’s happening to my son?’
They said: A psychotic episode. Psychological trauma. Post-traumatic stress syndrome.
He touched my shoulder. I turned and screamed in his face. Told him to fuck off.
They took him away.
‘Take him away, take him away, he’s useless anyway, he’s useless.’
I went to sleep.
A massive crash woke me up. Like metal cutlery falling all over the floor. There was a knife on the floor of my room.
I picked it up.
(Jake’s voice): What you doing with that, Adam?
The knife was in my hand, my hand was shaking.
Jab. Jab. Jab.
No, not three jabs, it was just one jab. Nathan did it with just one jab.
‘Nathan. Why did you do it? We were so happy.’
(From the corner): This is a police announcement, put the knife on the floor and put your hands in the air. NOW.
I dropped the knife. It made a screaming noise.
(Behind me): I’m arresting you on suspicion of leaving your best friend to die. You do not have to say anything but anything you do say–
‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’
What sort of person leaves his best friend there to die? What sort of person would do that?
‘A coward. A coward. A coward. I’m a coward. I’m weak. I’m weak. I’m weak.’
(A doctor): Give him something stronger. I need a syringe.
‘Give me something stronger, give him the syringe. Give him the syringe.’
A scream.
Not mine.
(Debbie): Why did you leave him there, Adam, my baby, my baby, my baby?
A sharp scratch then everything went black.
I woke soaked in my own sweat. I was shivering. There were arms around me. Someone was lying next to me on the bed. Holding me close.
A smell I knew.
Coconut shampoo.
I looked down to my chest. I knew those hands, that ring.
Let it be real. Let her be real.
(Her voice): It’s OK, baby, it’s OK. Everything is going to be OK.
Debbie. She’s come. She’s come to forgive me.
Her hand stroked my hair. She held me tight.
Please let her be real.
‘Adam, your dad is here.’ It was Damian.
She was gone.
He was there.
My eyes wouldn’t focus. They were rolling into the back of my head.
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘Who?’
‘Debbie.’
‘Debbie isn’t here, son, it’s me. It’s your dad.’
‘No! No!’
‘Can’t you give him something else?’
‘He’s had a maximum dose,’
‘I want Debbie.’
‘This isn’t right, you must be able to do something else for him.’
‘I want Debbie.’
‘Adam, Debbie can’t come.’
‘I want Debbie.’
‘Just lie down and go to sleep, you need to sleep.’
I did as they said. I slept. I slept, and I slept, and I slept.
When I finally opened my eyes, there were people in my room. A few, I think. Dad was there; David, too?
Someone else. Someone else was there with them.
I couldn’t see who, my eyes wouldn’t focus.
‘Do something, do something. Do something for him. Oh Adam. Oh Adam.’
It was her. Her voice. She was back.
Debbie.
She was there, she was crying, she was reaching out to me, but I knew she wasn’t real.
My mind was tricking me again, getting my hopes up, playing games.
I knew she wasn’t real. She hated me. She would never forgive me for leaving Jake there.
<
br /> ‘Oh Chris, I’m so sorry.’ She was crying on my dad’s shoulder. He was green like he was sick, like he hadn’t slept for weeks, and weeks, and weeks.
‘Go away. Stop playing tricks on me.’
‘Oh Adam, my poor baby, Adam.’
I moved off the bed. I sat in the corner facing the wall. I had to ignore her. She wasn’t real, I was just crazy.
I just had to ignore her.
She was touching my shoulder.
‘Go away, you’re not real.’
‘Adam, I need you to turn around and look at me.’
She was touching my shoulder but she wasn’t real.
‘Adam, turn around slowly.’
‘He’s been having hallucinations, he thinks you’re not real.’
Shut up, Dad.
‘Adam, it’s me, it’s Debbie. Turn around, sweetheart, let me see you.’
‘You’re not real. You’re in my head.’
‘I am real, darling. Turn around and see me, turn around now.’
She was stroking my hair, like she did the time I was sick in the night when Jake and I were having a sleepover. I’d thrown up all over Jake’s floor.
‘Come on, baby, turn around now. I won’t hurt you, you know I won’t hurt you.’
‘You hate me, you’ve just come to tell me how much you hate me.’
‘Now now, don’t be silly. I’ve come to see how you are, that’s all.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
She moved me slowly round to face her and she was there, right in front of me. I could feel her breath on my face.
She took my hand and put it on her cheek. ‘It’s me, I’m here, I’m real.’
I stared at her. She was breathing. She was blinking and there were tears pouring out of her eyes, over her cheeks, and collecting in the corner of her mouth.
She’d come.
A wail came from deep inside me as her arms wrapped around me and I collapsed into her, sobbing.
Thirteen
David closed my notepad and put it on his lap. He rested his hands on it like he was protecting it, or what was inside it.
I sat up in bed, eating the toast Damian had brought me, and I watched David’s face for signs of a reaction to all the stuff I’d told him. His face was straight. There was no emotion to be read. I guessed he was trained to be neutral, but I still needed to know what he thought, if he judged me, if he was about to walk away from me, no longer wanting to help me get better.
I wanted to ask him, but the words still wouldn’t come out. I also wanted to ask him if Debbie had really been there. I remembered falling asleep in her arms, I don’t know, maybe a few days ago. I’d lost track. All I knew was that when I’d woken up, all the crazy stuff had gone. The numbness was sort of back, but it felt different. I felt a bit clearer, a bit lighter. That horrible feeling that I was going to explode at any point had gone and I was so glad.
‘Do you want some more?’ David asked as I finished the last bite of my toast.
I shook my head.
He nodded. Then he pulled his chair a little bit closer. ‘You know that you were talking during your episode, don’t you?’
I shrugged. I wasn’t too surprised to hear him say that because things were pretty mental for a while.
David looked defeated. I was certain he was going to get up and walk away and I wouldn’t have blamed him. I was a lost cause. I could have told him that right from the very start. If I could have spoken I would have told him not to bother, that it was hopeless.
‘I’m going to get Damian to come in and help you shower,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you a bit later on.’
At that point, I knew he’d given up on me. Maybe because he realised it was hopeless. Or maybe he hated me too, for running off and leaving my best friend to die.
When I was fresh out the shower, Damian took me straight to the visitors’ room and sat me down with a pot of tea and two mugs.
Two mugs.
As soon as I sat on one of the leather sofas, the door opened. David was there. He held it open for her as she walked in.
She moved slowly across the room. I wanted to get up and fling myself into her arms but I didn’t, I sat, and watched her. She moved differently from how I remembered. The spring in her step had gone. Her eyes didn’t shine the way they used to.
She looked broken and worn out.
David gestured for her to take a seat on the sofa. She sat down slowly and David sat next to her. I could see she was shaking, and I was, too. I found it hard that someone I’d always been so comfortable around could make me so scared and so nervous but I didn’t blame her, it was my fault. I’d left her son, my best friend, on his own to die. If I’d stayed with him and saved his life, we wouldn’t have been here right now. We would have been at home, like normal, comfortable in each other’s company, and laughing and joking like we always had.
She couldn’t look at me as she helped herself to a cup of tea. Tea wasn’t her thing, it was coffee, and I wanted to ask Damian to get her one, but I couldn’t move or speak or tear my eyes away from her.
Her reaction to me now made me believe even more that she hadn’t come the other day, and that her holding me tight and me falling asleep while she stroked my hair was just in my head. A fantasy. Wishful thinking.
She gave a big sigh, then she looked up at me, and I braced myself for what she was about to say. I didn’t think it was going to be good.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘You’re not talking again?’ she asked. Her voice shook. ‘You were talking the other day. You’ve stopped?’
So she had been there. I hadn’t been imagining it.
‘Adam, how did it get like this?’
I put my head down.
‘I’d give anything to have you three boys back at my kitchen table, fighting over the best piece of chicken, or arguing over which flavour of Angel Delight we were having for pudding,’ she said. She turned to David. ‘Did you know I used to have to make three different flavours, just to keep the peace?’
David smiled but said nothing.
‘I keep asking myself why it happened, Adam, how it happened. I can’t understand it, none of it makes sense.’ She picked up her cup, took a small sip and put it back on the table. She pushed mine closer towards me. ‘Drink it or it’ll get cold,’ she said but there was a flat tone to her voice: not the usual pushy, but loving. Not the whole fed up but full of affection thing she always used to do.
I did as I was told.
‘You know, Adam, I still go to talk to him, then I remember that he’s gone, and …’ she paused. ‘And I still go to talk to you, too. Some days, I make to go into the front room to check you’re both OK, or if you want anything, but you’re not there. The curtains are open, and it doesn’t smell like boys, and the TV isn’t blaring out some sort of crappy reality show or cartoons, and I wish so hard that it was.’ She stopped to catch her breath.
I could feel the emotion circling in my stomach and I knew that I had to hold it in. I had no right to cry in front of her after what I’d done.
‘I read up on it on the internet, you know,’ she said. She reached into her bag for a tissue, and dabbed her eyes even though there were no tears. ‘I read that if his artery was severed, he would have lost so much blood, that it wouldn’t have taken long for him to die.’
‘Do you mind me speaking?’ David asked Debbie.
‘No, of course,’ she said.
‘Adam is under the impression that if he hadn’t left Jake, he would have been able to save his life, but if what you’re saying is true, then …’
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, I stood up and tried to catch my breath but I couldn’t. I tried to stop the emotion, I tried to fight it, but I couldn’t. I let go. I let go of everything that was inside me, and I hunched over, and this cry or scream or something just came flying out of me.
Debbie’s hand went over her mouth, then she leant forward, reaching out to me. ‘Adam,’ she cried. ‘No,
Adam, you wouldn’t have been able to save him.’
I was clutching my chest. I didn’t know what it was that I was feeling. I couldn’t compose myself, though, no matter how hard I tried.
David led me back to sit down. Debbie got up and sat next to me. She put her arms around me and I buried my face into the crook of her neck, and let my shaking body sink into the sofa.
I wouldn’t have been able to save him. Even if I hadn’t run off. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to save him. I wouldn’t have been able to save him.’
‘Adam?’ Debbie pulled me away from her and looked at me. ‘What did you say? Tell me again.’
‘I wouldn’t have been able to save him,’ I said, then I pushed her off me and I was up and out of the chair and pacing like there was so much energy inside my body.
‘I thought, I thought that because they said they’d tried to save him that he was still alive when he got to the hospital; and that if I’d stayed and stemmed the bleeding or something then …’ I was talking so fast and I couldn’t stop. ‘Then I could have saved him and he’d still be here–’
‘Deep breaths, Adam,’ David said. ‘Damian, can you get him some water, please?’
Debbie got up and took my hand tightly in hers. ‘Amy, the girl who found him, she was at the hospital with us, do you remember?’ She asked.
I nodded.
‘She said afterwards that she couldn’t find a pulse, and that they tried to restart his heart in the ambulance. She didn’t want to say at the time because she didn’t want us to worry. I don’t know what happened when he got to the hospital, if they carried on trying or what, all I know is that if his artery was cut, it wouldn’t have taken him long to die,’ she said.
I thought back to the fight and tried to work out how long it was between Nathan stabbing Jake, and me running and it would have been a minute, two at the most. Jake had already stumbled to the bench and couldn’t talk.
‘He must have lost consciousness as soon as I’d run off,’ I said. I wiped my eyes with my hands and let the thought sit in my head. ‘But I shouldn’t have left him,’ I said. ‘I still shouldn’t have left him.’
Debbie let go of my hand. She reached into her handbag and handed me some tissues. ‘I’m not sure I should say this, but I’m going to anyway,’ she said. She took a deep breath. ‘Every day I wish you hadn’t. Every day I wish he hadn’t died on his own, that you were there holding his hand and pretending to him that everything was going to be OK.’ She stopped to compose herself. ‘He was my baby, and he shouldn’t have died alone on that cold, wet bench, Adam, he shouldn’t have died alone.’ She couldn’t hold her sobs in anymore and neither could I.
The Deepest Cut Page 17