Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Anne. He told me he didn’t want to see you.”

  Her heart took a swan dive straight to her stomach. “Wh-what? Why?” she stammered.

  “I don’t know, I’m only telling you what he said. That’s the reason I didn’t call you in the first place. He didn’t want me to tell you, and above all, he didn’t want to see you.”

  The first cruel stabbings of guilt twisted into her gut and tore.

  What did I do?

  “Look,” Rick said. “Just promise me you won’t go see him until I talk to you. And Anne, I don’t think you should go to his apartment. I think it’s pretty bad there. Go straight to the hospital. I’ll meet you there.”

  Anne had gone to Dan’s apartment first, in order to find some kind of answer. A note. Something.

  Stepping through the door, in the dim, early morning light, she at first thought she saw a large blanket on the floor. She flicked the light switch and gasped as she realized it was, in fact, an irregularly shaped and smeared pool of blood, roughly four feet in diameter.

  Heaped next to it lay a shredded long sleeve, button down shirt, apparently cut off Dan by the paramedics. Most of the white shirt was now rusty red.

  The coppery, musty scent of old blood wrapped heavily around her, filling her nose and mouth. She brought both hands up, trying to shield her face from the assault.

  On the floor next to his clothing, cigarette butts filled an ashtray. Next to the ashtray, an empty bottle of wine, a wine glass, and a half empty bottle of Crown Royal. Bloody fingerprints covered the cigarettes, and the bottles, and the glass.

  Anne imagined him sitting on the floor, smoking cigarette after bloody cigarette, slowly dying.

  Would it have been slow, or long? How long does it take to bleed to death?

  Anne knelt in front of the large pool, and touched it. Her fingernail disappeared in the depth of the cold, sticky blood. She caught her breath.

  My God, how did he survive this?

  The TV screen glowed blue, the movie ‘Legend’ in the VCR. It was one of Anne’s favorites, and Dan had teased her about it. “Really Anne, Unicorns and Tom Cruise running around in a diaper?”

  Yet this is what he had been watching as he bled to death, a movie about love and hope and happy endings.

  Later that morning, Anne stood in the doorway of Dan’s hospital room. They looked at each other in silence.

  “What are you doing here?” Dan finally asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Anne smiled. The image of him became bleary behind the tears in her eyes. “I came to see you. Did you think I wouldn’t come?”

  Dan looked down. “I told Rick I didn’t want to see you.”

  Anne had met Rick in the hospital cafeteria before coming up to Dan’s room. He bore into her like a precision scalpel. Questioning. Accusing.

  “What did you do to him, Anne?” he asked almost immediately.

  “I-I” Anne stammered, “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what happened. He called me yesterday and broke up with me out of the blue.”

  “Why?” Rick scowled at her. “Did you guys fight about something? Something happened, damn it. I’ve known him practically my whole life and Dan would never try to kill himself. You did something to him, and by God, I’m not going to let you go up there until I find out what.”

  Anne was not the type to cry easily. It was something she detested watching others do, and even more, detested doing herself.

  Nevertheless, she felt the watery devils welling up in her eyes, which she opened a little wider in an effort to contain them. She sighed, and slumped heavily in the chair across from Rick. Against her will, she blinked and the infernal tears slid down her face and hung on her cheek, testifying to all the world of her weakness.

  To the best of her ability, she tried to defend herself. She told Rick how Dan was going to quit his job, how they were making plans to move in together, how they had never had one fight in the entire year they had been together, how they would be getting married as soon as her divorce was finalized. “He called me, Rick. He broke up with me. And I have no idea why. What did he tell you? Does he blame me?”

  Rick studied her face, as if trying to find her guilt or innocence there. She sat up a little straighter, knowing she had nothing to feel guilty about.

  Did she?

  Finally, Rick sighed and dropped his gaze, his voice softening. “No, Anne. He didn’t blame you. He told me the same thing you just told me. He said it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why, Rick? Why did you blame me?”

  He shook his head. “Because he is the last person on Earth that I would think capable of this. My God, I could imagine myself doing it before him.”

  As she looked at Dan, lying in that hospital bed, telling her he didn’t want to see her, the nameless guilt reared up again. Was this her fault?

  Anne’s voice trembled. “Why don’t you want to see me, Dan? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” Dan answered weakly.

  “Then why?”

  A tear slipped from the corner of his eye and traced a shimmering line down the dry skin of his face. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

  Anne’s fear and uncertainty vanished and she walked over to him. She had never seen him cry. As she got closer, she saw both of his arms, heavily bandaged and splinted at his sides. “My God, what happened? Why…?”

  Dan wouldn’t look her in the eyes, something else she had never seen. She reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled away. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now, okay? I’m not ready.” He looked down at his hands.

  “Okay, Dan, it’s okay. I’m just glad you’re all right.” She paused. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He looked up, red eyes brimming with tears. “No,” he said in a trembling voice, “don’t leave.”

  Anne stayed until they took him to surgery. He had partially severed tendons in both wrists, and they had to be repaired. After he left, a nurse came in. Anne noticed a large, red plastic bag just behind her on the floor. The nurse said she was concerned about Dan and wanted to talk to Anne privately.

  “There’s three kinds of suicidal people we get in here. First, there’s the ones we call ‘frequent flyers’. They don’t really want to die, and they don’t usually hurt themselves too bad. They’ve tried to kill themselves many times, and we know them by name. They aren’t clinically depressed, but they like all the drama and being the center of attention.”

  Anne couldn’t take her eyes off the red bag.

  “Then there’s the ‘attention seekers’. They don’t really want to die either, but they are depressed. And after they come in, they’re ready to talk. They’re like terminal patients who choose death because the pain is so deep, and there’s no way out. When they think about dying, it’s a sad thought. They aren’t happy about it, but they don’t know what else to do.” The nurse paused. “Does that make sense?”

  Anne saw Dan’s name written on the red bag in large black letters. “Yes, of course.”

  “Most of the suicide attempts we see fall into those two categories. But every once in a while we see a person who really does want to die. It can be a difficult distinction to understand. They don’t do it as a desperate way to end their suffering or as a cry for help. They’re way beyond that stage. They do it because they want to die. They don’t want to live anymore. When they think about dying, it makes them happy, not sad.”

  The nurse seemed to pause for dramatic effect, but Anne wasn’t quite certain what that effect was supposed to be.

  There appeared to be liquid in the corners of the bag.

  The nurse cocked her head to the side, and narrowed her eyes slightly before continuing.

  “When we see them, it’s usually a fluke they survived, because they do some serious damage. And after they recover, they don’t want to talk about it because they don’t w
ant help. They’re disappointed when they wake up. Most of the time when we treat someone who’s cut their wrists, they don’t cut very deep, and there’s these little marks they make, trying to build up the courage for a deeper cut. With Dan, there were no hesitation marks, only one, very deep cut on each wrist. He was close to death when he came in here.”

  Another pause.

  Anne wondered if she was supposed to ask a question at this point. She blinked her eyes and tried to shift her focus from the red bag, to the nurse’s mouth. “But, he called 9-1-1. He must have changed his mind.”

  The nurse seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Look, Anne. I’m not really supposed to be telling you all this, since you’re not his wife…But…someone needs to know… He never asked for help. It was a hang up call. And besides, he’d lost so much blood by then, he was delirious. Don’t take that call to mean he didn’t want to die.”

  The nurse scrunched up her face the way people do when they need to say something that they don’t really want to say. “We call patients like Dan ‘goners’, because there’s usually nothing we can do for them…I just thought you should know all that.”

  After the nurse left, Anne opened the bag and looked inside. A nauseating smell of blood and urine smacked her face and she jerked away from it. For a moment, the bright red glare stung her eyes.

  The bag contained Dan’s clothing. The paramedics had cut away his button down shirt at his apartment. In the bag was his white under-shirt, pants, boxer shorts, belt, and socks.

  Blood had dripped out of the clothes, forming little pools in the corners of the bag.

  Later that afternoon, after surgery, Dan finally tried to explain what happened.

  “I just snapped. I can’t explain it any better. Everything at work was going really crappy and I felt this pressure building up until I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I thought if I left work, it would relieve the pressure.”

  He tried to reach for the cup of water on the rolling hospital table beside him. Both hands and arms were bandaged up to his elbows, and like a seal with flippers, he swung them together in one deft movement to grasp the cup between them. And then he held the cup there, in mid-air, unable to bend his arms to bring it up to his mouth.

  With a sigh, he set the cup down, and looked up at Anne.

  “But there was something wrong with my car, the engine light kept coming on. And this pressure - it just kept building.”

  Anne put a straw in the cup and held it up to his dry, chapped lips.

  He drank until the water was gone, and as Anne refilled the cup, he leaned back in bed and continued.

  “Then I started thinking about us.” He paused, and only looked at her for a moment before his eyes darted away. “And this feeling, I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like I was being crushed, and I couldn’t breathe. It literally felt like I was suffocating.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I thought maybe, if I broke up with you, it would relieve the pressure. That’s when I called you. I know. I hung up on you. I’m sorry about that.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  Anne shook her head and tried to make a genuine smile. “It’s okay, silly. Don’t worry about that.” She reached out to run her fingers through his silky hair.

  He raised his hand to swat hers away, wincing as their arms collided. “But breaking up with you didn’t help either. It only made it worse until I couldn’t take it anymore. I figured I would just go home and get drunk, maybe even pass out, and that would relieve the pressure. I drank way too much…I got so wasted…I didn’t know what I was doing. I must have...just snapped...”

  He trailed off and fell silent.

  “So…? What?” Anne said incredulously, her fake smiled faltering despite her best effort. “You thought you would relieve the pressure in your arteries? I mean, is that what you thought? Relieve a little blood pressure?” She hated saying the vicious words, even as she spoke them, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “I’m sorry, Anne. I don’t know what happened. Thank God it didn’t work.”

  “Yes, Dan, thank him. You do thank him, don’t you? You really are glad that you’re alive, right? Cause that nurse…she came in here and was saying some stuff...”

  Dan nodded, and looked pointedly at Anne, his voice strong and unwavering. “Yes. Yes, I’m glad. I don’t want to die. I was just drunk. It was a stupid, drunken, mistake.”

  Dan only spent a week in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. They diagnosed him as Clinically Depressed, which he staunchly denied, and Obsessive Compulsive, which he scoffed at. They gave him some medication, which he refused to take, and discharged him.

  Easy peasy, lemon breezy.

  None of the staff from that floor ever said anything to Anne.

  When she asked the nurse behind plexi-glass if she could talk to his doctor, the nurse replied without looking up from her paper work, “Are you family?”

  “No, I’m his fiancée.”

  “Sorry, we can’t disclose medical information to you. Spouses or legal guardians only.”

  “Look,” Anne said, “I’m the one he’s coming home with, and I think I need to know what’s going on with him. Now I want to talk to his doctor.”

  The nurse looked up and raised her eyebrow. “His doctor is not going to talk to you about anything.”

  Anne felt red heat warming her pale face. She clenched her jaw and said through gritted teeth, “I knew this would be a waste of time. You’re all the same. Completely useless.”

  She picked him up from the hospital, and he spent the last two weeks of his life with her and Alexandra. They went to the Grand Ole Opry, and saw the Titanic exhibit. Each ticket had a passenger name printed on it. Inside the exhibit was a list of names - who survived, who perished.

  They laughed and considered it a lucky omen, because according to their tickets they all three survived the ill-fated voyage. Anne and Alexandra held their hands as long as they could on a giant block of ice and then snuck up behind Dan and put their cold hands under his shirt and on his back. Dan hollered and grabbed them, laughing all the while.

  They visited the Greek Parthenon replica in Nashville. Alexandra curled her hands into claws and chased Dan. “Im’a nasty giant, and Im’a gonna eat you up!” Dan fell on the ground and let her climb over him as she raked him with her nasty claws and bit him with her sharp, nasty teeth.

  They went to Mammoth Cave and Dan carried Alexandra through most of it. In Indianapolis, they went to the zoo, and the Children’s Museum, and the Art museum. The Art museum garden was one of their favorite places to visit. They paused on the bridge and kissed, and Alexandra covered her eyes and said, “Ewww!”

  When Anne fell asleep on Dan’s couch, he and Alexandra covered her legs with Easter stickers, from her ankles, all the way up to just below the bottom of her shorts. Anne laughed and said she loved it, and when they went out to dinner that night, she left the stickers on her legs. Alexandra squealed with delight and told everyone who would listen to her, “I decorated my mama!”

  Several times Dan assured her that he was not depressed, that he was glad to be alive, and that he did not want to die.

  It never quite made sense to Anne, but she didn’t push the issue because she didn’t want to put more pressure on him. He seemed genuinely happy, so it was probably best to just forget about it, and move on. Dwelling on it too much would only embarrass him.

  Besides, she would have plenty of time to talk to him about it later, after his wounds had healed, and he was back home living with her.

  Sunday, May twentieth had been their last day together. They stayed in bed most of the day and made love.

  Anne didn’t know that the gun which would kill him lay only a few feet away, inside his duffel bag. He had gone over to his parents the night before and snuck it out of their house while she had been at work.

  She had to leave for work that afternoon, and he would be leaving for Nashvil
le shortly after, returning to work Monday morning. It had been three weeks since he cut his wrists.

  Sometimes, he would wait for her to get home from work on Mondays around one in the morning, before he would leave for Nashville. He would nap for a few hours while she was at work, and when she got home, they would sleep together for a few more, before he would silently slip away without waking her.

  Anne had waited too long to get out of bed that Sunday, and was going to be late for work. She rushed around, trying to get ready. Dan sat on the couch and she had her back to him. “Are you going to be here when I get home tonight?” she asked.

  “No. I have to get going. I have a bunch of stuff to do...unless you want me to stay...do you want me to be here when you get home?”

  Anne couldn’t see his face. She stood with her back to him. Her head tilted and a little crinkle formed between her eyebrows. It seemed rather odd. They had specifically taken care of everything in Nashville before driving up to Indy so that he would not have anything to worry about before his return to work.

  What could he possibly have to do? She wondered for the briefest of moments before blinking and shaking her head.

  “No, that’s okay. If you have stuff to do, go ahead and do it.”

  Chapter 21

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Anne screamed to her empty apartment. “Why didn’t I turn around and look at him? Why didn’t I tell him to stay?”

  Stinging silence echoed through her ears and grew louder. Why, she wondered, did her eyes also sting? Oh right, she realized, and closed them.

  When she opened them again, she saw Rale sitting in the faded blue rocker beside the bed.

  He leaned forward and looked in her eyes. “You didn’t tell him to stay because secretly, you were glad to be getting rid of him.”

  Anne closed her eyes, and opened them again.

  Rale still sat there.

  “You aren’t real,” she said, with some hesitation in her voice.

  Rale said nothing.

  She sat up in the bed and blinked her eyes several times, but he remained. “You aren’t real,” she repeated.

  “Then what am I?” His wild blue eyes seemed to look right into her soul. A long strand of black hair fell forward into his pale face.