by KL Evans
Additionally, I no longer needed to fret about you constantly and didn’t have to feel like I had to be at your beck and call. I was so proud of you and wanted you to be proud of both yourself and your obvious ability to take care of yourself.
And finally, we were going to deal with this I don’t want you too attached to me nonsense. I was attached to you, firmly, and I was going to tell you as much and you were going to have to deal with it.
In other words, I wanted you, and unless you gave me a damn good reason why I shouldn’t, I was going to fight for more from you.
How much more? There were thoughts in the very back of my brain. Way back there, there were those statistics. I was statistically likely to get married at some point, and way back there, in a secret part of my mind, I thought, why not her? She’s great. A little bit of a handful, but part of that is her youth and her grief. She’ll outgrow all of that.
Of course, that was a ways off. We had a lot to deal with before we could even approach the road to that. But I want you to know that I was thinking about it.
And those were things I thought of. All those possibilities. All those steps forward. All those great things that could be on the horizon.
And as I thought of them, I noticed I was approaching a grocery store on the main road toward your neighborhood. I needed flowers. Maybe that was a little cliché, but it would be a nice gesture. I’d also never bought a girl flowers before other than my senior prom. So I stopped and picked up a tasteful bouquet of pink and red roses. While I waited to pay for them, I called you again, got voicemail again, and then considered maybe I needed chocolate or ice cream or something else, too. But it was already 1:34 and I felt it was most important to simply get to your house.
And isn’t this the way these things always happen? This feels like the way these things always happen. The moment that is supposed to be the turning point; the climax in the story; yes, this is when you have every reason to believe things are going to be tied up in a neat little bow, only to find it’s the moment when the rug is pulled out from underneath you.
I’d barely pulled onto your street when I saw the chaos. An ambulance. Two, three, four police cars. Crime scene tape. All of it creating a nearly impenetrable barrier around your house.
I don’t even remember parking. I don’t even remember walking onto your lawn. I just suddenly found myself tearing through yellow tape and marching toward the front door until I was stopped by an officer who sounded pissed off and like he was probably going to arrest me.
“Can’t go in there, son,” he told me, and fuck you, officer, like hell I can’t.
“My girlfriend lives here.” I think I was shouting, but all of this is very hazy in my mind. “Charlotte Reid. This is her house. What the hell is going on?”
He looked at me with blatant pity and my stomach curdled, because for him to wear such an expression after I said such a thing meant one of the worst-case-scenarios that had instantaneously flooded my mind was an actual-case-scenario.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Seth. What happened?”
“Seth, we responded to a call about a fifteen minutes ago. One of the neighbors heard a gunshot. We found her in a bedroom with what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”
The Kübler-Ross model postulates a series of emotions experienced by terminally ill patients prior to death and also for other people in any form personal loss, including the loss of a job, a major rejection, the end of a relationship or divorce, or the death of a loved one. It’s also known as the five stages of grief. These stages of grief can present themselves in any order and can repeat at any moment.
Stage one: denial.
Silence.
Either I went completely deaf or the universe simply went quiet. Everything slowed down and went cold, like molecules approaching their freezing point, and I lost all working knowledge of the English language, because surely I hadn’t just heard that.
“Huh?”
“I know this is probably a lot to take in—“
“Where did she get a gun?” I asked in a tone that was surprisingly calm. “Whose gun was it? How can you say she shot herself when she doesn’t even own a gun? How do you know it wasn’t a home invader? How do you know someone else didn’t shoot her? None of this makes any sense. Let me go talk to her, I’ll find out what happened. She can be evasive, especially with people she doesn’t know. She didn’t even tell me her name for about two weeks when I first met—“
“Son, I know this is extremely upsetting, but you can’t go talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Seth, maybe you should go sit with me for a minute while you sort through—“
“I don’t want to go sit.”
Stage two: anger.
“It would probably help, especially while they’re—“
“I am not going to sit anywhere!” I shouted. “I want to talk to my girlfriend! And you still haven’t answered my goddamned question. Where the hell did she get a gun? I have been in this house almost every single day for the past seven months and I’ve never seen a mother fucking gun! If there was a gun in that house, I would’ve known about it. And she’s flat fucking broke, so I know she didn’t go buy one, so where the hell did she get a gun?”
“Just try to calm down, son. This is a very distressing situation and the best thing you can do right now is try to stay calm while the paramedics try to help her.”
Stage one: denial.
“So she’s alive? Let me go talk to her. Paramedics kind of freak her out. I’m sure she’s upset right now. She was trying to get a hold of me.”
The officer gave me a morbid look. “She’s not dead, but right now they—“
“So she’s alive.”
“Son,” he said gently. “She shot herself in the head with a .38 special. They’re going to do everything they can, but this isn’t going to end well.”
“You have to say that so I won’t sue the police department later. You’re giving me the worst possible outcome for liability purposes. Let me go talk to her.”
“You can’t go in there.”
Stage two: anger.
“You can’t tell me I can’t go in there!” I shoved past him and marched toward the front door just as the paramedics were wheeling you out. My mind fixated on the fact that you had IVs and they were using one of those bag-valve mask ventilators, and—most importantly—you weren’t covered from head to toe by one of those black blankets. In my mind, you were going to be just fine.
Stage one: denial.
“Charlie!” I jogged to the gurney and attempted to stick my head between the shoulders of the paramedics. “Baby, I’m here. I’m sorry I missed all your calls, but I got here as quickly as I could. Christian got beat up and Missy’s having a hell of a day. I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—“
I couldn’t see the wound because someone was holding a blood-soaked cloth of sorts on top of it. Even if they weren’t doing that, I probably wouldn’t have seen it well anyway. There was so much blood on your face that I wouldn’t have known it was you other than your obscenely long hair spilling over the sides of the gurney.
Your hair. I loved your hair so much. And your hair that had looked a little red in the sunlight exactly twenty-four hours prior now looked a lot red because there was so much blood.
Stage three: bargaining.
“Hang in there, Charlie. Just hang in there,” I told you after someone had pushed me to sit on something in the ambulance. I was next to your legs and I placed my hand on your knee. “I need you to hang in there because I’ve been thinking about us and I think we need to make some changes. We both need more stability and assurance than we’ve got right now. I think you get in those moods because you still feel like you’re doing all this on your own, but you’re not. I should’ve taken the time to talk to you earlier today. That was my fault. I’ll never snap on you like that again, I swear. I swear to you, Charli
e, if you can just hang in there through this, I’m going to start doing everything the right way. I think you should move in with me. I think that would be good for both of us and I’ll prove it to you.”
One of the paramedics shifted, allowing enough room for me to reach for your hand—your hand… The hand that must’ve pulled the trigger because it was splattered with more blood, but somehow that didn’t bother me so much right then and I pressed it against my forehead.
You were still warm.
You were still here.
“We can do this, I just know it. And it will make you so happy, I promise you. But you gotta hang on. None of this can happen if you don’t hang on.”
The ambulance was a frenzy of kinetic energy and for a second I tried to extract a shred of hope from what they were saying, but it may as well have been a foreign language, so I focused on what I had said.
That you should move in with me. That you would be happy. That we needed more stability. And earlier—the last fucking thing I said to you when you could still actually hear me—I am absolutely not too attached to you and if you bring it up again, I will prove it by showing you how not attached I am. Also I don’t have time for this childish bullshit. Then I thought of that annoying phrase you were always saying to me. Don’t get too attached to me, Seth McCollum.
It was like a sucker punch to the jaw. It finally made sense. You’d been playing me. All the progress you’d made, all the things you’d said about wanting to finish school so you could do something with your life, batting your lashes and calling me Seth, it was all a ruse.
This was just plan B after your failed pill-hoarding episode. You faked progress to get out of the hospital and you faked doing so well with me so I wouldn’t… what? I’m not your damn spouse, Charlie, so it’s not like I could legally do anything to prevent you from what you obviously fucking wanted. You didn’t have to lie to me.
You know, you’re a pretty good liar for someone who’s not really a liar, and I know you’re not really a liar because even you couldn’t keep your damn story straight all of the time. That’s when you would slip into your true self. That’s when you would cry. That’s when you would use my full name. And you used my full name on that voicemail—you never leave voicemail—and that was a genuine cry for help. The afternoon the day before and the whole morning you were crying out for help and I just didn’t get it.
Don’t get too attached to me, AKA, I love you, Seth McCollum, AKA, I know what I’m planning to do and if you’re too attached to me, it’s going to hurt you and I really don’t want to hurt you.
I hate you and I love you and I’m so sorry.
“Charlie.” I kissed your hand and held it to my cheek. It was still warm. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I had no way of knowing. I swear I’ll never blow you off like that again. Just hang in there. I’m so sorry. God knows how sorry I am. I should’ve talked to you. I should’ve brought you with me this morning. You should’ve been with me. You shouldn’t have been alone today. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I am not a man who cries, but right then I wanted to.
“God damn it, Charlie. How could you do this?”
Stage one: denial.
“How is she?” I asked one of the paramedics. “She’s stable, right? Is she stable?”
“She is currently stable,” one of them said, although I could practically hear the ellipsis and but in his tone.
“That’s good, right? I’ve heard of people surviving this before. And the officer said you guys got there pretty quickly, so she could—“
“We’re doing everything we can to help her. And at the hospital they’re going to do everything they can, too,” he said briskly.
“You’re the boyfriend right?” the other one asked. He sounded less brisk, almost a bit friendly, but there was still something in his voice. They must’ve thought something about me, being the boyfriend of a woman who’d just committed—attempted?—suicide. Surely, this was my fault. Surely, that’s what they were thinking.
“Yeah.”
“It’s good that you’re here. She needs you to be here right now. She’s sad, you can tell, so it’s helping her that you’re here.” It was a bit Captain Obvious, but it was all he was likely allowed to say to me.
“The congresswoman from Arizona!” I suddenly declared as if I were moderating a debate in DC. “She was shot in the head at pointblank range. She survived.”
“Yeah, she survived,” the first paramedic said blankly.
“So if she survived then… then she could survive.”
He didn’t respond. They both started talking to each other in medical-ese again and we arrived at the hospital shortly thereafter.
The hospital. The same one. The one where your sister died and the one where you almost died the first time. This is kind of our place, isn’t it? That’s fucked up and sad, but honestly, which part of this isn’t?
They wheeled you out and I jumped down from the truck, and I was able to kiss your hand one more time before a medical team descended upon you and whisked you away. And then I had nothing to do but wait.
While I waited, I noticed I had your blood on my hands, and the double-meaning of that was not lost on me. I found a bathroom and scrubbed like Lady Macbeth until the sight of the rust-colored runoff impelled me to a stall, where I vomited until I saw stars and tunnel vision and eventually total blackness.
Sometime later, I felt someone nudging my shoulder.
“Hey… Hey, son, you okay?”
The face I saw when I peeled my eyes open was vaguely familiar, and the man held my arm to help me up. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You sure? You look kinda pale. I could find you a doctor. They’re all over the place.” He chuckled, which struck me as unbelievably ironic, but he didn’t know; he hadn’t seen; he hadn’t felt any of it.
“Yeah, I just think my blood sugar is low or something.”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a bag of M&M’s, offering some to me, and I immediately remembered where I’d seen him. I’d seen him here. He was the kindly old janitor who told me your name.
“Eat some of these. You’ll feel better.”
It was too tragic and I couldn’t stomach it, both physically and emotionally, and my face must have said as much.
“You wanna sit down again? You’re starting to sway.” He put the candy away. “I’ll go find you a doctor.”
“No. No, it’s really okay,” I said, but opted to sit down again anyway. “You know a friend of mine. I mean, she’s more than just my friend. A lot more. But you know her. She used to come here to visit her sister and she’d share her M&M’s with you.”
He cocked his head and squinted before recognition lit up his face. “Oh yeah! Charlie. Yeah, I know Charlie. Sweet girl. How’s she doing?”
I am not a man who cries, but the man’s face suddenly went bleary like fresh drizzle on a windowpane. “Not great,” I croaked.
“Not great’s not good,” he said quickly enough for me to wonder if he’d somehow telepathically lifted the information out of my brain.
He didn’t say anything else, so I said, “Yeah. She’s here. Which is why I’m here. And I don’t feel so good right now.”
“She get hurt?” Concern-muffled curiosity hung from his words.
Stage two: anger.
“She hurt herself,” I sputtered, as a sensation surged through me that I could only liken to my veins being on the cusp of bursting with rage. “She hurt herself really, really badly, and I don’t think she’s going to be okay. I don’t think she’s going to make it. I think I’m going to come out of this bathroom and one of those nurses is going to tell me, ‘I’m sorry, we did everything we could, but.’ And I did everything I could, too, you know? I mean, I tried to do everything I could. Before today, she’d been doing so well. At least, I thought she was. I was so careful for so long and I really thought she was doing well, but this morning she was driving me kind of crazy
and I lost my temper. And then she lost her mind. But maybe she’d lost her mind a long time ago. I have no idea. But right now, I feel like I did this to her.”
I wiped my eyes and braved a glance at his face. He looked as somber as if he’d been there when you pulled the trigger.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to unload all of that on you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m so sorry to hear that happened. She’s such a sweet girl. That’s such a shame.”
“It’s a shame, all right. It’s a damn, crying shame,” I managed to eke out before I covered my face again.
He gripped the underside of my arm and helped me stand. “You don’t need to be sitting on this bathroom floor. Let’s go find you a seat.”
I inhaled, exhaled, and shook my head as he led me out of the restroom and into the waiting area, where he guided me to sit in a chair.
“Want me to find you a chaplain? It might help.”
Stage one: denial.
“I don’t…” I shook my head again. “I think I just need to try to calm down. This’ll all be fine. She’s being treated right now and I really think she’s going to be okay.”
He raised his bushy eyebrows. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Thank you, though. I really appreciate it.”
“I’m gonna come check on you later, y’hear?” he said, pointing at me.
“Yeah. Thank you.”
He left and I thought maybe I should try to sleep. Sleep would effectively pass the time. And once the time had passed, I would finally be out of the swamp of the unknown.
Most of the chairs had hard, metal arms, so there was no lying down and stretching out across several of them. I leaned my head back against the wall and that might have worked had I not consumed a veritable gallon of coffee throughout the chaos at the other hospital. So there was nothing to do but wait. Fortunately—or unfortunately—Ava could always be counted on.