I spotted my mom standing outside his room once I got there. She was in ill-fitting pants (see: mom jeans) and a Winnie-the-Pooh pajama shirt, a tissue clasped tightly in her hand. I fidgeted with the string on Snake’s shorts and looked down. I couldn’t face her because I might have been wrong to run away, and all of this might have been my fault, and she might have hated me. I didn’t know how to handle it if she did.
She looked up briefly to scan the hall and saw me standing by a nurse’s cart, in clothes not my own, with hobo hair and a guilty twitch on my lips. It was too late to avoid her now. I trudged forward, still pulling on the string.
“How is he?” I whispered once I got close enough to be heard.
She paused for longer than she needed to. It was like she was trying to spite me in between her words and the stillness. “He’s stable,” she answered. Her voice was as aloof as her eyes.
“Can I go in and see him?”
“No. He’s sleeping right now.”
“Oh.” I twisted the string around my finger.
“Those aren’t your clothes,” she pointed out. Immediate judgment. I should have been prepared for it.
“They’re Snake’s,” I muttered.
“I see. So that’s where you’ve been.”
“Can we not talk about this right now?”
“We tried to find out where he lived, but not many people knew him.” Her voice was trembling, leftover frustration trying to find a passageway out. “Little Carla told us his address. We rang the doorbell ten times, but no one ever showed up. I assumed you weren’t there.”
“Technically, I wasn’t,” I said, staring at a brown mark on the tile. “I went with his family to Cedar Point for the day. We just got back an hour ago.”
A tear slid out from under her glasses. It was an inevitable repercussion. Hurting others. A side effect of me.
“Your dad was so desperate to find you,” she whispered as another tear fell. “He regretted letting you walk out that door. He said he forgot how stubborn you are.”
“It was only one day. You guys didn’t have to be so dramatic.”
“One day?” Her eyes were wet and angry and terrified in one look. “What day was it, Regina? Hmm? Do you know what day it was?” She glanced at the clock on the wall that read 11:10. “What day it is?”
“Saturday . . .” I said slowly.
“Guess again.”
“I’m not doing this, Mom.”
“It’s your dad’s birthday.” She wiped her eyes with the tissue in her hand. “He spent his entire birthday looking for you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. Because you spent the whole day thinking about you, just like you always do. It’s always about you, Regina.”
“I said I’m sorry!” I yelled. She put a finger over her mouth to quiet me, which only made me angrier. “What do you want me to do about it now?”
“I want you to open your eyes. I want you to see that your depression is selfish.”
“What?” I mouthed.
“You heard me,” she continued. “It’s selfish to be so miserable that you let your own unhappiness consume everything around you. You hate your life so much that you’ve let yourself believe it doesn’t matter, that the things you do don’t affect people.” She motioned to the door. “But I want you to look at how loved you are and still try to convince yourself that your life is worthless and the things you do don’t matter. Because all-consuming hatred is selfishness. And the people who love you, really love you, don’t deserve to be victims of your depression.”
She took an accomplished breath, like she had been rehearsing that speech since the day I was diagnosed. Her words rushed into my brain all at once. I couldn’t subdue them. I couldn’t arrange the sensations they stirred into any cohesive whole. All of the emotional mush produced one dominating response. Anger. How could she hate me so much that she didn’t even try to understand?
“I’m selfish?” I whispered. I wanted to yell. Scream. Explode. Do something that would get her attention. I wanted her to see me. To listen. And then, after everything was bared, I wanted her to look me in the eye and tell me who I was to her. But I couldn’t find it in myself to fight anymore. “Do you even know why I’m depressed? Do you know what day I go to therapy each week? Do you know one single thing I’ve talked to my therapist about? Go ahead. Guess, since we’re obviously playing games.”
“Reggie.”
“You don’t know. Just like I forgot Dad’s birthday, and I ran away, and I pick battles with you, and I make more mistakes in a day than most people do in a lifetime. And maybe that’s selfishness to you. Maybe my depression makes me selfish. But what is it that makes you selfish? All you do is pray for me, and preach to me, and tell me how wrong I am for letting myself hurt. You’ve never tried to understand me. Why don’t you want to understand me?”
I wiped a tear that I didn’t even know had fallen until I tasted salt on my lips. She looked at me briefly, so briefly she didn’t see me at all. She didn’t want to.
“It’s not that I don’t want to understand you,” she said, still focused on the wall. She might as well have been talking to it. “I’m just afraid that if I did, I would want to fix you. And, apart from an act of God, I don’t know how to fix you.”
“I don’t want you to fix me,” I whispered. “I don’t want you to see me as broken.”
“Well, I do. I can’t help it. I can’t help it when I hear you crying in your room when you think I’ve gone to bed, or see you staring at walls for hours on end, or catch you running around with a boy who is going to do nothing but break an already broken heart.” Her eyes fogged over, as if she wanted to cry but didn’t know what she was crying for. “That boy will destroy you. By then you’ll be so broken, I’m afraid you’ll be unmendable.”
“He makes me feel,” I justified, to the benefit of no one but myself. “He makes me feel like I’m more than just a sack of blood and bones with a stomach full of antidepressants. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But I don’t fear anything with him. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You won’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you what I understand,” she said. “I understand he may treat you well, and pay you attention, and give you all of these feelings. And he may mean every bit of it. For now. But what happens when that little girl has her baby, and he is suddenly responsible for taking care of another person’s life? What happens then?” She watched me with pity I didn’t want. I didn’t want to need it. “You’ll never get the best of him, sweetheart. He’s going to leave you like the one before. And I don’t say that to knock you down. I say that because you’ve already lost people you’ve loved. I don’t want to stand by and watch it happen again.”
She doesn’t know Snake, I tried to remind myself. But it wasn’t comforting. I didn’t know if it was her sincerity that propelled my doubt, or the unchangeable reality that hearts are fragile machines, made to be broken. I might have already known that Snake would break my heart if I let him. If I gave him a heart to break. He would never be permanent. Like ninth grade year. Like best friends. Like nerdy boys from math class. Like circus people.
Snake Eliot was incurably human. And like all humans, he was wind and fire. A gust of life. A wake of destruction. And I would soon be a broken heart. An unmendable machine.
“I want to see Dad,” I said. I couldn’t think about the inevitable. I couldn’t let myself dwell on what I knew I was going to have to do to preserve the tiny pieces of me that remained intact. That kind of hurt could wait.
“I told you, he’s asleep.”
“I’ll be quiet. Just let me see him, okay?”
She rubbed her exhausted eyes. I knew she didn’t have the willpower to tell me no. And the careful way she slid away from the door, the way she looked at me with something reminiscent of my dad’s compassion, told me that she didn’t want to.
When I walked into his room, the lights were dimmed. He was h
ooked to stacks of metal by small tubes and needles. His eyes were closed tightly, and his square glasses weren’t on his face. He looked even more helpless and fragile than he usually did. I stared at him, probably in the pimple way that I didn’t like. But I couldn’t help staring, and wanting to help, and feeling guilty because I was selfish. I was so astoundingly selfish.
There was a cushioned chair stationed by his bed. I sat in it, close enough to see the pastiness of his skin, the purple hue of veins drawn beneath it, the lifelessness of sucky hearts. I wouldn’t touch him.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure I made a sound.
I tried to arrange some grandiose speech to appease my conscience, something about remorse and lost time and wishful thinking. But, like all the pages ripped from my journal, words weren’t good enough. They didn’t express enough. Give enough. Mean enough. My mind wasn’t bound by words, but doses of memories. And sunlight. And odd smiles that didn’t seem to fit. And a wolf above the fireplace. And regret.
“You told me once that nothing ever dies,” I whispered; his eyes were still firmly shut. “But you lied. Things die every day. Poor children in Africa and people in car wrecks and cancer kids and old people and animals. And yeah, they have spirits. And yeah, the impression never leaves. But people do die, Dad. We die because we’re decay. We’re the wolf above the mantel. We are and then we aren’t, and that’s the truth of it. That’s our nature. We can’t stay any longer than time can have us.” I wanted to reach for his hand, but I was afraid he would wake up and hear me. Some things were better left unsaid.
One of his devices beeped loudly, lines rising in V-shapes and falling again. I stared at the heart lines, waiting for a doctor to hurry in and rush him away. But seconds later, the sound subsided, the lines mellowing. He never opened his eyes. He never moved.
I contemplated touching his hand, and that time found the courage. I wrapped my fingers around his. They were colder than the metal of the bed. I traced my fingertip along an icy blue vein, but he didn’t seem to feel my touch. A sleep that deep must have been nice to someone with a heart like his, a necessary relief from overbeating.
“I wish the world had a pull cord, and whenever it spun too fast, you could yank it and stop everything dead in its tracks.” I studied the vein. It was thick, protruding from the skin. Blood pulsated under my thumb. “Wouldn’t that be nice? To convince yourself that the universe and time and life are willing to pause for you? Maybe I would be happy then. I think I wouldn’t have wasted so much time not appreciating the temporariness of you.” I thought I saw his eyelids flutter, but it was probably more wishful thinking.
“Time is in a race with itself. And we’re the gunshot that sends it running. By the time it comes back around, we’ve already made all of our mistakes. And people like me have already hurt ourselves and taken our pills to the bottom of the bottle and hated everyone and everything along the way. And people like you are left with the pain we cause. But we don’t mean to cause you pain; we just want to cure our own.”
His hands didn’t grow warmer with touch. My fingers were sweating against him, yet he felt as cool as he had when I first laid my hand on his. I stood from the chair, bending toward his face. I would have thought he was gone already had it not been for his breath, slow puffs against my cheek.
“You want to know a secret?” I whispered into his ear. “Something’s killing me, too. It’s called depression. And it’s not a symptom of anything but me.”
I touched my hand to his chest. His heart was beating, but not enough. It was beating only because it chose to. It would stop only when it chose to. He, too, was incurably human.
“I guess people die in all kinds of ways.”
Chapter Twenty
ONLY THREE HOURS LATER, I WAS awakened to a rush of nurses. My mom was bewildered, tossing out questions returned with silence. Machines were ringing at excruciating decibels. Personnel were shouting all of these medical words I didn’t understand. Mom and I were exiled from the room without the chance to say goodbye.
Fortunately, goodbyes weren’t in immediate order. Unfortunately, they weren’t off the table. The doctor informed us that his condition had caused him to slip into a comatose state (see: coma), which could be as mild as a few hours of unconsciousness to the severity of days. Apart from monitoring his heart and vitals, there was nothing more to do. My dad’s life was a waiting game.
Karen did the only thing she knew. She prayed. And I didn’t mock it. I didn’t particularly mind it, either. She meant every word she said. She asked me to pray, but I didn’t even know where to start. But Karen actually said something that helped me. She said praying isn’t about the words you say, it’s about the meaning you put behind them. So I prayed for nonsense. And I let myself hope. I hoped that, if no one else did, God understood me.
We sat in the waiting room near the elevators. Karen was on the phone with Frankie, explaining the situation as he promised to make it to town by noon. It was Sunday morning, maybe six. I hadn’t checked my phone since I got to the hospital. I took it out of my pocket to see the time and noticed three missed calls from Snake. There was a text spread across the screen.
I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll be outside if you need me. Call me back when you can.
He’d sent it at two in the morning, right around the time my dad slipped into the comatose state that we all knew was a coma but refused to classify. There was no way Snake was still outside. He must have waited for a while and left when he got no news. He must have gone home when I didn’t respond. Then again, I wouldn’t have put a hospital parking lot all nighter past him.
I glanced at Karen, who was in deep conversation on the phone. I nudged her and mouthed, “I’ll be right back.” She threw up a dismissive hand.
When I reached the parking lot, there it was in its gold, soccer mom, yoga wisdom glory. The Prius (see: wimpmobile) was parked next to the hospital sign on the edge of the road. Snake was sleeping in the front seat, his head resting on the steering wheel in the most uncomfortable sleeping arrangement in the history of makeshift car beds. He looked peaceful, though. Calm in his unconsciousness. I didn’t want to wake him. I didn’t want to serve the long-time-coming blow that was needed and unavoidable and possibly the most painful absence I would ever demand. In my selfishness, I wanted to keep him for a little longer. I wanted to bask in his presence and forget how momentary the pleasure. But God, if I ever prayed for nonsense, it was to not have to walk this tightrope alone.
He jolted awake when I knocked on the window, disoriented before he wiped his eyes and remembered how he got there. He opened the door and stepped out of the car, his chaotic hair electrocution-level crazy. His dull and amazing eyes were watching me with concern.
“How is he?” he asked, reaching to hug me.
I backed away, staring at the pebbles of broken pavement on the ground. “Not great,” I answered, my voice nearly gone. I was just like Dad, there and not at the same time. “He slipped into a coma early this morning. They don’t know how long it will last.”
“Oh,” he breathed. He knew something was off. There was dread in his tone. “I’m really sorry.”
“Thanks. You should have gone home.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you.”
“Why?”
“You were freaking out on the way over. I was worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself, Snake.”
It wasn’t necessary to remind him. But I couldn’t stop myself once I knew how badly this would hurt.
I looked into his eyes for the first time.
He was what I expected him to be. Tense. Upset. Overwhelmed in a controlled kind of way. “I know?” He took a step toward me. “What is this about?”
“We need to talk.”
I regretted how horribly Breakup 101 it was to say that. Next thing I knew, I’d be saying “it’s not you, it’s me” and waiting for him to beg so I could toss out the old “we
can still be friends.”
“Reggie,” he whispered. His face was discolored like he was going to be sick. “Please, don’t do this. I know what you’re going to say, and I’m begging you to let me be ignorant for just a little while longer. Okay? Let me pretend like you want me the way I want you.”
“I want you, Snake,” I said. It was like admitting that I was the one who stole the crown jewels. It was like confessing to a homicide. It was liberating and horrifying in one beat. “That’s the problem. You’ve always wanted too much, and I never wanted enough until now. And it feels like dying, to be honest. It feels like Prozac seizures and frenzy and Disconnect, because I know how tragically temporary this is. How tragically temporary you are.”
“It’s only as temporary as we let it be,” he said, panic sweeping across his face. “I know I haven’t shown you the rest of my film yet, but if you give me a chance, you’ll see that I understand exactly how you feel. That’s the outlook. Temporariness. And it doesn’t have to change anything. Just give me a chance to prove that to you.”
“I can’t,” I insisted, my voice catching. It would have been unforgivable to cry. I bit my lip so hard it throbbed, and I could still feel the tears threatening to overwhelm me. “My dad is in there dying. Not the you-and-me version of dying. The real kind. The kind Zoloft can’t alleviate. The kind therapists can’t write prescriptions for. Heart-stops-beating, dirt-on-the-casket dying.” He was shaking. I could see Stage 1 in his twitching fingers, in his disbelieving eyes. “I’ve been neglecting him all this time. I’ve been so focused on you, and that’s great. Really, Snake. You’ve been the only thing keeping me alive. But you have a bad case of human. You were made for two things, to make people want you and to leave them still wanting. And I can’t do it. I can’t stand around waiting for you to leave me.”
Definitions of Indefinable Things Page 18