Watch Over Me

by Tara Sivec

  But maybe that's not true. I know it's true for me, but what about her? It's not like we ever talked about things like that with each other. Our friendship was based on not prying into each other's lives, and it worked.

  As I stare at Zander while he softly talks to Meg and tries to keep her awake and focused on him, I realize that it didn't work. It never worked. It was a stupid idea, and it's not what friendship is about at all. Friendship is about being there for someone else, helping them through the hard times and celebrating the good times with them. It's about knowing everything about the other person and still loving them and sticking by their side. I didn't do any of this with Meg. I kept her at a distance and had no idea what she went through, what she was still going through. Standing here watching her struggle to keep her eyes open, I'm thrown back in time to the day I walked into my parent's home after my dad's frantic phone call.

  I raced into the house and ran into my aunt in my parent's kitchen.

  "Stay here, sweetie. The coroner is back in the bedroom right now," she told me, resting her hands on my shoulders.

  I shrugged them off and tried to move past her.

  "I need to go back there. I need to see her."

  She wrapped her arms around me from behind and held me against her as I struggled to be free. I needed to get down the hallway; I needed to see that this was all a joke. It couldn't be real. It wasn't real.

  "Addison, sweetie, you don't want to go back there," she whispered softly in my ear.

  "LET ME GO! I NEED TO SEE HER!" I screamed as loud as I could, finally escaping from her grasp and rushing down the narrow hallway to my parents' bedroom, ignoring the view of my father crying in the living room, slumped against the wall.

  I stopped in the doorway as a man in a black suit moved away from the bed and nodded at me.

  "She's sleeping. She's just sleeping," I mumbled to myself as I caught my first glimpse of my mother lying on her side under the covers, facing away from me.

  The man in the suit walked over to me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry for your loss."

  I didn't even look at him; I couldn't take my eyes off of my mom.

  As he walked by me and left the room, my feet slowly carried me closer to the bed, closer to where she lay sleeping, just sleeping.

  I rounded the end of the bed and finally saw her face—so peaceful and calm.

  "Mom?"

  There was no reply and I took another step closer to the bed, looking for signs of life, movement, anything—something to tell me that this wasn't happening.

  "No, no, no, no, no," I mumbled through my tears as I stood next to the bed just staring down at her, unable to make my feet move.

  My chest hurt and my vision is blurred from all of the tears pouring out of my eyes. I wrapped my arms around my waist and continued to chant my denial until I was screaming the words over and over.

  "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!"

  "No, no, no, no."

  The sound of my own voice pulls me back to the present, and I try to get my brain to catch up with what's happening right now.

  "ADDISON!"

  Zander's shout makes me jump, and I realize I've been staring at the empty pill bottles thinking about the past instead of doing what I need to do to help Meg.

  With shaking hands I dial 9-1-1 and tell the dispatcher with a monotone voice that I think my friend just tried to kill herself.

  Zander leaves me alone with Meg to go outside and wait for the ambulance once he's made sure that I'm okay and not going to stand here doing nothing but wish things had been different between her and I. I'm sitting by her side with her head in my lap, trying not to cry as she looks up at me. Her eyes are glazed over with what I now know are sleeping pills that were prescribed by her doctor to help keep the nightmares away.

  "Why? Why didn't you tell me?" I whisper to her as I run the palm of my hand down her cheek.

  "Silly, Addy, we don't tell each other things," she slurs with a smile. "Everything is just hunky-dory if we don't talk."

  I blink back tears as I stare down at her.

  "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  A laugh bubbles out of her as her hand weakly reaches up and lightly smacks me on the arm.

  "You're so silly. It's not your fault. It's MY fault. It's all my fault. Everything is my fault. They died because of me. Me, me, me. All my fault. I'm so sleepy," she mumbles almost incoherently before her eyes drift closed.

  "No, Meg, wake up! You can't go to sleep. Please, Meg, open your eyes," I beg as the tears fall down my cheeks.

  Her eyes slowly blink back open, but they don't focus on me. She stares blankly at a spot above my head.

  "I shouldn't have snuck out to that party. I shouldn't have drank so much. It's my fault you came to get me. It's my fault that truck hit you. My fault, my fault, my fault," she whispers sadly. "I'm going to make it right. It should have been me."

  I shake my head frantically back and forth, not really understanding what she's saying but knowing that this isn't right. None of this is right. None of this should be happening right now, and I'm ashamed of myself for not being a good friend and not knowing what she kept bottled up inside of her.

  As Meg floats in and out of consciousness, I remember Dr. Thompson's recent words of wisdom and do something I haven't done in a long time.

  I pray.

  "You can't expect the people around you to know what you want from them if you keep everything bottled up inside, Addison," Dr. Thompson informs me as she gets comfortable in her chair across from me and reaches for her coffee cup.

  The cup is white and has pink child-like writing on it that says "World's Best Mom." It reminds me of the mug I made for my mom one year for Mother's Day years and years ago. I briefly wonder if it's still in the cupboard with all the other coffee cups at my parents' house but probably not. I'm sure it's long gone, along with the rest of my mom's things.

  "Your anger is like a living, breathing thing. It needs to be let out or it's just going to slowly eat away at you. Your father has learned how to communicate with people in rehab; he knows that he's wronged those he loves, and he knows that they are going to be mad at him. You've been skirting around the big issues with him because you're afraid to rock the boat. You're still so worried about him and what he'll do that you aren't focusing on yourself. You aren't going to be able to get past your disappointment with him until you finally admit to him what his drinking did to you. The two of you need to talk about it and move forward."

  That's so much easier said than done. My father and I have never had the type of relationship where we sit down and talk about our feelings. That was always something I did with my mother. My dad is a good person to call when you're in a bind or you need help lifting something heavy, and he's always there with a joke or something to say to make you laugh, but he's never done the touchy-feely thing. He's never been a person I felt like I could go to with a problem or to lean on. Doing so now when he's fresh out of rehab, and probably one stressful situation away from going back, doesn't seem like the best idea.

  "Don't be afraid to lay it all out for him, Addison. It's time for someone else to take away some of the burdens that trouble you. He's an adult and it's time he takes some responsibility for his actions."

  After sitting in the hospital room for two hours, we finally get word from the doctor that Meg is going to be okay. Meg admitted to only taking a few of the sleeping pills once they were able to get her talking in the ambulance. They still pumped her stomach just in case and were able to get away with just bandaging the cuts on her arm without any of them needing stitches. We won't know how long she'll need to stay until she can get a full exam from a psych doctor. For now, she's safe and she's alive and that's all that matters.

  "Are you sure you don't want to go back to your place first and get cleaned up?" Zander asks softly as we pull into the bakery parking lot.

  I glance down at myself and realize my shirt is dotted with Meg's blood. Zander puts the
car in park, and I don't say a word as I stare at the red splotches on my T-shirt and touch each of them with the tip of my finger.

  "I shouldn't have left. She's all alone there. She doesn't have anyone but me," I mumble as I continue to trace the bloodstains, thinking about the words she spoke to me about both of them being gone and how it was all her fault. I can only assume she meant her parents, and it breaks my heart all over again that all this time we had so much more in common than I really knew.

  Zander reaches over the console and grabs my hand, pulling it up to his lips and kissing the top of it. I look over at him as he takes his other hand and runs it over the top of my head and down the side of my face.

  "She's fine, Sugar. They're going to have her heavily sedated until tomorrow."

  I nod my head in response to him, but I still feel guilty. I left her alone to deal with her demons, and now I'm leaving her alone in the hospital. It doesn't feel right.

  "I have to go into work for an hour to finish up some paperwork. I'll make sure to check on her and let you know what's going on," he promises.

  I want to tell him I love him. It hits me like a punch to the face as I sit here staring at him, covered in my friend's blood, the guilt eating me alive. I want to tell him that I'm only able to breathe right now because he's sitting next to me taking care of me.

  But I don't. I can't. I won't burden him with my feelings until he knows everything about me. Instead, I lean over toward him and rest my forehead against his and let out a deep sigh.

  "Thank you for being here today," I tell him softly.

  "Don't thank me for something like that. Of course I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. You know that, don't you, Addison?"

  His voice is filled with worry and concern, and I almost wonder if he knows that I was about to tell him I love him but stopped myself. I wonder if he knows there's more to my story than I've told him so far and this is his way of reassuring me that nothing I say or do can chase him away.

  It's wishful thinking on my part. I want to believe all of those things, and I want them to be true so much that I'm just assuming he can read my mind and know what I'm thinking.

  "I should go inside and talk to my dad," I tell him, pulling away from his face and moving to open the car door. All I want to do is pull him close and kiss him, forget about what happened today and forget about the part I played in it, but I can't. I have responsibilities.

  "You'll call me if you need me, right?" he asks through the open window as I step out into the parking lot and close the door behind me.

  "I will, I promise."

  The shop is empty when I walk through the front door, and I'm thankful for that. I probably should have taken Zander's advice and gone home first to shower and change, but for the first time in a long time, I just want to talk to my dad. I want the comfort of his wisdom and the reassurance that only a father can give.

  "Whose blood is that? Is that your blood? What the hell happened?" my dad frantically asks me as soon as I walk through the door. He races around the front counter and grabs onto my arms, searching me for injuries.

  "I'm fine. It's not my blood," I tell him in a tired voice as he takes my face in his hands and turns it side to side making sure I'm telling the truth.

  "What happened? Did that Zander guy do something?"

  I pull back and look at him like he's crazy.

  "What? No! It's from Meg, but she's fine," I say quickly when his eyes bug out in shock.

  "What happened to Meg?"

  I clear my throat uncomfortably and turn away from him, mumbling the words quietly. "Today was a really bad day for her. She took some sleeping pills...too many. And she broke a few things around her apartment and cut herself, hence the reason for the blood."

  It's quiet behind me for so long that I finally turn around to see if my dad even heard me. He's still standing in the same spot with his hands on his hips and a surprising look of fury on his face. His lips are pinched tightly together and the hands on his hips are balled into fists.

  "I knew that girl was trouble. She's done working here, and I don't want you anywhere near her."

  "Excuse me?" I fire back at him, gritting my teeth in anger.

  "You heard me. That isn't the type of person you need to be associated with, Addison. She's bad news and this just proves it. She tried to kill herself for God's sakes. Someone like that is just…"

  My dad cuts off what he's about to say, most likely because of the rage coming off of me in waves. I can feel it boiling inside of me, and I want to scream. I want to shove everything off of the table next to me so it can crash to the floor and some of this anger can be taken out on something other than him. He has no idea how much Meg and I have in common, and I should feel sorry for him because he's so dense when it comes to this subject, but I don't. He doesn't know how Meg and I met, and he doesn't know we have matching scars on our wrists to remind us every single day of our weaknesses. He doesn't know because he was too busy spending another sixty days in rehab forgetting about the daughter he left at home to fend for herself and say good-bye to her mother all on her own.

  "Someone like that is just what? Go ahead, finish that sentence."

  I want to hear him say it. I want to hear him admit that someone like that is poison, damaged, broken, pathetic, weak…all of the words I know are flowing through his head right now, all of the words I've associated with myself over the last year.

  "Come on, Dad, tell me what you really think of Meg. How do you really feel about someone who tries to kill themselves? What do you think about the kind of person who could be so weak and in so much pain that they feel like there's no other way out, no other way to stop the hurting?"

  I don't even realize I'm advancing on him until I'm right in front of him staring up at his six-foot-two frame, waiting for him to tell me all of the things I already know about myself.

  "I understand she's your friend and that you're probably upset about what happened—"

  "You don't understand shit!" I yell at him. "Do you know what I was doing a year ago next weekend, Dad? I was sitting at Mom's grave, full of pills with a razor blade in my hand, curled up next to her headstone wishing I could be anywhere else but here without her. All of those things you're thinking about Meg right now—how she's a bad person and hopeless and broken and a lost cause—well guess what? So am I."

  I shove the sleeve of my shirt up to my elbow and thrust my arm in his face and watch it lose all of its color as he listens to what I'm saying and stares at the long white scar on the inside of my wrist.

  "This is what hopeless and broken looks like, Dad. It looks the exact same way as Meg, and it feels the exact same way she feels. It's feeling alone and being alone and realizing that everyone you loved and depended on left you and didn't give a shit about you enough to be there for you," I shout as he slowly shakes his head back and forth in denial.

  "Oh, Addison, no," he cries softly.

  I'm sure this isn't exactly what Dr. Thompson had in mind when she advised me to finally talk to my dad, but now that I've started, I can't stop the venom from flying out of my mouth.

  "She died and they may as well have just buried you right next to her. You got rid of all of her things, and you refuse to talk about her or acknowledge her. One day she was here and everything was fine, and the next it was like she never even existed. We don't talk about how much we miss her, and we don't talk about the memories we have of her, and God forbid we even say her name. The holidays are spent ignoring all of the traditions we shared with her and shitting all over everything she ever blessed us with because NO ONE WILL TALK ABOUT HER!"

  I want to cry. I should be crying. It's overwhelming to be telling my father all of the things I've kept to myself the last year, and my emotions are going haywire. Every truth I speak is like a knife to both of our hearts. I know I'm hurting him, I know I'm ripping open old wounds, and the look on his face tells me the wounds are festering and bleeding and excruciating, but I don't care. I want h
im to hurt. I want him to feel a fraction of the pain I've felt and had to deal with on my own all this time.

  "This is because of Zander, isn't it? He's filling your head with things and turning you against me," my dad argues, still shaking his head back and forth as I pull my arm away but refuse to cover up my scar. I always wear long-sleeve shirts and always have something covering my arm so no one can see what I've done. I'm finished with that now. I'm finished with the lies and the hiding and the pretending.

  "Do you even hear yourself right now? Why would you think Zander had anything to do with what I'm feeling or what I've done? You don't even know him."

  My dad lets out an irritated laugh and nervously runs his hands through his hair.

  "And neither do you. You've been spending a lot of time with him lately. I'm glad you're getting out and away from this place, but I just don't trust that guy," he tells me.

  "Oh that's rich coming from you," I fire back.

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  I roll my eyes at him and take a step back, putting some distance between us.

  "You know exactly what it means. I may not have known him for very long, but I trust him. I've known you my whole life and I can't say the same."

  The irritation falls from his face, and it's quickly replaced by sadness. I know my words did that to him, but I don't care. We've been tiptoeing around each other since he came home and I'm done. I can't keep worrying that something I say or do will force him back to drinking. Dr. Thompson is right. He's an adult and he makes his own choices. I can't keep being responsible for the bad ones he makes. For the first time I finally understand and believe what she's been telling me all along: it's not my fault.