Watch Over Me

by Tara Sivec

  After I unload on her, Meg and I talk more about her parents, and she promises me that she will talk to me whenever she is feeling guilty or depressed. No more pills, no more drowning in sorrow alone. We are both going to be better friends to each other and I feel hopeful that both of our futures look brighter.

  Meg asks about Zander, and I can't hide the blush from my cheeks or the smile from my face. She knows just from the look on my face what happened last night and lets out an ear-piercing scream that causes several nurses to come running. After we finish convincing them that everything is fine and burst into a fit of giggles when they leave, I hesitate to ask for advice. Even though I don't want to burden Meg with my problems, she insists that I do. She needs something else to focus on aside from her own problems, and I guess she's right. I realize that sitting here in the hospital, talking to her for over an hour, that even though I'm dredging up old memories and problems and talking about current ones, the feeling of dread that usually pools in my stomach isn't there. I'm comfortable talking to Meg, and it feels very good to have another girl to talk to. I love Zander and I know I can talk to him about anything, but there's just something different about having a girlfriend to confide in.

  "I told him I love him," I tell her sheepishly.

  "Oh, holy shit, this is serious. More serious than giving up your V-card."

  I smack her on the arm and tell her to keep her voice down when a nurse walks by and looks in on us.

  "Are we moving too fast? It's too fast, isn't it? I feel like everyone is looking at us like we're crazy. And my dad isn't too fond of him. God knows why," I complain with a roll of my eyes.

  "I hate when people say that to someone else. 'Oh my, they got married too soon,' or 'But they haven't even known each other that long.' What business is it of theirs to judge your relationship? Only the two of you know what's right or what's wrong. I know for a fact that you wouldn't have had sex with someone if you didn't trust them completely. And I've seen the way he looks at you and the way he takes care of you; his eyes follow you everywhere making sure you're okay. No one can tell you whether you're moving too fast or too slow. You're moving at exactly the right speed for the two of you and that's all that matters."

  When Meg finishes up, I stare at her in shock, surprised by her insight.

  "How the hell did you get so smart?"

  She shrugs and gives me a cocky smile. "It's easy fixing other people's problems. It's my own that can suck it."

  We talk for a few more minutes, and when I'm confident that she's going to be okay, I promise to call her later that evening and step out of the room so she can get some rest before she meets with one of her shrinks.

  Digging through my purse to try and locate my cell phone to text Zander, I don't pay attention to where I'm going and run right into someone's chest.

  "Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" I exclaim, looking up at a blond guy in hospital scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck.

  "It's okay. I'm good," he says with an easy smile.

  "Addison? Excuse me, Addison Snow?"

  I turn when one of Meg's nurses jogs up to me with my cell phone in her hand.

  "You left this in Meg's room. She told me to try and catch you before you left," she says, handing the phone over.

  I thank her and she quickly walks away to go back to work.

  "You're name is Addison Snow? I thought you looked familiar."

  I look back at the guy I ran into, surprised that he's still standing next to me.

  "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

  He reaches up with both of his hands and fiddles with the stethoscope around his neck. "You probably don't remember me. You were pretty out of it the last time I saw you. You look good though. I'm glad you're doing so well. Zander said you were doing alright, but it's nice to see it first-hand."

  I stare at him in confusion, not really sure what he's talking about or when he would have seen me last. But since he knows Zander, I'm assuming he must be a friend of his or one of his co-workers. I can't help but smile knowing that he talks about me to his friends.

  "Do you work with Zander or something?"

  He shakes his head at me, continuing to tug the ends of his stethoscope back and forth around his neck. "No, he works down in Radiology, but we met in college. I'm an intern in the Emergency Room, which is how I met you."

  Bits and pieces of broken memories from my time in the emergency room flutter through my mind and a chill crawls up my spine.

  "I need a liter of O negative in here immediately. She's losing a lot of blood."

  "Can you tell me your name? Keep your eyes open for me."

  "Someone get me a pressure cuff and call the OR."

  "Her name is Addison. Addison Snow and she's eighteen years old."

  "Hey there, Sugar, open your eyes. Come on, open your eyes and look at me."

  "BP is seventy over forty-five. I need that blood NOW!"

  "Addison, hey, it's okay. Shhhh, you're okay. I'm right here, Addison."

  "Man, Zander was out of control that day when you were brought in." The guy's voice breaks through my memories, and I find it harder and harder to breathe while he continues on. "I've known him for a lot of years, but I've never seen him that devastated or freaked out as he was when he stopped by to talk to me and they wheeled you in. We tried to get him to leave while we worked on you, but that guy was determined. Something about making a promise to your mom…I don't know. He was the only one able to get you talking, though, so we kind of had to let him stay."

  I don't say one word to him in response to his story and his trip down memory lane. I can't speak, I can't breathe, and everything around me looks blurry, and I realize I turned away from him and began running down the halls of the hospital with tears falling down my cheeks.

  He shouts my name as I run towards the elevator, but I don't turn around or answer him. The only thought going through my mind is that it was all a lie. Everything between us, every moment, every touch, every word…it was all a lie.

  "People in your life will let you down sometimes. It's a fact of life, Addison. What matters is how you handle it," Dr. Thompson explains.

  The smell of hazelnut permeates the room as I watch Dr. Thompson lift her coffee cup to her mouth and take a sip. I used to love the smell of hazelnut. My mom would buy fresh hazelnut coffee beans and grind them herself every morning.

  "Obviously, I don't know how to handle it. I'm so used to people letting me down that I've become immune to it at this point. I expect it, it happens, and then I just move on and never want anything more to do with them."

  Dr. Thompson sets down her cup and folds her hands in her lap.

  "No one is perfect. People make mistakes. Just because they hurt you doesn't mean they don't still love you or care for you. There are lots of different reasons for someone to make the choices they have in life. If you don't allow them to get close to you again or try to make amends, you'll constantly find yourself alone. I don't want you to be alone, Addison. You deserve to be surrounded by people who love you and have your best interests at heart. You used to always be able to see the good in people. I want you to be able to get back to that point again. I want to see you happy again. I don't feel like my work is done here until you can finally be happy again."

  Dr. Thompson didn't know me before—back when I was surrounded by people who loved me and I didn't have a care in the world except for being young and having fun. She's right though; I always saw the good in people first. Even if they disappointed me in some way, I was still able to find redeeming qualities in them and still wanted to be close to them. I forgave easily, I forgot quickly, and nothing left permanent scars on my heart. I want to get that person back. I feel like she's just beyond my reach. I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of being stuck in sadness and depression or moving forward with life and allowing myself to be happy. One good, strong gust of wind could push me in either direction. Right now, it feels like my future happiness all depends on which way the wind is
blowing.

  I don't knock on the door to Zander's house when I get there. He had showed me where the spare key was a few weeks ago, so I lift up the welcome mat and pick it up off of the porch floor, sliding it into the lock and opening the door.

  It's strange being in his home without him here. Even though he's at work, his presence is everywhere. No matter which way I turn, no matter what room I walk through, I can see him, feel him, hear him…he's everywhere, and for the first time since I met him, it makes me angry. I don't want him invading my life anymore. I don't want to see him everywhere I look or think about memories of the two of us together in every part of the house I walk through. It takes everything in me not to shove all of his mail off of his kitchen table, knock the framed pictures of his family off the walls, or pick up his lamps and throw them against the wall. I want to break him like he broke me. But the things in this house are just that: things. Breaking them won't hurt him; they won't shatter his heart or his soul. These things can be replaced after they've been broken. You only get one heart and soul and what the hell are you supposed to do with those things after they've been destroyed?

  I ignore the happy memories of us curled up together on his couch watching a movie and think about the bad things instead. I think about his deception and his lies. I think about how in just seven short weeks I felt so comfortable with him and how it felt like I had met him before. I think about how afraid I was to tell him what I'd done at the cemetery a year ago and how I didn't want him to look at me any differently. It's such a joke, all of the anxiety I had about something that he already knew about. He knew everything about me and never said a word.

  I walk into his room and refuse to look at the bed. I refuse to remember how it felt to be wrapped up in his arms and close to his body. I won't let myself think about the words of love he whispered to me and how they were all a lie.

  I don't even know what I'm doing in his room. I don't know what I'm looking for or what I hope to find, but I have to do something. I need answers and I need them now. I begin dragging all of the clothes out of his dresser drawers, tossing them onto the floor in huge piles. When each drawer is empty and I find nothing, I move on to his closet, then under his bed, and then to each of his nightstands. I empty the contents of his entire room onto the floor, and when I find nothing that connects him to me or my mother, I crumble to the ground in the middle of clothes, shoes, sports equipment, old textbooks, and photo albums. I've obviously seen too many movies. I've read too many stories where a creepy stranger fills their room with secret photos and notes that implicate them in their deception. Did I really expect to find a box full of black and white photos of me taken with a telephoto lens? I hug my knees to my chest, rocking slowly back and forth.

  I don't know how long I sit among his things, staring off into space, but it's not long before I hear his voice behind me.

  "If you wanted to do a little housekeeping, I've got some dirty clothes in the laundry room you could have tackled," Zander says from the doorway of his room with an uncomfortable chuckle.

  I don't turn around to face him, and I don't move from my spot on the floor. I can tell by his laugh that he knows why I'm here. His friend at work probably told him what happened. It makes me sick to my stomach to know that a stranger knew more about my life than I did and that Zander confided in him instead of me.

  "How?"

  I only say one word to him, but that one word is enough. He knows exactly what I'm asking for, and he can probably tell by the state of his room that if he doesn't tell me the truth once and for all, this won't be the only damage I do to his home. I've never been filled with this much anger or hurt. I should be ashamed of acting like a child and making a mess, but I'm not.

  "I was her radiology tech when she was first diagnosed. I'm the one who ran the initial test on her confirming Leukemia. And then over the two years she was sick, it just happened that I was always the tech on duty when she came in for scans. I started picking her up from her room and taking her down for her scans on my own instead of letting an orderly do it. We had a lot of time to talk."

  I close my eyes and think about all the times over those years that my mother needed an MRI or an X-ray or some other imaging test, and it occurs to me that she would have had a lot of time to talk to him, a lot of time to talk about her life and her one and only daughter.

  "Did she tell you to stalk me after she was gone or was that something you decided all on your own?" I ask angrily, pushing myself up from the floor so I can face him. I want to see his face. I want to watch and find out if this time, now that I know everything, I can easily recognize the lies.

  "I didn't stalk you, Addison. I kept an eye on you to make sure you were okay."

  I let out an unattractive snort and roll my eyes at him.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, is that the new technical terminology for following someone around, knowing everything about them, and then tricking them into loving you? My bad," I tell him sarcastically.

  He closes the distance between us and reaches out for me, but I quickly sidestep him. I don't want his hands on me. I don't want him anywhere near me. His face falls when I continue walking backward until I bump into the wall next to the door.

  "I'm sorry, Addison, I'm so sorry. I was going to tell you. I swear to God it was killing me to keep this from you. I knew if I told you too soon that you would walk away. I didn't want to lose you. I love you. Please, you have to believe me when I say that," he begs.

  "You don't love me. It was all a lie. You knew everything about me the entire time. This entire time I thought it was real but it never was. You just felt sorry for me," I tell him with a sob.

  I don't want to cry in front of him. I don't want to tell him that just being here in the same room with him is cutting holes in my heart that is only being held together by the tiniest of threads.

  "It was never a lie and I never felt sorry for you. I worried about you, and I wanted you to be happy. From the first moment I saw you in that hospital when you were visiting her, I knew I wanted to know you better. It was wrong and I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't help it. You were so beautiful and so strong. Every time she got bad news you held it together for her. I've seen grown men break down in front of their families and an entire staff of doctors, but you just held your head high and gave your mom the strength and the courage to keep on fighting," he tells me, reminding me of all the times I just wanted to race out of her hospital room and scream and cry at the unfairness of it all, but I never did. I never wanted her to see how petrified I was of losing her.

  "She talked about you constantly. About how close the two of you were and how it scared her to death having to think about what it would do to you when she was gone. She knew your father wouldn't be able to be strong for you, and she worried about how that would affect you. She saw the way I looked at you when I would see you from a distance, and she joked with me about all of the questions I would constantly ask her about you. During her last appointment, she made me promise to find you and make sure you were okay if something ever happened to her."

  His words do nothing to ease the betrayal. If anything it makes me feel even more alone and more angry to know just how close he thought he was to my mother that he could make her a promise like that.

  I cross my arms over my chest and don't say a word as he continues with his explanation.

  "I tried to stay away from you, I swear. I knew it would be crossing so many lines if I tried to contact you after I found out she passed away, so I did my best to ignore the promise I made to her and forget about you and move on," he continues. "But then, one night, I was on my lunch break, and I went upstairs to the ER to talk with my friend Nate. I had just started talking to him about some plans for the weekend when the paramedics burst through the bay doors and we were suddenly surrounded by doctors and nurses and people shouting orders. I took one look at the gurney and my heart instantly fell. I saw you lying there unconscious, your arms, clothes, and the bed covered in blood, and it s
cared the hell out of me."

  I don't want to relive that day again, but I can't help it. Everything is so vivid that I can almost taste the clean, antiseptic smell of the hospital, feel myself being lifted off of the gurney, and hear the shouts and orders of the doctors all around me. Except this time I hear Zander's voice, clear as a bell, asking me to open my eyes and telling me everything will be okay. I hear his voice talking to me right now, and I hear his voice that day in the hospital. Knowing he was the one speaking to me trying to keep me alive should fill my heart with warmth, but it doesn't. I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed, and I'm angry that he saw me that way. He saw me during one of my weakest moments, and he witnessed just how broken I really am.

  "It was my fault. I should have kept my promise to her. It never would have happened if I would have just kept my promise," he states sadly.

  "Well, lucky for you, you won't have to be plagued by all of this self-doubt and guilt anymore. You took one look at me and thought you could fix me. I don't need your help, and I don't need your pity," I tell him as I turn away from him and ignore the pain written all over his face. "From now on, stay the hell away from me."

  I turn to leave, furious that he basically just admitted he was with me out of guilt. He felt like my suicide attempt was his fault for not doing as my mother asked. All this time I thought he was with me because he wanted to be, not because he felt like he had to be.

  "Please, Addison, don't leave. Not like this," Zander begs, following behind me as I stalk through his house to the front door.

  As I turn the knob and pull open the door, he reaches his arm around me and smacks his palm against the door slamming it closed.