Written Into Love

by Joe Lechene

  That was the last time that I saw the two of them for almost two days. When they finally emerged, they acted as if nothing happened. The boys went back to work and life went back to normal. Everything was fine for a while until the boys came home beat up one night again. Like before, they gave me the same answer. Tristan helped clean Erik up and they went to bed. I was still concerned about them, but unless they told me anything, there wasn’t anything that I really do about it. After the second time, I waited outside the restaurant for them to get off work. There were no encounters for the month that I did that, then I stopped and let them be on their own again.

  Over the next couple of months, the boys would come home with cuts and bruises on them. The strange thing was, at least from what they told me, the attackers never tried to take their money. Very few people knew that they were a couple, so I didn’t think that it was gay bashing. I was starting to think that it was some other guys that hated them from the shelter. Although, since they pretty much kept to themselves, I couldn’t understand why.

  So, this was how our lives went for another six months. I would do my work throughout the day and the boys would go to work in the evenings. Every couple of weeks, they would come home bruised and bleeding. Every time I would try to help them, but the answer was always the same. At one point, I even tried to get the police involved, but that was about a waste of time. Unless something could be proven, they couldn’t have cared less. It hurt me almost as much as they must have been hurting to see them like that.

  And this was how we lived, until that one fateful night…

  III

  It was getting very late on a Tuesday night. The boys came home later than normal, once again. Sadly, I was almost getting used to Tristan helping Erik walk down the hallway. This time though, I was caught off guard by the sound of Erik screaming. As he was wailing in pain, I decided that enough was enough and called 9-1-1. I hated to do it to them, but I was genuinely worried about his wellbeing.

  I had my cell phone to my ear as I walked down the hallway. As I was giving the dispatcher my address, I found the boys just inside the front door. Erik was laying on the floor with Tristan hovering over him in tears. When I finally got close enough to see Erik up close, I took a step back into the wall. His face was covered in blood and already beginning to swell. The black shirt that wore had cuts all over his torso with blood coming out of the slits in the fabric. Plus, his hands looked like he was punching a concrete wall. He was holding his side as he groaned in pain on the floor.

  Poor Tristan looked helpless as he held his lover’s head in his lap. Tears were rolling down his face while he tried to comfort Erik. Tristan looked like he didn’t get away completely unscathed either. There were a couple of spots on his face that were starting to bruise. Plus some cuts on his hands and arms. It definitely looked like Erik took the bulk of the beating though.

  After I finished answering the questions that the dispatcher asked me, I hung up the phone. I knelt down beside Erik and gently rubbed his leg. I was hoping that the ambulance got here quick, he really didn’t look good. It was taking all that I had not to pull his shirt up and look at where he was holding his side. With all of the other trauma to his thin body, if he was just holding his side than it had to be bad.

  It seemed like forever before there was a knock on the door. By New York City standards, this was actually pretty quick for an ambulance to show up. When the knock on the door finally came, I got up and rushed to open it. Of course, the paramedics were a couple of dickheads and just threw Erik on the stretcher. They strapped him in and took him out of our apartment. Tristan and I followed them down the hallway where they took him down the elevator. Since it was only a few floors, we just took the stairs and met them in the lobby. They didn’t really seem too thrilled about letting us ride in the back with him, but Tristan was throwing a fit about how he couldn’t be without him. The paramedics gave in and let us ride in the back of the ambulance with Erik.

  The ride to the closest hospital was relatively short, especially since the ambulance was blowing through all the red lights. As soon as we got there, they took the stretcher out of the back and wheeled Erik into the ER. Once he passed through the door to triage, we weren’t allowed to go back with him. All that we could do was sit in the waiting room and hope that we heard something soon. Tristan was still crying as I pulled him into my side. I ran my hand through his hair as we patiently waited for some news about Erik.

  Shortly after sitting down, a woman approached us and handed me a stack of papers on a clipboard to fill out. As I began to fill out Erik’s basic information, I started to realize that there was still a lot about the two that I didn’t know. All that I really did know was, they both came from families that didn’t except them for who they were. Tristan ran away from home at the age of sixteen. Erik was beaten by his father for his choice in lifestyle and ended up running away at seventeen. Other than that, I knew both of their birthdays and their current address. So, I filled out the questioners as best as I could under the circumstances and sat the clipboard on the chair beside me. Which is where it sat until the woman from the desk came back over to get it from me.

  …

  We had been waiting for about an hour when a nurse finally came out to see us.

  “The family for McAleer,” she blandly asked?

  “That’s us,” I responded getting up, pulling Tristan up with me.

  She looked both of us over before saying, “I’m sorry to say that he has a ruptured spleen and broken occipital bone. They took him up for emergency surgery. There’s a waiting room on the fourth floor where you guys can wait. The doctor will come out there with the prognosis.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  Still holding Tristan by my side, we walked down the hallway to the elevators and I pushed the ‘up’ button. The short ride up the empty elevator led us to a waiting room with only a few people waiting in. Now, I wasn’t one for stereotyping people, but most of these folks looked like they were waiting for gunshot victims to get out of surgery. I led Tristan to a spot away from anyone else and sat us both down on two chairs by the wall. He buried his face in my chest once again and kept crying. I had known that Tristan and Erik deeply loved each other, but I had never seen either one of them this emotional before. All that I could do was hold his head against my chest and run my fingers through his freshly dyed jet-black hair.

  We sat like that for a while, watching a doctor come out into the waiting room occasionally, and talking to someone in the waiting room. Some got the news that they wanted to hear. While a few others heard their worst nightmares come to fruition. I hoped for Tristan’s sake, when the time came for us to hear the outcome, that it would be good news.

  Before too much longer, we were the only two left in the waiting room. I really wanted to get up and grab a cup of coffee, but Tristan was clenching onto my shirt as if his life depended on it. He had stopped crying; however, he was making no attempts to remove his head from my chest. There was no way that I could have gotten up and left him alone in this dingy waiting room.

  I was just starting to doze off when I heard the automatic door open and two sets of footsteps approaching us. I looked up to find a middle-aged man wearing green scrubs and a woman in a black dress. I think that I had seen here before tonight if my sleepy eyes weren’t mistaken and those occurrences hadn’t ended well. Since we were the only ones in the waiting room, they walked right over to us.

  The woman asked, “Are you waiting for McAleer?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  The man in scrubs said, “I was one of his surgeons. I’m afraid that on top of the ruptured spleen, he had some internal bleeding. We tried to get it under control, but unfortunately, he had lost too much blood already. I’m sorry, he didn’t make it.”

  Tristan started crying again into my shirt and my stomach felt like a ton of bricks. I was trying to prepare myself for this, but I don’t think that there was really a way to prepare yourself for losing so
meone that you cared about. Poor Tristan dug his palms deeper into my shirt, pulling my collar down my chest. I tightened the grip that I had on the back of his head as the tears started flowing in full force once again. There were only three things going through my mind at this point. It wasn’t fair that Erik died. It wasn’t fair that Tristan had to endure this pain. And, if I ever found the fuckers that did this to him, I was going to seriously fuck them up. Very seldom did I get angry, but right now I could feel the blood boiling in my veins.

  I almost didn’t even hear the lady start talking to us. “My name is Ms. Embersole. I’m a grief counselor here at the hospital. If either of you needs to talk about anything, I’m here for you.”

  I could tell that Tristan wanted nothing to do with her just from looking down at him. “Thank You, Mam. Right now, I just think that I need to get him home.”

  “Fair enough,” she replied. “You’ll need to get in touch with a funeral home to make the arrangements. Also, we need you to file a police report. By law, these types of incidents must be reported. We can have the authorities contact you later today if that will be okay.”

  “That’ll be fine. I just need to get him home right now. They were very close.”

  By this point, his tears had thoroughly soaked through my shirt and were starting to coat my stomach. And quite frankly, it was taking all I had not to break down myself. I may not have had the kind of relationship that Tristan had with him, but I was still going to miss him. Since there was nothing else that we could do here, I just needed to get Tristan home and into bed.

  I slowly stood up, pulling Tristan onto his feet with me making sure to keep my arm wrapped tightly around his side. He kept his head buried into my shoulder as I thanked the doctor and counselor. They turned around and walked back down the hallway as we headed to the elevator. I almost had to pull him along with me across the waiting room. Once the elevator opened up in the lobby, I guided him to the front door and caught one of the taxi’s that was waiting outside.

  The ride back the apartment was rather quick, considering that there was almost no traffic at this time of the morning. After paying for the ride and tipping the driver, I took him upstairs and got him inside. I had considered letting him sleep alone, however, I was afraid that he would try to harm himself. Losing Erik was hard enough, I couldn’t fathom anything happening to Tristan too.

  I got him into my bedroom and sat him down on the bed. After taking his shoes off, I got him into bed and under the covers. Not one for sleeping with too many clothes on, I went to the bathroom and changed into a t-shirt and shorts. This was still overdressed for me, but under the circumstances, it was appropriate.

  As soon as I crawled into bed, Tristan curled up to me and put his head back on my chest. He was still crying as his arm wrapped around my stomach. I put my hand on the back of his head once again and held him. By this point, whatever self-control I had left was completely gone. The tears started flowing from my eyes and my sobs were starting to match Tristan’s. I put my other hand over my face, trying to wipe away the tears, but they wouldn’t stop coming.

  Losing Erik to such a senseless tragedy was weighing heavily on my mind. He didn’t deserve to go like this, not this young. He still had his whole life ahead of him, a life that would have been hopefully spent with his partner. A partner that was crying on my chest, in more emotional pain than I could even imagine. All that I could do was hold him close to me and let him know that he wasn’t alone. There was nothing that I could do to help him deal with his loss right now. However, keeping him comfortable and safe was now my top priority.

  IV

  It was too early in the morning for me to be getting up. I stood in the shower with the water as hot as I could stand it. I was hoping that the hot water would wash away the pain, but it persisted right through it. Tristan was still in bed, passed out on my pillow. With everything that he had been through over the past twelve hours, sleeping was probably the best thing that he could do right now. Besides, most of the tasks that I wanted to accomplish this morning didn’t require him being present.

  After throwing on a pair of joggers and a white t-shirt, I went to my office and sat myself down in front of my computer. The first thing on my list was finding a suitable funeral home. I knew that neither of them had life insurance to cover something like this happening. Luckily, I had enough in my savings to hopefully cover it. Putting Erik to rest was definitely more important than taking a vacation. After calling the first 20 places on the Google search, I finally decided on one that was decently priced and looked reputable. They couldn’t get us in to make the arrangements until later in the afternoon, which was fine with me. I knew that there was going to be a nap in my future anyway.

  Next on my list, and probably the most difficult task that I wanted to accomplish this morning, was notifying Erik’s parents. They may have had their differences, but they deserved to know what happened. So, I pulled out the phone book that I never used and started calling all of the McAleer’s listed. I started to go down the list, dreading the moment that I hit the right one. About halfway down the list, I was starting to give up any hope of finding them. However, I knew that I couldn’t sleep until I tried them all.

  Just as I decided to get up and refill my coffee, my cell phone started to ring. After the countless messages that I had left, it was kind of a shock that someone was calling me back. Setting down the coffee pot and running back to my desk with the half-filled mug, I answered the phone.

  “Hello, this is Ian.”

  “Yes, I got a voicemail from you. My name is Norma McAleer. I have a son by the name of Erik.”

  “Would he be around twenty and have run away from home a few years ago?”

  “Um, yes that sounds like my boy,” she said. “Please, tell me why you are calling.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to tell you this.” After a deep breath, I continued, “He passed away last night.”

  The phone went silent and it sounded like she dropped it on the floor. After several seconds, it sounded like she picked the phone up and said, “No, you must be mistaken.”

  “Tall skinny guy, emo, came out to his family before getting thrown out of his home?”

  “Oh my God, no,” she replied before the phone went silent again.

  It was another minute and I still didn’t hear anything. “Um, Mam, are you alright?”

  There was the sound of a sob before she asked, “Have the arrangements been made yet?”

  “Not yet, we’ll be making them later this afternoon. If you’d like, I can call you after and let you know what they are.”

  “Yes, I would very much appreciate that.”

  “I’ll call you later this afternoon then. And Mrs. McAleer, I am truly sorry for your loss. He was a good man.”

  She sobbed again before saying, “This is actually the second time that I lost him. I need to go now. Thank you for the call.”

  And then, just like that, the call ended. After writing the number down from my caller ID, I put my phone down on my desk. Putting my hands behind my head, I just sat in my chair and tried to run that conversation over in my head once again. For a moment, she seemed genuinely sad for losing her son. But, then it almost seemed to fade away. I never really had a full understanding of how Erik’s leaving home happened. He would never talk to me about it. However, after this call, I was starting to wonder what exactly did happen.

  I sat in my chair like that until I started to doze off. Looking at the clock, I realized that it was almost 10 a.m. and we had to be at the funeral home at four. After getting up from my chair and taking the last swig of my now cold coffee, I walked out of my office and back into my bedroom.

  When I entered the room, I looked at the bed. I was surprised to see that my bed was now empty. Immediately worried about Tristan, I looked around the room. The only thing that I found out of the ordinary was, the bathroom door was shut. I always left that door open when I came out. Starting to get worried, I walked over to the
bathroom door. Just as I got to it, I heard the toilet flush. After breathing a sigh of relief, I went back to my bed and crawled under the covers. No sooner than I had the covers pulled up over me, the door opened and Tristan walked back into the bedroom.

  I was kind of shocked when he got back into my bed and pressed his back into my side. He was still wearing the same clothes that he had been wearing since yesterday. And, he was starting to stink a little bit. Still, I rolled over towards him and wrapped my arm around his chest. He settled into the contour of my body and put his hand on my arm.

  I tried to block it out, but the conversation with Erik’s mother was still playing through my mind. I didn’t want to bother Tristan with a trivial question like this, but I had to know.