The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  Cho ratted me out.

  “I can explain,” I say, but Nurse Merchant doesn’t want an explanation.

  “These kids are sick!” she shouts. “You think you can do whatever you want with them, but they could die. And that would be on you, Andrew. Is that what you want? The only reason I didn’t call security is because I know how much you mean to Lexi and Trevor.”

  I shake my head. “Lexi’s fine. And Trevor needed time to fall in love. He’s seventeen, and he’ll probably be dead soon. Doesn’t he deserve it?” When I say the words, I hate myself a little bit. I’ll still try to keep my promise, still try to keep Death away from him, but where I should feel hope and determination I only feel dread.

  Nurse Merchant purses her lips. The anger she wants to direct at me dies inside her, and she deflates visibly. “You’re a good boy, Drew, but you can’t do this again.” She walks back to her desk and picks up a chart.

  “I’m not good,” I say, but she’s stopped listening to me. And she hasn’t forgiven me for taking Lexi and Trevor on a date last night. The goodwill I used to enjoy from Nurse Merchant is used up and gone.

  There’s a part of me that wants her to punish me. The part of me that doesn’t deserve Rusty and needs an avenging angel like Nurse Merchant to come along and set the world right. Boys like me don’t get to be happy. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to suffer in this hospital until the game ends, until long-legged Death finally realizes who I am and takes me away.

  So, while I’m waiting for that inevitability, I go to Trevor’s room.

  Lexi has draped the wig over her IV pole and is dancing with it while Trevor laughs in his bed and her mother rolls her eyes from her chair in the corner. The room is so bright with the sunshine and Lexi that I have to squint. Lexi twirls around the room, dangerously close to becoming entangled in all the tubes and wires. Somehow she manages to stay free. Trevor grabs the edge of her gown and pulls her down to him, peppering her face with kisses, and their love makes the whole damn room glow even more.

  They’re so . . . happy. No. Yes. Yes, they’re happy, but that’s not it. They’re so . . . alive.

  Lexi throws down some tickles on Trevor, and he squeals before launching a counterattack. Mrs. Kripke halfheartedly tells them both to settle down and save their strength, but she knows that it’s from this, from each other, that they draw their strength. Full stop. Period.

  I did that.

  And I don’t think I can be part of it now.

  On quiet feet, I back away from the room and leave the way I came, nodding good-bye to Nurse Merchant. It bothers me to think that I might never return to my friends, but they don’t need me anymore. Despite my inadequacies, I seem to have kept my promise to Trevor after all. It doesn’t matter whether Death takes him or not. In Lexi, he’ll live forever.

  Trevor is happy, and Lexi is happy. He’s got a future, and she’s anchored to the present, and I have no place in either. Not with them.

  Mr. Kelly is yelling at the nurses as I make my way to room 1184. “Stop them, Drew! They want to do me in!” He’s struggling against three nurses, two of whom are restraining him, while a third attempts to stick him with a needle. They ignore me. I don’t look at Mr. Kelly. I walk by, straight into Grandma Brawley’s room.

  The old broad looks better. Her skin is pinker; her breathing is steadier. She needs only wake to leave. Part of me wants her to get well, to rise up and tell everyone that she has no idea who I am. It would solve all my problems. No more living in the hospital, no more “borrowing” iPods from doctors, no more keeping secrets, no more hiding from Death.

  No more Rusty.

  Rusty McHale is the one good thing I have. The only thing that belongs to me. And I’m pretty certain that I’m not worthy of him.

  “What do you think, Gran?” I ask. “Is it possible for someone to be bad but still have something good in their life? I killed my family—why should I deserve Rusty? Why should I get anything at all?” I wait for an answer that doesn’t come. It never, ever comes. Like the owner of that lock of red hair, my answer is somewhere out there. I think of her waiting, waiting her whole life, wasting her life waiting for Sandy to come home. And even though it’s a fiction that I made up, I still hate her for it. I hate her for waiting for him and leaving me alone.

  I don’t want to be alone.

  “Please, wake up,” I beg softly. “Wake up.” My voice is so small that I doubt she can hear it wherever she is. I sink to my knees and bury my face in the crook of her still, winkled arm. I need her to wake up and tell me that everything is going to be okay. That I won’t always have to stand on the outside watching the people I care about die or be happy without me. Like my parents. Like Trevor and Lexi. Like Rusty.

  I need it more than air. More than anything. I’m not sure I can go on not knowing.

  Because I think Rusty will die if I stay with him. God knows I don’t deserve him. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe the only way to protect Rusty is for me to stay away. Maybe that’s why Sandy stayed away from Grandma Brawley. He was like me. He didn’t deserve her. So he left and never returned. Sure, she’s alive, but is she happy? I don’t know, and I need to know, and I cry for forgiveness, and I just want someone to tell me it’s all going to be okay.

  Father Mike is standing at the door when I lift my head. Snot dribbles down my lip, and my eyes are blurry with tears. He looks as lonely as I feel. Slowly, I rise.

  “Sometimes I pray with them,” Father Mike says. “Sometimes I pray for them.”

  I wonder how much Father Mike saw. As the desperate sadness passes, replaced by shame, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “She’s my grandma,” I say.

  “No, she’s not,” Father Mike says. I freeze. “But I’m sure God won’t mind you borrowing her.”

  “Do you really believe in God?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

  Father Mike nods. “Today I do.” He crosses his arms over his chest, not moving from the doorway. There’s enough space for me to squeeze through if I wanted to escape, but doing so would put me uncomfortably within Father Mike’s personal space.

  “I should . . .”

  “Don’t leave on account of me.”

  “I’m not,” I say, though clearly I am. Father Mike sucks in his stomach as I pass—a joke, maybe—and I say “bye” as I take off down the hall.

  “Drew?” Father Mike calls.

  I stop. Turn around.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  He sounds so certain, I almost believe him.

  I wait for nightfall on the roof of the parking garage.

  It’s almost August, and the last swarm of lovebugs swirls around me, their tiny connected bodies a tragedy. They’re born, they fuck, they die a horrific death splattered against an uncaring windshield. That’s the cycle: The ones we love always die.

  One day, I’ll die too.

  Rusty deserves better than that. He deserves someone who will always be there to catch him when he falls.

  I wish I were that person, but I am not.

  • • •

  Arnold is leaving Rusty’s room as I stroll through the double doors into the ICU. He’s wearing a lazy smile, like the one my father wore after devouring a huge turkey dinner. Nodding as he passes, Arnold doesn’t stop to talk to me, and I let him go. I no longer work for him; he no longer needs me.

  Steven glances up from the monitors at the nurse’s station. His face is unreadable. He doesn’t wave or smile or anything before returning to work.

  When I walk into Rusty’s room, he’s sleeping. His chest rises and falls steadily, and his mouth hangs open; a thin ribbon of drool leaks out. I think back to the nights I used to sit with Rusty and read to him. Before Steven. Before I could sit in a chair and be seen. I would wedge myself into the dark space beside his bed and lean my head against the cold metal frame.

  “Is he gone?” Rusty asks.

  “Arnold?” I say.

  “Yeah.”

 
; “Yeah.”

  Rusty moves around above me. The sheets rustle, and the whole contraption shakes. “He showed up out of nowhere insisting that I needed him to read to me. He brought Beowulf.”

  “He works in the cafeteria,” I say. “He’s the one who gave me the books.”

  “He’s a better reader than you are.” Rusty is silent, and then he says, “But I hope that doesn’t mean you won’t still come.”

  The naked need in his voice is a baited hook he dangles before me, taunting me, daring me to bite. And I want to so badly.

  “They’re talking about moving me. Maybe out of the hospital, Drew.” Rusty’s voice is trembling. The words crumble as he says them, and he struggles to hold them together. “You told me that you wouldn’t let them take me. You promised.”

  I can’t see Rusty’s eyes, and for that I’m thankful. Yesterday’s kiss replays on my lips like a looped video, the memory stronger than reality. My lips want his lips. My hands, his hands. I want him on a quantum level, where we’re already entangled. Where what happens to one happens to both.

  “I killed my family,” I say.

  “You already told me that.” Rusty shrugs like it’s an unimportant fact, like the color of my eyes or something.

  My memories are fuzzy because I’ve done everything I can think of to forget. I don’t want them. I’ve tried to dissolve the details, rearrange the faces, even change the names. But the memories persist. I reach out for them now, because I want Rusty to know the truth. I need him to know the truth.

  “I hated my parents, you know?” I say, speaking quickly. “My summer was all planned out. There were parties to go to and beaches to sleep on, and I was all set to volunteer at the busiest fire station in Providence, doing really hardcore shit.” Once words begin to spill from my mouth, I can’t stop them, or I don’t want to. I’m honestly not sure. I only know that I won’t stop until Rusty has heard everything.

  “Dad surprised us with a vacation to Disney World. We’d make a road trip out of it, he said. A real family adventure. Maybe the last one before I trekked off to college. I tried every excuse to bail, but Dad held his ground and Mom pulled the guilt card. One last vacation with both of her babies, was that too much to ask? I felt like an asshole for hating them, but they were ruining my life.

  “That drive felt like the longest hours of my life. We stopped at every cheesy tourist trap along the way. It was twenty hours of fast food and soft rock on the radio and road games, and Cady wouldn’t stop singing. The car was this moving metal prison and I just wanted to be there already. Dad got a migraine and asked me to drive. It was that or stay at some bedbug-infested hick motel, and I was more than happy to do anything that got us to the hotel before I strangled someone with a seat belt. After a while, everyone dozed off and it was just me and the moon and a two-lane highway. I swear I only looked at my phone for a second. My friend Jack sent me some pictures from a party. Someone had brought a goat and . . . it doesn’t matter. I’d drifted into the other lane and there was a semi. Fucking thing came out of nowhere. I swerved and ran off the road. The car flipped. I mean, I assume it flipped because, when I came to, I was upside down, my face all bloody, my cheek pressed to the roof.”

  Rusty sits silently, and I pause; my voice is breaking; it’s broken. I clear my throat, blink rapidly to keep the tears at bay. They’re someone else’s memories, I tell myself. But that trick doesn’t work anymore.

  “They were sprawled out on the pavement,” I say, swallowing a sob. “I could have saved them. I don’t even know how I got them out of the car, but they would have been better off if I’d left them in there. Except for Cady. She was thrown through the windshield and into the ditch. She knew better than to take off her seat belt—I didn’t know that she had. I never let her drive with me unless she put it on.”

  My body heaves with sobs now. They wreck me as I stumble through my memories of that night. I hoped maybe they’d have healed, but they’ve only festered, become gangrenous. But I can’t bear to cut them off. They’re mine to live with, my punishment from now until Death takes me, and likely beyond.

  Rusty tries to touch me, but I flinch. “You couldn’t have saved them,” he says.

  “I could,” I whisper.

  “It was an accident.”

  “You don’t know,” I say. “I trained for this. How to save lives. I . . . I tried to do CPR on Cady, but there was so much blood—she was drowning in it—and I froze. Fell back on my hands and watched her blood leak onto the blacktop. All my training, everything that I knew—and I let her die. I let them all die.” I sit up, and I look Rusty right in the eyes, and I say, “Don’t you see that I killed them? It was my fault. Everything is my fault.”

  Rusty shakes his head. “You were scared.”

  “Was I?”

  “Yes!” Rusty says. “Anyone would have been. But you didn’t kill them.”

  “I did,” I say. “And if you don’t leave, I’ll end up killing you, too.”

  With his burned hand, Rusty strokes the bridge of my nose. He traces the lines of my lips and caresses my cheek. He searches my eyes with his—the hazel is more green than brown tonight. He’s trying to find a way to forgive me for something he hasn’t any right to forgive.

  “You’re right,” Rusty says finally. “You did kill your parents. And if you let them take me from here, you’ll be killing me, too.”

  “I miss them,” I say, ignoring his accusation. “Being grounded for staying out late and the smell of Mom brewing coffee at five in the morning, and the way Cady’s hair stuck up like fireworks when she got out of bed, but how she never stopped smiling, not even when she slept. There’s a hole in me. A gaping wound. Every part of me misses every part of them. And it never stops hurting.” A dry sob shakes my bones, spreading from my chest like an earthquake. “I can’t bear the thought of missing you, too.”

  Rusty is quiet. There are no more accusations. Letting out the truth hasn’t healed the wound. That’s a myth. Telling Rusty has made it worse. I’m bleeding out all over again.

  “In tenth grade, I was so terrified of going to school that I threw up on myself,” Rusty says. I’m not sure what he’s trying to do, but I haven’t the words to stop him. “It happened on the bus. Mrs. St. Charles rolled to a stop at the railroad track and opened the doors. But it was like my body kept going all the way to school, where I knew, I fucking knew, that Jaime Newton and Clive Downs were waiting for me in the locker room.

  “I had P.E. first period with Mr. Callow, who believes that competition breeds superiority. It was beat or get beaten in his class.”

  The way Rusty talks about it is clinical, like how Steven describes a patient: This happened, and then this happened. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel, or why he’s telling me these things. “Yeah, that’s how high school is,” I say.

  “You sound like my dad.” Rusty sneers. His lips shake, and he looks away from me. “But you don’t know. Nobody knows. Not until they’re covered in their own sick, running down the halls. Until they’re the one on the floor, being kicked in the stomach so that the bruises won’t show on their face. Until people whisper about them as they walk down the halls and someone paints ‘cock gobbler’ on their locker on Parents’ Night.”

  Rusty’s heart-rate monitor spikes, too fast. “That was my future, Drew. People beating me every second of every day, for the rest of my life. It didn’t even have anything to do with being gay. . . . I was just different from them. And that realization, living with the knowledge that I’m always going to be on the receiving end of some asshole’s sick, twisted mission to destroy everything and everyone that’s not like him . . . it was too much. I couldn’t bear it anymore.”

  “So you threw up?”

  Rusty looks at me like he forgot I was here. “Yeah. But it’s different in the hospital, with you. I feel . . . almost normal.”

  I don’t know what to say. I swore to Rusty that I wouldn’t let them take him, but I think getting away from
me is the only way to keep him safe. He’s got his parents. He’s got Nina. My feelings for Rusty and my duty to keep him alive are at odds.

  “About the other night,” Rusty says. He’s not trembling anymore. He’s in control again. “The kiss, I mean.”

  “What about it?” I ask, wondering if it’s the only thing he’s been able to think about. The way it has been for me.

  Rusty worries the corner of his sheet, the threads beginning to show wear. “Do you like me?”

  “Of course I like you,” I say immediately, knowing that he’s asking more than I’m answering.

  “Right,” Rusty says. “But do you like me?”

  I feel like I’m back in fourth grade. Nikki Baker slipped me a note asking if I liked her. She even drew little checkboxes under the question. But Rusty is serious, so I’m serious back.

  “Yes,” I say. I whisper. And my acknowledgment is a win for the part of me that lives for his smile, but it’s a crushing defeat for the part of me that can’t bear to see his pain.

  “You came to tell me you weren’t coming to visit me again, didn’t you?”

  I nod, unable to speak the words. “I’m bad,” I say. “If I stay, bad things will happen.”

  “What if I don’t care? What if I tell you that bad things are going to happen anyway?”

  “I don’t know.” Confusion is a parasite that gorges on my brain. Words fail me.

  But Rusty has words for us both. “I didn’t mean what I said about you killing your parents,” he says. He gulps and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I was serious about me, though. If you let them take me away, I’m going to die.” He lifts my chin and looks into my eyes. I see me as Rusty sees me. It’s not real. I can’t be that person. “For a while, I thought I’d be okay with that. Dying, I mean. An end to all pain. But then I met you.” He leans forward and paints my lips with his lips. It’s never enough.

  I think of Trevor and Lexi and how happy they seemed this morning, how they were so alive, and I think—I want to believe—that I can have that with Rusty. But I don’t deserve it.