Once again, huge thanks need to go out to Karen and Scotty T for reading over what is to come. Thanks also to Drewbie, just for being Drewbie, and for forgiving me for not telling you that the first two parts of the story were posted.
And of course, thank you to Matt. There are far too many things to thank you for, boo, so I guess just thank you for everything. SHMILY, sweetie. :)
Disclaimer is the same as it ever was. Nothing contained in this story is meant to in any way represent or depict real life. Well, except for the fact that apple butter and bacon sandwiches are the perfect breakfast food. That part is true, but that's it. The rest is all fiction. It is, however, fiction that has a decidedly adult slant to it. If you're not of age or shouldn't be reading this for some reason, please stop reading now. Otherwise, enjoy!
THE SUN FROM BOTH SIDES
PART 4
I woke up with absolutely no idea where I was. It certainly wasn't where I had expected to wake up. I had been expecting either the fiery inferno or something vaguely cloud-shaped. Maybe a reincarnation as a bug. Not the total quiet and oddly disconcerting hum around me, felt rather than heard.
My eyes didn't seem to want to open, and I didn't see any reason to fight them for it. I tried to assess where I was through my other senses. I had already struck out with hearing and sight, but I hit paydirt on the third one, smell. There was a distant antiseptic smell in the air that screamed hospital.
My fear of hospitals was one of the few fears that I saw no need to try and get over. In some strange way, I had always thought that it would keep me out of them. Panicking, I forced my eyes to open and clenched my jaw and hands, trying to jerk them around myself.
All I achieved was to send bolts of agony through both arms, and elicit a cry of pain from whoever was holding my hand. Not that it stopped me; I continued to struggle, my eyes closing again, this time with the effort I was exerting.
"Nate!" I heard a voice yell as the hand in mine finally managed to extricate itself. I felt two hands fall on my shoulders and push me back onto the bed. "Nate!" they yelled again, holding me prone.
"Let me up let me up let me up!" I screamed, thrashing against them.
The hands let go of my shoulders a mere second before one of them slapped me across the face. Hard. They then returned to holding me down on the bed again. My eyes flew back open as I prepared to strike back at whoever had hit me, and took in Andy's face as she towered over me, putting all of her weight into holding me down.
"Andy--"
"I know you don't want to be here," she said, holding my attention with the intensity in her eyes, "but you've got to calm down or they'll sedate you."
"Andy, get me out of here," I pleaded, focusing on her face to avoid looking around me. My heart felt like it was about to pound right out of my chest, but seeing Andy there with me brought some semblance of calm back to me.
"I can't do that," she said, looking like she was about to cry. "Even if I wanted to, I can't."
"What's going on in here?" A man's voice asked. I looked up from Andrea in time to see a young man enter the room. Judging from the stethoscope hanging around his neck, I figured he must be a doctor. I'd always wondered if they really wore them like that, or whether that was one of those things that the doctor shows on TV just made up.
He was cute, I suppose. About 5'11", dark hair and eyes, slight build. He was wearing brown cords and a blue dress shirt with a very unobtrusive-yet-stylish tie. He might have turned my head at one time, but there were too many things going against him. The fact that he was frowning at me and I felt like I had been run over by every Mack truck on the planet weren't the least of them.
"He just woke up," Andrea said, taking my hand again, "and he freaked out."
"Mr. Healy," the doctor said, nodding at the information and taking my other hand. "You can't be doing that. You'll just make things worse."
I looked down at the hand that he was holding without answering him. Easy for him to say not to panic. What I saw when he held up my hand completely wiped any resentful thoughts from my mind. There was a tight bandage wrapped around my lower arms, starting about four inches from my elbow and running down to just below my palm, and there were fresh flowers of red blooming across it.
"You've opened the wounds again," he explained, seeing my expression. "I'm going to have the nurse give you something to make sure you don't do any more damage to yourself."
"I won't take it," I said defiantly. What I was going to do was get up and get out of there.
He ignored me and stepped out of the room again, motioning for a nurse to come over. They talked for a few seconds, and she nodded and left my field of vision.
"I won't take it," I said again, glaring at him.
"Is he always this difficult?" the doctor asked Andrea, as though I wasn't in the room. It reminded me of the way my father had talked about me to my mother when I was young, and it pissed me off.
"He doesn't like hospitals," Andy explained, brushing the hair off of my forehead. "But yeah," she smiled at me. "He's always this difficult."
"Well he's going to have to calm down," the doctor said disinterestedly. "I heard him all the way down the hall."
"What do you expect?" Andy asked, frowning at him. I knew that frown. It meant that you might as well give her what she wanted because otherwise she'd just remove it from your dead carcass when she was done with you. Part of me wanted to smile, but a much larger part was still freaking about where I was. "He's petrified of hospitals."
Apparently the doctor was as smart as he was cute. He didn't argue with her, but moved out of the way as the nurse entered the room carrying a needle. Now I knew why he wasn't concerned about my cooperation.
"Andy," I pleaded, squeezing her hand again, much more gently this time. "Please don't let her do this." The next sentence came out before I knew it was there, and the pleading note in my voice scared me almost as much as my surroundings. "Please? I'll be good."
"Shhhhh," Andy soothed, running the hand I wasn't holding across my temple. "It's just a sedative. You need your rest. I'll be right here."
"I don't want her to."
"I know you don't, sweetie, but she's got to. Just let her do her job. I'll stay with you."
The nurse didn't seem concerned at all about my escalating nervousness. Very business-like, she walked to the bed and rubbed my arm with some sort of antiseptic. Then she calmly plunged the needle into my arm as I resisted every urge I had to jerk it away from her and thought disjointedly that I wished Matt was there instead of her. But that thought brought up even more thoughts that I didn't need to deal with at the moment.
Her job done, she turned again and left the room. 'Friendly people around here,' I thought to myself as I slowly relaxed a little bit. I don't know whether it was whatever had been in that needle, or just seeing both the nurse and the doctor leave.
"Where am I?" I asked, looking up at Andy to find her watching me.
"Westvale," she said calmly.
I wracked my brain trying to figure it out. I knew that the name was familiar, but it took me a minute to place it. I had seen a news clip about this place opening months ago. The details were a little fuzzy, as was just about everything in the past year, but I remembered enough to know that I was in a pricey private care facility just outside of Toronto. Not a hospital per se, but close enough to keep my heart racing.
"How--" I started, but she squeezed my hand.
"Later," she said softly. "There's a lot to talk about, but we'll do it later. You get some sleep. You're going to need it for the major beating you're going to get from me."
I smiled weakly. "I'm sorry," I managed thickly. Whatever they had pumped into me was certainly good stuff.
She didn't smile at all. "Are you?" she asked. "I wonder about what that really means, Nate."
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but the thoughts didn't seem to want to translate to my mouth. I lay there, watching her watching me, until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. "Don't leave me," I managed to whisper. The last thing I heard before giving myself over to the darkness was her promise to be there when I woke up.
She was indeed waiting at my bedside when I opened my eyes again, though she wasn't holding my hand anymore. She was sleeping in what appeared to be a very uncomfortable position. She was, however, in what looked like a very comfortable chair.
I took a much closer look around myself than I had before, and found that it really wasn't bad at all. I was in a private room, and it was decorated much more like a hotel room than a hospital room. The walls were painted a deep orange-brown colour that my mind associated with Arizona for some reason.
The room was a large one, with several overstuffed chairs clustered in the corner, making a small sitting area. Andrea had brought one of those over to sit beside me rather than have me wake up and think she wasn't there.
Looking down at myself, I realised that I was in a very soft bed. It didn't seem like a hospital bed at all. I pulled my arms out from under the blankets and immediately noticed the bandages. I was dressed in soft pajamas. I realised that they were my green ones from the apartment and decided that they were Andy's doing.
The bandages stood out starkly against the dark green of the fabric. The red blooms were gone, which meant that someone had been in to change them while I was sleeping. I gently flexed my fingers and felt some slight pain in my wrists, but it was managable if I didn't overdo it.
I wriggled myself into a sitting position without using my hands to push my weight up, and tried to get comfortable. I slid my pillows up behind me and rested them against the headboard of the bed, resting my back against them.
Noticing a table in the far corner, I discovered my suitcase sitting on it. I looked back at the bandages on my wrists again and decided that I was probably going to be in there for a while. I turned myself around and sat up on the edge of the bed, determined to unpack. As disturbing as the thought of staying in a hospital -- even a ritzy one like this -- was, I wasn't going to do it without unpacking. Besides, it was a goal, and at the moment I was feeling lost.
I groaned as I stood up, which woke Andrea.
"What are you doing?" she asked, concerned. She stood from the chair, wincing at a pain in her neck as she did so, and put her hands on my shoulders again, meaning to push me back to the bed.
"I'm just going to the table," I said, shrugging her hands away. "I'm not making a break for it."
"You're not supposed to be straining yourself," she argued, following me as I started across the room.
"Hanging up a few things isn't straining myself," I argued back. I saw that it wasn't convincing her. "Andy, I need to do something."
She looked at me for a minute, then nodded. "It could be worse, you know," she said, standing by the table as I opened the suitcase. "As hospitals go, this one's pretty good."
"It's still a hospital," I muttered, taking some hangers out of the wardrobe beside the table.
"Bitch about it all you want, but you put yourself in here."
"This isn't exactly what I had in mind."
"No kidding!" she said, exasperated. She dropped into a chair and stared at me.
"That's not what I meant," I returned, taking a couple of shirts out and unfolding them.
She continued to watch me as I made little trips back and forth to the wardrobe. When I was finally finished, I closed my suitcase and looked up at her. Her eyes took me in without showing any emotion at all.
I left the suitcase sitting on the table and walked over to sit in the chair beside her. Reaching out, I took her hand. Her other hand came over instinctively to hold my wrist, but it jerked away when it touched the bandage there.
"How could you?" she asked, her tears finally falling. "How could you just leave like that?"
"I'm sorry," I tried, but the words fell flat.
"You said that before," she said, sniffling. "What are you sorry about Nate? Are you sorry about what you did, or are you sorry that it didn't work? Are you sorry that you gave up, or that you're still here?"
"I don't know," I admitted, looking down at the floor.
"How can you not know?" she asked, dropping my hand. "How can you not know if you're sorry to still be alive?"
"There are a lot of things that I don't know," I admitted, letting my own tears fall and bringing my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. That lasted for the millisecond that it took for the pain to shoot up my arms. I jerked them away quickly and wedged them gently between my knees and my body. "Nothing seems solid anymore."
Her hand shot out and grabbed mine, pulling it away from my body and up to my face, twisting it so that the bandage was in front of my eyes. "This is pretty fucking solid, Nate."
"Andy--"
"Do you know how much this hurts?" she asked me, releasing my hand again. "To know that you were going to just give up rather than take my help?"
"You don't have any help to offer," I told her. "There's nothing that you can do to help me. I don't know how many times I can say that. It's something I have to deal with on my own."
"You're not doing a very fucking good job of it," she hissed, glancing at my wrists again. I had my hands linked around my legs again, but I was holding my wrists out awkwardly to keep them from rubbing.
"It was too much," I pleaded. "Andy, that's the only way I can explain it. There was just too much, finally. It seemed like the only way to resolve everything. The only way to let all of you go on and let go of me."
"Don't you dare turn this into some sacrifice you were making for our own good, Nate!" she argued coldly, turning her face up toward mine again. "You weren't doing this out of concern for us. You were scared and you ran. Instead of fighting, you ran. Again."
"There's no fight left, Andy."
"So you just run?" she asked. "When there's no fight left, you turn to your friends and let them fight for you! You don't just run like that."
"I wasn't running, Andy. That's what I've been doing for over a year now. I wasn't running away."
"Then what in the hell did you think you were doing?"
"I was giving in," I said softly. "After a while, that's the only thing that's left."
"You've tried this before," she said, shaking her head. "Didn't you learn that there was always something else worth getting back up and fighting for?"
I shook my head as well. "The first time was running away, not giving up. Those pills seemed like the best alternative I had at the time. This," I said, holding up my hands with the palms out to her, "was the only one left. It was the best for all concerned."
"Bullshit," she spit out at me. "Don't try to pass off you being a coward as some sort of altruistic sacrifice."
I didn't know how to explain it so that she would understand. I didn't even know if I totally understood it myself. Resting my head on my knees, I let myself go and cried all-out, feeling the tears soak into the fabric of the pajamas.
"Tell me," Andrea said, just loud enough to make sure I heard her over my own hitching breaths. "Tell me why this was the only thing left, Nate. Explain it to me."
"He won't be able to do that," I heard a familiar voice say, though it took me a moment to process it and realise who it was. "I doubt he's got a clear idea himself."
I looked up and found the friendliest pair of brown eyes in the world looking back at me. "Hello, Nathan," he said, smiling at me.
"Hello, Doctor Lauler," I replied, feeling the years drop away. Suddenly I was a teenager again. I couldn't bring myself to return the smile.
"I don't mind telling you that I'm not happy to be seeing you again," he said, coming over to join us. He took a chair facing Andy and I, resting the clipboard that I remembered so clearly on his knee.
"I'm not all that happy to be here," I said, still not smiling.
He nodded. "I'm sure you realise that there are two ways to take that."
"I do. I'm not sure which one I mean, either."
"That's where I come in, I think. Don't you?"
"You're the doctor," I said.
"I'm sorry, but I'm confused," Andrea said, looking from me to the doctor. "You've met?"
"I'm Doctor Maxwell Lauler," he introduced himself, shaking her hand. "And yes, Nathan and I are familiar with each other. You would be?"
"Andrea Cameron," she returned. "I'm a friend of Nate's."
"So it's Nate now?" He turned to me with a questioning look.
"If you don't mind," I nodded. "And she's more than just a friend." His arched eyebrow at that was enough to break through and get a small smile out of me. "She's my best friend," I clarified.
"Or so she thought," Andrea interjected.
I closed my eyes and waited for the pain of that one to dissipate. It didn't do so very willingly. I had damaged more than my wrists with what I had done.
"I see," Dr. Lauler said, nodding.
"I'm sorry, but I'm still confused as to how you know Nate."
"Dr. Lauler is the psychiatrist I worked with in high school," I explained. The flash of recognition that crossed Andy's face was almost enough to get me to smile again.
"He speaks very highly of you," she said, shaking his hand again.
"As I'm sure he does of you, regardless of what you may think at the moment," he returned. I smiled inwardly at that one, remembering how good he was at turning things around and comforting you without you seeing it coming. It seemed to have worked again, as I saw Andrea's calm return to her.
"We'll see how right you are after I get through with him," she said, looking at me.
"How about we let me have a go at him first?" Dr. Lauler said, smiling.
Andrea took the not-so-subtle hint to leave us alone. "I'll go and get something to eat," she said. "That's another of the benefits of this place. Real food."
Dr. Lauler's smile grew a little. "It's one of the main reasons that I enjoy working with people here," he said as she excused herself.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him as soon as the door was shut behind her.
"They notified me that you were here," he explained. "I'm still listed as your psychiatrist in your records."
I slumped back in my chair. "God, when the news of this gets out, I'm dead. My publisher's going to kill me." Realising the absurdity of what I had just said, considering what had landed me there in the first place, I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity and sank lower in the chair.
"That's not going to be a problem," Dr. Laurel said, smiling at me. That was another thing that I remembered about him. He never seemed like he was evaluating you. Sessions with him were very much like just sitting down and having a chat. "One of the perks of being here at Westvale. All of the staff have signed non-disclosure agreements. Even the custodial staff and temp workers have to sign them. On top of that, there are only three people in the entire building that have access to your file. Dr. Fitzgerald I believe you've already met. Nice young man, though he needs to work on his bedside manner."
I nodded to let him know that I remembered him.
"I'm one of the other two, since I'm listed as your psychiatrist of record. The third is the Chief of Staff of the hospital. He's got access to all of the files, though I doubt that he'd even glance at yours unless Dr. Fitzgerald or myself asked him to."
I nodded. At least it appeared that this wouldn't do any harm to Carrie or the publishing company. It wouldn't hurt book sales.
"Now you have to decide whether or not you want my services," he said, getting my attention again. "And in order to do that, you've got to figure out if it's worth it. I won't lie to you Nathan... Nate. I'm a busy man, and I don't have the time to put into this if you've decided to give up. I need to know that you want to help yourself before I can help you."
Another thing to like about him. He didn't pull any punches. He was a straightshooter with a heart. The least I could do was return the favour. "I don't know," I said. "I didn't expect to have to defend my decision. I didn't expect to wake up again."
He nodded. "But if you had it all figured out, why are you hesitating now?"
That was the question, wasn't it? "I guess," I started, piecing my thoughts together as I went, "that there was a minute there when I woke up the second time that I was glad to see the room around me. To see Andy sitting beside me."
"That's a start," he said. "But I need a committment to try from you, Nate."
"I can't give it to you," I said, looking back down at the floor. "Not right now. I don't know how I feel about all of this anymore."
"That's okay," he replied, ducking his head a little to get my attention. "You expected to be dead, Nate. You're not. That's going to take a little time to process. You think about it. Talk it over with Andrea and your other friends. Your partner if you have one. See if things look a little brighter than they did."
I nodded my head and promised to think about it. He handed me a small card with a handwritten number on it and stood up. "You call me when you make a decision. And Nate? I want to work with you again, if that matters. You were a good boy back then, and I'm willing to bet that you're a good man now."
"Thank you," I said, taking the card and putting it in the breast pocket of my pajamas.
"Call me if you need to talk," he said, walking to the door.
"I will." He smiled at me again as he walked out into the hall and shut the door, leaving me alone.
I almost took the card back out of my pocket again, meaning to rip it up. Nothing had changed. At least, nothing significant. While my attempt to escape it all hadn't worked, the reasoning was still sound, at least in my mind. Then I thought about that initial moment of relief when I had opened my eyes and found Andrea sitting beside me. Running my fingers over the edges of the card through the fabric, I decided to hold onto it after all.
"Nate," Andy whispered, knocking slightly on the open door. I opened my eyes and lifted my head to let her know that I was awake. "You up to a little company?" she asked softly.
"You sure you want to be around me?" I asked back, wriggling up into a position that vaguely resembled sitting.
"Look," she said, coming into the room and taking the chair again. She reached out and took my hand. I had a feeling that that hand was going to get a lot of contact in the near future. "I don't understand what you did, or why you did it. I don't like it, and I'm about as pissed off about it as I've ever been about anything. But you need me and I'm here."
"Andy--" I started, not sure of exactly what I was going to say.
"But, make no mistake," she interrupted. "When you get out of here, I'm going to beat you senseless for scaring everyone like that."
How could I tell her that I wasn't at all sure that I would get out of there? That I wasn't sure I wanted to be around that long? I just squeezed her hand and kept my silence.
"So are you up to some company?" she asked again, standing up.
"Don't you qualify as company?" I wondered what she had up her sleeve.
"Not in this case," she smiled gently.
"Then who does?"
She released my hand and walked back to the door. The overhead lights were out, with the only light coming from the much softer reading light above the bed. The door was in shadows, but I had no problem picking out the forms Andy retrieved from the hallway.
"Hello," Dad said, coming into the room with his arm around Mom. When she saw me sitting there, her hand came up to her face, partially covering her mouth. It was the sort of move that you thought only happened in the movies.
"Hi," I managed to get out before the looks in their eyes brought tears to my own.
They both came over to stand beside the bed, nudging Andrea's chair out of the way. Andy stayed at the foot of the bed, her hands absently rubbing my shins through the blankets, offering me whatever comfort I chose to take from her.
Instinct took over, and I reached out to take Mom's hand. She clasped mine in hers and brought it up to her mouth, gently kissing it. Her eyes took in the stark white of the bandages, and she carefully ran a finger up them from the palm toward the elbow, unconsciously tracing the wound underneath.
"Oh, Nate," she whispered, the tears falling freely now. "Oh."
I reached under me and pushed up off the bed, trying to sit up fully. The instant I put pressure on my arm, I felt the pain lace its way up my forearm and hissed.
Andy was there, lifting me and taking the weight off of my arm. She helped me get sitting up, then turned me around so that my feet were dangling over the side of the bed. I reached out and pulled Mom into a hug, being careful to keep from rubbing the bandages across her back.
I could feel her shudder against me as she cried and, looking up, I saw how close to tears Dad was as well. That got me more than anything else. Dad never showed strong emotions. Not for the first time that day, I wanted a drink. Something told me, though, that as ritzy as the place was, they didn't have a bar.
Mom clutched at me, as though trying to make sure that I was really there. I suppose that was an understandable reaction to everything that had happened. She kept whispering my name, her hands rubbing my back comfortingly. I wondered briefly which of us was getting the most comfort from it.
When she finally let go, there were very definite tear streaks down both cheeks, but she had stopped crying. "How could you?" she asked, her eyes pleading for an answer that she could understand.
Unfortunately, I didn't even have an answer I could understand. Rather than answer, I slid myself off of the bed and brushed past her, heading for the window on the far side of the room. "I don't have an easy answer," I whispered, then cleared my throat and repeated myself.
"Then give us the hard one," Dad said, taking Mom's hand again and standing with her, facing me.
"I'm tired," I said, then realised that they would probably misinterpret that as a plea for them to leave. "I'm just tired of having things blow up on me. I want it all to stop. Now."
"Nate--"
"I thought I was okay, you know. I really did," I said, overriding him. "All those times that I said I was fine, I really believed it. It feels like this," I said, looking at my tightly-wrapped wrists, "came out of nowhere, and at the same time, it's like everything was building up to it. Like it was inevitable."
"It wasn't inevitable," Andy said, though I barely heard her.
"The first time," I continued, now completely in my own world as I thought about it. "The first time was different. It was like I thought it would change things. I wasn't looking for a way out, just a way to change things. Like I didn't really think it would work.
"This time wasn't like that. I didn't want things to change. There was no way for them to change enough to bring back what I've lost, you know? I just wanted them to stop. I'm sick and tired of having the rug pulled out from under me. This time, I decided not to pick myself back up." I turned and faced them again. "I'm tired," I concluded.
"We shouldn't have ganged up on you like that," Andy said, sitting down on the bottom of the bed. "We pushed you too hard."
I shook my head and closed my eyes, turning my head back to the window. "You didn't do it. It was inevitable."
"Don't say that," Mom pleaded, taking a step away from Dad and toward me. "Things are never as bad as they seem."
"Sometimes they're worse," I finished for her. "How much is enough, Mom?" I asked without looking around. I could see her ghostly image in the dark glass.
She couldn't find the right words, so she retreated back the step she had taken.
"I'm 25 years old, and I'm exhausted," I turned to face them again, tears in my eyes. "My entire life has been one big downhill run, with occasional bumps to show me how happy I could be until it all falls apart again. After a while, you lose the urge to get back up when you fall."
Dad lunged forward and grabbed my arm, making sure to place his hand above the elbow. I jumped, surprised by the sudden movement, but couldn't pull my arm free. Both Mom and Andy gasped as he dragged me across the room to stand in front of the mirror in the corner.
"What do you see?" he asked me, shaking me a little.
I was looking at him, trying to remember when the anger had surfaced on his face. He let go of my arm long enough to grab my head and turn it to face the mirror instead. "What do you see?" he demanded again.
"David," Mom said, coming over and trying to pull him away from me.
"Nathaniel James Healy," he insisted, pulling his arm from Mom's hand. "Look into that mirror and tell me what you see."
I took a sidelong glance at him again and knew that he wasn't kidding. With a sigh, I turned my attention to the mirror and looked at myself. Green pajamas, bare feet, bandages, just what I expected to see. Taking in my eyes, I stared at them. They looked beaten. There was no spark left in them at all, as though the light didn't even reflect in them anymore. My eyelids were drooping slightly, and there were very definite streaks of red through the white of my eye. Everything about my image spoke to exhaustion.
Looking back to Dad, I felt my shoulders slump even more. "I see a tired little boy who just wants to go to sleep," I answered him. "That's all."
"Bah!" he said in what I would have swore was disgust. He threw my arm out of his hand and turned away from me. "I see a sad little man who doesn't know how lucky he is!" he said angrily, taking my position at the window.
"Dad," Andrea said, then silenced again as he put his hand out to stop her.
"I see a petulant young man who would rather give up than fight for all of the things that are worth fighting for."
"Are they?" I asked softly, frightened by the sudden change in his demeanor.
"Damn right they are!" he half-yelled. "You're a damn lucky young man, Nate. You've had some very shitty things happen to you, and you've managed to get above each and every one of them. Why is this one different? I know you had it tough in high school, though there's a lot that you and Andrea won't tell us about it. Whatever happened to make you try this the first time, and then losing your parents.
"But look what you did! You stuck it out, you got your degree, and you made a life for yourself doing something that you're good at and that you love to do. You lost a family and gained another one. You're as much our child as Andrea is, and the thought of losing you is killing both of us."
"Dad, I love you both. You know that, but I can't--"
"For someone who's life is falling apart, you've got it pretty good, wouldn't you say?" he asked, glaring at me. But now, below the glare, I could see the concern and the fear. "You've got a great career, friends who seem to be willing to put up with all of the shit you throw at them without flinching, parents who love you, and yet you're willing to throw all of that away."
"I don't deserve any of it! Everything I touch crumbles! Don't you see that? I won't do that to you!"
"That's bullshit," he said back, eerily calm. "What have you personally caused to fall apart, Nate? You didn't ask for the trouble you had with this Jack person. You couldn't help who you were or how people reacted to it. You didn't kill your parents, either. The only thing you had control over was leaving Brian. I tell you, I wish like hell you'd never met him."
I glanced up sharply. "Don't say that."
"Why not? He's what caused all of this! If you'd never met him, you wouldn't be where you are right now, Nate. You wouldn't have broken up with him, and none of this would have happened."
I shook my head.
"You're here because of Brian, whether you want to admit it or not. He's the reason."
He seemed about to say something else, but my hitting him put the thought out his mind. I don't know exactly how it happened. One minute I was listening to him blame Brian for what had happened and trying to think of a way to shut him up, and the next I was diving at him and watching as my fist connected with his jaw.
"NATE!" Andrea screamed and came running over, dragging me off of him. She didn't need to worry, though. I had accomplished my goal of stopping his words.
He sat back up, rubbing his jaw, and watched me. He seemed almost pleased with himself. Looking back on it, I suppose he was. He had managed to find the one thing that I was willing to fight for. I wondered if he had been trying to get me to hit him. I also wondered whether he was disappointed in what that one thing was.
He was still sitting there when Dr. Fitzgerald came rushing into the room, drawn by the yelling. "What the hell is going on in here?" he asked. It seemed to be the way he always entered my room.
He took in Dad sitting on the floor, and me standing back away from him, my hands clenched into fists again, regardless of the pain. "Don't you ever blame him again!" I hissed at him, trying to glare a hole right through him. "Brian's the best thing that ever happened to me, and it's my fault we're not together, not his."
Andrea led me to the bed again and made me lie down, pulling the blankets around me. "Nate got upset," she said, turning to face the doctor.
Dr. Fitzgerald shook his head, frowning at me. "I want you all to leave now," he said. "I'm going to give Nate something to help him sleep. You can come back in the morning," he paused to look pointedly at Dad, who was still rubbing his jaw, but was standing up again. "If you want to," he added. He turned again and left the room.
Andrea nodded and leaned over to kiss my forehead. "I'll be back tomorrow," she promised. Taking her father's hand, she led him out of the room without another word. I could see them both waiting out in the hall as Mom came over and took my hand again.
"He shouldn't have said that," she said, giving me a kiss in the same spot her daughter had. "He's just upset. You've got us both upset."
I nodded. "I know I do. I didn't mean to hit him."
She nodded and patted my hand, then put it back in the bed and told me to get some rest and that she would see me in the morning. I sat back and watched her as she rejoined Andy and Dad in the hall. They paused to talk to another figure that I couldn't quite make out, then continued down the hall and out of view.
The other figure stepped into the doorway and I saw the soft light in the room glint off of blond hair.
"Hi," I said, motioning for him to come in.
"Hi," Nick answered, stepping to the side of the bed. He hooked his foot around the base of the chair and brought it around to himself. "How are you feeling?"
"I've been better," I smiled. There was something about Nick that made it almost impossible not to smile. He seemed to exude comfort.
"Looks like Mr. Cameron has too," he said, sitting down.
I nodded. "I hit him."
Nick gaped at me. "You what?"
"I hit him. Punched him, to be more exact," I said, not at all proud of myself.
"Why on earth would you hit him?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but you're going to have to leave," the good doctor interrupted, coming into the room with another needle. Apparently he wasn't taking any chances on my refusing a sedative. "I want Mr. Healy to get some rest."
Nick stood up immediately, but I grabbed his arm. "He stays right where he is," I said, glaring at the doctor.
"No, he leaves when I tell him to leave," he insisted. "You're proving to be quite the handful, Mr. Healy, but I assure you I'm more than up to it."
We'd see about that. "Nick's not going anywhere because I say he's not going anywhere," I repeated myself, bringing my voice to full volume. I wasn't yelling, but I wasn't moderating my voice either. I normally tried to speak rather softly. This was the voice I reserved for being heard through a crowded room or making sure that someone knew I meant business.
"Please leave," he said, turning to Nick.
Nick started to move again, but I hauled him back. "Don't you move a muscle," I ordered him. "Look, doctor, I don't think it's any secret that we don't particularly like each other. We don't have to. But here's the deal. Nick stays with me, and I don't put up a fight about that needle you're holding. Nick leaves, and I make sure that every patient in this building thinks that you're slaughtering me in here." I risked a glance at Nick and saw that he was trying valiantly to keep a smile off of his face. "Take it or leave it, but that's the offer on the table."
He searched my face, apparently surprised. I had actually surprised myself. One of the voices in my head asked me whether I was really as tired as I kept saying, but the other voices shushed it to see what was going to happen. Dr. Fitzgerald looked at me closely for another moment, and then turned to face Nick. "You can stay, but as soon as he's asleep, I want you out of here."
Nick looked at me, as though asking if that was okay. He had stopped trying to hide the smile. I nodded my agreement and rolled up my sleeve as he sat back down.
Once Dr. Fitzgerald had gone again, glaring all the way, I reached out and grabbed Nick's hand. "Thanks for staying."
"I was afraid not to," he laughed. "The way you looked, I thought you were going to attack him."
"I'm all attacked out," I said, lying back on the bed.
"So why did you go after Mr. Cameron?"
I rubbed my hand over my eyes. "He said something that I didn't want to hear."
"What?"
I closed my eyes. "He blamed all of this on Brian," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"What?"
"He said that if Brian and I hadn't met, I wouldn't be here right now. Before I knew what I was doing, I was hitting him. And now I have this shit pumping through my veins to calm me down."
Nick shook his head and turned my hand over to look at the bandage. I was already getting sick of looking at them. He ran his fingers over it without applying any pressure. "Does it hurt?"
"Only when I flex my hand or put pressure on them," I said. "They sort of throb constantly, but they don't hurt exactly unless I try to exert myself."
He continued to look at them without speaking again.
"I suppose I have you to thank for waking up here?" I asked him, getting his attention.
"Huh?"
"You were the only one in the apartment. I assume you got me here."
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "After I went to bed, I wanted to ask you something. I knocked on the bathroom door, but you didn't answer me. After I knocked a couple more times, I got scared and broke it in. You were... you were..." Nick started to cry, and the hand holding mine started to squeeze as he fought for control. "You were just lying there..." Nick words dissolved as he let himself cry.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," I whispered. I hadn't really given much thought to the fact that Nick would have been the one to find me the next morning, and I was kicking myself for being so selfish.
"You knew, didn't you?" Nick asked through the tears. "Out on the balcony, and then in the living room. You knew and you were saying goodbye, weren't you?"
"Yeah," I said softly, my eyes downcast. "Yeah, I was."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "Why didn't you say anything? We could have talked about it!"
"That's why I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to talk about. I'd made up my mind."
"Do you know what this is doing to Brian?" he asked suddenly, looking into my eyes.
I flinched away from his gaze, but didn't answer him.
"He's shutting down, Nate. He's way worse than he was after you left, and I don't know what to tell him. Nothing seems to get any sort of rise out of him. He just sits there. He spent all day crying or sleeping, and he won't even eat anything."
"Nick-" As much as I was hurt by his words, it was becoming a detached sort of hurt as the shot Dr. Fitzgerald had given me started to take effect.
"This is destroying him, too, Nate. You've got to work this out. Get through it somehow. If you love him, you can't leave him like this."
They were words very similar to the ones that he'd spoken in one of our phone conversations right after I had left Brian. Right before I had hung up on him. My mind made the connection as my eyes slipped shut, and I felt my hand clench around his again briefly before it relaxed totally.
The last words I heard from him came as though through a wall. They were muffled, but completely understandable. "I've got to tell him," he said, just before I lost track of everything around me.
To be continued...