I wanted to go through the drive thru at the MacDonald's but Tom insisted that we go inside and sit down. I didn't order anything and to my surprise, Tom said nothing about it. Tom supersized a quarter pounder value meal and I stood by his side and observed his interaction with the girl taking his order. The girl was smiling at him and he smiled back at her. I felt my jealousy building so I said, "I'm going to go sit down."
Tom turned to me and I could tell by the fire in his eyes that he was still upset. He grabbed my hand, "Wait." His harsh tone made me want to cry and I sighed because I just wanted to close my eyes and be alone in my room with my knife and my cigarette.
I expected Tom to drop my hand but he maintained a firm grip. His thumb rubbed teasingly against the back of my hand and I dropped my head in a mixture of shame and embarrassment. Tom was being intimate with me in front of a complete stranger. He used his other hand to tuck my hair behind my ears. I tried to shrink away from his attention but that caused him to step closer and further invade my personal space. I was terrified he might kiss me so I winced and pulled my face away from him while I whispered, "Don't." I kept my head down because I could feel the girl's eyes drilling a hole in to me and I imagined everyone had stopped what they were doing and started staring at the two gay boys holding hands.
The girl told Tom his order was ready so he let go of my hand and grabbed his tray. My mind was so confused and overloaded by the revelations of the day that I was mentally crashing and physically falling apart. I couldn't put my finger on what I was feeling for those brief seconds after Tom let go of my hand because for a moment everything was blank, even my mind. I couldn't define what was happening to me and the best explanation I could work up after I came to my senses was that I needed to release some of the tension that was making mincemeat of my insides.
Tom grabbed my arm. I looked at him as he said, "Snap out of it."
I needed to get away from him because the urge to vent was crawling around in my veins and giving me the sensation of creepy- crawly things under my skin. I had to do something. I half smiled at him when I told him, "I'm going to the bathroom."
"I'll come with you."
"No, sit down and eat. I'll be right back." He was afraid I might hurt myself in the bathroom. His fear was painted all over his face. "I won't do anything. I promise." He still didn't look like he believed me. "It's a public restroom. Calm down."
He released my arm. "If you're not out in five minutes I'm coming in to get you."
I walked to the bathroom knowing I lied. I was going to do something to myself. I wished I didn't have the urge in public, but I couldn't help it. I'm not sure why I did it, maybe I felt his eyes or something, but I turned around when I reached the bathroom door and there was Tom standing a few feet behind me. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"I just wanted to make sure you made it to the bathroom okay."
"Thanks, are you going to come in and help me use it too?"
He wasn't amused. "Fine I'm sitting down."
He left me standing there feeling guilty for being sarcastic. I walked in the bathroom but being in there felt wrong. I wanted to be in my room. I couldn't do it but I still needed some satisfaction so I left the bathroom, ran past Tom at his table and darted out the door. I started to run across the parking lot but two arms wrapped around me and held me back. I tried to push Tom off, "Let me go."
"What is wrong with you? Where are you going?"
"I just needed some air."
"You couldn't tell me that?"
I began fighting against him. "There are a lot of things I can't tell you just like there are a lot of things you can't tell me! Now let me go!"
Tom physically overpowered me in every sense of the word. He picked me up from behind and carried me to his car with me thrashing around in his arms. He put me down by the passenger side of the car and yelled, "Get in!"
He sounded the way I imagined an adult would sound yelling at an unruly two year-old. I opened the door and got in and waited for him to get in on his side. I felt trapped. I shouted, "Let me out!" I knew Tom wouldn't force me to stay in the car. The truth was all I had to do was open my door and get out but I didn't really want to. I wanted Tom to stop me and be my hero again. I thought if he stopped me it meant part of him did love me.
Tom gently turned my head so I was facing him and he calmly asked, "What happened?"
"What happened? What the fuck do you mean what happened! You happened and I hate you! Why would you touch me like that?"
"Like what?"
"You held my hand! In public!"
"And? I've held your hand in public before."
"But never like that! Everyone probably took one look at us and instantly knew we were, ugh, you were, that we," My anger wouldn't let the right words come out, "why would you do that?"
"I wasn't thinking about it. I held your hand because I wanted to assure you everything was okay. I could tell you thought I was upset with you and I'm not."
I exploded. "Yes you are, but you have no right to be upset with me!" I could hear my heartbeat and I felt my chest tighten and it was hard to breathe again but I kept talking. "You kept Brian a secret! You kept Isaac a secret! What other secrets do you have? Why can't I have any secrets? You want to know everything about me! You want to be a part of everything I do! It's not fair. I want to see Dr. Conley in private. I want to talk to him about my problems and I don't want you there listening to how crazy I am. I told you I was going to tell him and I wouldn't lie to you, at least not about that!"
I stopped talking because I couldn't slow down my breathing. A sharp pain shot through my heart and I put my hand on my chest and grunted. Tom grabbed my shoulder and asked, "Are you okay?"
I looked at him but I had to shut my eyes because my chest kept getting tighter and trying to focus on him seemed to make it worse. When I opened my eyes, Tom was speeding down the road. I got out a soft, "Stop speeding," and then I closed my eyes again because I was more comfortable that way. The car stopped and I half opened my right eye. I saw the EMERGENCY sign and my eyes shot completely open. Tom had taken me to the hospital. Tom got out of the car and came around to my side and pulled me out. "I'm fine," I told him.
"No you're not. You passed out."
"No I didn't! I shut my eyes for a while. That's it." He cradled me in his arms and walked in to the hospital. I buried my face in his shoulder because I didn't want to be seen by anyone. He told someone I passed out and they asked some additional questions but I stopped listening. He started yelling and then there was a buzzing sound and he walked me around a corner and through an open door. "Tom I'm fine," I whispered, "just take me home."
"This isn't the first time you passed out."
There was no arguing with him. He was going to find out what was wrong with me. His mind was made up and all I could do was go along for the ride. I didn't want to know why I sometimes lost track of time and I didn't particularly care about my rapid heartbeat or the pounding in my chest or the feeling of losing consciousness. In fact a fractional part of me was thankful for my blackouts because they seemed to be coming at times when I hated the situation I was dealing with as if the blackouts were protecting me from life. After years of feeling like the outsider, it was nice to know someone or something was completely on my side without judging me or trying to change me. At times I was my own worst enemy but during my blackouts, I was my own best friend. My blackouts were perfect escapes from reality because each blackout was welcomed in by uncontrollable spasms of pain and finished off by complete peace and a tingle of inner awkwardness as the nerves in my body calmed down.
"You can put him down in there," someone said.
Tom laid me down on a bed and smiled at me. I began laughing maniacally and Tom looked at me like I had lost my mind. "What's so funny?" he asked.
I stopped laughing because I realized there was nothing funny. I nervously smiled at him and confessed, "I think I'm going crazy." Only a crazy person would rationalize mental breakdowns and somehow find them meritorious. I knew I was officially losing my mind.
"You're not going crazy," he assured me.
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I know you."
In just above a whisper, I blurted out a secret I wasn't ready to tell him yet, "There are days when I find myself teetering dangerously close to the edge of insanity and I wonder what will happen when I can't reel myself back in."
"I'll be there," he said. "When the day comes and you can't reel yourself back in, I'll be there and I'll catch you or throw you a rope or grab you or pick you up like I did today or sacrifice myself in your place or whatever it takes to save you." He smiled tentatively. "So see, you can't go crazy, at least not as long as I'm around because I won't let you."
"You can't stop someone from going crazy," I informed him.
"Ten dollars says I can," he joked.
I laughed. "You think you can do anything, don't you?"
"I can," he said with a grin.
"Okay, make this hospital room disappear."
His grin vanished and he instantly looked sad and defeated. I knew if he could do it he would. "Alright maybe not anything," he admitted.
"You do enough," I told him.
"Apparently not, here we are."
A nurse walked in and Tom sat at the foot of the bed while she took my vitals. My blood pressure was too high and my pulse was a bit fast but my temperature was fine. She asked me a lot of questions while Tom listened attentively to all of my answers and corrected every minor mistake I made and included every major detail I couldn't bring myself to mention such as my anorexia and somehow my cutting. I can't recall how the hell we got on the topic of cutting I think the nurse asked something about bruises or wounds or something. I fell silent and Tom answered for me. I had been to the emergency room before but I never remembered having to go through twenty questions about every minute detail of my life. Then I remembered that my mother or some other adult had always been with me when I made my trips to the ER. The adult did most of the talking and I just answered simple questions like, on a scale of 1 to 10 how much pain are you in?' and what is today's date?' but with Tom as the only other person around, I had to answer the tough questions too including the questions about my medical history and any conditions I might have.
After the nurse had sufficiently rummaged through my medical history and my psychological flaws she repeated one of her initial questions: "Are you currently taking any medications?"
"No. Didn't you already ask me that?"
"Yes but I don't think you understand the question. Anti- depressants are medications."
I heard her implication loud and clear. "Yeah, I understood the question and the answer is still no. I'm not on any medications and that includes anti-depressants. I don't even take Advil when I have a headache."
"Is there a reason why you're afraid of drugs, maybe a former addiction that you forgot to mention?"
"I'm not afraid of drugs. I have never been a drug addict and I'm not going to change my answer so let's move on."
She looked at Tom and then she looked at me. "Would you be more comfortable if he waited outside?"
"No, I like him right where he is, but since you mentioned it, I think I would be more comfortable if you waited outside."
Tom put his hand on my leg. "Calm down Sam. She's just doing her job."
"She's fucking badgering me, that's what she's doing!" I knew I wasn't really angry with her. I was angry with the situation. I hated hospitals. Dr. Conley would say I had displaced anger, but I would say I was ticked off and she was pushing me up against a wall.
"I am not trying to badger you. I'm trying to make sure I know all of the important information about your medical history. Knowing your allergies and what medications you are on is as important as knowing what brings you to the emergency room." She was struggling to keep a smile on her face and maintain an even tone.
"Okay, I told you everything! I shouldn't even be here. He overreacted and brought me here, but I'm fine!"
"Your friend did the right thing bringing you here."
"That's just your opinion."
Her face looked uncomfortable as she continued to smile, "The doctor should be in here in a few minutes," she said.
Tom was on me as soon as she walked out the door, "She just wants to help you."
"She thinks I need to be medicated." Tom was quiet. "Tom?" He slowly looked at me and I saw it, "You think I need to be medicated, too, don't you? You think I'm crazy?"
"Being medicated doesn't mean you're crazy. If it did then my father is psychotic because he takes a shitload of pills everyday."
"For what?"
"Just because he doesn't talk about Isaac doesn't mean he never thinks about him."
I wanted to say something but there was nothing I could say. If I went on about taking a stupid anti-depressant making me crazy then I would be saying that his father was crazy and Mr. Yeager was definitely not crazy. "What type of pills does he take?"
"He takes an anti-depressant, some other mood related pills, I don't really know what they do, I think one of them helps regulate his mood during the day or something like that and he takes a pill to help him sleep."
"Wow. That is a lot of pills."
"I know, but you know him. Do you think he's crazy?"
"That's different."
"Why?"
"Dr. Conley would say your father had a traumatic event that impacted his ability to adequately express his emotions, whereas I have no such event in my history. Your father's emotions were impaired while my emotions were never right to begin with."
"Dr. Conley doesn't think you're crazy."
"He gets paid to say there's hope for me."
"No, he gets paid to determine if there is hope for you or if he should have you committed. Considering that you're here, I guess it's safe to say he thinks you're okay."
"He's had me committed before," I reminded him.
"Going to a clinic is not the same as being committed to a psychiatric facility."
"You mean the loony bin?"
"Don't call it that."
"Why not? It's going to be my home when Dr. Conley finds out about my legs."
"He'll understand. I went to the library at school and looked up some information on self-mutilation and you're not alone and it doesn't mean you're crazy it just means you haven't found a healthy outlet to express your feelings but I know that you're going to be fine and I also know that Dr. Conley is not going to commit you because you occasionally hurt yourself."
"You don't know that."
"He won't, not when he sees us together and I tell him that you won't hurt yourself anymore."
Tom was ignoring the obvious so I took my finger and pointed at the bruise on my cheek, "What are you going to tell him if he asks about this?"
"You fell."
"But I didn't fall. I did it on purpose."
"Well," Tom took a deep breath, "well tell him what you did and explain what you were thinking before you did it. Shrinks love that shit, don't they?"
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, they love that shit."
"Okay so give him what he wants."
Tom had me convinced that he was right. Dr. Conley loved to tell me to be honest with him and he would never judge me so if I told him I hurt myself, it would be judging me if he sent me to the loony bin and it would be like punishing me for being honest. I thought about it a little longer and then I said, "I'll tell him but thanks to you I don't think I'm going to make it today."
"I know, but you can tell him the next time you see him."
"Speaking of which, where the hell is the doctor?"
"I'm sure he's on his way. You're not exactly a top priority."
"Way to boost my self-esteem."
Tom hit my leg and the doctor walked in almost on cue. "Try not to be too rough with my patient," he joked.
The doctor then turned his attention to me. He introduced himself as Dr. Cunningham and then he asked me a few questions, had me breathe for him. He left the room and a nurse came in and handed me a hospital gown and told me to disrobe. Tom pulled the curtain and offered to help me take my clothes off but I wouldn't let him. I should have because he watched lasciviously as I undressed. I smiled and he asked, "Why are you smiling?"
"Because you're almost slobbering even though we both know I'm not much to look at."
His face tensed up for a second then he relaxed and said, "Why don't you sit in my lap and I'll tell you a story?"
"Huh?"
"I said sit in my lap and I'll tell you a story."
"Oh so you're a dirty old man now?"
He smirked. "Come here."
"What if someone walks in?"
"I'll be quick, I promise."
"Would you tell a lady that?"
It took him a second to get the joke and then he laughed, "You're supposed to be too sick to be witty."
"I already told you I feel fine."
"Okay, so come sit in my lap for a second." I sat down in his lap and kicked my feet up on the bed. Tom tucked my hair behind my ears. He kissed the side of my head and then he kissed down to my ear and whispered, "I love you." I sat there for a few minutes and Tom said, "Okay you need to move before I'm forced to grope you."
"Eww." I crawled away from him and lied on the bed.
"You know you wanted it."
"Yes because the idea of being groped in a hospital is a real turn on."
"Thanks for the sarcasm," he said then he winked at me, "The hospital is a real turn on for some people."
"Well it's not for me."
He grinned, "Don't knock it until you try it."
"Oh so you've tried it?"
"Well," his hand began slowly creeping up my exposed leg. When he reached the edge of my gown I kicked him. "Ow. I wasn't going to actually touch you."
The curtain moved and a blur that resembled my mother charged towards me. "Oh Honey how are you? What happened this time? Are you okay?"
"Mom I'm fine. You didn't have to come."
"Don't be silly, you're in the emergency room, of course I had to come. The nurse said they need my permission to run some tests on you."
And there the truth was: they needed her permission for tests. She was essentially forced to come. I felt bad. "I'm sorry if I ruined your day."
"You didn't ruin anything." Her response didn't convince me because I knew I had ruined everything. Ruining things was what I was best at. "So what happened? Did you faint and fall on your face?"
"No."
"Why is your face bruised like that then? Did you get jumped again?"
"No."
"He fell while he was running around the track at school and later he fainted in my car," Tom said.
"Oh thank God you were there."
I rolled my eyes at how honest she sounded. For a second I almost believed she cared. The emergency room seemed to bring out the best in her. She became somewhat motherly. She sat on the side of the bed and held my hand. I knew her affection was only for show but I squeezed her hand anyway.
Dr. Cunningham walked back in the room. He talked to my mother and told her given my history and my description of what happened he thought I had a panic attack but that didn't account for the fainting and that's why he wanted to run some more tests.
The first order of business was to draw some blood. I enjoyed that part because I was able to watch the blood flow through the tube and in to the vials. I wished it was painful but I hardly felt a thing. It was downhill after that. The tests Dr. Cunningham made me endure were much worse than the simple tests Tom's mother gave me. I reached a point where I was hoping I would have another blackout so I didn't have to deal with the tests. The doctor told my mother he was going to admit me so he could run a few more tests in the morning. My mother left after a few hours but Tom stayed until I was transferred to my new room.
Tom begged and pleaded to stay but they sent him home. He promised to be back at the beginning of visiting hours. I was amused by the contrast between Tom and my mother. Tom was willing to miss practice and have his playing time cut so he could be with me and my own mother wasn't willing to take one stupid day off, although she did promise to stop by after work.
I was exhausted by the time I reached my room but I still had time to think about Tom. It took time for me to adjust to the rhythmic pattern of the snores coming from my roommate, so while I adjusted, I reflected on my day. The thought of Brian and Tom angered me, but then I remembered how loving Tom had been to me after we went to MacDonald's. I had told Tom I hated him and I meant it when I said it but I couldn't hate him for long because as soon as I needed him he was right there for me just like he always was.
I wasn't sure what I felt, so I carefully pulled at the tape that was keeping a gauze pad on the bruise on my cheek. I picked at the bruise until my fingers were wet with blood and then I pressed my hand against my cheek and didn't stop until my palm could feel the hardness of my teeth under my skin. My cheek burned like hell but I felt good. I put the gauze back on the bruise and used my hair to clean my bloody hand.
When my cheek finally stopped burning, I wept silently because I knew Tom would be disappointed in me. He had faith that I could be helped, but I knew I was beyond redemption.
c Lustyville 2007 Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out more of this story and my other stories at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville