“You hate hospitals,” she reminds me.
“I hate what I saw last night even more,” I say.
“Can I go with you?” She hates hospitals as much as I do.
“No, I need to go alone.”
Mom’s gaze falls to her hands, drawing my attention to the red marks on her intertwined fingers where her skin is pulling against her tight grip. “Okay,” she says, sitting back down in her chair. “I’ll be here when you get back. If you can let me know what’s going on, I would appreciate it. Do you have change for the payphone?”
I dig my hand into my pocket, remembering the quarters I found last night. “Yeah, I’ll call you. I have money.”
Mom looks like a train just blew by, missing her by two inches. I can assume she’s thinking …that could have been you.
“I’ll be in the car,” Brett says, kissing Mom on the cheek. “Love you.”
“Have a good day, sweetie,” she says, trying to sound casual, but failing.
I follow Brett’s gesture and give her a kiss on the cheek too. “I love you, Mom. You don’t need to worry about me, okay?”
I try to walk away, but Mom’s hand squeezes around my wrist, tighter than I thought she might be capable of as I’ve grown taller and heavier than her over the last few years. “Look at me, Brody Pearson,” she demands. I do as she says because it’s instinct to react to her motherly tone. “I will always worry about you until the day I die. That is my job as your mother, like it or not.”
She releases her hand from my wrist, and a tear rolls down the side of her nose. “I’ll call you.”
I hate the smell. I hate the expressions on faces from those coming and going. I hate the constricted feeling of being in an extra-large, yet overcrowded elevator. I hate that there is no music or artwork without inspirational quotes. There is nothing about this place that can be confused for anywhere other than a hospital. It isn’t that this place has done me wrong, but I’ve been here so many times for stitches and broken bones that the feeling of dread follows me through the sliding doors. I should be used to it here, but instead, I try harder to avoid injuries on the playing fields.
The reception desk is helpful with guiding me to the right floor, and I’m glad they didn’t ask if I was family because if that question comes up, I’ll be sent packing. Although, I’m not at all sure what the hospital rules are in this situation.
While prepared to check in with the nurse’s station on the third floor, After stepping out of the elevator and walking halfway down the hallway, I see Pete’s name scribbled on a whiteboard next to a room across from the nurse’s station.
He’s watching TV, looking worn out and bored out of his mind. What’s more concerning is that he’s all alone, hours after committing himself to an infinity of loneliness.
Pete twists his head slowly, giving me a quick look before returning his focus to the TV. “Why are you here?” he snaps.
“Why isn’t anyone else here?” is the only reply I can conjure. Maybe it’s the worst question to be asking at this moment, but I’m not well versed in how to react to a post suicidal friend.
“You mean my asshole parents? They’re too busy fighting over whose turn it is to sit with me. I’m surprised you didn’t hear them from the elevator. They’ve been out there longer today than they’ve been in here, thankfully.”
I take an uninvited seat next to his bed. “Look, I know you don’t want me here.”
“I don’t want to be here. At all,” Pete says.
“Okay, I get it. Sometimes, when things feel like they can’t get any better, it is, in fact, a point for change, but—” I can’t remember where I was going with my thoughts. He’s staring at me as if I just spewed cruelty, asking, “how dare you?” with only the darkness in his eyes.
“Do you have any clue what I’m going to have to go through now? If you knew, you would have let me jump, Brody.”
“Why did you page me? Why did you want me there if you didn’t expect me to stop you? Why?” My volume is quickly rising to a level that could get me kicked out of here, but I need to know. If I was on the other side, would you just have let me jump?” I demand.
“No, yes, no … I don’t know, okay?” I notice he tries to lift his hands, but they rise simultaneously beneath the sheets. They strapped to him to the bed. “For a minute, I thought maybe I was making a mistake, but it wasn’t a mistake. The only mistake I made was sending you a message.”
“You waited until I arrived,” I say. I’m still not convinced he didn’t expect me to stop him from jumping. Maybe he’s embarrassed, and this is his only defense mechanism.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” he says. It was my original thought last night, but that was following the rest of my assumptions, which don’t add up.
“I don’t understand, Pete. I really don’t.”
“Okay, well, understand this … get out and please don’t come back because you’re nothing more than a reminder that the only control I had over my pathetic existence was whether to live or die, and you took that away from me. I’ll never forgive you for the torment I’m about to endure from this day forward.”
15
