It’s louder than I expected in the ICU.
Hushed voices, yes, and murmurs from television sets, but it’s the overwhelming cacophony of beeps and alarms that makes my skin crawl. Several short alerts in quick succession from one room, then another long beep from somewhere down the hall, interspersed with the robotic and regulated “shhhh-shhhh” noise of ventilators.
After I check in at another desk, the nurses direct me to Daan’s room.
I move cautiously down the hall, aware of every squeak of my shoe and slightly loud breath, feeling like an oversized beast set loose in an eggshell factory.
The despair and despondency is stronger here, suffocating waves of it, like someone waving a tray of fresh baked cookies right under my nose. Even being full doesn’t stop me from wanting it.
Worse, though, is the sensation oflife. Not firmly ensconced in bodies as I normally encounter it, but rather loosely tethered and, in some cases, barely hanging on to its person. It feels as though asneeze or the wrong thought from me would jar it loose and send it my direction.
Shit, shit.I keep my eyes focused on the bright white tile floor, glancing up only to check room numbers.
Finally, I find Daan’s. The green curtain around his bed is partially drawn, so I hesitate on the threshold. But after a moment, it’s clear he’s the only one in the room, so I go in.
His feet are tall pointed mounds beneath a light blanket, which seems perfectly normal and exactly as I’ve seen so many times before, arriving at his room freshman year to get him for calc class only to find him still asleep.
But as soon as I round the edge of the curtain, all semblance of normalcy vanishes.
Next to the raised bedside rails, his hands lie limp, an IV taped to the back of one. His head is locked in a gray plastic brace, his long hair crumpled and caught inside. A plastic mask and tube combination covers his mouth and nose. The machines at his bedside add their notes to the beep-beeping and ventilator percussion sounds.
He looks so horribly still, and pale, as if someone has sucked nearly every drop of vitality from him.
The glow of life from him is so faint, it looks more like a reflection from some random shiny object in the room.
Fuck.My knees wobble and then give. Instinctively, I catch myself on the plastic footboard of the bed, jostling Daan in the process.
I suck in a breath sharply and jerk my hands away, though he does not react, nor does his light dim any further. Thankfully.
Carefully, I make my way around the edge of the bed, without touching anything, to sit in the visitor’s chair.
Daan’s chest rises and falls mechanically, too abruptly to be natural. He is not breathing on his own, may not ever breathe on his own again.
Hot tears sting my eyes. How did this happen? Two days ago, he was thinking about romancing a brother-sister combo, and now he’s in a hospital bed that he might not ever leave. His parents, his older brothers, they’re going to lose the baby of the family, the self-proclaimed favorite.
The Old Ones destroy everything.
Except… it’s not just the Old Ones in this case.Ifailed Daan.Ihid my true self, and he and Lennie and others have paid for that.
“I fucked up, Daan, and I’m so, so sorry.” I start to reach for his hand and then stop myself. I can’t take the chance. Tears spill down my cheeks, and I swipe at them with the back of my knuckles. “Just hold on, okay? I’m going to do everything I can to fix this, I promise,” I whisper.
Except… even if I can somehow make these attacks and all of this succession bullshit stop, how does that fix anything? It certainly won’t bring Lennie or anyone else back. It won’t even stop this same thing from happening again in the future.
Slumping in my chair, I stretch my hands out in front of me, looking at the words inked there. They’ve never been more accurate.
Iamtoxic.
I’ve been telling myself I’m doing everything I can. But that’s a lie.
I’ve been making decisions like my life here will continue at some point, like I’ll be able to go back to just being “normal college student Jocasta Trelane, fully human.”
In the process, I’ve made it impossible for the people I care about to make decisions they need to make to save themselves. Because they don’t have all the information.
And here we are. Fighting, dying, dead.
My distorted reflection in the shiny metal bars of the bedside rail stares back at me, eyes flesh-colored holes with lashes.
It’s selfish of me. Wrong. Putting my own needs ahead of everyone else’s when doing so hurts or kills them, just because I’m scared.
