“Ignore it,” I say.
“I can’t, what if it’s…” His head is already turning to the bedside table.
He stretches over and picks up the phone.
“Jason, what’s up?” he says.
Jason? Who’s Jason? I don’t recall him mentioning a Jason.
“Okay, okay. I’m twenty minutes away, I’ll be right there,” Christopher says, and hangs up. His gaze darts round the room.
“What is it?”
I grab both sides of Christopher’s head with my hands to steady him.
“It’s Andrew. He’s awake.”
24.Christopher
Sunday - December 9
If I get told one more time that I need to be patient and understanding, I’m going to scream. I swear even the pope would be on his last nerve after navigating everything with Andrew’s care since he woke up nine days ago.
When I arrived at the hospital the day after Thanksgiving, he was barely coherent. The nurses had taken Andrew from the private ward to the psychiatric unit for assessment, telling me it would be a minimum of seventy-two hours before he could be discharged. In the end, he stayed in the hospital for another week. He’d refused to see anyone for the first four days, leaving me both powerless and helpless to support him.
Thankfully, the psychiatrist was more forthcoming. They had kept me updated, despite me not being a family member. Initially, they’d just confirmed what I already knew, that it was an active decision to take his life. What I didn’t know though, what no one had known, although I’d had my suspicions, was that he also had a bipolar disorder. And that he had tested positive for HIV.
Not words an individual wants to hear, despite the recent advances in treatment.
I wept the whole way home.
When I finally got to see him on the fifth day, after he’d returned to the private room to continue his recovery, Andrew was combative.
“Do you know how embarrassing it is to have everyone think you’re crazy? Only to confirm it by getting locked up in a psych ward?” Andrew had practically foamed at the mouth as he shouted at me.
“No one thinks you’re crazy, Andrew. We’re just concerned. Worried about why you would want to end your life.” My attempt at showing compassion fell on deaf ears and he demanded I get out.
I barely slept that night.
I was taken by surprise the next day, when I turned up after work, to be greeted by his parents, who’d driven down from Utah. My feeble attempts to contact them when the paramedics rushed Andrew to the hospital had gone unacknowledged.
“Thank you for taking care of our son, but we can take it from here,” Andew’s father said in a condescending tone. His mother, standing alongside her husband, was the spitting image of Andrew. The same olive skin, same green eyes, same kink in their noses. But she looked at me with the same level of disdain people reserve for homeless people who are begging for money.
Jason had to pull me away when I nearly exploded with rage. The stress ball he found and handed over to me didn’t stand a chance. If anyone had the right to cast that look, it was me. I’d put my life on hold to be there for Andrew, just for them to swoop in and dismiss me.
But I bit my lip, for Andrew’s sake.
I left the hospital and took the higher moral ground.
When I finally managed to see Andrew again yesterday, his parents leaving their round-the-clock vigil to get lunch, I questioned him and asked what was going on. Why had they shown up all of a sudden, after years of estrangement and nearly two weeks of being in hospital?
Andrew couldn’t look at me when he told me the reason.
“I’m leaving Los Angeles. Heading back to Utah. I’m going to live with my parents.”
“But you hated it there.”
I rested my hand on his arm, feeling the coldness of his rebuff through the light-blue dressing gown. He shook my hand away and continued staring out the window to the Beverly Center.
