The room is as cold as the secret. We wait on green-cushioned chairs, in the emergency room lobby. Matt is somewhere inside, in a room or behind a curtain. They won’t tell us anything, but they can’t make us leave.
We cluster in one corner, Celia and Janna huddled together on a single chair, Patrick leaning against the window and Simon perching on an end table, knee to knee with the girls. Me, an island, hovering across the aisle from them.
“This once, and only this once, we violate club rules,” Simon begins. “What the hell just happened?”
“I didn’t know it was this bad for him,” Patrick says.
“I think I did,” I admit. “We went up there one time, and he was talking about jumping. He had this look on his face, but I thought it was—I didn’t know what it meant. People say stuff.”
“Yeah, they do,” Patrick agrees.
“I don’t understand,” Celia says. “Someone like him. Doing this. I mean, any of the rest of us … no offense.”
“He’s really unhappy,” I confess. Why didn’t I see it more clearly all along?
“He’s the happiest of all of us,” Celia protests at the same time that Janna says, “How do you know?”
“Because he showed me. I was just too caught up in my own thing to really see what he was trying to tell me…” The ugly green waiting room cushion catches me as my knees buckle. My hands cover my face. “Oh God.”
“Kermit’s right,” Patrick says. “Matt’s been faking happy. Haven’t we all? The club is bullshit. Not talking about anything is bullshit.”
“That’s not fair,” Celia cries. “We’re supposed to help each other. We’re supposed to call each other in an emergency.”
“He did call,” Simon points out. “He called Kermit.”
Celia turns away. I know she’s crying. Maybe we all should be. Patrick puts his hand on her shoulder.
“We knew and we didn’t tell,” I say. “That makes it our fault as much as anything.” I say “we,” but it’s me. I should have known.
“That’s not fair,” Celia says. “How could anyone know he was that close to the edge?”
“I don’t know,” Patrick says. “How much can we ever know? Even about ourselves.”
Everyone goes quiet. We all look at him.
“What?” Patrick says, crossing his arms a little defensively. “Like you never thought about wanting to die? After what’s happened to all of you?”
“But, not, like, for real,” Celia says.
“How do you tell the difference?” Simon asks. No one knows the answer to that.
“Kermit?” Janna scoots forward, reaching across the gulf that separates us. Her hand presses mine. Out the window, a light snow is falling, the kind that dusts the pavement for a moment, then melts. “On the phone, you told him you’d go with him.”
It’s embarrassing, her putting my business out there like that, in front of the group. “I was saying anything I could think of to stop him.”
“Was it true? Do you feel like you want to hurt yourself?”
“No.” But when I said it, I meant it. Reflecting back to that moment, under the panic, under the desperation, there was a feeling of … relief. “Maybe.”
I’m out of defenses. Janna’s wide caring eyes press upon me, and my shields are too damaged to deflect the onslaught. “I don’t know if I could stand losing anything else. I don’t know if I can stand to hurt anymore.”