I woke up, choking, as if on my own breath. My eyes burned with tears as my body realized ahead of my mind what must’ve happened. Above me glared the white of a ceiling. My hands shook as they curled into fists, chafing against their restraints.
I’d lived.
Someone must’ve called the paramedics. I wanted to scream, but I had a tube down my throat, forcing air into my lungs. Thrashing around would’ve been the next best thing, but they’d tied my wrists and ankles down to the bars of the hospital bed.
Above me floated a familiar face. I’d once known it so well, sneaking glances across the room, picturing it while bent over by my boyfriend, later waking up and staring at him beside me in bed with mingled wonder and guilt. Yet somehow, he looked blurry. His pale, boyish features floated in and out of clarity, like a camera trying to focus. But his green eyes were clear through the haze, normally so bright, turned dull and red.
Just like when we broke up.
You’re going to be OK, Liam said. His voice echoed strangely, the movement of his lips not quite lining up with his words.
My ventilator sounded a brief alarm as I laughed without sound. Everything hurt, all tubes and needles and restraints.
He leaned over my bed from a chair pulled up beside it and explained I’d gone into a brief coma after they’d brought me in with five times the safe blood alcohol limit. I’d blacked out whatever I’d done for my intended last night on Earth. I probably couldn’t top it if I were to try again. It must’ve been one hell of a party.
I had to wait hours before I could reply, after proving I could breathe on my own. My voice grated from my aching throat. Where is everybody?
He jerked awake in his chair. It was the first thing I’d managed to say.
I’d just tried drinking myself to death. I would’ve thought my best friends might notice. Then again, there’d been a reason I hadn’t opened up to any of them, other than in song. Perhaps they thought my morbid lyrics were only poetry, that I didn’t fucking mean what I wrote. Or they were just happy to profit off my existential despair. Until it got too inconvenient.
You need to rest,he said, leaning over to tuck in my thin blanket, but not looking at me.
I shifted, though I didn’t have room to flinch from his touch. What does it look like I’m doing?
You shouldn’t get too worked up, in your state.
Then tell me, I said. Where is everybody?
But I’d known this would happen all along. It hardly came as a surprise when he admitted, They’re on the road.
Without us?
He got up from his chair so fast it screeched on the tile floor, so he could pace, as far as possible in the cramped hospital room. We’re not stopping the tour.
My throat hurt too much to push up another laugh. So I’ve got to get better quick.
The room didn’t have a window, which would’ve been better for the glowering he had to do. I’m going to fly to catch up with them. I’ve got a couple days to stay.
I phrased it more shocked than I really felt. And what about me?
I’ll be here with you,he said, deflecting again.
I mean, what about your drummer?
He didn’t answer, staring at the wall. They’d left my goddamn ex to give me the news, and now, he couldn’t even bear to look at me, go for the kill.
My voice croaked, too hoarse to raise it as much as I wanted. Just fucking say it.
I’d replaced their last drummer, and now, they were replacing me. I wondered if they’d left their last one in the hospital as well. If they’d taken off without a word of goodbye.
Maybe this had been my way of quitting before getting fired. That didn’t make it hurt any less.
You can’t handle the pressure of coming back right now, he said to the wall, as if rehearsing it. This lifestyle you’re trying to push will be the death of you.
But I’d go out with a bang.
My silent laughter must’ve been contagious, because he let out a painful giggle of disbelief, finally turning toward me. Weren’t you going to wait till you’re twenty-seven? You’ve really taken the whole rock-and-roll martyr persona way too seriously.
I could only lift my hands so far in the restraints, but I still formed the shapes on instinct, echoing my usual finger guns. It’s called a coping mechanism.
You mean like your drinking?
That caught me off guard. He’d never brought it up before. It might’ve been helpful to have this conversation before it became a problem.
Actually, that’s called self-medicating, I said. All the greats drank.
Not to mention, died young.
I cracked my chapped lips trying to flash my coin-trick smile. Now you’re getting it.
You always do this, he said. Try to joke and charm everyone into thinking you don’t mean the fucked-up things you say.
I couldn’t tell if that was an excuse, his attempt to deflect the blame. Until he looked me right in the eyes and lied. We only want what’s best for you.
So where’s the intervention? I asked. Here I am, crying for help, and where is everybody?
I had nowhere to go. Good for nothing but this. I’d dropped out of college to go touring. When my mother found out, she’d told me to stay the hell put and finish the pre-law degree she’d funded, or never come back.
He obviously regretted looking straight at me, and yet, he couldn’t look away. I must’ve been a real spectacle, like a pile-up on the highway, or a body falling from a building.
I didn’t want this,he said.
My eyes ached in lieu of crying, my body too dehydrated to give up any tears. But you’re running back to them, aren’t you? You’re gonna leave me behind, just like that.
I’m not,he lied.
You’re on your way up, and you can’t have me dragging you down.
He snapped, at last. Is that what you were trying to do? Save us the trouble?
The voice of self-loathing in my head couldn’t have put it any better than that. His face softened in apology, but he let it hang in the air, unspoken.
Once again, he couldn’t bear to face me. You’re not dead. Neither is your career. After you get better, you could find another group.
I didn’t have the strength to shake my head. I’m not getting better.
What other choice do you have? He approached the bed, his hand hovering over mine, but he didn’t take it. I don’t know how to help you. But you’re going to get help, whether you like it or not.
No shit. They wouldn’t let me out without detoxing. I had a long way to go before getting out, and once I did, I’d have to start all over again. Only I couldn’t repeat a legendary night like that, dying like so many rock stars before me. My wings had melted. I’d have to take some ordinary route, all alone in my bedroom and anonymous once again.
Leave.
He winced. I’m not going to leave you like this.
I pressed the emergency button on the side of my bed. That’s exactly what you’re going to do.
We kept arguing until the nurse came in. I tried calling after him as they escorted him out, but it came out barely a whimper.
Have a nice life.
* * *
All too soon, they moved me from my nice single to the psych ward slash drunk tank, bedded beside the mostly forty-and fifty-year-old alcoholic vets and transients, and one or two people in the middle of some real bad schizophrenic or bipolar episodes. Right in time for me to start having hallucinations. Possibly from withdrawal, or just my own bad brain.
There were angels and demons. I couldn’t see them, not quite, manifesting as shadows in the corners, and lights like the passing of cars through the window blinds. They were speaking some language I didn’t know, and wished I couldn’t understand. But I did. They were arguing over my soul, half-heartedly, as if the angels were only there because they had to be, and the demons knew that.
I laughed, and that triggered one of the other patients into joining me, like they’d missed a joke and pretended to get it, anyway. Someone told us to be quiet, perhaps a nurse. I couldn’t remember, all the faces nothing but blurs, because I was too scared to look at any of them dead on.
Only one face stood out in the blue dark.
“Mal,” he said.
I knew him. He looked younger, somehow, strapped to one of the beds, like me.
“Ren?”
Then he was standing before me, looking almost like I knew him now, even down to the suit. He appeared translucent, as if he were the ghost. Around him glowed a faint halo, like the rings around the moon.
“I won’t let you turn into one of them.”
His eyes were so clear, watching from somewhere outside my memory. Unable to reach me. He could only stare, so tender, but useless.
“Stay with me.”
For a moment, I thought his glow had lifted the darkness. But he’d disappeared.
And yet, I wasn’t alone—though I wasn’t in my own head anymore, either.
Once again, I lay strapped to a hospital bed, my wrists and ankles restrained. No, that wasn’t right—they were free, but I still couldn’t move.
We couldn’t move.
The signals were there, synapses frantically firing, but none of our muscles responded, arms and legs offline. Not even a single finger or toe obeyed the command to twitch, let alone the burning urge to flail and thrash as panic built up inside us with no release.
Then our rational brain kicked in. This must’ve been sleep paralysis. We’d never had it before, but there was a first for everything. Lots of firsts today.
Except I didn’t recall going to bed. Coming home from my first real party that night. Saying goodbye to my friends.
Last I remembered, we were driving. I’d almost piped up, said we should order a ride and split the cost, or call somebody’s mom and try to act sober, we could always drink some water and hang out a while longer and get in trouble over curfew instead.
But I hadn’t said anything. I didn’t want their last memory of me to be ruining the coming-of-age movie moment. So we drove, with the skylight open and two of us standing up with hands in the air, all of us laughing and singing along to the radio, and then—
No, no, no no no—
I couldn’t even cry, let alone scream. The darkness just went on and on. Voices came and went. None of them belonged to my friends.
Over time, I started recognizing the nurses and doctors. I could tell from each touch as they exercised my limbs, and whether they spoke to me, if they thought I was still in here at all.
Mom and Dad tried to talk as if everything were normal. They told me about their days like they were picking me up from school or sitting down to dinner. Never telling me to please wake up, not give up, come back. I wished they would. I needed the help.
Leah never said much. But it sounded like her crying, sometimes.
Of course, I tried to wake up. Every single day. It got harder and harder to tell the days apart from inside my head. After the first few months, or years, I stopped trying. And stopped caring. After so long, I started trying the opposite. Going to sleep. The even bigger one.
At long last, it happened. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs pounded empty and dark, like the opposite of a birth cry. I welcomed the change of pace.
Someone lifted me up. Finally, I could open my eyes. And, instead of a blur of color, my vision turned out clear.
I found myself looking up in the arms of a beautiful man. He must’ve been an angel. My heart-rate monitor wailed behind us, flatlining as he grinned down at me.
I tried to speak, to ask if I were dreaming, but I couldn’t remember how.
You’re not dreaming,the angel said.