40. “Return”“You want him to go home now...then you’ll have to deal with what he’s done.” the doctor said, crossing his arms and tapping his foot impatiently. “Do you want to be responsible for cleaning and dressing something that he should ideally never see?”
“I’ve done it before.”
He stared at me for a moment, contemplating my statement. His eyes went right to my wrists and the pale line that often swelled to a pink mass of awkward and ungainly scars. “You didn’t cut as deeply though. You probably didn’t even need stitches to hold the sides together.”
“I know I didn’t. But I will take care of him.”
“Then why don’t you come and see what you’ll have to deal with then.” he suggested, acting like I would scream at the sight of a little blood. Blood was never the problem.
The screen went up...Jay was still floating in a haze of recently injected morphine or a recently swallowed painkiller...I had no idea what he was on and I really didn’t want to find out. The nurse made me nod to say that it was okay to proceed. I nodded almost immediately, the sooner this was over, the sooner we could go home and recover.
Gauze and tape peeled away quickly at first, then more slowly as it got to the core, Jay’s fragile wrist. She handed the discarded tape to another nurse, then began to peel back the little sterile pad, centimeter by excruciating centimeter. I could see the harsh dark pink reality of white blood cells fighting for every pore of his skin, then the corner of his wound. It had expanded, it had... I closed my eyes. There was no doubt in my mind that Jay would flip out and destroy himself, but he really couldn’t do that now. He had already destroyed himself. I doubted if I could find the image that he presented to the world ever again. Vulnerability had consumed him, and this was the path it had taken to enter his body.
“Sir, are you feeling sick?” the nurse’s aide asked, tapping me on the shoulder. My eyes flashed open, centered on the wound, closed again. It was just because I hadn’t eaten very much today, I could handle this. But just the thought that he had done this to himself was eating away at my stomach. My hands flailed out and tried to get the railing, I was dimly aware of people calling out for help. Fingers snarled around the railing and pulled me up. I was not going to chicken out from this. I forced my eyes open and shook away their pity. Jay was going to be my responsibility, I wanted to prove that I was worthy of it.
Then it was cleaned and covered and pretty and benign. They tied it back to the railing and took away the screen, leaving me alone with his half-focused eyes and quivering arms.
They didn’t let him out until a few days later when I was able to stand up and actually help the nurse change his bandage and he was able to last the whole day without picking at it.The gown peeled off slowly and his skin was revealed. Pale banality, almost perfectly smooth and white except for the moles and pinched nerve endings of the scars that still lingered from the first time he’d given up on everything. I handed him a T-shirt and helped him pull it over the wrist bandage. He just sat there limply and stared at the floor with his head cocked a little to the side as if thinking or as if presenting the appearance of being lucid was just too much at the moment. I dressed him carefully, he didn’t try to fight or anything, he just sat there like a lump, his eyes the only thing that made any attempt at relating to the world. They were almost constantly focused on me and what I was doing.
I pulled on his boxers then his pants, helped him on with his shoes and socks. Still he made little to no attempt to interact with the things that would let him leave. I put on his sweatshirt and handed him some sunglasses. He slid these on with a sigh of either relief or irritation. Now he truly looked like a spoiled and pampered star.
“Here are your personal items.” one of the nurses said, coming in with a sealed plastic bag of Jay’s belongings. I opened it a bit and the very heavy smell of blood crept out. Jay moved as far away from it as possible, giving me haunted looks. “I can give you the address of a really good dry-cleaner if you want to get those blood stains out.” I smiled at her weakly and watched her go.
“Throw those away.” he whispered.
“Isn’t your wallet in here?”
“Throw it away.” I continued holding the bag though the smell was starting to make me want to cut myself open. “Please?” His face fell as he realized that I wasn’t going to just throw it away because he said so. Before I knew it he had jumped over and grabbed it away from me, throwing it against the wall. He stood next to me, tall and almost majestic. If I squinted I could pretend that he was himself again. That soon shattered as he slouched and sighed. “I...I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I said soothingly, taking his arm. “You didn’t have much in it anyway.”
There was a girl outside with a little spray of dead flowers and a vacant expression. She stepped in front of Jay and I and lifted up her shirt. Scars and half-opened cuts accentuated her barely there bra and barely developed breasts. Almost submerged among the cuts and her flesh was Jay’s name surrounded by thousands of tiny little star shaped marks. She grinned, revealing silver capped teeth and little cold sores on her swollen lips. Her hand went right to one of her pockets and pulled out a penknife. “Could you sign me...like, cut me?” she asked, holding out the knife. Jay stared at her and then took it. He snapped it open and closed a few times and then looked at her fully before handing it back to her.“That’s not me.” he said and then dragged me towards the parking lot. Her shirt fell down haphazardly, obscuring the last few letters of his last name but leaving her stomach exposed.
After it appeared that Jay would get better, that it would only take time for him to heal, Paige and the others had gone back to their little love shack and left Jay and I to fend for ourselves. I was beyond feeling angry at them, even if everyone was slowly seeping apart again, it didn’t matter. I didn’t think Jay would be able to handle seeing Paige every day anyway. I knew I couldn’t. All it brought to mind was that night when he had needed me most and I had left him.Ryan came back to pick us up though, nicely sparing me the stress of taking Jay back on a bus full of other random people who more likely than not would either recognize him or spend the whole trip making him regret that he hadn’t been able to cut both wrists.
Jay forced me to sit in the backseat with him so that he could sleep on my lap and probably break the seatbelt laws. I didn’t care. It felt so...odd and different and almost beautiful. It had been so long since I could just hold him or feel him on me. Ryan was silent the whole drive. Again, it didn’t matter all that much to me. Existing in a little bubble that smelled of smoke and beer with Jay’s head on my lap was not the most awful thing in the world.
Scenery flashed by and away, I had no idea where we were and no idea where we were going. Mown hay, benign cows with no sense of reality or purpose, dead and dying trees with naked limbs stretching out over the highway, strip malls, strip clubs, liquor stores, neon of every hue, cemeteries both full and empty. Everything and nothing all at once. After a while they all glazed together into a film of background noise. The only constants were Jay’s wrist which he had flung haphazardly across my legs, his head on my knees, his warmth...how long I had waited to be touched by warmth.
We got home really late at night. The cosmetologist was just kicking out her fuck for the night when we came up the stairs. She smiled at Jay and waved at me. Her choice lump of pliant male flesh merely sagged to the floor and moaned bitterly about his bad luck with women. I unlocked the door as non-jarringly as I could and turned on the light. The time gone had not been kind. A few of Gavin’s toys that had migrated home with me lay strewn on the cheap carpet remnant I’d found in the dumpster and the water stain was starting to look like it would start dripping at any moment. Jay seemed to only care that he was inside a place that perhaps he had once considered home.“Do you want to eat anything or do you just want to go to bed?” I asked.
“Bed.” he said softly, looking at his feet.
We ended up curled up together in the middle, covers almost completely over our heads...a little cocoon that even the water couldn’t pierce. I’d noticed a bit sliding down the walls and gathering in the imitation wood paneling. He nuzzled his head against my chest and sighed, looking at his wrist despondently. I held him gently. It had been so long since I’d had anyone in here...except for the one time Gavin slept over, and that hardly counted since he’d spent the whole time jumping on the bed and pleading for more stories. “Are you okay?” I whispered. He nodded but sniffed a little.
“I don’t think I can get to sleep though.” Brown eyes glinted briefly in the darkness as he looked up at me. “This is going to sound really stupid...” he trailed off and let his hand touch my skin.
“It’s just us. I’m not going to tell anyone.” I said and forced him to meet my eyes.
“C...could you sing to me?”
“Sing?”
“I’m sorry, forget I said anything.”
“N..no, it’s okay. I just...it’s a bit out of the blue.”
“I know, you don’t have to.”
I tried to think of a song, any song. Finally I just sort of hummed and sang the notes to a tuneless song...nothing I knew or remembered, just something random. His eyes closed and he laid there and listened to me. I was so used to just being the background...all of this was somewhat new. Sort of invigorating actually. His breathing eventually evened out and I slowly stopped. I soon joined him in sleep.