Love Me Broken (35 page)

I groan, my eyes blinking open in the white room, and they both become silent. Someone touches my shoulder. I try to say something, but my throat is sore. There’s something running down it too, and it feels very strange.

“Shh,” she whispers, and I recognize my mom’s voice. What the hell is she doing here? “It’s okay, Adam. You’re in a hospital.”

I try to sit up and she pushes me back down onto the bed. She doesn’t even have to be rough about it. I don’t have much fight in me. Physically, at least.

I look at my mom. Her eyes are bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles. But more than that, they look weary and full of sorrow and pain—exactly the way I didn’t want to see her. “What are you doing here?” I manage to whisper.

“I’m your mother,” she says firmly.

I am so angry right now. I look to Erica, who looks like she’s been crying as well. Her pain gives me some guilt though.

“I called her,” Erica explains, and my guilt is overshadowed by anger again. My face must give away my temper, because Erica speaks quickly before I can say anything. “We were driving. To the beach. And all of a sudden you started coughing.” She quiets her tone, and says, “You were coughing up blood.” As if it were some big secret. “After the ambulance came, they wouldn’t let me see you. I didn’t know what else to do. I had your phone and tried to call Levi”—I cringe at the thought of Levi knowing about me being sick—“and got his voicemail. The only other number you had was your mom’s, so...”

She opens her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.

I shake my head and look away from them. I feel helpless. I feel exposed and rotten and guilty and—and so fucking pissed.

“You shouldn’t have called her,” I tell Erica, not looking at her.

“I’m sorry!” she says, although from her tone she’s not sorry. “But what else was I supposed to do? I had no idea what was happening to you.” There’s an accusation in her last statement. I hear it. But I pretend not to.

“You should have left me alone,” I mumble.

She moves over the bed, into my field of vision. “You could have
died
,” she says, trying to make me look into her eyes.

I resist. “You should have let me,” I say. “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“Adam!” my mother says, half in surprise, half in rebuke. “Erica saved your life. Whether you wanted that or not, you can at least show her some kindness.”

I really,
really
don’t like being told what to do. Especially when I realize the teller is right.

“Fuck you,” I say, to neither one in particular, but to both at the same time.

I hear my mom start to cry. Great.

“All I wanted,” she says, “was to see you again. You
disappeared
.” She turns to Erica. “I left for work—I’m a waitress—and when I came back, he was gone. No good-bye. No explanation. Just a note on the fridge.” She sobs. “A note that said, ‘Don’t look for me.’” She shakes her head and turns to me. “Don’t look for you? Don’t
look
for you?”

I roll my eyes. My mom, ladies and gentlemen. A real piece of work.

I picture for a half-second the moment when she got home, running around our little trailer. Yelling my name. Something inside of me curls tighter, and I just want to die already. I just want to die.

“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t look for me. Real simple instructions, I thought.”

There’s a moment when none of us says anything. I feel so impotent in this damn hospital bed. I’m in some sort of paper dress thing they put me in. I look around the room for my clothes. I want to leave. But I don’t know where my clothes are, and it would be worse to walk out of here in this gown than to stay here. I don’t want everyone to see me this way. I don’t want everyone to know I’m sick.

I hear Erica let out a sigh, and then feel her hand rest on top of mine. I pull my hand away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Adam,” she says, and I look at her for the first time since I woke up. I break down a little looking at her eyes. Then I notice her clothes. She’s wearing the same clothes that she wore when she came to me in the rain. The flowers on her blouse look wrinkled and faded now. Has she slept since all this began? Has she eaten? Look at what I’ve done to her.

I look down at my hands in shame. Then I start fiddling with the paper band they put around my wrist. There’s a tube going into my arm, just inside the elbow, and as I breathe, I feel another tube down my throat. It’s what is helping me stay alive.

A flash of fear hits me: it’s getting close. Death. And I don’t have much longer. My body can’t stay alive on its own anymore.

“Adam,” Erica repeats, her voice soft. “Why didn’t you tell me? Your mom says you’ve known all along.”

I’m silent, the guilt making me feel hot and restless.

Why didn’t I tell her? Doesn’t she get it? I didn’t even want to tell myself. And especially after all she’s been through, and the way she was so broken from loss already, how could I put her through that again?

I shake my head. “I should have kept away. I’ve been selfish. I should never have let myself meet you.”

When she doesn’t respond, I feel so uncomfortable that I have to look up.

Her face looks blank. No, not blank. It’s like the muscles are dead, and her skin is slack. She looks—she looks defeated.

“But,” she says, in the softest voice, “you did meet me.”

My insides quiver and squeeze with pain. I feel like I might cry, so I overcompensate by making my words as steady and firm as I can. “You should go.”

Her head pulls back slightly. “What?”

“Leave,” I say louder. “I want you to leave.”

Her mouth opens, and I shout over her. An image of her at my grave flashes in my head, and I feel so shitty that I just can’t take it. Who will help her cross the street now?

“Go!” I scream. “Are you stupid? Go! If you care about me at all, you’ll go and let me die in peace.”

She stands firm. “There are treatments,” she starts.

“No.” I fold my arms across my chest. It tugs at the tube in my arm, but I ignore the pain. “I’m not doing that. I’m not going to be a fucking nuisance just to last another few months.”

“Nuisance?” she asks, unable to understand. Her eyes—oh fuck, her eyes. I can’t take this. She’s still talking. “It wouldn’t be... All I want is to be with you.”

I feel like my chest is ripping in two. “I don’t care.”

“But we—but I—but what about me?”

I turn to her, my lip raised in a snarl. “Erica,” I say slowly, coldly. “What you want doesn’t matter, because this isn’t about you.
I’m dying
. After this is over, you can go on and do whatever the fuck you feel like. I don’t care. But for me, this is it. So quit being a bitch and just leave me the fuck alone. You’ve already wasted enough of my time.”

I feel awful about it even as I’m saying it, but it’s cruel enough to work. Her mouth screws up and she gives one last look at me, and then she runs out of the room.

I hear her footsteps echo down the hall. I savor the sound. I know it’s the last I will ever hear from her.

We’re over.

I run down the hall and throw open the door to the stairwell. I have to grasp the handrail on the way down, because my feet are sliding and stumbling as I nearly fall down the stairs. My heart is pounding and the air is burning in my lungs. I throw open the door to the lobby level, push past nurses, doctors, random visitors, and find my way back to the nurses’ desk where my parents are waiting.

My mom stands at once. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

Something about her tone is reserved though, as if she knows what’s wrong. As if she is expecting Adam to be dead already.

“I want to go home,” I say.

My dad picks up our things. “What about Adam?”

“Adam doesn’t want me here,” I say. “So I don’t want to be here either. I want to go home.”

My father wisely does not disagree. My mother and he usher me outside as quickly as they can and bring me to my father’s car. There’s a moment when we’re standing outside it, my father with his hand on my shoulder.

“If you want,” he says, “you can walk home with your mother.”

“No,” I say, opening the door to the back seat. “Let’s just go.”

The slam of my door wakes my dad up. He helps my mom into the front passenger seat, and then takes his own seat behind the wheel. I see him glance at me as he turns around to back out. I avoid his gaze, looking up at the side of the hospital.

My insides feel twisted, and my mind is cycling through the same thoughts again and again. He said he didn’t care about me. Not exactly, but that’s what he meant. He said I was a waste of time. How could he mean that?

We leave the parking lot and start to drive along a busy street. I don’t feel anything looking at the cars around me. I just want Adam back. I want to tell him I’m not scared of the cars anymore. If I could get over that, maybe he could—

I hunch over, a gasping sob overtaking me. I hear my mother’s voice. She’s turning around in her seat, but I’m too overwhelmed to listen. “I can’t—I can’t,” I mutter, the words blurred by my bawling.

I gave Adam everything, and he doesn’t want me. And there’s not enough time to make things right. There’s not enough time because Adam is going to
die
and he doesn’t want me there. He’s done with me. Done with us.

He said it was a waste of time to him.

He lied about being healthy. Did he lie about everything else too? Was it all an act? Did I ever know Adam at all?

And I weep. I weep for the Adam I thought I knew.

* * *

Returning home feels wrong, but my mind isn’t in a place to think of an alternative. My parents both help me up the stairs, one on either side of me. Some part of me registers the strangeness of this. They have barely spoken for the past year, and now they’re a team again? Were they that shaken by the thought of losing me? But my mind isn’t strong enough to dwell on this for long.

They set me in my bed and help me to get under the covers. My father closes my blinds, even though it is still light outside. Time has no meaning right now. I lean back into the pillow. My shoulders are still heaving with sobs, and inside I feel a strange mixture of sorrow and emptiness.

All I can do is lie here and—just lie here.

How did things get so bad so quickly?

* * *

The next morning my mom brings
me
food. It’s like we’ve had a reversal, a gloomy
Freaky Friday
. I’m barely able to talk, to look at her or anything, as she runs a brush through my hair. She’s talking, trying to comfort me, but I don’t hear the words. The nothingness has blackened my emotions. I can’t feel the pain. The pain would be too much. Inside I am a void.

* * *

Two days pass like this. I am out of bed now, sitting on the cushion of my windowsill, looking at the water in the distance. There’s something comforting about looking out at a big expanse of space. I can see why my mom liked it. I watch all morning as the sky lightens with dawn, then darkens again as a billowing cover of cloud spreads over the sky. It is just starting to rain when I hear footsteps outside my door.

Someone knocks. I don’t even bother to say anything.

When the footsteps enter, I can tell it’s my mom.

“Hi, sweetie,” she says, and takes a seat next to me. My legs are pulled up, my arms around my knees as I stare out the window. My mom sits with her back to the window, her face and shoulders toward me. I look over as she hands me something.

It’s a warm mug of tea.

“I thought you might like something to sip on,” she says. I look at her, noticing the change in her appearance. She’s no longer raggedy around the edges. She’s had a haircut. It’s clean and styled, and much shorter. She’s also wearing makeup, dark red lipstick that is applied perfectly. She looks like a mom again. Well, a mom that is getting over a long cold, perhaps. She’s still too thin. But there’s a warmth in her eyes that I haven’t seen in I don’t know how long.

I take this in, but the knowledge that she’s getting better is only recognized. I can’t feel it.

She looks at me, and I can tell from her pity that I must look like a mess. Then she gives a calm smile. “Do you mind if I sit with you a while?” she asks.