Wrath: A Sinful Secrets Romance, page 34
I don’t feel good, Miller.
I don’t want to do the ECT again. Having the seizure from the ECT does make me sleepy after- just like you were.
I love you. Please stay safe. Don’t ride bikes and don’t have any seizures. Love me- okay? Can you please still love me? Even if it’s been a while?
I’ll always love you too.
Your Ezra
Third Quarter
One
Ezra
December 19, 2018
“Are you sure about this?” My mom. Skeptical…or upset.
I peel my eyelids open, looking at the ceiling through the bleary spikes of my eyelashes.
“Yes,” a woman answers. “He woke up from anesthesia. Didn’t know where he was. There was some resistance. So that’s when we increased his sedation. We had the counselor in, and she asked…you know…about his memory.”
My heart beats a little quicker.
“He remembered being here last year…which was a good sign. But he thought that he had finished ECT. He said he was going to play football again. When we asked what year, he said his senior year. That’s how we knew,” the woman says, her voice low and conspiring. “As you know, memory loss can be very normal. It’s something we go over each time. In the consent forms.”
I try to swallow, but my throat hurts. It feels too dry.
“Yes, well, he did that,” my mom says, sounding irritated. I hear the click of high-heels as she steps into my field of vision. We’re in an ECT room. I’m lying on my back, and my mom is talking to a nurse. “He had a standout senior year in football,” my mom tells her. “Now has multiple offers for scholarships.”
The blood drains from my face as my pulse starts pounding again. What is she talking about?
“He remembered being discharged from here last time and staying at your house. When I asked what he’s done lately, he said he has a Jeep he likes and he’s been running. Lifting weights. The memory loss can…range,” the nurse says. “He may recall more this afternoon. Or next week. It could be a month or two. Some people never regain memories of the time before their treatment. Memory loss could go back several months. It’s different for every patient. Since his memory has been affected, we’ll have Dr. Katz call to touch base with you this evening or tomorrow. We may want to discuss moving from bilateral to unilateral. On the paper assessments, he did not score at a significant level for depression. Despite what you—and he—reported. So, unilateral may be more than enough for the remainder of the sessions. Especially given…these side effects.”
I stare up at the ceiling. Popcorn ceiling. I’m so…confused. I got football scholarships?
“Christopher? Are you awake?” My mom is leaning over me now. She’s got her hair curled, and I think she has on a dress.
I frown up at her, feeling...fuzzy. I think something went wrong. The nurse said that…right?
"Did I get a football scholarship?" My voice sounds weird and raspy.
Mom smiles. "Yes, you did. Do you remember which ones?"
"Ones?" The bottom drops out of my stomach.
"Yes. You have several choices." She smiles again.
I look around the room, feeling...nothing. I feel confused. Like I forgot something that I really need to say. But now I can’t remember it. The fuzzy feeling starts to turn to pissed off.
"Why am I here?" I look at the tall nurse, standing behind Mom. "I got scholarships and I forgot about them?"
I don't even notice that I'm sitting up till the nurse puts her hand on my shoulder. "Let's not get so agitated, Mr. Masters. Going home is dependent upon you being awake and calm enough to safely discharge. You don't want to make your mother feel unsafe, now do you?"
I lie back and shut my eyes.
Tightness.
My chest.
I feel like I can't breathe.
"How do you feel? It's okay to be angry. I don't want you being physical," the nurse says in a sing-song, preschool-teacher voice.
I put my arm over my eyes. It's...like I'm falling and I want to grab something. Need to. But I can't.
"How about some more relaxant medication?"
It's better to say yes. At this place. Better if they think you're on board. You don't want to be defiant in a place like this. Even in my current state, I know that.
“We still have your IV placed, so it will be fast,” the nurse promises.
I nod.
I close my eyes after. Think of... I can't think at all. My chest is still tight. Tears build in my eyes as Mom tells the nurse she'll take me home and take care of me.
I'm too tired to be mad.
Did I really miss my senior year? Or am I dreaming?
Warm under the blankets. Someone shaking me awake. Into the wheelchair. I don't like the halls here. I don't like the gray floors, gray walls. I remember—last time. I was here before. I wanted to die.
If nothing else, I guess I didn't die.
Mom says something. I'm so fucking high. It’s funny.
She says, "Christopher, we have to get up now and walk to the car."
Not we, my addled mind thinks. Only I do.
I get up. Why am I wearing real clothes? Was I not inpatient? I don't want to tell her I'm confused. She holds my hand to go down the stairs. Blue tile stairs. Like someone stole them from a plaza fountain.
My legs feel weird...like, shaky. I feel like I might pass out.
Don't pass out.
Mom's hand on my back. Into the van. And it’s weird to be in here. To smell the rubber-wax smell. Smells like childhood.
"You can lie down in the back seat if you want to. We can skip the buckle."
I get back there—barely. Lie down. I look at myself. Blue sweatpants and a T-shirt. Nike. Feeling dizzy. Empty-headed.
I rub the inside of my elbow. Stings a little. Always with the sore muscles.
I frown down at my bicep. What's that on it? My eyes are too blurry to read. I squint.
MILLER.
I stare at the word. I can't rip my eyes away from it.
MILLER.
My brain feels like someone's pulling it out through the back of my skull. Cold sweat prickles my skin. Then I'm getting sick. I shift onto my side to throw up—nothing but bile.
My mom swerves across lanes and then pulls over. I don't want her near me, but I can't sit up. I don't want to be her son. I don't want this.
I don't let her see the word. The name.
She stops at a gas station and gets a soda Icee for me.
“There now. Maybe that will settle your stomach.”
I drink some. I look down at the name again. And look at it. I look for so long that my eyes cross. Then I'm getting sick again, the Icee everywhere, my mother cursing in a soft hiss from the front of the van. Into the house, and she's holding my elbow.
I can barely walk up the stairs. My whole body feels weird—as if it's buzzing. My room. Mom says, "Get in bed, dear."
Into bed with no shirt. I'll take the pants off later.
"Remember, this is very normal. You'll feel better tomorrow. Here's your drink, there on the nightstand."
When she's gone, I get the Icee. Hold the cold cup to my cheek. I don't feel well. Something tugs at my mind. The name.
I look at the name. It's written on the lowest part of my bicep, inside my arm, above the bend in my elbow. MILLER.
All caps. Permanent marker.
I tip the Icee down and have a small sip of it. Then I start to cry.
Two
Josh
December 25, 2018
I sit up on the trestle bridge for almost an hour, but I don’t call. That’s a victory, at least.
Since he left a month ago, I’ve called dozens of times. I bet I’ve left at least fifteen or sixteen voice mails.
I don't do that anymore—the voicemails. I just can't.
I don't think I've called in...eight days?
It's not because I don't want to. I do. I want to call him every minute of the day, every day of the week. Not knowing what happened—not knowing where things went wrong—is like having an itch that I can never scratch.
When I think about it too long, my chest feels like it's being pried open, like something's ripping at me from the inside out.
I want him like a drug. I want him like nothing I've wanted before. In a way I didn't even know people could want things. I feel like I've lost a body part. That feeling in my chest—the painful, something's-breaking one—is with me almost all the time.
In the first few days, Mom and Carl treated me with kid gloves. I think Carl didn't quite believe that Ezra really left like that, so he talked to Ezra's mom and demanded to talk to Ezra. I was listening from the bottom of the staircase as Carl asked some questions. Just knowing Ez was around and capable of speaking, but not speaking to me, had me jogging up the stairs to my room.
Mom told me later that night that Ez told Carl he was feeling depressed and needed space, because that's what works best for him. That he was seeing an old therapist near his house in Richmond.
He was depressed. I can’t deny he never really seemed okay. But I thought I was helping him. That being with me made things easier. What a fucking idiot I was.
I thought we were in love. I did. I walk over the train tracks, back toward the Isabella mansion, where I parked.
We were in love. I thought how I felt, how he felt, was real.
But it wasn't.
Turns out it was only real for me. I try to tell myself, as I step from slat to slat on the tracks, that maybe that's not even right.
Maybe it wasn't real for me either.
But that's a lie. A coward's lie. I'm not a coward.
Ezra was a coward. He showed me all his cards when we first met, but I ignored them. I let him make me think we had something. Did he ever really even think we did, or was it always just a game to him, something to do in his spare time?
I ask myself this fifty times a day, and I think I can't answer.
I remember how he'd wrap me up against him, and for that reason—if nothing else—I think he must have felt real feelings for me. The way he'd fucking squeeze me. And his eyes. Sometimes when he looked at me, I swear—
I swallow before tears blur my eyes and try to fix my attention on the woods behind the derelict house. They're not really woods, I guess. Just...vines and grass and these big, mossy trees. It feels like another life when we sat under one of them, the weight of his torso on my lap.
It's quiet and cold out today. Kind of wet and humid, like it might rain. I get into my car and rest my forehead on the wheel before cranking it up. Then I reach into my glove box, turn the car off, get back out, and go sit on the steps of the house. Pull the last cigarette out of his pack and light the thing up.
I smoked the second-to-last one the day after he left. Just like that one, this tastes like shit and makes me cough like crazy. I don't want to do it anymore after the one-fourth mark, but I keep going. I don't even know why. I guess because I need something to make me feel like he was here. Like that shit really happened.
I feel sick when I'm finished with it. Maybe that's what I deserve—for not doing...whatever I should have done. To keep him here. To make him happy.
I wipe my eyes when I get into the car. Mom and Carl went to Carl's Dad's place in Mobile; dude is almost 80 and has Parkinson's, so he lives in a care facility. If Mom knew I was driving, she'd be pissed off, but I don't give a shit. I'm not gonna die at twenty miles an hour on the mostly empty streets of Fairplay.
Back home, I watch some TV on the couch, pick at some turkey and potatoes, and walk upstairs. Mom and Carl are supposed to be home now. Since they're not, though...
I walk through my room into the bathroom. His stuff was in here, but my mom moved it all. She put it in a drawer on his side of the bathroom. I don't open the drawer. I don't want to smell that stuff right now.
I turn the knob and open the door to his room slowly, like he's in there on the bed and I don't want to wake him.
He's not on the bed. Sometime in the week after he left, my mom made the bed. I go sit on it, look around the room. I've been in here two times before this. Checked his drawers. He left lots of what my mom bought. His clothes. Sometimes I want to wear them. Want to smell them.
I lie back on the bed, thinking of the one thing that he didn't leave. The one thing that makes no sense, that keeps me up at night, confused as hell, wanting to drink myself stupid so I don’t have to keep obsessing over this one weird fact: He didn't leave the football pillow that I made him.
Three
Ezra
December 27, 2018
“Did you increase meds as I advised?” Dr. Katz asks, over the phone line.
My mom answers, “Yes.”
She’s being quiet—maybe to keep this from Rich, my ex-stepfather, who Mom’s dating again, and who doesn’t want a fuck-up like me in the house—or, more likely, to keep me from hearing.
I hold the landline phone against my ear, smirking even as Dr. Katz says, “That’s a good thing. It’s a high dose. In a few more days, he’ll be more soundly medicated. Missing one session of ECT is okay. We can resume Monday.”
“I just want to get him out of this depression.”
I roll my eyes.
“I understand. Sometimes after one round of sessions, there can be a relapse. But it’s not to worry. Having such a strong semester—with the football, too—that says a lot about his resilience.”
I ease the phone back onto its base. Walk downstairs to get some fucking food. Since apparently I am a goddamn football god, I need to keep my weight up.
Saw my stats the other day online. God-like.
Do I remember any of it? Not a damn thing. Mom told me Carl was a dickwad and when he found out I’m gay, he called her up and told her that I had to go. Convenient that he called Mom up after I led his town’s team to an undefeated season. He told her they don’t roll that way in Alabama—no surprise. Seems like it was pretty shitty, so I guess it’s good I don’t remember.
I’ve felt tempted once or twice to check out social media. Try to figure out who I was hanging out with down there. See if “Miller” matches up to someone. But what’s the point? I’ve never been close to my dad. Honestly, I barely even know the guy. I don’t give a fuck about Alabama. There’s a guy from football that I might look up. Marcel Dubois. Seems like we played well together. He got some of the same scholarship offers I did. But…I guess I just don’t give enough of a shit.
I feel like I always do from all the meds I’m taking—like a piece of furniture. Life’s just boring. I’m so tired, sleep is honestly the best thing. I don’t feel like killing myself, so I guess that’s something.
College football was always my goal.
Mom said I told her the only thing I liked in Alabama was playing. I’m sure that’s true. I guess I must have gotten down there and gotten immersed in the game. Otherwise I would have fucking hung myself. That was the plan last year, I remember. I have memories from a few weeks before I went to live with Carl.
I step into the bathroom that’s attached to my room. Pull my dick out to take a piss. I squeeze it a few times, confirming I can’t feel a thing, but I don’t care. Who am I gonna get with? No one wants me. I don’t want that shit either. I’m too fucked up.
All I’m interested in right now is this fucking mystery shit on my chest.
I lift my shirt up, frowning at the tattoo in the mirror. Yeah—I got a fucking tattoo at some point. I don’t know when. I damn sure don’t know why. I haven’t shown it to my mom because I fucking hate her.
I rub my hand over the little symbol. It’s a little black infinity symbol, but the weird thing is, it’s not symmetrical. Looks like someone drew it on there with a pen or some shit—but it’s permanent ink. I frown at the thing, wishing I had some way to find out where I got tatted. I have a debit card and online bank account, but I don’t remember my password for either. It’s pretty weird the way I don’t remember anything.
But I don’t give a shit. Not really. What am I really missing? Other than this weird-ass tattoo.
It’s a blurry weekend. Maybe it’s the pills, but I feel sped-up. Panicked. When I get in bed at night, I can’t sleep, and I end up playing on my new cell phone for hours. Mom says I must have lost the old one. We can’t find it.
I can’t remember login info for any of my shit except Snapchat. I haven’t used that in a long time—since before Alton.
I make a new Instagram and look at football shit. Planning for next year. It’s weird, but it doesn’t bring me much joy.
I can’t get to sleep until the sun is almost up, and when I do, I dream of four dark walls and my handwriting and the whispering of nurses. Wake up screaming, and after that I get a shower. When I wake up screaming, no one ever comes. My mom pretends it didn’t happen. That’s because she feels like shit about it.
Two nights of dreaming, and shit’s worse for me on Sunday. I get the clawing feeling again, like my whole body is coiled up, desperate to grab onto something, stop the panic, but there’s nothing I can hold onto.
I take a walk around the neighborhood around sunset, checking out all the shiny new SUVs and big-ass yards with ivy-covered brick mailboxes, the status houses that look like mini-mansions.
I try to think about football. That’s always helped before, but this time it doesn’t do it for me. I still feel coiled up, a sense of panic just under the surface.
Back home, I take some pills I found in my old hiding spot. Couple Xanax and I’m nodding on my bed, looking at the glow stars I put on the ceiling back in eighth grade. Eighth grade, man. Nothing but football.
I fall asleep with my hand over the small tattoo. Wake up screaming at 3:20. This time, shit turns into crying in the shower.
I hate crying. Makes me feel so stupid. Helpless. I get out and wrap myself up in the covers—like a damn burrito. Then I watch the sky outside my window. When that’s not enough, I push the pane open and wish there was a little roof outside it that I could climb out onto. I don’t like a dark room. I don’t like the walls around me.
