Together, A Short Story

                                                      Together

What do you do when the one person you have loved completely falls into deep despair? What do you do when you know that there is nothing left for you to do? No way for you to help? How do you cope when being there and loving him just isn’t enough anymore? Would you stay? Could you watch your one true love drown himself in depression and alcohol and worse each day? Would you seek help even though he might as well be a million miles away? How do you give up on your love after everything the two of you have been through, after everything you have shared? Can you stop loving the man you know you’re meant to be with?
Only those who loved as deeply and truly as I have, and have had their heart broken by the hopelessness and desperation of depression can know what this feels like. It is a pain like no other. It is a pain that is deep, and it is a pain that doesn’t heal. It is always there in the form of his voice, screaming at the back of your mind, reminding you every time you laugh, every time you start to feel good again, every time you feel yourself falling for another man. Hey! What about me! Have you forgotten already? And you will tell yourself no. You have not forgotten him, you still love him, you always will. And you will stop laughing, you will stop feeling good, and you will quietly excuse yourself from the bar where you are sitting with this new man, you will slip out of the room, anonymous to the faces around you, you will disappear. Returning to your quiet lonely life without the man you have always loved.
You will wake up late at night, just having had a nightmare, and you will remember the first night you found him. He was sleeping on the couch surrounded by bottles. Whiskey, vodka, beer, rum. Anything he could get his hands on. Hundreds of bottles strewn around the living room of his apartment. On the tables, on the floor, smashed against the walls, sending spatters of amber liquid running down the light grey of the wallpaper. The smell of vomit is overpowering. You gag; you feel the bile start to climb your throat along with whatever it was you ate for supper. But you force it down. You have to be strong now; you have to be strong for him.
You wade through the bottles to the other side of the living room, to your love lying unconscious on the sofa. He smells even worse than his house does, and you realise that most of the smell is coming from him. You lift him up as well as you delicate frame will allow you, and you drag him into the bathroom and lay him down in the tub, pouring cold water over his head to try and wake him up. It doesn’t work. You run to the kitchen and grab the pale blue phone hanging on the wall. You dial 911. The ambulance makes it just in time.
Two weeks later your love is released from the hospital. You ask what happened.
“She broke up with me.” Is all he says. And that’s when you realise what this was all about. Ana, his girlfriend has dumped him for another guy. Your love tried to kill himself over a girl you have always hated, a girl who has been cheating on him. He thanks you for saving him, then pulls out a cigarette and lights it. The wind takes the smoke away behind you, your love stares off into the distance, in a direction you know to point towards her house.
Or maybe that is not the scene replayed in your head. A month after your love tried to drink himself to death, he tried it again. This time is different. You weren’t the one to find him.
It is two o’clock in the morning when the phone rings. You scramble around in the dark, blindly reaching until you feel the cold plastic on your fingers. You push the talk button and mumble into the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Is this Miss. Harwell?” A fast talking voice replies on the other end

“Yes it is.”

“We are going to need you to come down to the hospital. We have someone here who has been asking for you.” You don’t even answer the nurse. You hang up and throw yourself out of bed, reaching in the dark for a pair of dirty jeans, and an inside-out sweatshirt. You hurry down the stairs of your apartment building and run to your car. You make it the hospital in just under ten minutes. You run through the hospital until you reach a nurses station. The nurse tells you where to find your love and you hurry down the hall, anxious to see what he has done to himself this time. You walk into the room and gasp in shock and horror. You love is laying on the bed unconscious, the doctor tells you that he was found on the ground beneath his seventh story window. Apparently he fell out. But you know deep in you heart that he did not fall. He tried to do it again. You sink into a deeply uncomfortable chair beside the bed. The doctor adjusts something in the drip bag and then leaves. His white coat seems to billow out behind him just a little.
You look at your love, lying on the bed, covered in deep cuts and gashes. But he looks peaceful and you don’t wake him. Instead you cry. You cry because you know what this was about, you know you could have prevented it. You know you should have beaten the hell out of Ana when she went back to him. You begged him not to take her, you told him about her cheating, about all the horrible things she said about him behind his back, you make up some things to make it sound even worse. But he doesn’t listen. He is back with Ana, and now you know that she has dumped him once again.
You don’t know how long you have cried, but eventually the tears stop coming though you still sob into your hands. Your love wakes up and you start at the sound of his voice. Scratchy and pained from the fall and disuse. You stare deep into his eyes; you have always found their hazel depths to be mesmerising. They make you feel safe.

“Did you tell them?” He asks

“Tell them what?” you answer coldly

“That I didn’t fall.”

“Of course not.” You don’t know why you guard his secrets, maybe its because you are trying to gain his trust. Trying to make him realise that you love him, maybe your hoping he will love you to. But he does not love you. Not in the way you need him to. He loves you as a friend. Or worse, he loves you as a sister. That is what you fear.
Your eyes start to tear again, and you feel hurt. You know he only called you here to make sure you wouldn’t tell. Your love drifts back into uneasy sleep, and you begin to cry once more. You leave the room, and walk slowly to your car. Your love will be released again in a couple of days, but he will not have a place to live by then. His landlord is kicking him out. You will be back in exactly three days to pick up your love and bring him to your house. He will stay there until he is healed, after that…you don’t know.
The months that follow are rocky for you. You are constantly on the edge. Every time the phone rings you fear it is someone calling to tell you your love has finally succeeded in his mission. When you don’t hear from him for a couple of days you go to his new apartment to check up on him. He makes fun of you and tells you to leave. He’s fine he says. He won’t try it again. But you don’t believe him. In your heart you know he will.
Seven months go by. You start to ease up on him. You start to believe him, you only check on him once a week instead of once a day. You stop going to his house when he doesn’t call. You stop waking up in the middle of the night. But you still love him. You see him sitting in a bar one night, surrounded by girls. You don’t go into the bar, you just watch from the sidewalk outside. He looks so happy and at ease. You watch as he makes a joke and the girls all laugh. You are happy for him, but you want to be one of those girls. You want to be in that bar, hanging on his every word and you want to laugh at his jokes, which you know are cheesy. But you don’t go in you keep walking. He never even knows your there. 
Eight months have gone by now. You are driving home from work late one night. You haven’t seen your love for a while, and you don’t know how but you find yourself heading towards his apartment. You turn down his road; and notice there are no lights coming from his windows. You park your car and head up the steps. He is on the first floor. You made sure of that when he moved in. you walk up the steps and down a hallway. You knock on his door. No answer. You turn the knob; it is unlocked. Slowly you walk in, calling his name. You hear nothing. You flip on lights. All the lights you can find, and you see an opened letter on the table. You read it and your heart sinks, you are unable to breath. You know where he is.
You run down a short hallway to his bathroom and you find him. Your love is lying in the tub, deep gashes cut into his wrists. The blood flows freely and his head rests limply on his chest. You rush over to him grabbing towels to stop the blood. You press the towels against the arm closest to you and look at your loves face. His eyes flutter open for the briefest of moments. You can feel your heart pounding against your chest. You say his name and he opens his eyes again and weakly looks towards you. He asks if it is you. And you say yes. He doesn’t say anything else for at little. You continue to mop up blood keeping pressure on his wrists. But it is coming to fast and if you leave he will surely die.

“Angie.” He says. You look at him, recognising your name.

“I’m here.” You reply beginning to cry.

“I love you.” He says. Those are his last words. He slips out of consciousness for the last time. You watch helplessly as his breath grows shallow, and his pulse grows faint, when you can’t feel it you finally tear yourself away and call 911. The next time you see your love is the day they bury him. Nobody there is as upset about his death as you are.
So when you are sitting in that bar with that new man, laughing and having a good time for the first time in months, you will remember your love. The only man you ever really loved, the only man who ever really loved you back. You will excuse yourself and leave the room. No one will notice. You will leave the bar and go back to your apartment. You will sit on your couch and think of him. You will dwell on why he never told you, why he waited until the end.
         You will get up and go into your kitchen. You will pick up a sharp knife from the drawer and you will head into your bathroom. You will begin to cut, like you have so many times since the death of your love. But you will find that tonight it isn’t enough. So you fill the bathtub with warm water, slip in and slit your wrists. You do this so nonchalantly that someone watching would think you had done it a million times before. But you haven’t.
         You will sit there watching the dark blood drip and swirl into the warm water. You feel detached from the world, like this is not really happening. Soon you feel weak, and your head falls to your chest. Your breathing slows and stops and your pulse grows faint. Your last thought is of him, you hope that wherever this suicide takes you, whether heaven or hell, you will be together.