As much as I don’t want to go back to a place with so many bad memories, I need to talk to Andy; I need to tell him what I just learned. He should know that whatever state his body is in right now is for a reason – to give him a second chance at life. He can’t just give up now.
Now that I’ve been here before, I remember the exact route I took to get to the third floor and it takes me half as much time to reach Andy’s room as it did then. His parents aren’t in the waiting room anymore, but they weren’t at his house when I looked for them there. I wonder where they are, but I don’t care enough to go searching for them.
Andy is in the stark white room when I phase through the door, hovering beside the bed his body is laying in with a somber expression on his face. His hands are pulling at the sides of his
sweater and his eyes look darker against the bright backdrop. At his side, his body is breathing slowly, hands loosely resting on the mattress and eyes still closed. The machine he’s hooked up to tells me that his pulse is slightly below normal, as is his blood pressure, but I don’t understand enough medical terminology to figure out what the rest of the numbers on the screen mean. Clearly he’s doing better, because the oxygen mask has been removed from his face and there’s one less bag of fluid attached to his IV than there was last time I was here.
“It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Andy says as soon as he sees me, jumping back a bit and disguising his surprised yell with a cough. The only problem is ghosts don’t cough, but I don’t call him out on it. He’s got enough on his plate without me adding embarrassment to the mix.
“Better alive than dead,” I say, nodding towards his steadily rising chest. “I hate hospitals, but I’d rather be here than in the morgue. I’ve had quite enough of dead bodies for a while, thank you very much.”
Andy smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. From this close, it’s easy to see the distinct differences between Andy’s spirit and his body. The face of the boy laying on the bed is much rounder and softer, with a curve to his chest that’s visible from beneath the pile of blankets pulled up to his chin. Andy seems to be focused on that aspect in particular, his eyes roving back to his torso every few seconds.
“Yeah, but it’ll happen soon, won’t it? I’m in a coma – that’s
what the doctor told my parents before they left. My mom was
crying; I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry.”
I want to remind him that his mother is part of the reason he’s in this mess to begin with, but I know that would be cruel. He doesn’t need another reason to hate his life – not now that I’m about to try to convince him to resume it.
“It might not happen. You could still wake up.” I point at the quietly beeping monitor by the bed, with wires running from the front to various pressure points on Andy’s body. “You’re still breathing; your heart is beating. You just need to… reconnect with yourself. Have you tried that yet?”
Andy shakes his head. “I’m not so sure that would work. You… My soul is out right now. You said there’s no way to put it back in. Just like with Jeremy.”
“And my mom.” He shoots me a concerned glance that doesn’t go unnoticed. “But I was wrong. I just talked to Mellie, and beyond her crazy God complex, she actually told me some pretty interesting things. Like the fact that you aren’t going to die, for one.”
“But I took…”
“Eight pills too few. Mellie hid some of them. Granted, she could have hidden a few more, just to make sure you didn’t end up in a coma or anything, but you’re still alive regardless.”
Andy still looks confused. I wish there was some way I could imprint my information on him without having to rehash the whole conversation I just had with Mellie. I hate repeating myself, and I’m tired; all I want to do is go back to Andy’s house and hang out for
the rest of the night, not sit in a hospital room wondering whether he’s going to end up dead or not.
“And I didn’t pull your soul out, by the way. It turns out that was just something Mellie made up to scare me. But I still killed Jeremy, apparently. It’s confusing, but the point is – you’re still alive, and you get a second chance! You should be thrilled. Why aren’t you thrilled?”
Apart from being happy, Andy looks more sullen now than he did before. His head is down and his mouth is pulled into a tight line that makes him look years older.
“Terra,” he says after a moment, his voice low, “I took those pills because I wanted to die. It doesn’t matter that Mellie’s the one who convinced me to do it, it’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I don’t want to go back.”
His words hit me like a bucket of ice; I shiver and they roll off of me and pile themselves in my stomach like a lead weight. I thought I stopped him; I thought meeting me was enough to keep him from the edge. What else was I wrong about?
“Andy, it’s not…” I weigh my words carefully. This might be my only chance to convince him. “It’s not all fun and games here, you know that. It’s death and misery and… and I can never go back. But you can. And you should.”
“Do you regret it? What you did?”
“I…” I don’t know what to say. I want to tell him that yes, I did – I regret my decision to take my life every single day. But that’s not entirely true, is it? I must have had a good reason for what I did.
Even now that my memory has started returning, and Mellie has filled in most of the gaps with her own information, I have to assume that what I did was the right thing. Otherwise, what’s the point in
anything at all? Living, dying, everything in between – it has to mean something. If it doesn’t, then nothing will ever get better and we’re all screwed.
And I don’t want to tell Andy that life sucks, and death sucks too, because that’s too morbid. I want him to know that he’s going to be fine once he wakes up – that everything will go back to normal, except a better, happier version of his normal life that he’ll actually want to live in. But the truth is that I know nothing. I can’t say for certain that he won’t feel like killing himself again next week, or the week after; I can’t tell him that his parents will stop being transphobic idiots or that Jeremy will be the last kid who ever beats him up. He’s got a rough road ahead of him just for being who he is, and I can’t lie to him about something that important.
“I don’t know,” I tell him instead, settling on a half-truth. “Sometimes I do, but other times I don’t. I just know that my life was awful before, and death is just as bad. But at least being alive means you can change things – things can get better. Here, you’re just stuck. Nothing ever changes.”
The heart monitor pulses a slow, steady rhythm in my ears. It’s calming, and it reminds me that Andy is still alive. He looks so peaceful laying on the hospital bed, like he’s just sleeping and not slowly losing his grip. I wonder how much time he has before his coma becomes permanent, because I got the feeling from talking to Mellie that it isn’t much.
“If Mellie hadn’t convinced you,” I continue after it becomes apparent Andy isn’t going to say anything, “would you still have done it?”
Andy looks like he’s thinking it over, his face screwed up in concentration. On the bed below his expression is neutral, calm and blank and wrong. I can see more than ever now that there’s no soul in his body; it’s just a shell with a heartbeat. It almost hurts to look.
“I think I might have,” he finally says. “Probably. Just not now.”
I know he’s telling the truth, and I’m grateful that he’s not lying for my benefit, but it’s still hard to hear.
“What do I have to say to convince you to at least try to go back?”
“Nothing. Don’t say anything.”
He turns and looks at the monitor, averting his eyes from both me and the still body at his side. I take one step forward, then another, reaching him before I lose my nerve and back out.
I wrap my hand around his wrist and pull, tugging his palm to my chest and over the place where my h
eart should be. His fingers are trembling.
“Look at me!” He brings his gaze up to my face for a second and then drops his head back down. “Look at me, Andy! What do you feel? When you touch me, what do you feel?”
“It… it tingles. Kind of itches.”
I shake his wrist, holding his hand so close that I have to focus to keep it from passing right through my body.
“What about here? Over my heart, what do you feel?”
“I… Terra, this is stupid. I don’t feel anything.” His trademark pout is on his face again, but for some reason it looks out of place.
“Exactly!” I say. “No pulse, no warmth, I’m no better than a walking corpse. But this…” I swing his hand around and lay it palm-down on his own chest, on the chest of the boy breathing softly on the bed below. “You’ve got a heartbeat, Andy. You’re warm and solid and alive. You can’t just give that up.”
Andy wrenches his hand out of mine and steps back, phasing through a mess of wires on his way around the bed.
“I can’t do this right now, Terra,” he says as he heads for the door. “I’m sorry.”
And I watch him leave, because I’ve done all that I can.
♠♠♠
I take on another death, because that’s all I seem to be capable of doing right now - an anonymous thirty-something female who dies in a room just one floor above where Andy’s body is being kept. I hear the doctor talking to her family members about cancer, and whatever options they might have left to continue treatment. I want to tell them that it’s too late, that she’s going to die any minute and they would be better off spending their energy saying goodbye than wasting time talking to the doctor. The woman herself looks fragile and beaten, with dark crescents under her eyes and patches of hair missing around her scalp. She looks ready to die, and when her eyes finally meet my own, I know that she is.
She’s suffering, and she believes that death would be a better
alternative to living in pain. Didn’t I believe that once upon a time too? Andy still does, and I don’t want to lie to him anymore. There’s
suffering no matter where you go – that’s the only truth I know.
But I still introduce myself to the dying woman, try to make her smile, and give her the whole pep talk about death and where she’ll be going next. She looks calm throughout my entire speech, nodding once or twice but never interrupting. I’m not even paying much attention to what I’m saying anymore; most of it is memorized, and I fill in a little with things that Mellie’s told me. It comes naturally, and I wish it didn’t, because that just means that I’ve been doing this job for too long.
I don’t even ask her name. I won’t know her for long enough for it to matter, and the more I get to know these people, the harder their deaths are for me to bear.
Mellie joins me a minute later, acting like nothing has happened between us this past week. She greets me with a smile and takes over the conversation, chatting with the woman – Eleanor – like an old friend. Now that I know her name, I can’t get it out of my head, and it bounces around my brain like a mantra. Eleanor. It suits her, and I find myself growing attached without even meaning to.
The monitor beside the bed starts beeping wildly as Eleanor’s heartbeat slows to a crawl; doctors and nurses burst into the room and try to resuscitate her, but it’s already too late. She passes peacefully, and her family watches through the gap in the door, two daughters and a husband that she’s leaving behind.
And, inevitably, I think about Andy. I imagine what he’s choosing to leave behind – a mother who belittles him for something he can’t control and a father who does nothing to stop her. And a friend who’s already dead.
I can understand his decision, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. He’s only fifteen years old, and he’s already so sure that he wants his life to be over. I mean, I was sixteen when I offed myself, but looking back on it now I realize my life wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought. It was depressing, and I wasn’t content with any aspect of it – obviously – but I had a loving father, a kind sister, and a handful of friends that might have included Andy someday. If I could go back and do it all over again, would I?
I somehow feel like my answer bears some weight, so I push it to the back of my mind for now. Once Andy’s situation has been resolved – one way or another – I’ll revisit it and sort out my own thoughts better.
“He’ll be fine,” Mellie says out of the corner of her mouth as one doctor tries again to restart Eleanor’s heart.
“Who says that’s what I’m worried about?” I whisper, even though nobody else can hear me anyway.
“Okay, then humor me. What’s got you all wound up today, besides boy troubles?”
“Can’t it be something normal for once? Like, puberty or teen angst instead of death and the aftermath?”
Eleanor’s spirit joins us silently, hovering at Mellie’s side
with a contented expression on her face; she looks like someone who’s just had a massive amount of pain lifted off of her shoulders. One of the doctors looks like he’s about to cry, but he just sniffles and calls out a time of death with a raspy voice.
“With you?” Mellie asks, looking at Eleanor but talking to me. “Anything is possible, I guess. But it’s always been about Andy,
hasn’t it?”
I want to argue with her, I really do, but I can’t. Because she’s right. Ever since I met him, my life – or death, rather – has revolved around Andy. Whether that’s good or bad, I’m still being pulled to him for some reason, and part of me thinks maybe it’s a little more voluntary than intentional.
“I just… I don’t want him to give up.”
Mellie takes Eleanor’s hand and begins to guide her away. She looks back at me with a weak smile on her face, a spark of light burning from behind her.
“Like you did?” she asks, and I should be angry, but I’m not. I think I’m too tired, or maybe I know deep down that she’s right.
“Yeah,” I say, and I watch them leave together. A sense of calm blankets the room and I know from the feeling and the blinding light that they’re going to Heaven. I guess now I know why Mellie never stays, but I still don’t know why I’m here. But now that I’ve killed someone, I’m bound to be destined for Hell; being stuck has to be better than eternal damnation, right?
Eleanor’s heart rate monitor glares at me from the other side of the room, the thin, straight line of her pulse blazing in my vision. I
wonder what it’ll be like when I see that same imagine on the machine next to Andy’s bed.
I don’t even notice that Andy’s watching through the window until I see him moving out of the corner of my eye, and by then he’s already leaving.
Chapter Thirty-One
I find him sitting on my gravestone, his feet swinging in the air and kicking up dirt.
He looks like he wants to be left alone. I shouldn’t disturb his peace, but I’ve been looking for him all morning and I can’t just leave him here. I owe him an explanation – a little more truth than I’ve given him so far.
He must see me coming, because as soon as I pass through the fence he stops swinging his legs, but he doesn’t turn in my direction. It’s kind of odd that he chose my gravestone to sit on, of all the shapes and sizes that would have been a little less awkward to perch on top of. Maybe he’s making a statement, or maybe he knew I would go looking for him and find him here. Andy doesn’t do things without good reasons.
Although, I made that assumption back when I thought I knew him. Now, I’m not so sure. He still acts like the same person, but he looks completely different and his attitude has changed. What
happened to the kid who promised me he’d never try to off himself
again because he was getting better? Or the one who made jokes with me and kept me company and never let a single thing bullies said get him down?
Or maybe he did and I just wasn’t watching closely enough.
“Hi, Terra,” he s
ays as soon as my feet hit the sparse grass around my grave. He finally looks at me, his eyes a dark shade of green that looks almost black in the shade.
“Andy.” I breathe out a sigh and sit down on the headstone of the grave next to my own – some woman named Sylvia who died over a century ago. “What are you doing here?”
“Thinking,” he says.
“About what?” I ask even though I already know the answer. What else is there to think about when you’re dead but death itself? It’s really depressing, but it’s the truth. Ever since I died, my death has been in the back of my mind like an echo; now, my mother’s, Jeremy’s, and even Mellie’s have joined it. And Andy’s too.
“What to do. Whether I should go back or not. I… I just don’t know.”
I want to yell at him, scream my lungs out telling him that his life is worth living and there isn’t enough time left for him to still be thinking about it, but I hold myself back. If he gets mad at me now, he’ll never go back.
“I know I can’t sway your decision,” I say, “one way or another. But… Just think it through first, okay? Both options.”
Andy nods, his expression grim. “I’m trying. It’s hard.”
“I know it is. If I’d had the option…” I pause and think, because I honestly don’t know what I would have done. At the time,
I was so depressed and wanted to die so badly that I think I would have chosen to stay dead no matter what, but now… After everything I’ve seen, all the horrible things I’ve done, and what I’ve learned about death and life and everything in between, I think I would choose to stay alive. I know it’s too late for me, but I don’t want it to take Andy months like it did for me to come to that conclusion; by then, it’ll be too late for him to go back.
“I would live,” I finish after a moment. A wave of relief washes over me at the realization; I think I’ve known it all along, but this is the first time I’ve been able to say it out loud. It hurts, but it’s also liberating. And way, way too late. “You asked me if I regretted killing myself, and I told you that I didn’t know. But I do. I regret it, Andy; I regret it so much. I missed my mom and I couldn’t see a way out of the hole I’d dug for myself, but I shouldn’t have given up like that. If I’d… If I’d stayed alive just a little longer, I might have met you – in person, for real. And that might have made a big difference, I don’t know.”
Death in Spades Page 24
