Thirty Hours: a semi memoir of psychosis and love

by KL Evans

  I didn’t want to talk to her and waited until the last possible ring before picking up, and answered with, “How’s it going over there?”

  “Everything’s fine here,” she said. “Christian is stable and Missy’s sitting with him. How’s Charlie?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not? What happened? Something happened, didn’t it? What happened?”

  “Ava…” I said with a sigh while covering my face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Is she okay? She sounded so ups—“

  “She’s not okay. That’s all I’m going to tell you right now because I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh God, Seth, what did she do?”

  “I’m not going to talk about it right now. I’ll talk about it later.”

  “Later when? What’s going on?”

  “Jesus Christ, Ava. Will you back off? I can’t… like… do this… not right now. Can you just ignore your insatiable need to be in the know for, like, one afternoon?”

  “Are you crying? Oh my God, Seth, what is going on?”

  I ended the call, deciding a text message might be easier to explain. It wasn’t. I punched out several variations of the information before finally settling on, “She did it again, but worse this time. She’s in critical condition and I don’t know how this is going to end.”

  Not even a minute after hitting send, my phone began ringing again. I sent the call to voicemail and sent a subsequent message.

  “Not now. I can’t right now. If you want to help, I’ll need a ride back to my car later.”

  “Where’s your car?” came her reply.

  “At her house.”

  “How’d she do it?”

  God damn, Ava was positively maddening. But I noticed she was also a bit of a distraction and somehow typing the words was a bit easier and made me feel a bit of a release. A release of what, I have no idea. Maybe a release of hope. And whether that hope was released to me or from me, I also had no idea, but it seemed to matter very little.

  “She shot herself in the head.”

  “HOLY SHIT.”

  “I know.”

  “But she survived it?”

  “So far…?”

  “So if she didn’t die instantly, she could pull through right?”

  “That’s what they’re trying to make happen at least.”

  “Well, what kind of gun was it?”

  “The officer said a .38 special.”

  “That’s a puny gun, Seth. I bet she’s going to pull through.”

  “A puny gun at point-blank range is still lethal.”

  “Not necessarily. They probably just need to get bleeding and swelling under control and then I bet she’s in the clear.”

  “You’re extremely optimistic.”

  “Well, you’re extremely pessimistic about everything, so one of us should try to keep the faith.”

  “Faith in what, exactly?”

  “Faith in the idea that maybe even when everything looks hopeless, it’s still possible for something good to happen.”

  “You weren’t there. You don’t know.”

  The text messages flew back and forth between the hospital in Fort Worth and the hospital in Dallas for hours. My battery was at eight percent and the time on the screen read 9:38.

  “Are you here for Charlotte Reid?”

  I more or less jumped out of the chair. “Yes. Charlotte Reid, my girlfriend.”

  The doctor wore dark blue scrubs, a rainbow surgical cap, and an expression that made me feel like vomiting again, hands clasped at the level of her waist. “She’s out of surgery. Right now she’s—“

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, still thick in the middle of denial and hastily punching out an I’m turning my phone off message to Ava. “She is? How’d it go? If she’s out of surgery, that probably means she—“

  “She’s not showing any brain activity,” the surgeon said abruptly, but gently. “Her brain was already too swollen. Even if the swelling went down now, there was extensive damage to the cerebellum that may have damaged the brain stem. Taking her off the ventilator would be certain death, as she is unable to breathe on her own.”

  I blinked.

  I blinked again.

  I blinked a third time and it seemed I’d been rendered imbecilic. “What do you mean?”

  “What’s your name?” she asked, still gentle.

  “Seth.”

  “Seth, we did everything we could for her, but the damage was too extensive. She’s not going to recover from this. At this point, the options are to leave her on life support indefinitely or take her off. Taking her off will end her life. So you and her family are going to have to make some decisions. I understand this is extremely upsetting to hear and that you’ll need time to digest all of it, so don’t feel like there’s any hurry to make those decisions.”

  “Oh.”

  What the fuck else was I supposed to say? Especially since what I heard didn’t completely register. So I went with the most logical thing I could come up with in my sudden shock-induced stupor.

  “But she doesn’t have any family.”

  Which, of course, was stupefied Seth-speak for, since she has no family, there’s nobody to make those decisions, so this situation doesn’t exist.

  The surgeon’s expression pinched slightly as if the tidbit of information were painful—and, truthfully, it was—and she touched my forearm. “That may complicate things, but none of it has to be dealt with right now. You can see her now if you’d like.”

  A rock seemed to have lodged itself in my throat, so I merely nodded.

  I followed her to an elevator I’d been in before—not even that long ago—briefly saw my reflection in the stainless steel, and I couldn’t look at myself.

  When the doors opened, I once again found myself stepping into the ICU, but there was no triumphant swagger this time; no patting myself on the back like when I finally figured out your name. That name, which had felt like an imaginary signpost on the journey to my destination of finding out who you are, was now itself the destination.

  Reid, C. read the small whiteboard next to a room at the end of the hall, scrawled in black dry-erase marker by a nurse’s hurried hand. Like an absurdly informal headstone.

  I didn’t want to come in here. I didn’t want to see you like this. I’d seen your sister like this and I knew what happened to her, and I didn’t want that to happen to you, and I didn’t want to see you like this.

  I stood outside that door and, because I’d seen your sister, I had an idea of what you’d look like. The mental image in my head wasn’t accurate other than two aspects—the most distressing aspects if you’d asked me, but you couldn’t ask me, could you?

  The first time I saw you, despite the fact that you were stark naked in public, I noticed two things about you: your eyes and your hair. The more time I spent with you, the more I got to know you, the more my affection grew, the more I loved your eyes and your hair. When I walked into this room, I was hit like a two-by-four to the back of my head that I’d never see either of those again.

  With you propped up in the bed, still and pallid like a corpse, tubes threading in and looping around, I saw only your closed eyelids and close-shaved head.

  Someone in scrubs—who may have been the surgeon or possibly a nurse, but I didn’t know which and didn’t care—said something to me that didn’t register, and then left the room, closing the door behind her. Then we were alone together like so many times over the past seven months, but this was different because this time I knew I’d be the only one doing the talking.

  Stage four: depression.

  “Oh Charlie,” I started to say, but the latter half of your name tripped and stumbled over the rock in my throat and subsequently spilled out in the form of a single sob. I am not a man who cries, so I quickly clasped my mouth.

  A chair was positioned courteously next to the bed; conveniently close to your limp hand and its nails adorned w
ith chipped, black polish. I sat.

  I sat. I picked up your hand. It was still warm. I listened to the steady, repeating beeps from a machine that told me you were still here, but not entirely. Not of your own volition or choosing. But for the moment, you were still here. I continued holding your hand while I set my elbow on the mattress next to your hip and rested my chin in my palm.

  I waited.

  I thought about what I was waiting for and wondered if there was a way to stop waiting and eliminate the inevitability of that particular inevitability.

  I was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue and the desire to sleep and I thought about the last time I’d slept. The last time I’d slept—the last many times I’d slept—I’d slept with you, in your house, in your bed, with your damn cat curling up on the pillow just above our heads. It was only that morning. Only a matter of hours ago, and yet it may as well have been a previous generation or a distant memory that was only going to grow smaller and smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror of my life.

  And I was so tired. Emotional trauma is exhausting, and can’t we just go to sleep so we can wake up later only to realize all of this was just a horrible dream? No. I held your hand against my chest and laid my cheek on the sheet covering your slender thigh. Still warm.

  I counted the beeps.

  I didn’t move.

  I exhaled.

  Wait.

  I inhaled.

  You didn’t stir.

  I looked at you.

  You didn’t stir.

  I exhaled.

  Wait.

  I blinked.

  The clock ticked.

  The heart monitor chirped.

  You didn’t move.

  Still warm.

  Wait.

  Footsteps approached the door and I lifted my head. A woman I hadn’t seen yet entered the room carrying paperwork at which I raised one eyebrow.

  “You’re Seth?” she asked, stopping at the foot of the bed.

  “Yes.”

  She glanced at the paperwork. “And you’re Charlotte’s partner?”

  “Well… I mean…” Partner suddenly sounded so official; way more official than what we had, and that was my fault. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Do you two have a domestic partnership or a common law marriage or—”

  “No,” I interjected, incredulous. “She’s just my…”

  I wonder if I should have lied. I wonder if that would have made this better or different. I wonder if it would have made me feel better or worse. The naïve part of me wants to believe it would have saved your life, but the rational part of me knows even if they somehow fell for it I could only continue your life in the most basic sense of the word. I couldn’t save your life—nobody could—for all of the reasons we were in that situation in the first place.

  “I know this is a very difficult situation,” the woman said kindly.

  “To say the least.”

  “But, just to clarify, you don’t have a Medical Power of Attorney or Consent to Medical Treatment?”

  “I don’t have anything. I’m just…” What am I to you? I kept calling myself your boyfriend, but you never called me that.

  If you could speak, what would you have told them? I have my own ideas, but I’ll never know if you agreed with me, will I?

  “It’s not uncommon, unfortunately,” the woman went on. “The State of Texas isn’t very obliging toward partnerships that don’t fall within the parameters of a legal marriage. What is uncommon is the fact that she doesn’t have anyone to make these decisions for her. She has no next of kin. I understand you know her sister was treated here last year before Charlotte took her off life support. Their parents had previously died.”

  “I know that.”

  “So because she has nobody to legally make decisions for her, her case is going to be brought before the medical board and they’ll decide what’s to be done moving forward.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Holy shit.”

  “You do have the option of filing to become her court appointed guardian,” the woman said. “To do that, you would have to prove in court that the two of you had an informal marriage and, if approved, you would be legally recognized as her spouse. The court would then also have to determine that she is legally incapacitated and in that case, you would have the highest legal priority to become her guardian. With that status, you would be given full medical decision making authority.”

  “Authority to what?” I queried with no small amount of lingering incredulity. “Tell you guys to pull the plug?”

  “It would then be up to you how long to keep her on life support, yes,” she answered, still kind and compassionate. “That’s a difficult choice to make and you may need more time than you think in order to go through with it. Without that status, the timeframe would be out of your control. Some people prefer to have that control.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t need any control.”

  “So are you officially waiving that option?”

  “Officially official… whatever.” I waved my hand. “I’m not irrationally desperate. I know what’s going on. You guys just do what you gotta do. I’m going to stay here.”

  “Okay,” she said, scribbling something on one of the papers. “The process can sometimes take up to a week, but based on her condition I would anticipate it not taking very long.”

  I swallowed. “How long?”

  “If I had to guess, I would say about a day or two at the longest.”

  “And once they make that decision, you guys would… that would be when you…”

  “Once we have the decision, we would terminate life support.”

  Something about hearing her say that caused my stomach to turn and I broke into a sweat. “What am I supposed to do until then?”

  “Just talk to her,” the woman said gently. “Be here. Be with her. In a way, she’s still here. Talking to her and being with her will help you. Maybe it’ll help you both.”

  As the woman let herself out of the room, I found myself boring holes in the back of her head with my eyes and out of nowhere, a chill rushed up my spine and I heard the quiet hiss of that voice again.

  She’s going to die, Seth. And you’ll just sit there and watch. You can’t help her. You won’t help her. You’ll just relay the aftermath. That’s what you do.

  This was the twisted follow-up to the story I’d already written. The one that, when my editor caught wind of it, I’d be expected to write. And if you’d been just another subject, I’d probably have rubbed my chin and said, “Wow. How tragic. That’s awful. It’ll be so compelling.”

  But since you weren’t just another subject, not anymore, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was write a compelling follow-up. At least, not this one. And despite telling the kind woman with the paperwork that I was not irrationally desperate, that’s exactly what I became.

  The voice said I’d sit there and watch, so fuck you, creepy, unexplainable voice, I stood up and began pacing the room, staring at the clock and racking my brain.

  In 2015, Northwestern University conducted a study of comatose patients who were repeatedly told their names and the stories of their lives by loved ones. The study showed that it triggered awareness and activity in the patients’ brains. Twelve of the patients recovered.

  Stage one: denial.

  The time on the clock read 9:57 and I rubbed my sweaty palms together because I was about to initiate a medical miracle.

  “Okay, Charlie. Listen up,” I began. “Time is all we’ve got left right now and I’m not the kind of person who wastes time. I realize you were really fucking committed to this little plan of yours, but I don’t think you had enough information to realize it was a horrible fucking idea, so I’m going to give you a chance to try again. Got it?”

  I stared at your motionless face and your shaved head and your eyelids that hid the gray-blue I wanted to see so badly. Then I marched across the room, dropped myself in the chair, and picked up your hand.r />
  “You know, truthfully… time is all any of us have.”

  I rubbed your hand as I thought about where I was trying to go with this. I glanced at the clock again. It was 9:59 and I managed to come up with something.

  “At the moment we’re born,” I went on, “we are given a name, we’re immersed in a culture, sometimes a religion or a set of beliefs determined by parents or guardians. A doc slaps you with a gender and doesn’t have the decency to ask your opinion about it. The state provides us with an identification number. All these things are given to us by various entities, but the one thing we truly, intrinsically possess is time.

  “What we choose to do with our time determines the course of our lives. We spend our lives trading our time for things. Whether we trade it for relationships, or an education, or a paycheck, or hobbies, or to serve others, the currency with which we barter for everything is our time. What we choose to purchase with our time shapes us. Defines us. None of us know how much time we ultimately have—”

  I dropped your hand and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes because I couldn’t fucking believe any of this and it was making me resort to soliloquizing about shit that didn’t matter.

  “But I digress because none of that matters right now, and I’m wasting time, and I don’t waste time.” I sighed loudly and picked up your hand again. “Back to us. Time is all we have. You and me. Right now. We have some time and I don’t know how much. What I choose to do with this undetermined amount of time could determine the course of the rest of your life and mine. And do I have the temerity to believe I wield that kind of power?”

  I paused and my gaze briefly shifted away from and back to your motionless face. “Well… yes. But desperation will do that to a person, won't it? And desperation is why I’m not going to hope right now. I’m just going to talk. You need to know I want you and I want you here. With me. There are so many reasons for you to stay here and be here. I don’t think I did a good job communicating that to you before now, hence your obvious insistence upon following through with your plan to leave me like this. You need to know my side of the story, so I’m going to tell you everything I know about us and everything I know about you.