by Dan Mooney
“Except at the end.”
They haven’t given up on you yet, Denis. This is tough love. They’re more worried that you’ve given up on yourself. Looks like it’s working. She’s a piece of work, that one.
“I’ve been lucky.”
Not lucky, it’s a sign of the kind of good person you are underneath it all that they stuck by you. If you were an asshole, they’d have left long ago.
“I meant lucky with her.”
Oh good heavens yes. With her? Absolutely. Luckier than you’ll ever know. I guess most people will go through their entire lives not knowing the kind of unreserved love she had for you. Most people will weigh up love and decide when it’s become too inconvenient to continue. Not her.
“I did.”
I know.
“I wish I hadn’t.”
I wouldn’t worry too much about it now. Done is done.
“She deserves better.”
Indeed.
“I should have been better.”
Like I say, there’s no point in griping about it now. You’ve done what you’ve done and been the way you’ve been. Now you’re taking steps.
“I want the guilt to be gone, and the grief. I’m so tired of holding on to it.”
Holding on to it is what made you sick in the first place, but you should always keep just a little bit, to remind you of what you’ve lost, only just a tiny little bit. These things, tragic though they may be, are part of life. They happen.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Denis grimaced.
It’s not supposed to, and it’s only barely relevant. You’ve got a solution here. You’ve got to make it work.
“What will happen when I’m gone?”
Nothing. We’ll leave too. We won’t follow you though.
“I can hardly remember a time without you.”
Be strong, Denis. Don’t lose your way here. A decision’s been made. You felt better the second you made it, even though you hardly knew you had. Stick to your guns.
“It’s not easy, Deano. I’m lost again. In between the cracks again. And my major support for the last six years has been all of you. It’s not easy to just throw that away.”
Your major support has been yourself. You’re doing the right thing by me anyway. There’s got to be an endgame, Denis. You’re on the right track.
“I guess I better get to it before I lose my courage.”
Then this is goodbye. You won’t be seeing us again.
Denis blinked and Deano was gone. Had he imagined it? The terrible thing about being insane, Denis realized, is that there’s almost no way to tell the difference between real and imaginary.
He changed his mind and wrote two more emails, quickly this time, as he felt his iron will dissolving. The last thing he needed was for Plasterer to walk back in and change his mind for him. It was time. The house was clean, loose ends tied up. There was only one thing left to do.
I COULD TRY
Denis woke up in a hospital bed and immediately began scanning the room. He had been dreaming, well, nightmaring, actually, if such a phrase exists.
Plasterer had been there, and Penny, and the Professor, drinking with him in a bar that seemed to get smaller and dirtier every time he took a sip from the pint of blood in front of him. Blessedly, the details began to evaporate from his mind almost as soon as he woke, wisps of smoke that were almost tangible, but not quite. He remembered he had been woken by a voice; it had drifted into the dream.
“I bet he’s crazy. I always get the crazy ones.”
Seeing no one, Denis began to feel panic rising in his chest. Were they here? What if they had followed him to the hospital when he had checked himself in the day before? What if they had heard all the things he had told his doctor about them?
He couldn’t see them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He began to hyperventilate.
“You okay over there?” the voice asked.
It was coming from behind a curtain. In his drowsy and drug-addled state, he had failed to remember that he was in a two-person room, and the voice belonged to his fellow patient.
He sucked in great big calming breaths.
“I’m fine,” he told the voice.
“Besides the crazy, you mean?”
“Obviously,” Denis countered and smiled.
He was going to ask the man what his name was when Dr. Davis strolled in, smiling warmly. It suited his face. Warm, open.
“How you feeling this morning, Denis?”
“Fine, Doctor, thanks.”
“Just fine?”
“Better than I was yesterday.”
“A good start, then. You can call me Dean, by the way.”
Dean. His name made Denis laugh out loud.
“Mind if I don’t?” he asked, composing himself.
“Up to you,” he told Denis, joining in the laugh. “How would you feel about a visitor? I believe your mother got your email, and she’s very keen on seeing you, but I don’t want to put you under any stress for your first full day here.”
“No, please. Send her in.”
Dr. Davis nodded and withdrew, leaving Denis with his roommate.
“Is your mom crazy?” the voice behind the curtain asked.
“No crazier than me.”
“Not much of an answer.”
“Wasn’t overly fond of the question, to be honest.”
“Oooooh tetchy.”
“Do you mind?”
There was something soothing about the idea of having a roommate for his stay in the psychiatric ward. However long it may be. A feeling of journeying together. Denis just worried that if he had to keep putting up with the not-so-clever quips, it might become a little trying. He was about to introduce himself formally when his mother walked in.
She didn’t stop, or hesitate; she smiled a little sad smile and hugged him. It may have been the drugs in his system, or the realization of a first day back on a long road, but Denis didn’t recoil, he let her hug him, and then, after a moment or two to calm himself, he hugged her back. He felt her arms tighten as she sobbed very gently for her poor, sick child. He gritted his teeth and endured it. Grateful that, for once, he could give her back something she had offered for seven years. A small gesture. Tiny, really, but a start.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, her concern stamped all over her face.
“Fine,” he told her.
She nodded at him, but her eyes tightened. Something about her expression spoke of disappointment. He looked away so he wouldn’t have to see it. The absurdity of his reply struck him.
“I’m not fine,” he told her, in a rush, still looking away. “I’m not fine, Mom. I’m tired, and I’m sick, and I feel broken.”
The medication kept the tears from his eyes.
She reached out a hand and clasped his.
“It’s okay to feel that way, love. It’s okay.”
“I feel like I’ve gone insane.”
He waited for a smart comment from behind the curtain, but there was only silence.
“I want to be better,” he told her.
“And you will be,” she replied.
“You might be,” the voice said.
Denis looked at the curtain, then at his mother. If she had heard anything, she gave no sign. A worm of doubt crept into Denis’s stomach. The doctor, his mother, two out of two people who couldn’t hear what he could. Or could they? He had to know. He reached for the curtain.
“Can I get you something?” she asked.
Denis ignored her, stretching out his fingers, brushing the plastic material.
“Are you okay, love? Do you need something?”
Denis shuffled himself around on the bed to give himself more room and grasped at the curtain, pulling it back.
“Denis!” his mother admonished. “Leave that man alone.”
“Do you mind?” asked his roommate.
Denis sighed in relief.
“I’m allowed to check,” Denis told the burly man. “I’m crazy, remember.”
* * *
During his first week in the hospital, Denis had four panic attacks and had nightmares of Plasterer every night. Hiding in the darkest corners of his mind, his onetime friend stalked Denis’s dreams, spittle flying from his lips as he raged. Denis felt the memory of his gloved fist, recalled the feeling of his fingers closing around his throat and woke in a sweat. The clown followed him into his sleep, but apparently nowhere else. Dr. Davis adjusted Denis’s medication accordingly. It numbed him at first, and he sat through his group therapy sessions in half a daze, but day by day the fog seemed to clear.
During his second week, Denis had only two panic attacks, and four of his nights were dreamless. He woke on the days after dreamless sleep feeling fresh, and almost powerful. He told his story in group therapy and found that for the first time in his life, he could talk his way through the crash, through the devastation without breaking down. He could still feel his grief, but it no longer consumed him entirely. Where once it had felt all encompassing, he now felt like he could look at it, as if from a great distance, and see it for what it was. He talked constantly: to other patients, to different doctors, to nurses, in groups and one-on-one. Denis found himself emptying himself of all the words he had, and filled up the space inside that they had occupied with a sense of well-being that had been lacking for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like. It was nice. He hoped to never lose it again.
His roommate, Stephen, as it turned out, was both a source of amusement and irritation in equal measures. He talked in his sleep, he talked to, with and at the television. He laughed at inappropriate times and scorned the other patients for being crazy. But he was nice. He often had a kind word, and for all his not-so-clever quips, Denis was glad of the man’s company.
By the end of the third week, Denis’s greatest source of anxiety was his impending release. His sleep had become regular, his dreams pedestrian, and his only problem at night was the sound of snoring from the bed next to his.
The thought of the outside world was both exhilarating and terrifying. What if they were waiting for him back in his house? What if they weren’t? He tried not to think of them. Tried to force them not to be part of his reality. During the times that he was pretending they had never existed, his face took on a calm, composed look, his eyes faraway. To those watching from the nurses’ station he was meditating.
On the day of his release he had his second, third and fourth visitors. They had come to move him home.
Ollie and Frank were tentative. In all their years of joking and messing and trying to shock Denis back into being human, neither had imagined that it might happen like this. They patted his shoulder as he sat with them in the communal area, still wearing his nightclothes. They made no jokes, but forced themselves into jovial conversation. He sat there and tried to put them at their ease, despite his rumpled hair and wrinkled pajamas. This was a brand-new Denis, one they had never known, one who wanted to be better, but knew that this goal might take a lifetime to achieve.
Rebecca didn’t attempt to force joviality, she measured him with her eyes, seeing immediately what the others were still trying to figure out. A new person, built out of parts of the old one. Denis decided that she approved of what she was seeing, but even so, her wondrous, brilliant, wide smile that warmed her face remained absent. He had earned that. He had wounded her badly.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” she asked, cutting through the banal chitchat.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He smiled at her, and for the first time since she walked in, she smiled back. A small, tentative smile, but a smile.
“Yes. I would like you to.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
He did think so.
They left that afternoon with the blessings of Dr. Davis and a long list of appointments he had to keep. Doctors, therapists, dietitians, counselors. His medicine bag he carried himself, while Frank and Ollie carried his luggage. He shook Stephen’s hand and then passed the older man a box of antibacterial wipes so he could scrub his hands clean.
* * *
He stood at the gate of his house for a while before entering. He could feel the anxiety churning up his stomach, but it was smothered by a blanket of medication and a resolve to be better, to feel better, that he hoped would see him through the tough moments that were undoubtedly ahead. The front door stared back at him without saying a word. He opened it without ceremony and let them all in.
“I’m sure there’s food that needs to be thrown out,” he told them as they made their way into the kitchen.
“Don’t be silly. Your mother and I took care of that two weeks ago,” Rebecca replied.
Two weeks ago. He smiled at the thought. She never stopped caring for him, even when he couldn’t see it.
He checked the living room for signs of life. Nothing. He strained his ears in his office, looking for any noise, a whisper of words being said. Only silence.
On soft feet, he climbed the stairs and checked each of the bedrooms one by one. Ollie, Frank and Rebecca followed in his wake, saying nothing. When he reached the last bedroom on the corridor, he paused with his hand hovering over the doorknob. This was where he had met them. This is where they had first come to him, and from this room they had taken over the house. He clenched his teeth, unlocked the door and stepped into the mess.
* * *
Inside the room was a mountain of memories. Jules’s belongings, old textbooks, posters from the walls of the house he had shared with Eddie, with all of them. Eddie’s Pennywise doll, Jules’s first stuffed animal, now a shapeless ball covered in fur, photographs of him and his father, old clothes, scarves, hats, a comic book collection of The Walking Dead jointly owned by him and Eddie, a collection of He-Man, She-Ra and Battle Cat toys. A disorganized shrine to another life, to two other lives, really. Two lives he was leaving behind. Nowhere, among the flotsam, was there any sign of Plasterer, Penny O’Neill, Deano or the Professor. Denis let loose a long, shuddering breath.
The rest of the day was spent cleaning the room out. Some things Ollie and Frank kept, some Denis chose to hold on to. He remembered Deano’s advice just before he had left, and kept just a little bit in memory of what had gone before. The rest was for the garbage. Not for the first time Denis felt the therapeutic benefit of cleaning, and supposed to himself that some things he didn’t have to change.
Rebecca slept in her own bedroom. Part of him wanted to ask her to stay with him, but his better judgment told him that time would heal the wounds, or not, and one way or another he would have to live with whatever happened. It was a strangely comforting thought.
* * *
On a fine, sunny afternoon, two weeks after leaving the hospital, Denis made his way into town. He tried not to think about the cracks on the road and focused on more important things. When he reached the convenience store, he found himself smiling at Thomas, who initially didn’t recognize him.
“Aaaaaah, Mr. Murphy,” he said eventually. “Look at you. A new man. Your hair is very long, no?”
“Been busy. No time for haircuts.”
“The usual today?”
“Please.”
Thomas scanned the newspaper.
“And will you be leaving me hanging today, Mr. Murphy?” he asked, presenting his hand for the high five.
“Not today, Thomas.” Denis high-fived the shopkeeper clumsily,
and laughed at the astonishment on Thomas’s face.
“See you tomorrow maybe.”
In the afternoon sun, Denis sat in his usual café with his laptop and his coffee and wrote:
Dear Ned,
I hardly know where to start. First and foremost, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for Eddie’s funeral. He was the best friend I ever had, and I owe him, and your family, more than I can say. I don’t know where I went wrong. I don’t know what started me down the road I went, but once I was on it, I found I couldn’t get off. That’s not an excuse for how I treated you, or Ann, just a way of explaining myself.
I’ve been seeking help, as per your advice. It’s started me back on the road to recovery. I have no idea how this will all end up, only that I’m not willing to keep going the way I was. I have you and your kind words to thank for that. I want you to know that I may not have been alive to send this message to you if not for your love and generosity.
For the little this is worth, my door is open to you always. I hope that we can be friends, that we can grieve and share together the way I should have done a long time ago.
I hope you can forgive me.
Either way, I’ll keep Eddie in my heart for the rest of my days, and you and Ann with him.
Thank you again,
Denis
He looked over it. Less pompous than his last email, but with a little leftover hint of the Professor. He decided he liked it all the more for it.
He watched the people walk by, studying their faces. As they poured by on the busy street, he saw the whole gamut of human emotion. It was visible on faces of every age and race and was specific to no gender. A river of people, carrying a river of emotion, driven by a great intangible force. It scared him a little. Rebecca stopped in front of him. She was beaming her typical warm smile. He smiled back. He had been sitting in the very same seat when she had walked past him so many months beforehand.
“You thinking heavy thoughts?” she asked.
“As usual.”
She looked as though she might say something, but frowned instead.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No... Just thought I saw a really weird-looking clown. Thought he was staring at us. Must have been my imagination.”
