[Untitled]
Joshua Orr

Chapter One

The mind-numbing, soul-sucking dreariness that always seemed to follow my binge drinking was upon me again. Habit told me I was going to puke before the signs did. I ignored the thought though, since I was sure I’d not been drinking for several weeks, not since my promise. But then the nausia hit, the light headedness following behind like a puppy but hitting me more like a Mac truck. I tried in vain to sit up, but fell to my side, wretching and puking.
Several minutes passed and my puking eventually subsided, but not before it became mingled with a little blood. My blood. At first I was taken aback by this, but the grim weight of my memory set in. I was dying. I knew it for almost four days now. Soon after leaving her funeral I’d visited the doctor. He’d told me it was a combination of my recently given up binge drinking and an inoperable brain tumor. Normally, with just the cancer, I’d have lasted upwards of another six years, he’d said. But the damaged caused by my depression fueled alchohol abuse had left me with ‘maybe’ six weeks.
So apparently I’d been drinking again. I suppose it wasn’t surprising given the recent death of the one I’d loved and surrendered my drinking for. All without gaining anything in her eyes that may have made me worthy. I preached that people didn’t change, only their ideas did, and that trying to change some one was a fool’s errand. Then in a great act of cosmic irony, or hypocrisy- I’m not sure which- I changed for her. I surrendered one of the few things that made the clinical depression easier to handle for not even a smile.
So it was there, lying in a pool of my own vomit and blood, that I thought for the first time, very seriously, about suicide. At first I balked at the idea, finding it a laughable act of cowardice that I’d not stoop to. I knew deep down that even if there WERE an afterlife, I’d not see her again. Life had not been kind to me, luck, if it could be said to be a woman, was a sadistic, cruel hearted bitch, and love had been no kinder to me.
Six weeks, tops, left me with little time for redemption, even if I were interested in being “saved”. I didn’t believe in, and so had no fear of, hell, heaven, god, gods or any goddesses. Oddly superior thinking for a man laying in a puddle of his own puke, I thought a little disgustedly to myself before sitting up on the edge if the bed. Almost unwillingly I smiled a fake smile and muttered, “Beware, for I am fearless, and therefor powerfull.” If ever a time for a Frankenstien quote, I certainly felt like a monster, or simply monstrous, my self loathing not withstanding.
With drunken grace I stumbled to the bathroom, where I washed my face in the sink and, with a sigh, simply stood there. I wouldn’t look up, I couldn’t. I’d left a picture of us pinned to the edge of the mirror. It was from a day we’d spent one summer, some years back. Some one had snapped a picture of us, sitting at out spot, just cuddling, in the failing light, the sunset to the side of us.
It took me two hours, but I managed to finish my morning routine and get out of the bathroom without looking at the miniature reminder of her. But what wasn’t lost on me, was how my dark brown hair was plastered to my forehead, my posture defeated and for fuck sake, I couldn’t meet my own eyes in the mirror next to the door. One without her image tacked on to it. I closed the door behind me, and went to work.
My job is dull, thankless, and mind numbingly monotonous. For eight hours a day, I sit in behind a computer screen and monitor credit card transactions of $100 or more. It gives me plenty of time to let my mind wander, which is what I seemed doomed to do today.
*
I remember it vividly, the day she died. I was sitting next to her as she lay in the hospital bed. We weren’t talking, she was in too much pain and I couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say. I wanted to tell her how I felt, but she knew already and never did like hearing it. I must have sat there for three hours, holding her head and crying as I watched her whimper in near silent agony, tears rolling down her cheeks. She had been gripping my hand almost painfully at first, but as she started to lose the fight, her grip slackened. She was barely holding on now, and the light I loved was fading from her eyes. Watching her die, I was sure, was killing me.
A nurse came walking in, she checked the BP monitor. As she walked past me I reached out and grabbed her sleave, halting her, pleading with my eyes. “Please, can’t you help her?” I begged.
She simply shook her head, her blonde braid swaying softly behind her. “I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do.” With that she turned to the door and walked away, slipping from my grasp as she went.
“Alex…” She moaned my name pitifully, not the way I’d ever imagined or wanted. “Please…”
I moved quickly to her side, sitting on the edge of the bed, on her right side, taking her hand in two of my own and leaning in. She was always petite, but now she was just plain frail. “Yes, Faith?” I could barely manage a whisper as she tried to speak. With her body as battered as it was, speaking was agony for her I knew.
“Ho-” She hacked a blood ridden cough, “Hold me… please.” She begged me with her eyes as her words pled. Her beautiful long hair was caked to her face and neck by blood and sweat.
At first /i thought maybe she didn’t realize how badly her body had been beaten, that maybe she was back in shock or something and I tried to tell her so, but she just sobbed and begged me, “Please.”
I sat there, my mind realing, when her breathing became ragged and more unsteady than it had been but moments earlier. Her distress made my mind up for me, and with shaky hands I lifted her upper body slowly and pivoted beneath her. She wrapped her arms around my neck almost immediately, but the movement was sluggish, slow, weak. Her breathing leveled again when I finally hed her in my arms, and I sighed in relief, letting go of the breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
She shivered against me as I held her tight, but careful not to hurt her more. Unbidden and horrifying the image of the bruises, swollen arease above broken bones and the red splotches on her beautiful skin from internal bleeding sprang to mind.But despite clenched teeth, eyes, and fists, I couldn’t let go.
I could feel her hands clenching my wrist and my shirt, refusing to let me go. That was when I felt it, and I cried in earnest. She loved me, I realized then. But she had never told me. She was smiling weakly as she whimpered in pain in the shelter of my arms, the protection of my love. But too late to save her. Fate, it seemed like, had one fucked up sense of humor. Like our lives were just some cosmic joke, and our suffering is just a poorly written, sadistic punchline.
As I held the one I loved more than life itself, who had been beaten, raped, and beaten some more, then left for dead, I began to hate the parts of humanity that felt it had to harm the parts that could, and did, control the beast within. Those lowlifes, scary though they may be, they were also disgustingly bereft of any redeaming factors.
That she didn’t die alone in an ally was sheer luck. I’d been leaving work and heading for my car, when I’d heard her crying. I’d rounded the corner out of curiosity. The image that I came across will forever haunt me. I’d seen the group of men that had done those horrible things to her walking away, laughing and bullshitting. I’d had my phone out to call her and when the straggler of the group turned to spit on her as he left, he noticed me. I looked him in the eyes, unafraid as his friends told him to run. It was a long, tense moment as we each waited for someone to make the first move. Finally, they broke the reverie and ran, hauling ass to a car at the end of the allyway. I quickly turned to her, to see how bad it was, and nearly puked. I hadn’t recognized her at first, but the second I did I nearlysoundlessly whispered her name. With great care I knelt beside her as she cried soundlessly and stared off into space.She’s in shock, I realized with growing worry, and quickly removed my hoodie and wrapped her in it, and taking advantage of the shock, I lifted her in my arms and caried her to my car.
The night was dead, the streets empty, as I did a hundred and twenty miles per hour down the street the twenty nine blocks to the nearest hospital. Nothing but the sound of my engine protesting the exersion and my love’s pained breathing in the back to keep my splinteriing mind focused. Once there, three orderlies and a doctor helped me get her into the emergency rom.
So it was there, in my arms, that the one I loved more than anything died. I held her for an hour afterwards, crying for all I was worth, wailing as though a thousand years of human suffering had found an outlet in my tears and pain. When I was finally asked, although more like politely told, to release her and go home and rest, I realized that I should have said it.
On the way home I only did forty, my mind lost in a fog. It was a good thing I was the only one on the road that night, or I’d have been in a wreck.
At the funeral I gave a few words, and held her mom as she cried on my shoulder. She’d always approved of me, but her daughter had never really wanted me. Or so she had always told me. Now I knew the truth, and in many ways, knowing she loved me was worse. And I knew for sure, she was waiting, wishing, I’d say those three words that I always though I’d over used, just one more time before she passed. In those last moments she’d wanted to hear them so bad, I knew.
*
I spent my whole day feeling like shit. I’d wiped the tears off my face and continued with my day. What else could I possibly do? My work, my life, they’d keep going, and I’d things I needed to do. Life wasn’t going to end for me just because it ended for her.
With a fitting air of finality I shut my computer down and left the building, begining the walk down two blocks to the parking garage I kept my car in.