The Fighter

Joey

“Joey! Come on, man, wake up!”  

My eyelids fling open; I must have dozed off without realizing it. I blink a few times to rid the fog of sleepiness from my eyes before looking up at the towering figure before me.

“Calvin?” I mutter groggily. “What’re you doing here?”

“Giving you a ride home, idiot. Visitors’ hours ended at eight.”  Calvin glances at the digital clock on the nightstand next to Bree’s bed, eyes widening a bit at the sight of the glowing numbers: 12:47. He shakes his head at me. “You’ve been here way too long.”  

“The nurses don’t mind," I lie. "Besides, you don’t even know where my house is.”

He shrugs with a little grin. “We’ll find it if we drive around long enough.”

 I laugh. Calvin—one of the few friends I’ve made after Bree and I went our separate ways—is as optimistic as they come. In reality, we would probably end up driving through the whole city before he found my house, and he’d manage to mow down a few pedestrians in the process. This blind positive-thinking of his can be misleading at times, but I keep him around anyway. Lately, I need all the cheering up I can get.

“Come on,” he says, and kicks at my feet. “Get up.”

“Nah. I’m staying here.”

“Why?” Calvin laughs a little. “It’s not like Bree’s going anywhere.”

I stare at him for the longest time, eyes willing him to understand.

 “Oh,” he says quietly after a while. “Well, don’t worry about her. She’s been fine for weeks, right? She won’t . . .”

 He pauses, and I know exactly what’s going through his head. He’s trying to word this in the best possible way, attempting to make it sound less crushing than it really is. Finally, he decides on, “She won’t go now.”

 “You don’t know that. And she hasn’t been ‘fine.’ She’s been bleeding on the inside. Dying slowly. Not something I’d describe as fine.” 

“God, Joey, stop being so depressing,” Calvin says with a frown. “It’s not helping anything.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?!” I shout, abruptly jumping to my feet. The chair screeches against the tile as it flies backwards. “Pretend nothing’s happening? Pretend she’s not dy--?”

“Shh,” Calvin hisses, cutting me off.  He points to the hallway, where the receptionist is no doubt waiting for a reason to throw us of the room. Hearing me shout would be her perfect excuse. Putting a hand over my lips in an attempt to pull the words back in, I nod at Calvin to show I understand.

“Anyway, that’s not what I meant,” he whispers. “I’m just saying . . . you don’t have to accept it. You can hope, you know?”

I collapse back into the chair, trying my best not to make the paper crinkle. “Hoping won’t help anything either,” I mutter.

“Still, she wouldn’t want you to give up on her like this.”

“You didn’t know her,” I whisper bitterly.

 Calvin chews at his lip. “I wish I would have, though. We all do.”

“Too late now.”

“Fine.” He sighs and throws his hands up in the air. “Be like that. But I’m leaving, with or without you. What’s it going to be?”

“Without,” I say immediately.

Shrugging again, Calvin turns his back to me and makes his way out. But just as he’s about to step out of sight, he stops short at the doorway and turns to glance at me over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t going to say anything before, but . . . you’re a mess, you know that?” he says.

“I know.”

“Just get some sleep, idiot.” 

With that, he takes that last step and disappears. I don’t even mind that he’s gone.  It seems right to be here alone, just Bree and I. Like making up for lost time.  

Finding nothing else to do, I decide to continue on in Bree’s story. I’m nearing the end, the part I know all too well, but for some reason I feel the need to relive it anyway. I would only feel incomplete if I stopped now.

So, after glancing over the room once more to make sure Bree is still asleep and that all the machines are functioning properly, I pick up where I left off.