For You, I Would (boyxboy)

Chapter 39

It took almost an hour after Nialler left the house for us to all get to the hospital. We looked a right mess of a group, too. Skylar’s hair was mussed from her scuffle with her best friend. Harriet couldn’t even walk, her ankle so swollen and darkly bruised that it took Ely and Skylar both to help her walk. Harriet’s face also had a slight red mark on it from when she’d been slapped.

Ely looked fine, but he was panicking and fussing over all of us. Anton was about as beat up and bruised as someone who had just fought UFC style. Okay, maybe not that bad, but it seemed horrible enough to me. And then there was me. Walking along, face covered with a fresh pillowcase pressed over my face to catch what little blood was still determined to drip from my nose. Anton had his arm over my shoulder, keeping me on track as we walked into the hospital.

We’d had to sit in the waiting room for the E.R. for about twenty minutes. It was as quiet and painfully awkward as you’d imagine. It was like watching something off of a television show or a movie. The awful elevator-type music playing overhead and a muted television with subtitles playing across the room. Then there was us sitting in our chairs, not talking to a single person, all battered and bleeding.

When our names were called, all five of us got up and insisted on going into the same room together. The nurse allowed it after some persuasion despite her clear disapproval. She’d also looked us over like we were a freak show. I guess in some cases we did look like it. Then when the actual doctor came in, he also gave us a look as if he thought we were all insane. When he tried to ask us what had happened to us, we all just shook our heads and mumbled pretty much the same thing. And that was that it was a long story and not to worry about it.

After the longest ever two hours of waiting around, the nurse had us cleaned up and she helped the doctor figure out what exactly was wrong with us.

Apparently Harriet’s ankle was fractured. But luckily, only one bone was broken and it was stable. So she only needed to wear a brace. She had to keep that on for at least six weeks, and to come back in a few weeks to get a checkup. She was also given crutches so that she could keep her weight off of it when she was moving around.

Ely was perfectly fine as well as Skylar, so they just waited at the edge of the room, keeping out of the way. Anton’s left eye was swollen and bruised to the point where the skin around it was nearly black. Some of it was even a nasty purple and green colour. There was some blood in his eye as well due to a couple of the blood vessels bursting. It wasn’t anything too serious. He only needed to rest up and regularly apply drops of moisture solution to his eyes for the next week or whatever until it was healed. They also cleaned up his split lip and eyebrow, applying a tiny bandage over it where it had been cut.

I was the luckiest of everybody. Not that I didn’t have it bad, because I did. It’s just that it could have easily been way worse than it turned out to be. The doctor looked at my nose and did an x-ray and told us all that I was exceptionally close to having a fractured nose. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. My nose didn’t need to have anything done to it besides the standard ice pack to get the swelling down after the nurse finally got it to stop bleeding. I had the faint purple marks under my eyes which would turn into a mild form of black eyes. It should all be healed in a week, though.

After the doctor wrote out a couple prescriptions for my antibiotics and Harriet’s pain medication, we were sent on our way. And as if the day couldn’t get any worse than that huge fight and spending hours at the hospital, we had to go move all my things out of my apartment.

We dropped Harriet off at her place since she’d be no help after her fractured ankle. Not to mention, she was still extremely upset over what she had just found out. She kept muttering insults at me, feeling betrayed and pissed off. I almost felt bad for her but I didn’t let myself. I was feeling horrible enough as it was.

After that, we went to pick up mine, Skylar’s, and Ely’s cars from the house so that we could all drive over to what would soon be my old apartment. That way, we made sure we had room to get all of my things out. We also picked up extra boxes, baskets, and totes out of their garage to make things a little easier.

Then we were on our way over to the apartment. I was beyond relieved and thankful that when we pulled into the parking lot, Nialler’s car was nowhere in sight. The four of us made our way up to the unit via the elevator. I pushed the door open cautiously just to make sure that Nialler wasn’t in there waiting to murder me. I breathed a happy sigh when it was confirmed he really was out somewhere.

If moving out wasn’t awful enough, seeing the item that was slightly crumpled on the living room floor tore me to pieces. I picked it up carefully, almost as if it might shatter and erupt into ashes in my hands. My eyes softened and my stomach tightened into multiple knots, nearly making me sick in the living room.

It was a charcoal drawing of me, done by Nialler. I was sitting against a wall. My knees were pulled up and my ankles were crossed. I was barefoot. My arms were wrapped around my knees, holding them in place close to my body and I was holding my photography camera in my hands.

My long hair--black in this picture because of the charcoal, instead of blonde--was hanging down, framing my face perfectly as I looked down at the camera I was holding. I was more than likely going through some of the pictures I had taken prior to this drawing. There was a clothing rack next to me, my arm almost touching the metal bar.

That’s how I knew, Nialler must have sketched this while we were at one of my photo shoots before doing it over in more detail. Even in this little piece of artwork, Nialler had done such a breathtakingly phenomenal job on it. You could see the slight smirk of joy on my face as I was admiring my own work. It was as if you could actually see the twinkling of pride in my eyes.

I stared at the piece of paper in my hands, trying to decipher what was different about it. What was it that was standing out? I smiled, coming to the conclusion that the only bit of colour in the whole drawing was of the clothes that were on the rack. They looked amazing. It made the entire artwork pop beautifully.

Ely walked up to me while the other two were in my room throwing things into boxes. “Caspar,” he said quietly. It was almost a question.

“Nialler drew this,” I said. Ely stood next to me, scanning the large paper. “I think it was in the gallery last night.”

“Oh, Casp,” he said softly. I took a deep breath. I handed Ely the drawing. “Are we taking this?”

I bit my lip softly. “Yeah.”

Then I walked away from him. I felt drained. I couldn’t look at that picture any longer. I knew Ely would pack it up for me. He was brilliant that way. I wanted nothing more than to get all my shit together and get out as soon as possible.

I didn’t want to make Nialler any more angry and I also just wanted to give us both time to heal and move on from the pain we had caused each other. That’s what we owed one another. So I headed for the closet, walking past Anton and Skylar, before taking down some shirts and haphazardly folding them into a plastic tote next to me.