Drown

11. Is that you?

I closed my eyes. Caroline, is that you? I could hear Vince's voice in my mind, clear as day. Yes it's me, I answered back. It's me, I'm here.

"Excuse me," I asked a nurse, "I need to know what's happening." She looked very confused, then saw me staring at them wheeling Vince away, looked at my hands fisted so tightly my knuckles were going white, looked at my fast blinking eyes, tears still dripping - and she said: "Okay, hold on, honey." She hurried away, shoes squeaking.

I could hold on. I could. I sat down in the closest chair. I saw only the linoleum floor of the hospital, a stark pale blue floor, my converses dirty and scuffed. Shaking, tapping. My hands gripped the arm rests.

Hold on. I am. Yes. I am. I can do that. I've been doing that. For a while longer? Yes, yes I can do that.

Then, maybe a few minutes later or a few hours or a few seconds, the nurse came into my view, her scrubs were pink.

"Hi, miss. What's your name, miss?"

"Caroline," I said.

"That's a pretty name," she said in a voice you might use when addressing a hysterical child. "Your boyfriend?" she asked.

I shook my head. Then nodded. Then my face crumpled. "I don't know. He's my something. He's very special and dear to me."

"Okay," she says. Then she sits next to me, and she says a few things. Tells me that he ingested pills and rattles off names I've never heard of. She says that he probably didn't intend to overdose, just that maybe he had mixed some that shouldn't have been mixed. She said that it seemed he'd been on drugs for a while, that he was a user of some sort, that he, she suspected, had a problem. Did I know about that? Said that they were pumping his stomach now. That they were going to take care of him. I couldn't visit him today probably, she said. Maybe go home and rest? she said.

"No," I said. If I went home I would have to face my grandma and my mom and I couldn't see anyone or I think that I might spill over onto the floor and melt right through the floorboards and keep sinking lower and lower and lower until - "No, I'll wait," I say.

A user. He had a problem. Things were flashing through my mind, like how sometimes he was absent minded and his forehead was a little sweaty and his eyes sometimes got unfocused, or how he could go off on tangents or be random and spontaneous - what was the drugs and what was Vince? Were they synonymous?

I remembered the party he took me to, let's mingle Caroline come on let's mingle but wait I have to go somewhere I'll be back, and when he returned his hands shook and he was agitated but happy and amused and Vince. Was he high then? Was he ever not high?

I put my hands in my head, too overwhelmed to think anymore. The boy that I - who was he? He quit smoking cigarettes and I had felt so proud, as if I had done that, done something for him. All along there was an addiction hiding underneath.

Hours passed. I sat in the same position, and my neck hurt and my back hurt and my arms kept getting goosebumps because it was freezing inside the waiting room, but I didn't move.

The nurse checked on me every hour or so until her shift was up. She told me before she left that he was now in a room. Stable. That's all that mattered to me, really, despite all the things I had learned tonight.

Finally, when dawn broke and my grandma had called to see where on earth I was, I lied and said I was at Vince's. Said I had fallen asleep there. Sorry, grandma. She couldn't hear the sad, tiredness in my voice. The utter weariness.

I could go see him now. Since he was stable and it was visiting hours. I found what room number he was in and I felt my palms sweating as I boarded the elevator.

When I saw him lying there, he looked a lot less pale than the last time I had seen him. He still looked vulnerable and very young in that bed. I felt a strange urge to cover him from anyone seeing him like this, as if to see him weak was some kind of intrusion.

I sat down in the chair. I put my hand on his. It was cold and didn't move. I took my hand off.

"This is a mess," I said and my voice cracked because I hadn't spoken more than a word or two in a while. I swallowed.

"I don't understand," I said. I knew I was talking to a sleeping Vince. It was better that way. "I don't understand. Why? Why?" I rested my head on the side of his bed, my face right next to his shoulder. I could see his collarbones from this angle and they were so sharp, fragile. I knew I should call Josh about this. Maybe he knew about this... this addiction. That Vince was a - a user. But, selfishly, I wanted this time to myself. I wanted Vince to myself right now.

"You could've died," I told him. You could've, I kept saying. How could you? I knew it wasn't really fair to say that. It still hurt to know that people were human and made mistakes and did things to survive and get through the day even if those things were sometimes damaging.

I placed my hand on his cheek.

"Mom?"

I jumped at the sudden sound of his voice. His eyes were open a little but it didn't really look like he was seeing anything. The doctors did say that he would have a fever as they detoxed him from the drugs in his system and it might make him have nightmares and even see things or hear things that weren't real - but, they said, that probably wouldn't happen.

It seemed to be happening now.

"Mom?" he says again, reaching. I clutched his hand, didn't dare say a word. When he felt me hold him back, he sighed in relief. "My head is killing me," he says. "Really. It's crazy hurting. Maybe a Tylenol would help? Mom? Mom, are you there?"

I held still. Couldn't breathe or make a sound. Then he quieted down, half asleep.

Then, "Caroline? Is that you?"

"Yes," I said. My voice broke. "It's me. I'm here."

"Miss Caroline, you beautiful thing. My beauty, Caroline," he sighs. He seems to still be in a feverish daydream. It didn't seem like he could really hear me or even himself. Sweat drips down his forehead.

Then he says, "Please don't tell Caroline about this." His eyes are closed, breathing slowing down as he falls asleep. "She deserves more. I'm a bastard, aren't I? God. Jeez. Please don't tell. Her sadness is too deep. Too deep. And I think she would hate me, mom. Do you think so? Don't tell her."

"I won't," I say. I hold his hand and wipe at the sweat that's on his hairline. "I won't tell."

My heart trembles inside my chest. What am I going to do?