I left the flat early the next day, heading straight for the hospital to sit by Logan's side again. Whenever I walked down the corridor in the ICU, to Logan's room, the nerves seemed to intensify. Shaking my whole body and causing my breathing to deepen. I took shaky breaths and flexed my fingers, fighting away the rush of fear.
Stopping outside his door, I peered in through the small window. By Logan's rigid side sat his mother. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, a pencil skirt and white blouse, which had me wondering if she'd even left since we exchanged words. Her hair was now shoved up into a scruffy bun, adding to her stressed appearance.
I backed away from the door, taking a seat on one of the few chairs that were situated in the cream corridor. I rested my forearms on my thighs, leaning forward and clasping my hands together. I couldn't walk in and intrude on the time his mother was spending with him, but I wasn't going to leave either. I decided I'd wait until she left, and if she never did, then I'd simply stay here anyway.
But as that thought was crossing my mind, the air stirred around me as the door was swung open. I looked up to meet eyes with those that could easily be mistaken as Logan's, as they were the same shade of brown. The only thing that gave it away, was how broken they looked. She had dark blue bags beneath her eyes, that also had a red tinge to it, showing how much she had been crying.
Logan's never looked broken; they always seemed full of life, bright and happy. If it hadn't come straight from Logan's mouth how broken inside he really was, I never would have believed it. It was a scary thought, how well Logan could hide how he was really feeling. He obviously had a lot of experience behind him.
His mother cleared her throat, a surface smile upon her lips as she hesitantly took a seat next to me. She rested her hands in her lap and leaned forward slightly, so that we were eye level. The bead necklace around her neck swung forward and back gently, as she made the movement. I forced myself to look up, towards her eyes, finding only one was visible, as the other was shadowed by strands of her hair that had fallen loose from the bun.
"How is he?" I was the first to speak, finding the silence too heavy to breathe in. My voice came out cracked and raspy, as though I hadn't drank for weeks.
"The doctors don't think he'll recover," she began, her voice just as weak as my own. "There's nothing they can do."
I nodded my head along to the words, wishing I was hearing the complete opposite.
"What happened?" I wasn't sure if I was pushing my luck with the questions, but she didn't seem to mind answering them so far. I thought back to the way she always seemed to sneer at me whenever we came face to face, and whether or not that maybe was just her natural face for strangers. Because the Mrs. Young sitting here now, seemed as sweet and kind as her son was. I guess he had to get it from somewhere.
"He had a brain hemorrhage." She wiped a tear from her cheek with a quick swipe. "They think he fainted and hit his head hard, which knocked him into a coma. They told me he got to the hospital too late, and there's nothing they could do to help the situation."
"So it wasn't from his cancer?" The panic in my voice was clearly audible, as she scrunched her eyebrows at me and shook her head. "Someone could have stopped this? If they'd been there?" I asked, starting to develop an even deeper feeling of guilt in my mind.
"If he had got to the hospital sooner, they may have been able to do something,"
"Or if I'd have been there to stop him from falling," I whispered to myself, hanging my head low and squeezing my eyes shut. I pressed my palms against each other and rested the side of them against my lips, as though I was praying, a tear rolling down to the edge of my chin.
"Don't blame yourself. That's the last thing Logan would want you to do." Her tone was beginning to twist into a hint of annoyance at what I'd said. "If you blame yourself, it only makes things harder." I nodded in agreement, just to please her.
"But I should have been there," the words rolled out of my mouth like rocks down a hillside. I tried to hold them back, but they were too heavy with truth and guilt.
"You weren't to know," she dismissed, turning her head to the side just as I looked up at her. She cleared her throat again, before she brought her eyes back to mine. "And it's not your responsibility to look after him. It's mine, I'm his mother, I should have been there to stop this from happening. I should have taken better care of him."
I didn't know how to comfort her, so I stayed silent. She took a deep inhale and straightened herself out, smoothing the creases out of her black skirt. I turned my gaze over to the door Logan lay behind. Seeing him draped in white sheets reminded me of the photo I'd seen in the living room, unsure of whether or not it was a similar situation to this.
"The photo," I began, sitting up and turning to Mrs. Young with overwhelming curiosity. "The one in the living room of Logan in a hospital bed. He told me it was because of a car crash?" I didn't need to elaborate on my question.
"No," she said the word a little fondly, lowering her chin and a small smile on her lips. "No, that was the day we were told he was going to be okay. The doctors had high hopes for him from the start, because we'd caught the cancer early."
I buried my head in my hands. I over-exaggerated when Logan told me he had cancer, I shouldn't have acted the way I did. If I'd have stayed a little longer, once we'd both got over the initial shock of the confession, he probably would have explained it some more, and I would have understood everything instead of jumping to conclusions. Once I heard the word cancer, though, I immediately just thought of death, and the thought scared me so much.
The guilt I was feeling now, was too much to fucking handle. I was so goddamn selfish, always thinking about myself. Always just doing what I thought was best for everyone, when really it was only best for me. Keeping a distance from Logan was the shittiest decision I'd ever made. I could have been there to catch him, stop this from happening. If he hadn't hit his head, he wouldn't be in hospital right now. He would have been okay.
"Ash," her voice was gentle, but unsure as she spoke my name. I turned to look at her. "He talked about you a lot, you know. Always going on about how you made him feel like he had a reason, again. Sometimes I felt like Logan was a forty year old, stuck in a seventeen year old's body." She laughed lightly, affection residing inside her sad eyes.
"But I really do want to thank you for being in his life. Before he met you, he was growing more and more tired of it all. I tried everything to cheer him up, but he's always been very stubborn."
"Yeah, tell me about it," I added, smiling at the memories. Mrs. Young smiled back, and we shared a moment in common.
She took a deep breath in. "Then there was you," she said as she exhaled. "You just seemed to put the spark back inside him. He was always smiling, and when he wasn't smiling he was talking. It was like going back in time, before he found out he had cancer."
She straightened herself up once more, looking towards the door one last time before saying, with regret, "I have to go. Work awaits." She stood up, brushing her hands down her clothes. She then refocused her gaze on me, a hopeful look in her eyes. "You'll stay? Keep him company?"
I nodded my head in promise. A promise I wouldn't break this time. Mrs. Young smiled down at me in thank, before turning and walking away, her heels clicking against the laminate flooring. I stayed where I was for a few minutes, my leg jumping up and down as I nerved myself to go into the room. Forcing my legs to walk, I entered the room and sat down by the chair, still at his side.
He didn't look any different from yesterday. Maybe a little paler. I wanted to say something, let him know I was there, but I couldn't find anything to say. I couldn't even form the word 'hello' inside my head. So the room stayed in silence.
I sat there, mainly not saying a word, for the entire day, until Logan's mum made her next appearance. She walked in on me just as I was about to nod off in the chair, even though it wasn't all that comfy, but I hadn't exactly been sleeping, so it didn't really cross my mind. She smiled down at me as we exchanged glances. I felt awkward as I stood up and swapped places with her.
"You should go home. Get some rest." She said, taking Logan's hand in hers, but still looking my way.
"Yeah," I replied, knowing I wasn't about to do anything along those lines. The guilt had just been building up and taunting my mind all day, whispering in the back of my head even when I was trying to ignore it. I knew exactly what I was going to do once I left the hospital, because it was the only thing that would let me escape this feeling, and it definitely wasn't sleep.
I exited the hospital with haste, hailing a taxi down. I told him to head for an old, regular haunt of mine, when I'd first started working as a rent boy. It wasn't that far from here, which was good, cause if it had taken any longer to get there, I think I would have pretty much gone out of my mind.
I tossed the driver a few notes, and stepped out the cab, staring up at the grungy-looking building. I hadn't been here for ages. I stopped coming after Tyler stopped talking to me. It used to be somewhere we'd go together. I guess it was never really my haunt place, but ours. And once Tyler and I stopped being mates, it just didn't feel right to go anymore.
But right now, it felt like the perfect place to be.
I walked into the pub, and it was a sudden change of atmosphere. It was like being surrounded by a cloud of smoke, encased inside a completely different world than the one outside those doors. There was people doing weed in the booths, girls and guys making out in the dark corners - it made me smile inside. The place really hasn't changed much. Or at all.
The music was blaring from wall to wall of the place, almost causing a vibration beneath my feet. The only thing that had changed was that it'd clearly gotten more popular, as it was practically overflowing with people. Most of them were grinding up on the dance floor and crowding around the booths and tables. The only part that seemed reasonably vacant, was the bar. So that's where I made a beeline for.
I was desperate for something to numb the pain and quiet the thoughts for a while. I wasn't really one to turn to things like this at hard times, and I always told the lads that they should learn to deal with things rather than taking the easy way out. But the thought of losing Logan was just too fucked up to cope with, without a little bit of help.
I was welcomed by the bartender, who had a grin on his lips as he asked me what I wanted. I cast him a look of contemplation, deciding whether or not I should go through with this. But that thought was soon thrown aside when thoughts of Logan re-entered my mind.
My eyes narrowed with finality as I said, "Get me drunk." Slamming some notes down on the hardwood of the bar. The bartender gave me a nod as he set out a line of shots.