Robin
I kept seeing him in the hospital bed, connected to machines that were bigger than him and swallowed by nurses’ hands.
I only saw him for a moment before they ushered me away. I didn’t protest much; I felt like I, too, was in shock. I was led to the waiting room by a nurse with graying brown hair and tired eyes. Reximus’s family had already been called; his aunt and mother were sitting in the plastic blue chairs near the reception desk.
I walked over to them and plopped myself down as well. His mother and aunt were both crying and holding hands. I felt awful that I couldn’t do anything. They had seen so much death in just a month.
I watched people come and go for two hours; a woman with glass shards in her leg, a wailing boy with a broken arm, a man with a blood-covered hand.
I curled my hands into fists and stifled a sob. Why did they get so lucky? There they were, sitting in the E.R. waiting room at one A.M. on a Sunday, with cuts and broken bones but nothing that would cut their life short.
A doctor walked out. “Reximus Williams?”
I stood so fast, my head spun. Reximus’s aunt stood, as well.
“That’s us,” she sniffled.
The doctor approached us slowly. The grim look on his face made my heart skip a beat.
He shuffled his papers in his hands. “Reximus took a lot of pills,” he began. “From what you told us,” he nodded at me, “we can assume that he took around two hundred of them, since he nearly emptied a three-hundred-count bottle. He threw up some of them, and we’ve pumped his stomach, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else we can do.” He sighed. “I don’t think that he’s going to wake up. I’m so sorry.”
Reximus’s mother let out a cry of anguish before slumping forward into the arms of the doctor and Reximus’s aunt.
“My baby,” she sobbed.
“You can see him, if you want,” the doctor offered.
His aunt nodded and half-supported Reximus’s mother as we followed the doctor to his room.
I mumbled to him under my breath, telling him that I loved him so much, that he couldn’t die, not yet, not now. I don’t think he was listening, because at four A.M., the heart monitor made an awful beeeeep, and flat-lined.
The doctor nodded at the nurse with tired eyes, lips pressed together tightly. She turned off the machine, and then all that could be heard was noises from the rest of the building and his mother’s sobbing.
She broke down and had to be removed from the room.
He was so still. I wanted to do something; kiss him, hold his hand, scream at him, something. But he was dead, and nothing I did was going to bring him back.
I stopped by the school on Monday to tell everybody what had happened and ended up crying for a long while, long after the late bus showed up and the sky started to pour.
After three days of not getting out of bed and refusing to go to school, my mom made me an immediate appointment with Sherry, my therapist. I screamed at her the entire time, lost in a blur of anger and distress because why? Why did she and I get to live, when Reximus didn’t. He made a mistake, I could have shown him that. I could have shown him that there was so much more than bullies and homophobia and fathers. I could have helped him!
But you didn’t.