(no subject)
Even though I may be alone, but that's ok
And looking out to a different sky will disengage me
Absence is never the answer, I know, but it serves as my shade
I do not seek and do not intend to find
A calmer ocean or a sun that will never rise
My world will never change and time will bring you to my thoughts
And I'll move on and then forget you all over again
Moving on, I can forgive you all over again”
Delerium, “A poem for Byzantium”'>
“Paula, I think I’m going insane.” The two women sat in the sunlight of the hospital’s recreation center, the windows opening on a flaming red and orange garden. Melora was parked in her wheelchair next to the heater, Paula sitting opposite of her with a crossword puzzle lying half finished in her lap.
“Hmm? Are they not taking you off the morphine slow enough?” Paula asked.
“That’s not it. I think this is so much more than the morphine talking. I never told you about...” Melora suddenly looked unsure of continuing.
“What?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Isn’t that what you’re trying to tell me in the first place?”
“Yes, but I mean, I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy for not getting help sooner. The things I’ve been seeing...Paula, it’s some pretty freaky stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Entire rooms melting into blobs of swirling color. Watching myself turn into smoke for a few seconds. Talking pigeons that aren’t really pigeons but who are really handfuls of buttons. The night sky looks like Van Gogh threw up all over it. And that’s just the stuff I was seeing before the accident. It’s more subtle now, but it’s really disorienting.”
Paula’s gaze was now focused solely on Melora, her interest peaked. “What do you see?”
“Some days I wake up and look in the bathroom mirror, and there’s not a scratch on me. I feel fine, physically. For a few seconds I’ll be brushing my teeth, and the person staring back at me is twice my age, but it’s still me. That’s really scary. No, that’s terrifying.” Melora said, keeping her voice low, “Then sometimes I swear you were in the room talking with me, when I turn over to get some water or something, and as soon as I turn back around, you’re gone. Sometimes you’ll disappear and the room will be a different temperature, or the time of day will be completely off. Then I’ll blink and you’ll be there again, and it’s like it never happened.”
Paula gazed at Melora fixedly, not saying anything for a while. Melora stared back, and her lip began to tremble.
“Melora-?”
“I...I...uh..ah...” Melora blinked rapidly, but tears dripped down her face all the same. Feeling the hot droplets on her cheeks, she quickly buried her face in her hands but could not completely muffle the sound of her own sobbing. Paula got up from her chair and touched Melora’s shoulder, kneeling down to be level with her. Melora turned and buried her face into Paula’s neck, her soft red hair soaking up her tears.
“I...I miss him so much...” Melora hiccupped, gasping to regain control of herself. “I hate this place; I’ve been here for a month and it’s killing me that I can’t be with Edward, and I can’t stop thinking about him, and how frightened he must be, and what if he’s hurt and, and, and...” Paula continued to hold her until her sobs and gasps faded away, rocking gently, careful not to put any undue pressure on Melora’s torso.
Finally the two women drew back from each other. Paula stood and pulled her chair closer to Melora’s wheelchair and said, “I don’t know what to tell you about these visions you’re having. Maybe you had some sort of trauma even before the beam struck your head like that. You never talk about your life before you came to Suburbia; maybe once you go back home and are feeling a little more stable, you should try and think back to what could have triggered these episodes.”
Melora wiped at the salty wet sheen on her cheeks, sniffling a bit, “When do you think I can go home?”
“Well, I talked to your doctor, and he says that you’ll be able to go home next week, actually-” at this, Melora’s face lit up, “-provided you stay in your wheel chair for two weeks, and then use a cane to get around after that.”
“And the morphine?”
“They’ll give you a supply, but it’s best if someone else administers it...”
“...because then at least someone else knows how much I’m taking, and there’s less chance I’ll abuse it. God, I never thought I’d come to this. Well, obviously Edward can’t give me a shot, what am I supposed to do for the pain?”
Paula took a breath and swayed in her chair, looking hesitant. Melora lifted her eyebrows. “I was thinking that I’d do it.”
Melora scoffed. “For that you would have to live with me! I can’t just be in pain when it conveniences you to come over. Besides, how would I contact you, I don’t have a phone.”
“I was actually going to suggest that I come and live with you for a while.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t support you; Edward would never talk to me again.”
“I practically live there anyways! I go over there every chance I get that I’m not either doing your job for you or here keeping you company, or when I’m not in school. I hate having to deal with all the stress at home, and school’s not much better. I don’t know if you heard about this from Brian, but there’s a love-hate-love triangle slash square forming around you.”
“Excuse me? Brian never mentions anything like that when he comes to visit me. He just sits there and talks and talks, and I put up with it because handicapped people have to.” Melora huffed, recalling how her hospital room was crowded with roses.
“He wouldn’t. All he can see is you; everybody else is like snow melting around him.”
““I feel kind of sorry for him; nobody should have to experience the pain of unrequited love. So what exactly is this love polygon you’re talking about?”
“It’s actually kind of personal,” Paula sighed, “the girl who currently likes Brian is like the queen bee at my high school. I suppose she feels a sense of entitlement: she’s the queen of the school, and Brian with all of his charm and good looks is the prince of every girl’s locker door. It only makes things worse when she realizes that instead of claiming his throne as king of the highschool by dating her after taking her out to the Sadie-Hawkin’s dance, she’s been overlooked for some homeless artsy fartsy freak who lives in the abandoned house at the top of the hill.”
“Homeless and insane.” Melora sniffed proudly from her wheel chair.
“Right,” Paula continued, “especially since you refuse to date him-I suppose she could forgive him if it was just a passing thing and he came to his senses, but everyone knows that he’s been ditching his friends to spend time with you during visiting hours. So now this girl is saying that you’re a lesbian and a cock-tease, and people are starting to believe it, especially since everybody sees me taking care of you and practically living in your house.
“Of course, she doesn’t have anything against me personally...” Melora said, “but she hopes that Brian will feel pressure to stop chasing me if his friends ridicule him for barking up the wrong tree entirely. So why is this personal for you?”
Paula sighed. “Angela and I had...a thing...as children. I loved her even before I knew what a lesbian was. And I’m pretty sure she loved me. We were way more than just best friends, even if we didn’t do anything physical. People tend to brush it off when it’s in kindergarten, but Angela was writing me love letters in middle school, despite all the adults who encouraged her to start hanging out with boys. It would have been pretty bad if either of us were...you know...butch, but we’re both pretty femme. I think we could have gotten away with it if we had kept it a secret, but by the seventh grade Angela couldn’t take the peer pressure from all of her friends to stop hanging out with such an unpopular girl, so she stopped talking to me. That was very hard.” Paula bit her lip at this, “and I made a fool of myself trying to get back in her good graces. Finally by highschool, Angela told everyone that I was a heart-sick dyke who would obsess over any poor straight victim who would talk to me or try to be nice with me, and Angela made it out like she was trying to protect me before by indulging my little fantasy, but now she had to tell people so that other straight girls like her wouldn’t fall prey to me. It was the kindest thing to do, she said.”
“This is starting to sound like the premise of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You love, or loved, Angela, who loves Brian, who loves me, who loves Edward, and the only one who feels like the feeling is somewhat mutual is me...although to what extent, I don’t even know. Edward’s heart is fathomless still.”
“I’m not sure I would call what Angela feels ‘love.’ She’s a really bright girl, I would know, but she makes herself two dimensional because she thinks that’s what guys want. She’s just got a lot of pride masking all her insecurities, and if possessing Brian would elevate her status among her friends, she’ll get what she wants.” Paula said bitterly.
“She can’t be all that bright if she can’t see that Brian is going after me because he thinks I’m some treasure to uncover. I frankly wish someone would get his attention off of me; maybe Angela shouldn’t try to dumb herself down so much. She’s got a bigger chance of attracting Brian’s attention that way.”
Paula nodded with agreement. The pair was silent for a while, mulling over the implications of such a drama, when Paula suddenly asked, “So, can I move in?”
Melora glared at Paula for a few moments. Then, dropping her forehead into the palm of her hand and sighing, she said, “All right. But then I’ll have to kill you.”
“Yay!”
Melora lay in her hospital bed, a book forgotten in her lap. She gazed outside at the rain drumming down on the green, and was still. Her mind was out there, on top of the hill that she could not even see from her window, surrounded by his flowers. She was a caterpillar on the stem of a geranium, drinking from a droplet of water, massaging herself on a leaf. She swayed in the breeze, and the sound of blades with the falling rain was music in her ears. She climbed to the top of the plant, scaling the soft petals to lie in the center of the blood red bloom. The caterpillar with Melora’s face arched back to expose her soft underbelly and tiny wiggling feet, and added her voice to the song. She clung with her little claw feet to the crimson flower as it was tossed about like a ship in the storm by both wind and rain, and sang her heart out. Her voice seemed to be carried up with the breeze, magnified to join the chorus of nature. It was a song that couldn’t be heard unless you got down to its level. Melora wondered if Edward had been listening to it long before she ever had.
“Melora?”
Jolted back suddenly to her hospital room, Melora did not immediately acknowledge the voice that had called her name. After taking a moment to regain her composure, she slowly turned to look at the boy in the door frame.
“Hello, Brian.”
“I brought you some chocolates. Can I come in?”
“Just for a little while. I’m tired.”
Brian set the small box of chocolates down on the night table and sat down. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. My ribs still hurt a little, but the main thing is this huge hole in my tummy. I swear, if I didn’t have morphine every day to make me stupid, the pain from this thing would make me want to punch a baby.” Melora said, jokingly.
Brian looked a little disturbed, but didn’t make a remark. “Have they managed to filter out most of the toxins?”
“By now, yeah. I’m going home soon; I’d probably have to stay two more months if it had been something like a burst appendix, but this was much cleaner than that.”
They remained there, talking of inconsequential things, for a quarter of an hour more. Finally, Brian sighed and asked Melora, “Mel, is there somebody else?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, is the reason you wont go out with me because you love somebody else?”
Melora gazed at Brian from her bed. She really did feel sorry for him, and maybe in another life he could have been her boyfriend. There was a lot to him; he wasn’t just some dumb jock, Melora could see that. He wanted to rise above his stereotype because he understood that there was more than just going to highschool and dating pretty girls.
“Brian, you’re really sweet, and I think you’d make a terrific boyfriend, but right now I need to be on my own. It’s nothing personal, I just can’t deal with a relationship right now.”
Brian looked confused. “How...I don’t understand. Don’t you want to want to date guys? How are you supposed to get married on day if you don’t have boyfriends now?”
Melora didn’t want to show how offensive Brian’s words were to her; she knew that he wasn’t trying to be chauvanist. “I realize you’ve probably never met a girl who didn’t want to get married or date. But sometimes a girl’s life can’t revolve around a man; it has to revolve around her own hopes and dreams,” Melora continued, “don’t you get it? I have no memories of my past; I’m living on the extremely generous support of my friend, I wont be able to start working for another two weeks, and I’m mentally unstable. I’m running a high risk of becoming addicted to morphine, and my good standing with everyone in suburbia is on really fragile ground after what happened at the barbecue. I have to get all of this stuff sorted out before I can even think about what I want to do with my life, and I can’t date anyone before I get that figured out.”
“When do you think that will happen?” Brian asked hopefully, “because I’d be willing to wait. I could wait forever for you.”
Melora’s heart broke for him; he looked so desperate. She hated being the cause of such anguish; how could she end his suffering without being cruel?
“I don’t want you to wait forever, Brian. I want you to forget about me, at least as a potential lover. Like I said, you’re incredibly sweet, but I really just can’t see myself with you. I don’t love you, and I need to be on my own.” Melora prayed that Brian understood this without being too crushed.
“Oh.” Brian said. He wasn’t looking at her any more. “Oh,” he said again. He stood up and went to the door; Melora following him with her eyes expectantly. As Brian reached the door frame, his eyes darted to Melora’s face. “I think you’re mean, and cruel, and you think you’re better than everybody else, living like a princess in your tower. I wish I never met you.” And then he was gone.