Damian was rushed to the ER and I spent the night in the waiting room with Connor, Jeff, Meredith and Abby. I had to call my parents to let them know what had happened. They were disappointed in me for lying, but didn’t take away from the fact that a friend of mine was in the hospital under critical condition. They let me stay there, but warned me that consequences would be had for my deceit over the past months. Right now, I didn’t even care about punishments. I was too busy worrying about my friend, who might have been taken from me too soon.

I had fallen asleep on Connor’s shoulder and was shaken awake gently. My sleepy eyes opened and as the blur faded I was able to make out the blank white walls and navy carpeting of hospital room. My exhausted brain took a long minute to remember where I was, but as soon as the terrible memory came back to me, I saw the man in a long, white overcoat who was talking to a guy probably in his twenties that I had never seen before. The guy was scholarly in appearance, but tears burned his eyes pink.

“Who’s that?” I asked with much difficulty, my mouth filled with that fuzzy taste it gets after being shut for a while.

“Damian’s brother,” Abigail said, resting her temple on her fist.

I never knew of Damian’s brother, except for the quick glances I took at family photos. He was never around at their house when I was and Dam never brought him up. He turned away from the doctor and sat across from me, beside Abigail who talked with him, and I was granted a chance to look at him. He had a narrower face than Damian, but identical eyes, only his crystal blues were shielded by the thin lenses of his thick, framed glasses. He spoke with a pretty average voice and had stipples of facial hair budding from his jaw line – he clearly didn’t shave yet, today.

After relaying what the doctor told him, he turned to Connor, Meredith and me. “He’s been moved to the ICU; you’re allowed to visit him, if you like.”

How long had I been asleep that I missed all of this? Far too long. Meredith chose to stay back, since she didn’t know Damian that well, but followed Connor and me to his room, despite that. I could tell she just wanted to comfort me, as she found Connor to be an unacceptable person for a job like that.

We walked through two automatic doors with INTENSIVE CARE UNIT spelled out on the glass. A nurse pointed us in the right direction and we opened a door, which led to a small, closet-sized room painted a turquoise shade and lined with chairs and a table with tissue boxes on it. Oh God, I could feel the nausea wash over me again. We passed the door at the opposite end of the hall and it opened into a larger room with multiple patients in beds, divided by blue curtains that hung from metal frames. Doctors and nurses hustled and bustled about like early Christmas shoppers with clipboard in their hands. Straight ahead of us lay our friend, rouged bandages covering almost every part of him, casts on his limbs. I came up to his side hesitantly, but he appeared in an unconscious state. I held his hand but he didn’t hear me, and it was then that I cried the most. Even Connor was sobbing, and I knew he wasn’t the most sensitive of people.

We couldn’t stay long – we honestly did not have to ability to watch one of the most sincere people we knew in so much pain – and went rushing back to the waiting room. Jeff prompted a question about how he was doing, but we didn’t have much of an answer for that – we weren’t the doctors, but he looked pretty banged up.

“Have his parents already come by?” I asked the older brother, who looked at me uncertainly before answering.

“They’re dead – car crash two years ago. I’m his legal guardian.”

I felt like I was in those ghost stories – the one where a guy gives a ride to a hitchhiker, but the hitchhiker leaves behind a sweater or such object for the driver to return, and when the driver rings the house up, the residents tell him the person he gave a ride to is dead, and has been for years. I didn’t know why Damian couldn’t just tell me the truth. I wouldn’t judge him at all. Whenever I asked about them, he gave me a vague answer; business trip, vacation, errands. He was never sad about it, either. It was eerie, as if he himself didn’t know they were dead.

On Sunday, we were told to go home. I would’ve stayed, just to keep tabs on what was going on, but Simon (Damian’s brother) reassured us he’d contact us if anything happened. I smelled like booze, sweat, smoke and the stale outdoors, so showering was my first act of business when I got home. After that, I met with my parents in the living room for our family discussion. I pulled up a chair and paid attention – their spiels were long and they deserved any mind I paid.

“Your behaviour this past week is completely unsatisfactory,” my dad began.

My mum held up a hand to cut him off and continued in her soothing voice. “What your father means to say is that we were very worried for you once we caught on to your truth-bending. If you had told us you wanted to attend these events, we would have allowed you, as long as you’re not alone. You’re at an age where you’re entitled to do these things. It’s a part of your youth.”

And the rest of the lecture went on in that manner: my father would say something formal, in his business nature, and my mother would continue in her soft way of speaking, filled with the knowledge of a good psychologist. I could almost see the gears working in her head with the little techniques she knew to get people to talk, to convey that she was listening, to not spoon-feed them words or contradict them – she was very good in her line of work and I was proud of her for that. I could tell she was lying about letting me go to parties, though, since she just needed to build trust with me so I wouldn’t be inclined to pull an act like this again. Knowing these strategies were one of the perks to being a therapist’s daughter. So I put up a bit of a fight, and then “caved in”, to give them the satisfaction of their brilliant parenting, as well as not give away the fact their tactics weren’t working on me, and haven’t been for the last few years. When you know how to predict your enemy’s moves, you don’t want them to suddenly switch plans and play a different way, because then you’d be the one caught off guard. You had to make sure they didn’t know what you were capable of. I wouldn’t say my parents were enemies, but they were like the airplane security that blocked my way to freedom. If I wanted to pass them, I couldn’t do so by force.

Labels: nanowrimo