Lost and Found
Riverdale County Hospital - 19th June 2011
8:56 am
He walked down the horribly familiar corridor of the hospital, navigating his way to Adam's room without having to check the signs. He felt himself shudder at the familiarity of it all; nobody should know the layout of a hospital like the back of their hand – not unless they're being paid to be there.
And there wasn't enough money in the world that would make Eli Goldsworthy want to set foot in a hospital again.
He remembered the agonizing hours he had paced those halls after Julia's accident; the doctors telling them nothing and saying everything, the way Cece held him close to her and rocked him and how she wasn't Cece in that moment, but she was his mom, the way that the moment Eli stopped pacing, Bullfrog would get up and take Eli's place, like the world's most neurotic relay team.
Or how Julia's parents arrived just minutes before the doctors delivered the news.
And how they blamed Eli.
And how Eli agreed with them.
How she was gone.
And it was his fault.
He walked without focus through a stream of headily focused people; people focusing of saving lives, people focusing on getting better, people focusing, praying, pleading for the people they loved to please, please, please be ok.
Eli pushed against the current of those concentrated people and unconsciously drove himself over to Adam's room.
Eli could see him in the bed, seemingly out for the count. From his angle, the room looked otherwise unoccupied.
It wasn't until he actually set foot in the room that he saw Drew. Sitting perfectly still other than a thumb tracing over Adam's slung hand. It seemed an odd choice to Eli, especially when Adam's other hand was free and not lying up by his chest (an area Eli imagined Adam wasn't too happy about letting people near.)
Eli cleared his throat, feeling like he was intruding on something he wasn't supposed to see, even though Adam was asleep and Drew was just sitting there. Still, the intense look in Drew's face seemed to speak volumes – volumes in some foreign language that only brothers could understand.
Drew looked up at Eli, looking like he had been cut-off mid sentence although he was sitting in total silence.
The look of contempt that Drew usually reserved for Eli was conspicuously absent. Eli wasn't exactly sure what he had done to incur Drew's wrath, but whatever it was, it wasn't there now. As far as Eli could figure out, Drew's problem seemed to be that Eli had the audacity to be friends with Adam, which apparently was inexcusable to Drew because Adam was his; like a child not wanting to share his favorite toy.
"Hey," Drew said, his voice harsh from fatigue, "you got changed."
Eli looked stupidly down at his own clothes, just to check that Drew was right. Bullfrog had taken him home some time around 5am to get some sleep - something Eli had been desperately looking forward to.
Not that he managed to get any.
Eli was in the bathroom, having torn off his waiter's uniform and ready to have a shower; ready to wash away the horrors of the night before. He had went to jump into the welcoming stream of hot water when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and noticed the small dark stains on his forearms and the side of his torso.
Blood.
Adam's blood.
He managed to keep it together, if only barely, until he saw his violently scarlet knees. He wondered dully for a moment if he'd managed to scrape them from rushing to kneel on the floor where his best friend was lying, drenched a pool of blood.
A pool of blood; it had surrounded him - it had surrounded all of them.
He had been kneeling in Adam's blood. He'd been covered in it for hours.
He dry heaved in the sink a few times, but managed to evade actually vomiting. He had to get clean; he had to get rid of it all.
Eli stood in the shower much longer than he had needed to. Scrubbing so hard that he wasn't sure if his skin was red because it was bloodstained or just raw.
"Yeah, I got changed," he eventually said to Drew. "Had a shower. Tried to get some sleep; emphasis on tried."
It may have just been Eli's imagination, but he was pretty sure Drew cracked the tiniest of smiles.
"At least one of us finally got to sleep," Eli added, nodding to Adam.
"They had to give him a whole bunch of morphine first, but he's been out for about 3 hours now."
Eli looked at Drew; he still had his tux on and his eyes were still red and puffy, in stark contrast to the rest of his face which was chalk white. Had he just been sitting there the whole time?
Eli moved into the empty seat to the other side of Adam's bed, taking his free hand. At least it was warm and still this time; not cold and sweating and shaking-
"Where's your parents?" He asked, trying to force his brain to move to a different track.
Drew cleared his throat. "Dad was talking things over with Bianca; he took her home, I'm guessing he's getting some sleep. Mom yelled at hospital administration for a while and then went back to he house to get some stuff for Adam."
Eli felt a strange sense of satisfaction hearing that Mrs. Torres had chewed out hospital administration. It had taken the hospital a ridiculously long time to work out what to do with Adam. They had insisted on using his legal name when addressing or regarding him, they stuck "Torres, G. – F" on his medical bracelet and chart, they left him on a stretcher in the hall for over an hour while they tried to figure out what room to put him in before just giving him his own private one. Adam was fortunately too out of it to care, but Mrs. Torres was absolutely furious. "Have they never had a trans patient before? This kind of treatment is inexcusable!" she screamed to no one in particular, before defiantly adding, "It ends now." Eli hadn't seen her since then. As a matter of fact, he hadn't really seen anybody since then. Well, anybody other than Drew.
"So it's just you here on your own?"
Drew shrugged, he looked choked up again. "I- I just couldn't leave him."
He squeezed Adam's hand lovingly. Eli really didn't know what to make of it. Drew Torres didn't strike him as a particularly sensitive person, but man if he didn't adore his stepbrother.
Drew sighed shakily.
"Man, these things always happen to Adam. Always. When we lived in Vancouver, I had a friend Cal, who had one of those uncles - you know the kind that could get things?"
Eli nodded, he knew that guy – he was that guy. Drew continued.
"One time during spring break he got us these bb guns. We were like eight at the time; it kind of was crazy now that I think about it."
He paused thoughtfully. Eli wasn't sure why Drew was telling him this (or even if he was telling Eli this, or just thinking aloud,) but didn't think to question it.
"Anyway," Drew said, "I was showing it off to Gracie in the backyard and I accidentally pulled the trigger and shot her in the eye with one of the little metal pellet things! And I knew it was bad because she instantly started screaming her head off – and Gracie never cried."
Eli felt himself twist at the switch from "Adam" to "Gracie"; he just couldn't connect the two. He'd seen photos, he'd heard Adam's old stories, he'd even been in the house when Mrs. Torres, much to Adam's horror, decided to put on some home movies. He just couldn't process that they were the same person. Drew on the other hand didn't even seem to notice that he'd made the switch at all. But he did use The Tone; that hushed, sacred tone that people usually reserved when talking about loved ones who had died. Eli knew it well; he used the same one when talking about Julia.
"Dad heard and ran outside, and then he started freaking out too. They both yelled all the way to the hospital. Dad seriously thought she was going to go blind - even the doctor was worried. Obviously, she was fine but still… it was really scary."
Eli flashed back to the night before; to the confusion, the fear, the blood. The blood. Drew was still sitting in his tux, he had been right next to Adam – right by the side after he was shot. Eli took a closer look; it was hard to see against the black, but the dark red stains were definitely there; on his arms, on his knees and shins, on his side.
Drew didn't even know yet.
"She had to wear an eye patch for the rest of the school year - I felt so bad! She would've been six, not quite seven, and she just wanted to play pirates all the time – you know, because of the eye patch? And I was "too old" to play pirates, but I had to make it up to her somehow, so I went along with it. It was actually kind of awesome - not that I ever admitted that."
Drew was looking at Adam, as if he was telling the story to him. Eli wasn't even sure that Drew was telling the story to anybody; it seemed like it was just something that he needed to say out loud - something that needed to be unbottled.
"But yeah, it was always her – falling out of a tree and breaking a wrist, cracking a rib jumping off the swings, losing a tooth playing hockey. I'm a quarterback and I've never broken a single bone in my body."
The corners of Drew's mouth curled up, but it wasn't a smile. It was more of a grimace than anything else.
"It's not fair. He hates hospitals, gets totally queasy at the sight of blood – terrified of needles.
Drew's face twisted further, he tightened his grip of Adam's hand.
"I think that why he… why he didn't cut."
Eli felt his own grip on Adam's other hand tighten. A part of him wanted to turn Adam's arm around to reveal the scars that Drew was referencing, but another (thankfully much more overwhelming and convincing) part told him not to; he didn't need to see - it was none of his business.
But the burning, that was something that always unnerved Eli; it just seemed to go so against what Adam represented (or at least, what he represented to Eli) - sheer determination.
At the beginning his junior year, Eli was still trying his very best to be left alone. Meanwhile, Bullfrog had decided that Eli had had quite enough alone time and had managed to score Eli three tickets to the Dead Hand concert from work.
"Have a good time," he had told Eli. "Take some friends along!"
Eli had ignored the later part of Bullfrog's instruction and sold the other two tickets. Bullfrog somehow managed to catch wind of this and took away Eli's remaining ticket too.
"How am I supposed to get out of the house and enjoy myself if you're taking my means of enjoyment away from me?"
Bullfrog didn't relent. He produced a folded up sheet of paper from his pocket.
"We got sent this e-mail at the station today - from your student council president," he said, as if the role actually held some real importance. "They're holding this competition after school tomorrow; whoever keeps their hand on a car the longest wins four passes to The Dead Hand - he wanted us to promote it."
He handed the paper to Eli, the e-mail from Sav Bhandari printed out on it.
"You want to go that concert? Go out and earn it!"
Eli didn't really want to spend all day standing with a bunch of people who actively disliked him and thus decided that he was going to ensure that the competition would be over as quickly as possible.
He had avoided showering; a surefire way of putting people off wanting to stand near him. Then he picked up a crate of bottled water at the store, ready to offer them to any thirsty participants; it's hard to stand around for too long with a full bladder after all. Get in, get the tickets and get out he told himself - that was the master plan.
And his plan would have definitely worked if it hadn't been for that damn Adam Torres.
He didn't look old enough to be in high school. He was a small, skinny kid in clothes four sizes too big for him. He looked nervous at the idea of being in such close proximity to so many people.
But he was so determined to win; he would've clung onto that car all day if he had to.
All Eli had was smelling bad.
Eli had never had guy friends before Adam, and Adam was still his only one. He had always been a little too discerning, too perspicacious, for most other guys. He was actually slightly nervous about befriending Adam at first, who was all insinuation and false bravado when they first met; essentially, he was Drew.
That only lasted for about a week though, then they discovered a shared passion for comic books.
"You have a Batman #66?" Eli asked in disbelief, pulling the issue out of a very large stack of Batman's.
"It's a reprint," Adam shrugged.
"Even still," Eli said, clutching it in an overprotective manner, "if this were mine, I would have it encased in plastic, locked in a box, inside of a safe, in a fireproof storage unit."
"But then you could never read about The Joker's boner!"
"You're fifteen," Eli scoffed, "boners shouldn't be funny again yet – they should be deeply horrifying."
He was joking of course, but Adam still looked flustered and fumbled with the comic he was holding (a newer X-Men #1 from the nineties re-imagining of the series.)
"I mean, yeah!" Adam said, eyes wide. "Obviously. Those damn boner… things. Let's read!"
It would have been the first of many odd things about Adam (Adam would later call these "plotholes"). Eli wouldn't go as far to say that he knew, but he definitely noticed that Adam just wasn't like other guys.
Not that it mattered; when Adam did finally tell Eli what going on, it was hardly like Eli could judge. Eli had a penchant for being overly verbose (using words like "perspicacious" in his everyday vocabulary), wearing eyeliner and spending all his time with Julia; this was considered "faggy" amongst the other niner guys at the time, something Eli couldn't quite wrap his head around; spending time with your girlfriend is gay? He didn't mind too much, he didn't particularly care for any of the other people in his grade - just Julia.
Julia. Eli would always associate hospitals with her, no matter how hard he tried not to. The longer he stayed there, the more he would be reminded. He looked over to Drew, focusing on holding Adam's hand, seemingly unaware that Eli was even there, let alone that he was sharing stories with him.
Well since they were sharing stories.
"My girlfriend died," Eli said, quite bluntly; he was just too damn tired to explain it softly.
"Uh, yeah, I know," Drew muttered awkwardly. A lot of people thought they knew - there was a version of the story floating around where Eli was the one that hit her with the car. He never bothered to correct them; he might as well have been the one behind the wheel as far as he was concerned. Besides, it made sure that people left him alone; the people that mattered wouldn't listen to the bullshit.
"Some stranger hit her with his car," Eli explained. He wasn't even sure why he was bothering to explain himself to Drew - it wasn't like Eli particularly cared what Drew thought of him. But still, he was Adam's best friend, and Drew was Adam's brother, and Adam was quietly snoring in between the two of them, showing no hint of waking up any time soon.
"After Julia died," Eli started, "I would to go to this coffee house a few miles outside Riverdale. It was always full of college students and a few Bardell kids. It was better than going to The Dot; nobody stared, or whispered, or called me "Ghoulsworthy". Plus it got me away from the house for a few hours."
Drew shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, unconsciously running his free hand through his hair; he was definitely one of the people who still used Eli's unfavorable nickname. Eli hesitated before continuing, wondering if maybe Drew had had enough things thrown at him for one day.
But it wasn't really like Eli was going to get the chance again.
"There was a waitress who worked there - Kristin. I didn't know her or anything, she just used to take my order. But she looked like Julia; not all the time, but she would smile, or move her head in a certain way and..." Eli took a deep breath; he could feel The Tone coming on.
"It was like having her back."
Eli saw Drew; his eyes had darted to Adam, looking small and pale sleeping on his bed. The Look, the one that so often accompanied The Tone, was etched on Drew's weary face; he understood what Eli was trying to tell him, he probably understood it even better than Eli did, and it was Eli's story.
"And you kept going?" Drew asked in a low voice.
"Every day," Eli said, smiling involuntarily. "I'd only ever talk to her for a few seconds - when she took my order, but it was... nice, I guess. One time, I remember, I spilled my coffee and she helped to clean it up and… she gave me her dishtowel to use. She never asked for it back so I just ended up taking it home with me. I, uh, I kept it in my room - for a long time."
Eli looked up at Drew hesitantly; maybe he had said too much, had gone too far - too weird. But Drew nodded, urging Eli to go on.
"It didn't last though - the illusion - it never does."
Eli swallowed the bitterness before going on.
"The longer I went there, the bigger the cracks got. She wasn't very bright - she was pleasant enough, but when you heard her talk to someone for long enough, you could tell that she was pretty clueless. She would sometimes make these little comments to the other servers about what the customers were wearing, or their haircuts or other dumb superficial things. Sometimes her boyfriend would pick her up at the end of her shift; he looked like a tool, he probably wasn't, but he looked like one." He let out one quick chuckle. "I know right? Here's me saying this girl was shallow and I'm sitting there thinking her boyfriend looks like a tool."
Drew shrugged. "When it isn't you, every cute girl's boyfriend looks like a tool."
Eli felt himself agreeing with Drew's sentiment; it was surprisingly insightful. Drew was insightful, in his own Drew way.
"Regardless, I found myself getting really mad at her; for not being Julia, for looking like her, for being alive when Julia wasn't. And I started to resent her - this poor girl whose only crime was not being dead. I had to stop myself from going, I couldn't look at her - couldn't even drink coffee for a while after that come to think of it."
They sat in silence for a very long time; the constant racket of the hospital behind them was the only thing that stopped it from becoming uncomfortable.
"I had to change chairs," Drew suddenly said after a long calm, jolting Eli slightly.
Eli looked at him, unsure if he had heard Drew properly.
"After..." Drew nodded over to Adam. "I had to change chairs. Like during dinner and stuff - I'd sit in Gracie's chair, or when we watched TV too - anything like that. It was like... if I didn't sit there, then Adam would. And if Adam sat there..." Drew trailed off, shaking his head. "I'm not saying it right - it's hard to explain."
Eli knew what Drew was trying to say, despite his confused explanation. He understood, but he couldn't imagine how he would even begin to cope if, for some strange reason, Kristin had to live in the same house as him - if she sat in the living room in the same spot Julia used to, eating her dinner on her lap, or brushing her teeth by Julia's sink with Julia's toothbrush. How Drew didn't seem to resent Adam, not even a little, was beyond Eli. Although, once he thought about it, Eli only started to resent poor, unaware Kristin once it became abundantly clear that she wasn't as "good" as Julia; that she wasn't as smart, or as kind. And that tool boyfriend; the one that Eli just had the irrational desire to punch for no other reason than this person who looked like Julia was his-
Eli was the tool boyfriend.
Well, obviously he wasn't Adam's boyfriend (despite the jokes some of the guys from the football team would occasionally make), but he was his friend - his best friend even. And he was Drew's age. And he was over at their house all the time. And Drew was still trying to adjust to having a brother then Eli came along and took him away.
"I'm not trying to take your place," Eli said quickly. This definitely startled Drew, who pushed himself closer to Adam and, consequentially, Eli. "I don't know if that's what you think, but-"
"No, I know," Drew insisted. "I mean, maybe at first I thought-."
Drew looked flustered. Eli felt the overwhelming need to apologise to him – this guy's brother had just been shot and here Eli was, trying to play psychologist with him.
"I mean, you lost Julia," Drew said. "So you know."
Eli nodded; he wasn't entirely sure what it was that he knew, and he had the feeling that Drew didn't either.
"How long did it take?" Drew asked. "For things to get better?"
Eli thought about it before answering; it would never be better, but it did get more bearable.
"Probably a little over a year," Eli answered. "Until I could think about moving on."
Drew puffed up his cheeks and blew out a huge puff of air. "That long? Man, Adam's only been Adam for a year – no, over a year now actually. It would've been a year in April."
Eli felt himself sit up.
"April?"
"Yeah, April," Drew said, before adding thoughtfully, "I probably should've got a present or something."
Eli knew that it was stupid to ask, that the likelihood of it being that date was low (if there even was a specific date – how do you define such things?)
But he had to know.
"When in April?"
"I don't know exactly, somewhere towards the end." Drew stopped suddenly, coming across a flash of inspiration. "It was the day before Kid Elrick got arrested for stabbing that photographer guy! It was all over the news, remember it?"
Eli did.
"It was the 23rd," Eli told him. "Kid Elrick got arrested on the 23rd."
"It was all anyone could talk about," Drew remembered, apparently not daunted by Eli's ability to remember such a seemingly innocuous date. "And I was so annoyed too. Everyone on Facerange was going on about this dumb musician and I'd just lost my sister – not that they knew that yet."
Eli was struck by the idea that on the 23rd of April of last year, he and Drew were doing the exact same thing; scolding people for caring about Kid Elrick when she was gone. Eli had spent the day before planning to go out; to visit Julia at the cemetery, or go to one of their favorite places, or even revisit the street he had last seen her. In actuality, he had spent the day in his room, with his stuff, silently begging the clutter to bring her back somehow.
When he finally did face the outside world, the next day – the 23rd, everyone was too busy with mindless celebrity gossip to notice he was even gone. It did very little to reaffirm his confidence in the human race.
But that date; the one that signified that Julia was dead and Gracie was gone. Eli wasn't superstitious, and faith was one of those things he left for people who were afraid of the dark, but surely it meant something? In all actuality it probably meant that life is weird, and random, and things can just as likely happen on the 22nd of April as they can on any other date, and coincidences could be found everywhere if you just looked hard enough.
"Man, I was having the best dream."
Eli sat up as Adam shook himself awake, he still looked incredibly groggy, but at least he had gotten some rest.
"Really?" Eli asked lightly. "Even after all that excitement?"
"Yeah," Adam said laughing goofily, revealing that the morphine was still doing its job. "But now it just makes me want some grapes. Heh - grapes."
Eli rolled his eyes, smiling. He looked over to Drew, who looked more disappointed than anything else; he must have really wanted to talk to Adam - as in normal lucid Adam. The current Adam was way too high to have real conversation with anybody.
Well at least he got to talk to someone - even if it was "Ghoulsworthy."
Adam looked over at both his hands suspiciously, carefully noting that Eli was holding one, and Drew the other.
"Wait," Adam slurred. "How long have you two been holding my hands?"
"I've been here the whole time, bro," said Drew tenderly, using his free hand to push Adam's wayward hair back.
Adam nodded slowly, processing this new information.
"Aaand now that dream is weird. I don't want grapes anymore."
Eli smiled and got up. "I'll give you two some time alone," he said, backing out of the room.
Drew nodded at Eli, addressing him with the telepathy that he usually shared exclusively with Adam. Eli may have been an only child, but he didn't need to be someone's brother to know what that nod meant.
Thank you.
.
oOo
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- Well, that was fun! I've never written a oneshot before. But if you'd like to read a bit more from Drew's perspective, I have a (ridiculously long) WIP piece all from his point of view called "I always Wanted a Brother" documenting Drew adapting to having Adam in his life. Maybe one day (in the very distant future) we'll have a chapter where we see this little heart-to-heart from Drew's perspective.
- April 22nd 2010 was totally a Saturday, it was definitely NOT a Thursday, why would you even say that? (I mean, even if you check and it says Thursday, it would be wrong. Because reasons.)