Arthur remembers how to give CPR from watching movies, and he breathes into Curt's mouth every few seconds until the ambulance comes, which takes almost fifteen minutes, and Arthur is exhausted and panting and panicking by the time the EMTs walk in the door, at which point they tilt Curt's head back further before they start pumping air into him with a little hand pump, and Arthur is suddenly humiliatingly aware that the last fifteen minutes or so has been pretty fucking useless. A joke, even.
---
Not, obviously, that Curt had completely stopped breathing for fifteen minutes. Rather, his breathing was shallow and uneven enough to not really be enough oxygen to be real happy with. The dispatcher told Arthur on the phone to do "support breathing," enough to help make sure there wasn't any brain damage. Arthur didn't know how much support he was supposed to be giving.
They let Arthur ride with them in the ambulance, and they inject Curt with something whose name Arthur doesn't catch, and Curt is awake and insisting that he hasn't been using, nuh-uh, not a thing, before they even make it to the ER.
---
Curt is sick: whatever they gave him has precipitated withdrawal, and it's mild yet, but he's cranky and shakey and Arthur has to step outside the room and into the bright hallway, and he stares down at the green and white tiled floor, the flat vaguely marbled kind that only exists inside certain institutions, the kind that makes everyone looks jaundiced, the kind that is frightening under flourescents, and Arthur stares at the floor and he starts shaking and he can't stop.
Arthur asks a nurse where a public restroom is, and he barely makes it inside before he starts puking.
Stress: it's a bitch.
---
Curt curls up in Arthur's lap and shivers. Curt is nearly phobic about hospitals, the lights and interns and labcoats terrify him, and Arthur feels very protective as Curt snuggles close, clinging to Arthur's leg. It has been a long time since Curt allowed himself to be vulnerable, since he turned to Arthur for comfort. Arthur is glad to be able to offer that, at least.
--
Arthur knows he's being stupid, he's being a sucker, the time to walk away was weeks ago, maybe months ago, the time to walk away is now. He doesn't know how it all managed to slip out of control so quickly. It had seemed like Curt was doing so well, it had seemed like everything was going to be okay, this time. This time everything could be perfect. They could fix it all.
And Curt screws everything up, over and over and over. Arthur doesn't know why Curt is constantly sabotaging himself, but he's convinced that that is what it is. And it makes him so angry, he can't stand it, sometimes he wants to fucking deck Curt, to hit him so hard that it would spin Curt all the way round, 360, and knock a little sense into him. Arthur is so sick of these promises that aren't kept, of the way Curt tries and fails, of knowing it could, it should, be so easy, of knowing he can't always be there to make sure that Curt is okay.
Like today.
It isn't like cancer, it isn't like anything else, because not only is someone's life in jeapordy, they could stop. It's not a progression of cells inexorably eating you from the inside out, it's not something ticking dangerously deep within the body, none of that. Curt can make it end, at any time, if he can figure out how.
If he wants to badly enough.
--
And that's the thing. Today, was it an accident? Was it a half-accident, where Curt knew he was taking a risk and didn't care? Was it simply bad luck? Or something else?
Arthur can't ask, so he'll never know.
Not that Curt would necessarily answer, or necessarily tell the truth.
Old joke: How do you know when a junkie's lying? His lips are moving.
Arthur doesn't want to believe that.
--
It wasn't always like this, of course. There's an ebb and flow to these things, like everything. For a while, he was clean, and they were happy, relatively speaking. He was clean long enough that Arthur had come to count on it, to depend on it, to believe that it could be real, that it could be forever. And then for a while it was occasional, once a week, a few times a week, nothing more. And Arthur, too much of an insecure, inexperienced silly ponce to see it for what it was: Curt with his toes over the edge of a precipice. And then with a dizzying, predictable rapidity it spiraled out of control.
There must have been a moment when it started, when Arthur could have said something and headed things off, but he looks back and he can't figure out what moment it was. Curt had seemed so in control, so credible. Arthur didn't know then that things were about to escalate with breathtaking, nauseating speed, leaving both of them confused and shaken, not knowing what to say, not able to look each other in the eye or have conversations that were anything more than cursory.
--
The doctors let them go around midnight. They sent in a series of doctors and psychologists attempting to talk Curt into staying. But Curt knows the system, shoots down everything they say. He is having none of it. He tells them he doesn't have insurance, which is true. No company in the world would carry him, not for any price.
He's an adult; they tell Arthur; we can't force him. Curt is sick, pale and sweaty and trembling badly. Arthur hails a cab home and they don't say a word to each other. What can they say? Apologies, recriminations, regrets: it makes no difference. Arthur doesn't know what Curt is thinking: he's staring out the window, lost in his thoughts and a desire that has spun out of control, that has violated the boundaries of sickness and health, of choice and obsessive need.
--
Home, Curt beelines for the room he has claimed for his private space, his music room, the room where he makes phone calls Arthur is not privy to, the room where, a few hours ago, Arthur gave him mouth-to-mouth in the most pathetically ineffective and useless of ways.
"Wait," Arthur says. "Please don't."
Curt turns around, pale and haunted. "I'm sick," he says. "I have to. Right now. I can't wait."
Arthur says, "Then let me stay with you."
Curt looks down, looks up, nods.
--
So, for the first time, Arthur watches Curt shoot up, and stays sitting with him long enough to be sure that Curt is okay, that this time it's all right, that this time, at least, Curt is going to wake up.
And, when he's convinced, he locks himself in the bathroom and turns on the water and sobs and wonders how much longer he can deal with this, and at what point love will no longer be enough.