I'm not dead yet, but I'm starting to wish I was.
I couldn't pay for any more time in the hospital. I tell Tyler this one day, after that maddening stretch of silence.
So Tyler stands and presses the 'up' button on my morphine-drip regulator. A lot.
I don't even have the energy left to ask him what he's doing.
After a few minutes, the morphine floods into my veins like a lullaby and coaxes me into a semi-coma. Bliss.
There's no Tyler in this dreamless sleep. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing anymore.
I can't think anymore. I can't pretend to forgive Tyler for forbidding Gage from me, or breaking my ribs and crushing my windpipe. I can't forgive him for his pride or his lust.
I mean, I'm not that much of a martyr. I can sacrifice myself all I want, but I'll never be a saint like Tyler is a saint.
But I can't forget the way tears and sweat streaked down his face after he released my lye-burnt hand, the smoke curling away in phantom waltzes, the air screaming with searing flesh. I can't forget the way he pulled me from the wreckage of the ruined Cadillac, the way he dragged my ass back to Paper Street and tended my wounds.
God, Tyler is so full of contradictions. He can be Our Father of Cheap Sunglasses or my best friend, ever. He can be my lover or the abusive father I never had.
But in sleep, confusing shit like this isn't important.
What's important is that this is a break in the insomnia. That I'm actually sleeping.
Sick, morphine-induced, unnatural sleep, but sleep nonetheless.
And there's nothing.
* * *
When I wake up, I'm almost sure I'm still in the hospital until I smell the baking bars of soap and bleached smell of rice drifting from the kitchen.
Oh, that Tyler. He stole the machines from the hospital. My heartrate's still blipping regularlike by my bedside. The morphine's still dripping away.
Tyler delivered me from the hospital and brought everything I'd need.
Okay, sometimes he's pretty great.
The only problem with this is that I can't move to go find him, and I'm hungry as hell. I wonder how long I've been out.
And shit, my throat feels like I've been on a steady diet of steel wool. So no yelling for him.
But he'd probably be nowhere to be found if I did call for him. One of his monkeys would be upstairs, upping my dosage and telling me to shut up and be patient.
But oh, God, Gage is curled up, asleep, in the molding armchair in the corner of my room.
Gage is here. Gage cares.
The pang of guilt I feel, it's a meat hook to the heart. Poor Gage, my Hitler Youth, is still waiting for me to wake up.
That old saying, that the people you love end up killing you? It's working three ways for me.
I love Tyler, but Tyler'd kill me for loving Gage. I also love Gage, but Gage would die for loving me.
And Tyler can do whatever the hell he wants.
Fuck.