Roger POV:

            I wait until I know for sure that Mark is out of the loft before finishing my suicide note. I don't want him to get all nosy and barge in on me writing this. Then he would try to stop me, and I'm determined to make this work. Mark and everyone else has had to put up with me long enough. I've been nothing but a burden to them since they've known me, and what I overheard them saying before was just a confirmation of that. I've punished them long enough with my presence, they'll all be much better off without me.

            It takes me a while to finish my note. I have a lot to apologize for and I want to make sure I get it all in there. Once I'm finally satisfied with it, I put it off to the side so Mark will be able to read it without bloodstains. Then I pick up the piece of glass I selected before and cut into my wrist with all the strength I have, which isn't much considering how little I've been eating lately.

            At first I think it's not deep enough since I'm not very strong anymore, but I guess the glass was sharper that I thought because it's bleeding a lot more and faster than I thought I would. I do another deep cut though, just in case, and am about to do the other wrist when suddenly I see Mark standing in my doorway.

            He looks shocked for a split second but then his face is taken over by anxiety and fear as he rushes to my side and tries to get the glass away from me.

            "Roger! What the hell are you doing?!"

            I drop the glass, not wanting him to actually have to witness me killing myself, and he kicks it away from my reach as he tries to grab for my wrist. Suddenly, flashbacks from the last time I found myself in this position fill my head and I completely go crazy on him, screaming, and trying to kick his hand away.

            "Get away from me, don't touch me!! I'll kill you, get away, don't touch me, you'll die if you touch me!" He ignores my desperate pleas though, and tries again to grab my arm so I kick him as hard as I can, desperately trying to save his life.

            He grimaces in pain. "Shit, Roger, let me help you! You'll die if you don't let me help you!"

            "No! You'll die, you'll die if you touch me! Get the hell away from me, GO AWAY!!"

            He grabs my shoulders, hard, to keep me still and forces me to look in his eyes. "Roger, I already have AIDS. The only person that will die is you if you don't let me help you."

            As the reality of his words sink in I'm brought back to the present again and stop struggling, and collapse, sobbing in his arms as he grips my wrist tightly to stop the bleeding. We just sit there, shaking and holding each other, both of us drowning in a pool of blood and tears.

            After a long while of being wrapped in each other's arms, with him still squeezing my wrist, the bleeding stops, as do our sobs, though icy tears mixed with red blood stains still weave down our faces.

            He finally releases me and looks down at my crimson colored arm. "Why would you do this to yourself, Rog, why? Why are you trying to kill yourself?" His eyes look so sad, and I'm so sick of lying. So sick of pretend to be okay when I know really that I'm not. I know I'm sick, I know I have a problem and need help. So, for once, I swallow my pride and decide to tell the truth because I just can't go on living like this anymore.

            I pull my arm away, still not comfortable with him holding it like that. "Because…because I'm ruining your life. I'm nothing but a burden to you and to everyone else. I killed you and now I'm killing myself the same way."

            He looks shocked. "I…Roger, you didn't kill me. And you're not ruining my life. I don't know how that notion got into your head because it's not true. I just can't stand to see you hurting yourself like this because I care about you." He pauses. "And anyway, I didn't just mean tonight."

            "What?"

            "Roger, you don't eat…and on the rare occasion that you do, you throw up. That's not trying to kill yourself?"

            I sigh, fresh tears forming in my eyes. "I'm…I'm not doing it on purpose, I just…" I let my voice trail off, afraid I won't be able to continue without breaking into a sob.

            Mark puts his arms around me and holds me. "Sh…I know, it's ok."

            I look up, surprised. "You know?"

            "Well…kind of. But I still don't know why…"

            He looks at me, his eyes begging me to tell him, begging me to let him help. "I don't know, I really don't know why. I just get so fucking scared when I eat, I just…go crazy. I know it doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry. I just can't function normally with food in my stomach."

            He rubs my back. "And your room?"

            I pause, not sure if I'm comfortable telling him about this. There are quite a few things and I'm not exactly sure which he's referring to. "What about my room? There's a lot…"

            "How did it start?"

            Leave it to Mark to find the one thing I don't want to talk about. I sigh. "Okay, it's kind of a long story. Do you know how…how I cut my arm…that night?" He shakes his head, staring down at my blood soaked floor. I take a deep breath before going on. "I tripped over a pile of clothes on my floor and fell on a picture frame…that broke. And…well, you know the rest. So anyway, after that I just got really conscious about keeping my room clean, I didn't want anything like that to happen ever again."

            A look of realization flashes across his face. "So that's why…with that glass?"

            I nod. "And then it just grew and grew. I didn't just clean to prevent accidents from happening. I arranged stuff, my books…well you already know about that. Now I just do that whenever I'm really anxious, or I'll have a specific time or day that I have to do something and if I don't, I feel like I do when I eat something. It's like a compulsion."

            "God, Rog, you should've told me, I could have helped you! Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

            "Because you have your own problems, you shouldn't have to constantly be taking care of me, always cleaning up my messes! Geez Mark, you just found out you were HIV positive, I didn't want you to focus on me when you had all that stuff going on with you. And I knew you would have, Mark, because that's what you always do."

            "But you needed the help. Look at yourself Roger." He motions to the blood that is still pooled around us. "Will you let me help you now?" I can barely hear him, he speaks so softly.

            "I…it's not that I don't want the help, I do…it's just that I don't think I can be helped. I just can't go back to eating normally again, you don't understand how scary it is for me, how horrible I feel…"

            He takes my hand and gently leads me to the full length mirror in the hall that I had three weeks ago taken out of my room. The man staring back at me is not me, I'm sure of it. His bleached blonde hair is thin and dull with red patches of blood all over, and even though he seems to be wearing at least two sweaters, you could almost count every one of his ribs. I move my hand and touch it to my face and so does the mirror man and it then that I realize it is me. I haven't looked at a full length mirror in three weeks either and I'm shocked to see how much my appearance has changed.

            "Look at yourself," Mark says again. "If you don't let us help you'll die."

            I start crying again. "You can't help me Mark, no one can. You don't think I've tried to stop? I did try…and I just can't. I'm destined to die, this is my fate. I've accepted it and now you have to also because you know as well as I do that I'm not going to be here for much longer.
            He grabs my shoulders, fire burning in those deep blue eyes. "Don't you ever say that again Roger! I won't let you die, you've been through so much, I won't let you give up now!" He lowers his voice, the rage seeming to die away as he stares at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes. "I, uh…talked to Paul tonight…at Life Support…"

            "You talked to Paul about me?!"

            "I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to do! You said so yourself, you're dying. And I'm not about to let that happen.

            I cross my arms. I have no argument and he knows it.

            "Anyway…" He reaches in his pocket and hands me a small, folded piece of paper with a name and phone number written on it. "He said you should consider maybe seeing a therapist…"

            "No way! There's no way I'll-"

            "Roger, please…she can help you. There's nothing more any of us can do for you here. You can't handle this by yourself anymore. And anyway, you went to rehab to get off heroine, so why should going to a therapist for anorexia be any different?"

            "Wait, who the hell said I was anorexic?? I'm not some sixteen year old girl obsessed with getting fat!" (a/n: no offense to anyone, those words aren't mine, that's just Roger in his fury)

            "Okay, okay, so go and prove me wrong then!" I start to protest but he looks at me with those sad, blue eyes again. "Please Rog, if not for you then for me?"

            I'm suddenly reminded of why I started doing this in the first place and I sigh in defeat. "Fine…but I'm just going once and if I don't like it, I'm not going back."

            "Fair enough." He surveys me again and I detect the slightest tinge of sadness in his voice. "Come on, lets get you cleaned up."

            He drags me into the bathroom with him as he bandages my wrist and helps me wash the crimson stains off my body.

            The scars on my wrist will fade soon. But what about my soul? You can't just cover those scars with a band-aid and forget about them, hoping they'll go away on their own. That's what I've been trying to do my whole life. But tonight I took that bandage off, revealing my wounds for the first time in almost a year. Can I even hope that these scars will heal eventually too?

This chapter is for my best friend, Pam, whose scars will heal too!!