Disclaimer: is this really necessary anymore? We've already established in the past 7 chapters that I don't own these poor characters that I so very much love to torture. Heh heh… But Liz is still mine (Yeah, why wouldn't she be? I don't generally sell characters.)
A/N: I was going to put this off a little longer, just to see how many people would die of suspense, but oh well. I'm evil, oh so very evil. Morbid-ness. Yes, yes, yes.
Chapter 8: Close Up Tight
I barely slept that night. What had happened? Maybe Roger and Liz had…but then I felt guilty for not trusting me best friend or my girlfriend. And Roger still had Mimi. Didn't he? He hadn't flinched when I walked past him and said hello. He hadn't been like this since April's suicide.
I woke early the next morning to find Roger sitting in exactly the same position he'd been in the night before. Liz was in the kitchen, making coffee for Roger and tea for us. She poured me a bowl of last week's Cap'n Crunch. No one was talking. My mind was racing filled with the various things that could have happened, but none were the least bit logical. I was beginning to wish I'd stayed in Canada, where I wouldn't have to deal with all of this.
"Roger." Liz said gently. Roger didn't even flinch. Liz tried to hand him his coffee, but he wouldn't take it, so she sat it down on the floor at his feet, next to his guitar. He didn't react, nor did he react to me sitting down next to him with my cup of tea.
"Roger. What's wrong? What happened?" I asked him quietly.
"Asshole. You asshole." Well, that wasn't exactly what I'd expected, but I least he said something. I looked at Liz, and she shook her head sadly and beckoned me to come with her.
"Let's go for a walk." She whispered to me. I nodded, took her hand, and thought, this can't be good.
We walked down Avenue A towards the park in an uneasy silence. Upon reaching our destination, we sat on the swings, and Liz twisted hers around to face me.
"Mimi's dead." The way she said it, short and abrupt, felt like she'd just stabbed me with the knives I hid from Roger a long time ago, and began to use for my own purpose.
"WHAT?"
"She died a few hours after she found out you left. Roger thinks that's what killed her, though it was probably the cold she had." Words scrambled around my head trying to form a coherent thought.
"But…she…why…what…NO!" Liz pulled me into a tight hug and kissed me. The grim, terrified expression on her face was only half of what I felt. I knew she was fairly close with Mimi, but she hadn't known her nearly as long as I had. And then a thought struck me.
"Oh my god. Roger. Oh shit." I sprinted off down the street with Liz trailing behind me. Why had we left him alone in the loft? I'd forgotten that he had taken all my knives, razors, and other sharp objects back in November. He still had them. Why hadn't I thought of that before? I dashed up the four flights of stairs to the loft and threw open the door, knowing exactly what I was going to find, but hoping I was wrong.
Roger was still sitting on the couch, but there was something that told me he wasn't just sitting there. I ran over to him and almost fainted. A razor lay on the floor in an ever-growing puddle of blood, but he was still alive, he was twitching, and he was watching the blood pour out of him arms. All common sense left, I raced to the bathroom and grabbed every towel I could find and ran back to Roger. Liz had arrived, out of breath and all I could manage to say to her was,
"9…1…1! Please!" I continued to wrap Roger's arms in the two towels to slow the blood flow a bit. I assume he had passed out by this time. I managed to get his arms wrapped up, and now the ambulance just had to get there. My hands were stained with his blood.
"MARK!" Liz shouted and pointed to my hands. His blood. Oh shit.
Twenty minutes later, my hands had been thoroughly washed, and Liz and I were sitting in the back of an ambulance with a half-dead Roger and an EMT who was a dimwit. He kept assuring us that he dealt with things like this all the time, though he did mention it was his second day actually "doing work in a real ambulance."
We reached the hospital, and Roger was rushed to the emergency room and we were ushered to the cafeteria and given cups of lukewarm mint tea. My whole body was shaking and Liz kept poking holes in the Styrofoam cup. Eventually, we made our way back to the ER waiting room and did the only thing we could do. Wait.
We waited for hours. Maureen, Joanne, Collins, and Angel showed up eventually, but none of them said a word. Finally, after what seemed like days, a nurse came out and asked for "the family of Roger Davis." The six of us grimly stood up and followed the nurse down the hall to Roger's room, half listening to her explain that Roger would be ok eventually but he needed to go to rehab, therapy, blah, blah, blah. She let us into the tiny grey room where Roger lay half asleep, half alive on a bed. She wished us luck and left the room.
"MIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIII!" came a cry from Roger. I grabbed Liz's hand and winced. It didn't sound like Roger at all. He sounded like some big animal that had been hunted and shot, and was crying out in pain as he held on to his life. "MIIIIMIIII!" he screamed again. Maureen sobbed. The nurse dragged us out of the room again and informed us again that he'd live, and we were sent back to the cafeteria. As we disappeared down the hall, I could still hear the cries from his room.
"MIMIIII! MIIIIMI! MIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIII!"