NOTE:
Again, trigger warnings for miscarriage and suicidal thoughts. I apologize in advance if my prose seems uncharacteristically terse; I had a hard time writing this because of the highly emotional content—tissues strongly advised!
…at least there's Harry Styles?
Chapter 19: Shell-Shocked | July 2017
Holly
"Tom, what?!" I practically scream over the phone, pausing for a fraction of a second to wonder worriedly whether his ear had been painfully close to the speaker, before my excitement overtakes me again. "Why didn't you tell me, to begin with?!"
"I assumed—"
"Oh, you assumed, did you?!"
I laugh almost shrilly in my undiluted excitement and disbelief. I've been in London all summer for my internship—which is now paying me more—and I have the apartment to myself while Ben is gone, flying North to meet with the author of the Patrick Melrose books, and then heading to NYC where he'll be doing a live talk show. Tom had received two tickets to see Dunkirk, the newest film from my favorite director, Christopher Nolan, two days before, and as Ben had already been occupied, being set for the interview on the day of the movie, Tom had extended the invitation to me. I'd been overjoyed just at that, since I'd always wanted to see one of his films in the theatre but had never had the opportunity to do so, and had assumed that they were tickets to any average showing, to which we would sneak in disguise. But lo and behold, it turns out that the tickets were not to a normal showing in a normal theatre, but to the actual world premiere, itself!
The excitement is so overwhelming that I have to suddenly bury my face in the pillow and scream before returning breathlessly to the conversation with Tom. "I can't believe it, Tom! Thank you!"
"Well, who else would I go with? I'm sorry, I thought you knew, beforehand."
"You're an asshole, Tom. In the very best possible way."
"Good thing you figured it out before the day of," he says, chuckling through the speaker.
"Oh! You're right—I have to get something to wear…" At this, I collapse onto the bed yet again, dreading the imminent shopping trip—during which I'll undoubtedly have to use Ben's money… again.
Tom laughs aloud; I can hear him smiling on the other end of the line, and I start grinning, myself—as contagious as a yawn, his happiness. "In that case, I ought to let you go, oughtn't I?"
Once we've said our goodbyes, I stand up from the bed, get dressed in some clothes fitting the weather, and pace around Ben's apartment, once in a while allowing myself to wring my hands girlishly in my unharnessable excitement. I have only one reservation about the caliber of publicity that comes along with my updated understanding of the event we will be attending.
Though Ben and I have 'agreed' to avoid monitoring the internet's views of us, I have still, from time to time, happened upon gossip columns and tweets and the like. The latest gossip is that Benedict, Tom and I are in a polyamorous relationship, which has since made my friendship with Tom a bit strained in public, as I've become slightly anxious about being seen out alone with him, and as I don't know whether he's heard the gossip, and am not about to tell him, we haven't spoken about it. Now, I'm sure, our appearance together at a movie premiere will only serve as evidence to the fans' false case—but at this point, I decide, I couldn't care less. In just a few days' time, I will be attending the first-ever screening of a new film by my favorite director and, sure, I may be going with a good friend of mine who happens to be quite attractive, but that doesn't mean I have to allow the potential gossip to ruin the event for me.
To distract myself, I call Alex, still having to check the dual clock on my phone to ensure that I'm not calling her at an ungodly hour, even though I ought to be accustomed to the time zone change, by now.
"You know what this means, right?" she exclaims, squealing loudly in my ear when I tell her the news. "You're going to see Harry Styles!"
"Whatever, Alex," I groan, allowing my eye-roll to be audible in the tone of my voice. "I'm just excited for the movie. Actually, to be totally frank, I can't believe Nolan casted him in the first place."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she says, incredulous.
"Never mind."
I'm not about to get into another Harry Styles argument, right now.
And Alex forgets my blasphemous reaction soon enough, sighing romantically.
"Gaze at him from afar for me, okay?"
"Sure," I say, and I can't help the little smile that tugs on the corners of my mouth.
Surprisingly, the more I worry about the imminent shopping trip, the more inclined I become towards finding the perfect dress—which I decide, at length, to do with my recently-made friend Saoirse Ronan. She'd come to my defense online about my supposed 'resting bitch face' in the photographs that had been taken of me at the park in London, when Ben and I had had our argument last Winter. Then, at the beginning of last month, we'd met at a party here in London soon after I'd finished the school year in New York.
("Is that Holly Whitaker I see?" a voice behind me had said, in an unmistakable Irish accent. I'd turned around, swallowing my cold water too fast and nearly choking when I'd seen her, smiling confidently and extending a hand. "Hi," I'd said, limiting myself to one syllable to avoid stuttering from excitement.)
She'd already known Tom, and he had been the one to push her in my direction, knowing the extent to which I looked up to her confidence and poise as an artist. We'd made fast friends, along with Florence Pugh, who was and still remains the most badass individual I have ever met. Even though I'd never heard of her before the party, I'd been immediately enticed and inspired by her past films once I'd looked her up online afterward.
I call Saoirse and ask if she would be interested in accompanying me to buy a dress, and she says, fresh and bubbly already, that she would love to, and then announces that she'll be around in a cab shortly to pick me up.
"Maybe you'll get to meet Harry Styles!" she whispers scandalously, once we've been looking through racks of custom dresses wheeled out for us specifically by an attendant at the high-end store for half an hour, her face peeking out at me from behind a velvet blue number she's been considering.
"Did you know you're the second person to say that to me?"
"Well, it's certainly something to be excited about!"
I roll my eyes and pretend to eye a long, dark red dress I wouldn't dream of even trying on.
"Come on, Holly, fess up. There's no shame in admitting it—he's hot! And a musician!"
I shake my head but blush slightly, and she smirks triumphantly before the topic of conversation turns to the dresses.
I settle contentedly on a light cream-colored dress, made from a fabric that isn't too stuffy or too tight, adorned with tiny velvet roses along the neckline. It's elegant but subtle and will be just classy enough without attracting undue attention—which is my primary goal. Besides, it's comfortable to sit down in.
"A woman of practicality, I see," Saoirse says with a giggle when I set my eye on it, as she ironically holds a ridiculous pink getup against her body.
"That's in jest, I hope," I say, raising my eyebrows and nodding to the risqué dress.
And though she ends up buying a beautiful emerald green champagne dress for her upcoming date, she looks at me with wide eyes and says, "I'm afraid not," and for a time we both find ourselves laughing and feeling wonderfully young, not minding the sideways glances we receive from the other customers.
On Thursday the thirteenth, Tom and I arrive by private car outside the Odeon theatre on Leicester Square, my heart beating violently against my ribcage in enthusiasm.
From afar, we notice the many veterans in attendance standing in front of the giant film poster serving as the backdrop for the main cast pictures. And a minute later, Tom points out to me Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex, himself, stepping out of a private car and making his way, escorted, across the red carpet to greet them.
Yet it's the sight of Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas that makes me nearly stumble, grateful that I'd had the sense to wear flats under my long dress, regardless of the fact that heels would have placed me on slightly-more-even footing with Tom, even though he'd likely have still towered at least eight inches above me.
He and I stand apart from most of the pre-premiere action, along with a number of other miscellaneous guests and some members of the press, a few of whom approach Tom, who miraculously seems to serve as a shield against any impromptu questions coming my way, instead taking the brunt of them, himself. We wait for another handful of minutes while the cast of the film stands for photographs and meet the Duke of Sussex, and then the crowd merges together once again as we all prepare to file inside.
But, to my surprise, as Tom and I are patiently making our way through the door, him still relatively distracted by a member of the press, Harry Styles himself—face energetic and full of adrenaline after meeting his namesake, bedecked in a black suit befitting of the time period of the film—approaches, his eyes undeniably affixed on mine.
I must admit that I do get a bit star struck, and find myself smiling when he smiles at me politely. I start to extend my hand to him just before he comes up to me and kisses me on both cheeks in his own form of exuberant greeting. Intuitively, I understand that this makes sense for someone like him, and that I was being a massive dork to expect something so academic as a handshake. 'Oh,' I think to myself, harshly suppressing the bashful smile that threatens to climb onto my face, 'if Alex could see me now…'
And I find myself, in my effort to keep from grinning, allowing a heavy blush to overtake my cheeks as he pulls away and draws himself up to his full height again, only now offering his hand, which I shake, gripping it confidently before he has a chance to try to kiss it—which I'm still sharp enough, even under the circumstances, to readily suspect him of.
"Holly, right?"
"Yes, that's me," I say, almost reluctantly staking claim to this identity which is recognized by people like him.
"It's wonderful to meet you!" I wonder vaguely how on earth I came into a position in which Harry fucking Styles knows who I am.
"You, too," I answer, telling myself inwardly to pull it together and wrangle up a response that's more than three syllables—but I don't truly have much to say to this stranger, and I suppose that's alright. I am more intimidated than I'm ready to fully admit to myself. "I'm very excited to see the film," I muster after a beat.
"Really? I'm a bit nervous, actually," he confesses.
Harry Styles, the super-famous popstar sex symbol, nervous?
"I'm sure it's wonderful," I say. "You're certainly in good hands."
"Oh, the best. And thank you—I hope so. Actually, Holly—" I almost shiver from weirdness…this is the guy whose voice was constantly blasted over the speakers in my elementary school gym during P.E. class, and now he's saying my name "—would you let Benedict know I loved his performance in The Imitation Game? I'm rather afraid to approach him, myself."
This time, I let myself smile, and he grins almost sheepishly back. Maybe I shouldn't have judged him so harshly.
"Of course, I will," I assure him, warming slightly and grinning wider, still, as I imagine Benedict's possible reactions to the message.
"Much appreciated, love—I had better find my Mum, now. But, thank you, and—I hope you like what you see."
This last, he says with a practically-patented wink.
Then, he turns and shoulders his way skillfully through the crowd of bystanders, still grinning, and I'm left wondering whether I've just been flirted with by Harry Styles, or if he's just an unexpectedly bubbly individual. Surely, some of the press members had taken a photograph or two of our unexpected interaction—perhaps I'll snoop through them online later and look for clues.
The film, expectedly, is nothing short of a dream. In fact, it's even better than I'd ever imagined it would be. Nolan had managed to encapsulate one of my favorite time periods and events in history in a rivetingly emotional manner, while still implementing his usual mind-bending use of unconventional timelines. Hans Zimmer's score makes my heart swell and my eyes water—especially when delivered to my ears through the loud, high-quality speakers of the theatre—and at the conclusion of the film, my whole body is filled with such shock, such a sense of having transcended my previous understanding of what film can accomplish, that I stand up and clap, one of a few other audience members to prompt a standing ovation once the final credits have started to roll.
As we exit the theatre into the numbing sunlight, I find myself still reeling from the marvel of the film, at once humbled and motivated when I think of my own storytelling in comparison to the masterwork—most of all, I feel inspired, and eager to see what might come out of the now-obligatory free-write I'll be sitting down to, once back at the apartment. I find myself zoning out as I sometimes do when deep in thought, while meandering amongst little islands of people interviewing and being interviewed, and I resurface from my ponderings to realize that I've lost sight of Tom briefly. I straighten up and scan the crowd for him.
But at that moment, I feel a shard of the cosmos slice through my body, and I think I might pass out. I double over, stabbed by a stinging pain slightly to the inward side of my hip bone. At first, I think it's just a bizarre cramp, maybe from the chips I'd thoughtlessly wolfed down earlier—or maybe an unusually intense ovulation cramp.
But then it happens again and persists, morphing into a terrifying, sharp throbbing, before I have a chance to inhale again. My insides become a vacuum cleaner, consumed with pain that I imagine could be alleviated if I could only manage to breathe. But everything seems stuck. And all at once, something tells me that this is definitely not from food or ovulation.
"Um…" I mutter under my breath, feeling my whole face clench in reactionary pain. "Tom?" I say out loud, too quietly to be heard by anyone around me. I spot him a moment later, smiling and shaking hands with one of the veterans who had been in attendance. "Tom—" I manage, louder, this time, gripping my side and trying to shuffle towards him. The world has started to zoom out around me; I am conscious of a handful of people watching me, now, but am in too much blinding pain to be embarrassed by the small scene I'm making.
(What the fuck is going on with my body?)
The first person to approach me is the woman I'd noticed Harry Styles sitting with inside—his "mum," I realize, as she bends over to accommodate my own pained position.
"Are you alright, dear?" she says, her eyes concerned.
I smile through a severe grimace, my whole face hot—my whole body hot—from the pain, and manage, "I'll be fine—Just—Tom—"
And finally, he notices me, and turns around, excusing himself from the conversation he'd been having, hurrying discreetly to me across what seems like a mile, also bending down towards me. "What's wrong?" he mutters, seeing my clutching hand, his blue eyes panicked, voice hoarse but restrained.
I try to pull myself up, not wanting to frighten him, breathing, "I'm not feeling very—Well!" But the last word is a high-pitched gasp as I double over further, the pain searing and ripping along my insides. "What the—" I feel myself sway; hear myself groan as I steady myself against Tom's tall, lanky frame. I try to look up at him, but can't manage it, staring hard at the bright red of the ground.
Everything I can manage to say comes out through clenched teeth, my head a whirlpool from which few thoughts can escape intact. The world blurs, being stirred into vague movements and sensations of bodies and vectors, careening into each other.
I think I'm falling onto my side one second, and flying as fast as a roller coaster the next.
My eyes are damp.
My hand is damp. With…
Oh, my God…
"Tom, something's wrong."
I'm vaguely aware of someone stepping forward to help—Harry Styles, beckoned by his mother—who helps Tom to hold me up and usher me out of the crowd. A tactic that only works for so long, as the crowd soon follows behind us, a hush going over some of them while another group stays behind, still chattering loudly, yet unaware. They help me to sit down on a bench at the side of the street, Harry sitting down beside me, Tom standing with his hand on my shoulder, and Mrs. Styles hovering behind me, talking to somebody quietly.
Disassociation, I hear myself think… the word echoes throughout the no-man's-land of my mind. You're disassociating, Holly. Breathe. Try—to—breathe.
My hand leaves its previous post at my hip bone and I look at it, laying deadly in my lap, against the pretty (ruined) fabric of my dress, covered in the blood I'd felt earlier.
I see it and know I should be panicking, but all I can think is—in a dazed, cynical sort of humor: Great. Now Harry Styles' female following are all going to hate me, too.
The pain is so bad that I have to stand up again and lean on the back of the bench, breathing deeply but gasping over and over, trying hard not to fall into panic, yet feeling as though, unbeknownst to myself, I'm already trapped in its clutches. Tom calls an ambulance while Harry presses on the web of thin flesh between my pointer finger and thumb, trying to help calm me. But it doesn't work; the pain is so extreme that I find myself floating in the ether, wanting to scream but unable to breathe through my tight throat.
"My dear," I hear Harry's mom say behind me, "you're bleeding badly."
But I hardly register her words, I'm so lightheaded. It feels as though fiery insects with biting pincers are swarming inside of me, their masses concentrated around my center as they gnaw relentlessly at me.
"Oh—Christ," somebody says, the sound echoing near my left ear.
And then I black out.
Tom
Ben calls me the instant he gets off the set of the live talk show in New York, having seen the news just seconds before. I've been sitting in Holly's hospital room, watching her closely as she sleeps, and I step outside to take the call so as not to possibly disturb her, even though I know they have her on so many drugs that there's no way she would wake up.
"What happened?" he says over the speakers, his voice quiet, totally in shock, too startled to break down.
"She miscarried, Ben."
"What? She—she was pregnant?"
We share a second of dumbfounded silence. Then, he says, pained, "I didn't know."
"I don't think she knew, either."
"Do they know what happened? Could it have been the gunshot wound—did the bullet damage something internally?"
"They said that wasn't it—they said it was just—there wasn't a solid explanation—they just said it's… normal… but it usually happens without any outward effect, some people never know they're pregnant at all, and there's no—um… blood... to make it clear what happened."
His swallow is audible. "I have to go," he says, sounding more disoriented by the moment, and I can only hope whoever is with him is responsible to help him. "I'm getting on a plane as soon as possible."
"Alright."
"And you're with her?"
"I'm with her."
He says something undecipherable and then hangs up after a long, wordless, pause.
After getting off the call, I look down at my phone and, for the first time, see all the notifications that I'd silenced earlier. And though I know that scrolling through them likely isn't the best course of action at the moment, I do so, anyway. The majority are texts from my fellow cast members from the Marvel films, including a very long, sympathetic paragraph from Elizabeth Olsen. There's one from Saoirse Ronan asking me to pass along a message to Holly, a short condolence from Mia Wasikowska, likewise from Mark Gatiss, and a few nervous texts from Emma Watson. I'm too overwhelmed to answer any of them right now, preferring the guilt of silence to…
I've reached the bottom of the intimidating and still-growing list of notifications and, frankly, I don't want to believe my eyes. (Who the fuck does she think she is right now?) I breathe in to force myself to calm down and then re-read the message. (She means well. The negativity is coming from your end. Just ignore it for now. Or forever, if that's the right thing to do.)
But I don't know if it's right or not—how can I, when the world's two-faced nature has just shown itself to me in such a frighteningly intimate way? I turn my phone off, channeling my sudden, inexplicable desire for violence into pressing the button as hard as I can, before going back into the hospital room and sitting down in my waiting chair. I scoot it up to the side of the bed, laying my head down on the cot by Holly's elbow and holding her small, lifeless hand as I try not to cry.
She wakes up at midnight, totally doped, still, but alert enough to be upset. "Are you in pain?" I ask, my senses made sharp by her pitiful, disoriented moaning.
She falls asleep shortly without answering, and I'm so exhausted—white specks have started to skitter across the undersides of my eyelids with every dragging blink—that I wonder whether I'd imagined her waking. Finally, I end up falling asleep, my head on the mattress, losing the will to stay awake.
But then an hour or so later, Holly wakes up again with a dark groan, and this time her system is all too clear of sedatives. I wake up just after she's started to cry, and she looks in my direction, her eyes shining out of the unnatural half-darkness of the room, never landing exactly on my face, as though she's gone blind.
"What happened, Tom?" she whispers hoarsely.
I can't say it. I know I should say it. I shouldn't leave the dirty work to her. But I'm not strong enough.
The heartbreaking conclusion arrives a few seconds later. "Did I have a miscarriage, Tom?"
I nod my head yes.
Her tears intensify though she's surprisingly anti-vocal, and she holds herself tightly, shaking and caving in on herself, laying on her side and scratching her forearm compulsively, aggravating the skin so roughly that it starts to turn red and I'm afraid she's in danger of drawing blood. I reach out and take her hands, hard but not rough, in my own to keep her from continuing.
"What did I do wrong?" she says. "What did I do wrong?"
And though I know her words weren't addressed to me, I can't help but answer. "You did nothing wrong, Holly. Nothing. Nothing—"
Her restrained crying turns to hoarse, gut-wrenching sobs, now. A wretched ache pervades my body, biting and twisting at my heart, making it speed up in a futile attempt to ward off the disaster befalling it.
"I can't feel anything," she shivers, barely whispering. "I'm so cold."
I reach out my hand to touch her forehead but can't follow through with the movement, my hand defying the laws of physics and falling pointlessly back to the mattress. I bury my face in the sheet, feeling the dampness of my eyes and understanding the pointlessness of trying to stop myself from crying, now.
How could this happen to her?
After everything else?
Why has this happened to her?
What. The. Hell.
"Tom?" her shaking voice trembles across the sea of the mattress, like shards of light or glass that only sting me further. "Can you lie down with me?"
I do. I have to.
I climb carefully onto the cot and spoon her, holding her hands tightly in my own, putting pressure around her little body, trying to protect her, trying to hold her tightly enough to erase the evil the world has done to her. But it's impossible, and even once she's fallen asleep again, her small form relaxing against mine, her measured breaths only make me dread the moment when she'll have to wake up again, even more.
Ben arrives at six o'clock in the morning, coming directly off of his emergency flight, harried by the press when he steps carefully—yet still, seemingly, like a whirlwind—into the room. Holly is still asleep, seeming smaller than ever and sunken into the mattress. I watch him see her and then turn my head away.
I should excuse myself. My work is done here, and it's not my place to infringe upon their privacy.
But when I stand up to go, aiming—a bit immaturely, albeit—to make it seem as if I hadn't been there at all, Ben looks at me urgently, and I know that he wants me to stay. It feels both profoundly good and profoundly horrible to be needed.
Benedict sits down and I follow suit.
A discreet nurse comes in a few minutes later to take notes on Holly's vitals, and Holly wakes up shortly after she's left.
She sees Benedict, incapable of fully turning her body, only looking at him sideways.
Benedict looks back at her, his body tense and built of breath.
She breathes in, and doesn't breathe out. She's about to speak. And then her voice comes through her mouth narrowly, quietly, accompanied by the weakest, saddest smile I've ever seen. "Harry Styles told me to tell you that he liked you in The Imitation Game."
Ben chuckles gently, his eyes filling with tears that he refuses to let fall. I know the look. It's one that I often wear, myself. His voice comes out hoarsely, and I can see him trying to smile, too, even though the attempted smile has already melted off of Holly's face. "Why do I care if Harry fucking Styles liked me in The Imitation Game?"
Her breath catches in her throat and I think, for a moment, that she might cough, or might cry. But then she recovers her footing. I inhale and exhale along with her, the way, as a child, I used to hold my breath whenever an action hero in a film got stuck underwater, to see if I could hold on as long as they could.
"You'd better be careful what you say about him; he's an actor now."
"Bollocks," Ben proclaims quietly.
And they manage a little smile together, for the briefest of moments, before the forced lightness is broken and devastation cracks its damned egg over their heads again, letting its filth spill down.
Nobody says anything else.
There's nothing else to say, really.
Holly
The gossip is as ruthless as the press that had crowded us on our way out of the hospital two days after my miscarriage.
They call it the Tragedy of 2017, as if it's over.
Too full of emotion to feel remorse, I hate the random strangers who post supportive messages and those who shame me for what my body had done of its own volition equally. Without discrimination, they all talk about how it had happened at the exact same time that Ben had been doing his talk show in NYC; they all find ways to romanticize the whole thing. It's sickening to read, but I'm too weak to throw up and too depressed to acknowledge that I'm sad.
Florence and Saoirse reach out a few days after I've returned to the apartment, setting up a group call and dialing me in the afternoon. Ben is doing something somewhere else and I'm still in bed and decline the call, texting them the truth: that I don't want to talk to anybody. They tell me they understand—increasingly beside myself, I'm struck and annoyed by their use of the word—and tell me to reach out if I need anything at all, of if I just want to talk, or if I need to be distracted.
'Sure,' I text back, and then don't pay attention to any of their following messages, not caring that they can see that I've read them.
Ben has to leave again for a period of time. It's too late to reschedule his filming for the next Avengers movie. I don't feel bad about it at all. I can tell he needs to escape, and I admit to him, in so many words, that I want him to go. I need to be alone. He leaves the next day without touching me.
Tom calls me every day, and is respectful enough to let me know ahead of time when he's going to come over, but still shows up of his own accord more often than I prefer. I know his intentions are good, but that doesn't mean I feel any less exhausted after his visits. I don't let on, though, preferring to keep things inside, even if it hurts more.
I listen to Nirvana. I listen to nothing but Nirvana. Tom tells me, in a tone that I perceive as condescending even though it's just because of the bitter lens through which I see everyone and everything, lately, "I like them, too. But they can become toxic when you listen to nothing else." He suggests that I should try to wean myself off of it. With "some Tom Petty, or something."
I tell him I will but I don't. I need something that understands me. And in my current state, even Petty's most pensive songs sound like mindless summer pop music.
Benedict calls every day when he gets finished with filming. Our conversations are comprised of a long section of greetings, a longer section of silence, a short section of him talking about what he'd worked on for filming that day, and then a short section of me making some excuse to hang up—a right which he never denies me.
Not that I have anything better to be doing.
I spend the majority of my time laying in bed scrolling through random photos and watching random music videos with the sound off—listening to "Heart Shaped Box" while watching Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" is the closest I've gotten to laughing in weeks. Otherwise, I sit in the bath, burying myself in bubbles, or crawl around madly on the floor, or watch the old black and white recordings of Shakespeare plays that Ben has kept with the volume all the way up, even though I'm usually doing something else on my phone at the same time, my brain in a limbo space, not paying attention to anything, at all.
My life is pretty much summed up by a quote from Fight Club, which I watch five times in a day, once: "With insomnia, you're never really awake, but you're never really asleep."
My brain can't even begin to focus on reading, and I detest sitting down to try and write. The sparse words that I put down in a day are never more than half-assed fragments of thoughts in poem-form, so detached from my unnamable feelings that I don't even understand what I'd meant by the words when I re-read them later. Kurt Cobain's suicide note is the closest I get to literature.
I text Alex once in a while, allowing myself to tell the truth only vaguely, hiding behind my phone screen.
'Why don't you talk about it with Ben?'
'I don't want to.'
'You should be talking to somebody.'
'I know. There isn't anybody. No offense.'
'None taken.'
'But you're right. I do need somebody.'
She sends me a Harry Styles interview and I'm too depressed to take any sort of amusement from her absolute naiveté. I turn my phone off, not wanting to deal with her right now. A minute later she texts me again letting me know that she can see I haven't opened it yet. To appease her, I do. It's someone asking him about how he felt after witnessing the miscarriage. ('Nice, Alex. Super supportive,' I think, finding this quite funny, and soon after feeling depressed and ashamed again.)
Harry gives the interviewer a vaguely-hidden 'are you bloody serious?' expression and then answers carefully. "It's the sort of thing I've tried to understand before, you know. Especially with 'Sign of the Times.' But this was something else—I just feel bad about it."
'And?' I text Alex, once I've finished.
'You could probably talk to him.'
'That's absurd, I don't know him at all.'
'You could. That's all I'm saying.'
(Is my friend seriously trying to live vicariously through me right now?)
But then after another minute, she continues.
'…maybe that's what you need, right now. To talk to somebody who you don't know at all.'
'Whatever,' I respond, my patented conversation-closer, and a minute later, Alex's green 'active' dot disappears.
Tom has been calling me daily at nine in the morning—when I usually wake up—and I always bring myself to answer, not wanting to worry him. Answering the phone is the single act of selflessness I can manage per day. But one morning, I can't bear to pick up—so much as sliding my finger across the screen seems too exhausting an obstacle to possibly be surmounted.
Instead, I end up in the bathroom, leaving the phone under the covers to conceal the sound of Tom's continuing calls, laying down on the tiled floor. It's the coldest place in the apartment—the heat of the summer has lately seemed to seep through the walls despite the air conditioning being on blast—and I want nothing more, right now, than to freeze.
I want to tear my body apart.
I press my temple as hard as I can into the hard cold floor.
I want to tear my body apart piece by piece.
I want to feel every piece of myself.
Why?
Why?
WHY?
It's fine, Holly.
It was a good thing.
It was the right thing.
The Universe always knows what needs to happen, right?
Of course, it made the right decision.
You weren't even responsible enough to realize that you were pregnant, to begin with.
It didn't escape your juvenile notice that you were a little late, but you kept taking birth control and ignored it.
That's probably why it happened, Holly.
You killed it, Holly.
You would've killed it anyway, Holly.
You're not even a real adult yet.
You could never have been a parent.
You can't even take care of yourself.
You can't even manage you own feelings.
You're not very good at being a person, are you?
You're not very good at being alive...
Tom arrives at the apartment mere seconds before I push the sharp, winking tip of the razor blade into my skin. I hear him coming through the front door—to which Ben gave him a key before he left—and calling my name, clearly in a panic since I didn't pick up the phone.
But I barely register the sound of his footsteps hurrying through the apartment, focusing on the sudden prick of pain that shivers up my arm at the contact of the blade against my fragile skin. My wonderfully fragile skin. This moment makes more sense than the rest of the world does. Why have I never tried this before? It's almost orgasmic—no—it's better than orgasmic. I hear myself sigh aloud, and press the razor further into my arm, my entire being focusing on it—on the blood, which appears almost beautifully, beading and then running and then dripping, and on the deep sting of the pain.
Tom bursts into the bathroom seconds later, though, ruining it.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouts, eyes panicked at the sight of the red blood, dripping steadily now, onto the bottom of the bathtub.
"I just wanted to see what it felt like," I hear myself say.
And I realize, suddenly, that I'm crying—even though I can't think of why I would be, apart from the fact that Tom had startled me terribly, the volume his voice so out of character that I'd felt my heart hop in my chest at the sound. He lunges forward, sharply confiscating the razor blade from between my fingers and then tightly wrapping his hand around my arm to stanch the bleeding. I flinch from his strength while his other hand searches in the cabinet under the sink for a sufficient bandage. After a lengthy second, he finds a roll of gauze and wraps it around my arm, hard. It hurts.
"This will get you to hospital," he says, not looking at me and trying to pull me up out of the tub. My foot shifts to the side in an effort to resist him and my sock is suddenly soaked with red. "I'm not going to the hospital," I argue, pulling my hardest but still incapable of even making a dent in the physical power he holds over me. Damn the predestined strength difference between the sexes.
"Like hell, you aren't," the persistence of his arm making it clear that if I don't step out of the tub of my own free will, he will not hesitate in lifting me out of it. Startled, I grab onto my upper arm to protect my shoulder and quickly step out onto the bathroom floor, almost slipping on the blood and stumbling into him but recovering my footing just in time.
"Tom, I'm not going like this!" And I know from the look in his eyes, when he finally makes eye contact with me, that he knows I'm right. "It wasn't even that deep," I say, staring at the gap between two tiles on the wall.
Tom moves his hand from my good arm to my bad one, inspecting the blood flow—not at all severe, not even mild, just a few blots of red seeping over about a square inch of the gauze. Then he lets me go and makes me stand in the doorway of the bathroom while he starts collecting all the sharp objects and pills in the cabinets and the shower. He takes me from room to room with him doing the same, collecting anything he perceives as a threat in a plastic bin from the bathroom and making me stand in the doorway, repeating every time, "Stay right there where I can see you."
"I'm not going to shove myself out the window, Tom," I retort bitterly, once we've made it to the kitchen—which he practically has to tear apart in order to achieve his goal.
His reaction to my sarcasm is entirely unexpected: he turns to me quickly with a painful fire in his eyes, almost dropping his bin when he says—halfway between a shout and a growl, clearly defending himself, "I'm not overreacting!"
A pang of guilt pierces me through the heart—and not pleasantly. "You're not overreacting, Tom. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just saying I'm sorry, and—" I stop to gasp for breath my hands going to my face, my arm's aching making my head clear for a few moments, for the first time in what seems an eternity. "I'm just sorry," I sob. "And I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
At this, a look of remorse comes over his face like a veil, and I can see his jaw tensing. He sets down his plastic bin of knives and pills and razors and breakable glass objects and steps over it to get to me, hugging me so tightly that I can hardly inhale worth a centimeter. I can feel that he's having difficulty inhaling steadily, too.
"You're right," he says. "You don't."
And just like that, my sudden humility is once again replaced with resentment.
I'm refined to the stripped-bare bedroom at night, while Tom sleeps on the couch just outside the door—which, as dictated by the new apartment rules set forth by Tom, is required to remain open. In my boredom, scrolling through social media, I decide to go out on a limb and take Alex's advice. I need some sort of irrational behavior on my side, however silly it may be.
Without a moment's hesitation—something that the Holly of the past would be proud of, but which I couldn't care less about, right now—I look up Harry Styles, follow him, and send him a message.
'Hi. It's Holly Whitaker. Wanted to thank you for trying to help. I appreciate it. And you were great in the movie.'
I almost write, 'Sorry if I ruined it,' but then backspace, not wanting to put self-deprecation into the world at the moment, for whatever ridiculous reason.
For a few seconds, I'm terrified that he'll think I'm some random creep pretending to be me. But then I remember, like remembering a vague detail from a dream, that I've been confirmed by the app, even though I barely use it. I turn off my phone, sure that he has other, more important things occupying him, even at this hour, expecting not to hear a reply from him for a while—maybe not ever.
But, to my surprise, just a few seconds later, my phone buzzes and I unlock it to find his reply.
'Holly! I was just thinking of you, actually. Not to sound strange. Do you party?'
Do I party?
I decide to be honest.
'Not normally.' I almost send it just like that, but then choose to be adventurous; that's what I'm here for, after all. 'Not normally,' I send, 'But I'd be interested.'
'Really?' he responds. 'That's perfect! I'm having a little get-together later this week and we're still in want of fun people. You can bring friends if you want to, but nobody too serious. ;) Again, only if you want!'
'I don't fall into that category?' I respond, still surprised at myself for freely typing out my thoughts. But it's not necessarily a bad feeling. I could get used to it.
He starts typing, then stops, then starts again. A second later his response arrives, unsurprisingly mysterious, surprisingly considerate. 'You won't.'
I find myself actually smiling. 'Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh?' I suggest.
'Already coming.'
'Then, sign me up,' I type, my smile widening bizarrely. I take a deep breath and then press send.
'Beautiful,' he responds. 'In that case: 31 Abbey Road, 9 P.M. on Thursday!'
Have it your way, Alex. Maybe I'll take a picture or two for you.
So, there.
NOTE:
Thank you for reading, as always! I would adore hearing from you. Including Harry Styles was surprisingly fun, considering I'm not a very big fan, and he only happened to fall into the plot by chance. Apologies if I portrayed him totally incorrectly—I really have no familiarity with him or his interviews/music whatsoever, so I could be totally off in my characterization—but this is probably how he'll stay, in the future, for the good of the plot. Let me know, though, if I've done anything so egregiously incorrect that you believe it warrants an altercation, and I'll certainly do my best. He'll probably continue to be a minor character, along with Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh (who are both serious badasses).
Thanks for not plagiarizing!
26 May 2021
On_Errand_Bad