THE STORY OF MY LIFE

I am unaware of my surroundings, of the weather, of the people and dangerously unaware of the traffic as a blast of a bus air horn finally snaps me to.  I wave thanks, ignoring his angry gesture and continue my journey of self-loathing.

What the hell was I thinking of?

Obviously you weren't thinking, Lockhart.  If you were thinking you'd have set the alarm to get Kim upstairs.  If you were really thinking you'd have locked your bloody door.  If you'd been thinking at all you'd have locked it four weeks ago when this started.

What the hell was I thinking of?

I find myself at an El station.  I'm not sure which one.  It has the vague familiarity of the other side, one I pass on the way to work and look out the train window at the people waiting to get on, waiting to meet someone, waiting to steel themselves to throw themselves in front of the next train because this just wasn't the one.

What the hell am I thinking?

When it was bad, when I had made the decision to stop drinking but the reality of it became too much, I'd come to the El station and sit on the bench.  When it was really bad I'd try to figure out the perfect time to do it.  Too soon and the train might stop in time.  Too late and it would already be braking and going too slow.  Too many people and someone would stop me.  Too few and they'd have to deal with it without the buffer of a crowd.  The crowd now is post rush hour, families heading downtown.

What is Kerry thinking?

Shock but not surprise in her expression.    Kim was right.  Kerry would forgive Kim.  Hell, she'd probably pre-forgiven her as soon as the possibility occurred to her.  And I didn't doubt that it had occurred to her.  Kerry is good at seeing the possibilities, especially the bad ones.

I wonder if she'll forgive me.

I wonder if I'll forgive me.

Yes.  No.  Damn.

I find myself patting down my jacket looking for a forgotten cigarette but all I come up with is a half dead lighter.  I play with that a little until I nearly set my hand on fire and I notice that mothers are pushing their children away from the strange lady on the bench.

Now I’m scaring children.

I stick the lighter back into my jacket.  The train arrives and I get it, heading downtown toward the hospital.  It's a rare day of no classes and no work and I'm going to a fucking hospital where probably everyone I absolutely do not want to see is likely to be.  The train pulls in and I grab a seat in the front car.

What is Kim thinking?

Pretty obvious.  She's not.

What was I thinking?

That I could handle it.

Handle what?

Being in love with my best friend?  Or being half in love with my best friend’s wife?

Oh fuck, I think, burying my face into my hands and closing my eyes and it still being too bright behind my eyes.

Ladies and gentlemen, we present Abigail Lockhart, giving new meaning to the phrase bi-polar.

The train has already stopped and the passengers have started to load when I realize that I’m at the hospital station.  I slip through the doors earning several dark looks that I ignore.  As I exit the station I find my hands again searching through my jacket.  It’s technically a man’s jacket so I’m always rediscovering small pockets in it.  And in the bottom of one, the one Carter told me was for the opera tickets the one time I wore his tux jacket, I hit pay dirt.  One terribly stale, bent and crushed cigarette.

We’ll wonder about why leather jackets have pockets for opera tickets later.

I manage to get the cigarette to my mouth and my lighter lit and am just about to take the first drag since…

Fuck, since I moved in to their house.  Into the basement anyway.  Kerry hadn’t said anything, just looked at the cigarette in my hand when she opened the door.  Kim hadn’t said anything.  They didn’t have to.  I’m going to be a damn baby doctor.  I knew what they did to me and I knew what they do to kids and I’d made some mumbly remark about enjoying a last one and stamped it out.

I pause long enough to notice a homeless man making eyes at the cigarette.  I sigh and hand them over.  I’ve already fallen off the wagon on one vice.  I’m not about to fall off two.  Or three.

I push the automatic doors open with more force than necessary and look around the ER.  There’s a crowd in chairs and all the exam areas seem to be in use.  A quiet day, no yelling or shooting or screaming.  I spot a flash of red and duck into the lounge before she can see me.  I hope.

I pour myself a cup of cold coffee and try to relax but it’s fairly futile because I hear the door open and close behind me and the slight tap of hard rubber on tile and then the sharp click of the lock.  I’m glad it’s day old coffee because it’s sloshing over my wrist.

I turn and she’s impossibly close and I realize that my entire body is trembling, not just my hands.  I take a step back, banging up against the table and causing a small rumble as mugs clatter against each other.  But she stops and looks at me closely.

I wish I could read her expression.

“I…”  The trembling has obviously spread to my mouth.  She reaches out with her free hand and captures my wrist as if taking my pulse.  A slight pressure and I find myself moving and sitting on the couch with her perched on the rickety coffee table.  “I…”

“It’s all right,” she says firmly.

“Kerry,…”

“Nothing has changed.”

I stare at her and wonder if she’s been helping herself to the sample box in the drug lock up.  Something like that must have shown in my expression because she smiles slightly.

“Nothing has changed, Abby.”

“I didn’t mean for any…”

This time she interrupts me by placing her fingers across my lips.  I dutifully shut the hell up.

“Are you okay?” she asks.  I nod.

“Is she okay?” she asks and I helplessly shake my head and shrug.  She removes her fingers.

“I got angry and left.  I don’t know how she is.”

Kerry nods, face thoughtful.  I’ve seen the look in the trauma room.  Calculating.  Planning.  Visualizing a treatment or procedure versus a different one to see which outcome she likes the look of.

“I’ll leave,” I hear myself say and we both know I don’t mean the lounge.  I bow my head.

“No.”  It’s said sharply and firmly and reflexively, without thought or planning.  “You will…” she sighs and shakes her head.  “Please stay.  I can’t make you but please stay.”

“Why?”

“Kim doesn’t handle loss well,” Kerry says patiently with the understatement of the fucking century.  “She needs you to keep pushing her past this because I can’t.”

If I stay I might lose all three of us.  I wonder what she’d think of that little truism.  That if I stay there’s a really good chance I’m going to hurt someone I love.  And then I can’t avoid her gaze any longer because she’s cupping my face in her hands.

“And I know that you’re never intentionally hurt her,” she continues.  “I know that whatever did or didn’t happen last night or any other night wasn’t intended to hurt anyone.  How can *I* deny *her* comfort?  Or oblivion?  Even if she doesn’t seek it from me?”

“This is the weirdest fucking conversation I have ever had,” I tell Kerry solemnly. 

“Very likely,” she replies, just as solemn and then she smiles.

“I’m not the best person for this.”

“Maybe.  But you’re the only person.  You going to hang around?”

I close my eyes, enjoying the warmth of her touch and when I open them I see that the warmth is in her eyes too.

“As long as I can, Kerry.”

She nods, hands slowly leaving my face and I resist the urge to duck down to maintain the contact.  She stands and moves to the door, pausing with her hand on the lock.  She’s stooped over her crutch, letting it bear more of her weight than usual and I see how tired she is.  Weary.

“At the house, this morning.  You didn’t see me.”

“What?”

“I got paged in early.  I left through the back door so that I wouldn’t wake Kim on the couch.”

Oh God.

“You didn’t see me,” she repeats and I nod.

“Get some sleep, Abby, you look like hell.”

She unlocks the door and from somewhere draws on some strength that I can only imagine.  Her body straightens and the piece of metal in her hand changes from a support to a mere balance.

“Thank you,” she says and then she’s gone.

I stand and, after a brief stop upstairs, I begin the trip home.  It’s an exact reverse of the trip downtown with me in a black fog and children being steered to seats far away from me.

Wonderful.

I let myself in the basement entrance, not making any effort to be quiet.

She’s still in my bed, sprawled out on her side with the covers around her waist and her t-shirt up around her ribs.  There’s a small pile of clothes beside the bed that she’s stripped off while I was out.  I can see her left hand from here, the ringless fingers clenching the bottom sheet in her sleep.

Kerry wears a wedding band.  Plain reddish gold, simple and elegant and easy to clean the blood off Kim had informed me.  That was the main criteria for her, a ring that Kerry wouldn’t have an excuse not to wear.

She moans in her sleep, hands moving to her stomach as if to protect something that’s no longer there.  It’s a dream I’ve seen a dozen times.  It wakes me in the wee hours and I hold her until she wakes and then she goes upstairs to the couch or their bed.  Last night was the first night she hadn’t dreamed it with me.

I kick the foot of the bed, hard, and the headboard bangs against the wall.  I hear an exclamation of shock but I ignore it as I kick it again because I can’t kick Kim.  And again because I can’t kick Kerry.  And again because I can’t kick myself.  And again because I can’t kick God.

Abigail Lockhart’s definition of faith: believing in God when you don’t want to.

Thank you very much, God, for giving me Kim on a silver platter.

I kick the silver platter.

And then, because the wall is already banged to shit, I kick it a couple of more times.

When I finally look up she’s staring at me wide eyed, as if I’ve gone insane.  And I have.  In the four hours that I was gone I’d calmed down but the rage I’d felt this morning comes roiling back in full force and I kick the fucking bed so hard I can hear the drywall give.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Short Stuff,” she begins but I kick the bed and she wisely shuts up.

“My name is Abby.”

She flinches as if I’d physically slapped her instead of just verbally but she nods.  “Abby, I am so sorr--“

I draw back to kick the bed but she has abruptly stopped talking, eyes wide.  I take a calming breath that does absolutely nothing.

“No one has every hurt me like that, Kim.  Told me that I was so ugly or stupid or,” I close my eyes and my whole body tenses to strike out but I don’t have the physical energy to kick the bed again, “so worthless that they would have to be drunk to sleep with me.  Or worse, no one has ever told me that I’d such an evil person that I turn into some kinda molester.  Rapist.”

“It wouldn’t have been…”

“Wouldn’t it?  Tell me how it’s different, Kim.  Tell me, please, because that’s what it feels like on the other end of it.”

She stares at me, waiting to see if she’ll be allowed to speak.  I regain enough control to nod brusquely at her.

“It’s not like that, Abby.  I wouldn’t have been using you.”

I just stare at her until she blushes and drops her head.  She doesn’t need to admit to the lie.  We both see it.

“So those are the choices,” I finally say and I lose the last of my energy.  I fall back against the wall.  “I use you because you’re drunk and in pain.  Or you use me because I care for you and am available.  Pretty sucky reasons, Kim.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Damnit, I don’t want to be with you if it’s for the wrong reasons,” I say.  She nods and looks down, hair falling to obscure her face.  “Get dressed.  Get out.  I need to find Kerry.”

“She doesn’t know,” Kim says.  Fear in her face and tone.

I wait.

“She phoned and said that she was paged and didn’t look in.  She thinks I was on the couch all night.”

Either Kim really wants to believe that or Kerry’s lying skills have improved.

“You lucked out,” I say harshly.  “Guess you’ll have to find another way to drive her off.”

“She won’t leave me,” she says but it’s not as confident as it was a few weeks ago in the bar.

“Kerry doesn’t have to physically move out of the house to leave you, Kim.  And neither do I.”

She stares at me, defiant and proud and noble in her grief before it crumbles.  I feel like shit.

“What do I do?”

“Grow up.  Heal.  Talk about this with someone that doesn’t love you because the people who love you can’t help you anymore, Kim.  We hurt too much,” I say.  I reach into my jacket pocket, the one where you hide the opera tickets, and pull out an appointment card that Foster gave me.  “Make it to this appointment and work at it.  ‘Cause I don’t know about you, Kim, but this is killing me.”

She looks at the card, then at me, and then nods.

“Thank you for not giving up.”

“It’s in the job description, Kim,” I say and the closest thing to a smile that I can manage.

“Friend or shrink?” she asks, stealing my line from that spring barbeque all those years ago.

I shrug.  Part of me wants oh so badly to give it to her but another wants the absolution to be earned.  “Get the fuck out of my room.”

She nods, gathering her things and heading to the door.  She pauses when she reaches me, not looking at me.

“What are you going to do?”

“Find the key to the basement door.   Sleep.  Fix the drywall before my landlord sees it and keeps my security deposit.”

There’s a sobbing laugh and I guess my attempt at humour is semi-successful.  “Friends?”

“Not today, Kim,” I tell her honestly.  “But maybe tomorrow.”

She nods.  “The key’s in the table by the hallway.  In an envelope.  But you won’t need it.”

I nod and she’s gone.

Long minutes later I pull myself up from the wall.  Grabbing the bed I tug it away to look at the damage.  Not as bad as it sounded.  A little polyfiller, a little sandpaper, a little paint and as good as new.

Story of my life.

The End

Next story in the Thing-verse: The Nightlight in the Birdhouse

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