Page 29 of Salvaged Heart

29

BECKHAM

T he doctors said that Anders would recover physically. The Narcan prescription Dr. Nicolas forced me to take, and I’d almost not filled, was the difference between him dying in my arms and him lying unconscious in the hospital bed in front of me. Wires and cords ran over his body, hooking him to various beeping machines. To think I'd almost thrown that prescription in the trash, so sure that he wouldn’t relapse, so confident that I could be enough to see him out the other side of this and keep him strong.

What if I hadn’t had that momentary slip of faith that had caused me to fill it? He would be dead.

I had to push those thoughts away. What ifs would get me nowhere when the truth of the matter was that I’d saved him, and he was alive right now because I’d been able to act quicker than waiting for the paramedics.

He wouldn’t have overdosed if you’d thrown the shit away in the first place.

He wouldn’t have used if you hadn’t left him standing in the kitchen to chase after your ex-girlfriend.

I dug my fingers into my scalp, hoping the temporary pain would silence the suffocating thoughts. I’d feel better once I spoke to him, once I could hold him in my arms. I'd never let him go again.

Anders had woken only once since being admitted to hospital two nights ago, but I hadn’t been here. The staff were being fussy about non-family members visiting outside of hours, and I’d been forced to haunt the hospital’s lobby from dusk until dawn each day. However, Laurel and Margery, who'd arrived from Colorado the following morning, had been by his side. They were probably the last faces he'd expected to see when he woke up, but Laurel said they’d been able to clear some of the tension between them during the short time he was awake.

She’d looked at her feet nervously when I’d inquired if Anders asked about me. She sighed, “He was pretty out of it, Beck. I don’t think he fully knew where he was or what was happening.”

So no, then, he hadn’t.

“He asked for Jonah again, but I think he was confused.”

Fucking Jonah.

He was in this mess because of him.

No, they were both in this mess because of each other, the key difference being that this mess killed Jonah while Anders still clung to life by the tips of his fingers.

Anders hadn’t thought he was enough. It was me who made him feel that way. I’d ensure he would never doubt his worth again when he woke. As if he had heard my thoughts, the sheets on the hospital bed rustled, and I lifted my head to see his hazel eyes open, looking back at me.

“Hey.” He smiled, and it broke my heart clean in two.

I rushed to his side, grabbing the water jug from the bedside table and pouring a large glass, which he downed quickly before I refilled it for him. He looked around the room like he was taking it in for the first time. I saw the moment recognition of what happened hit his face, the little life in it draining away.

“Beck…Shit…I’m…”

He didn’t owe me an apology. I was the only one in this room with a debt to pay.

“Shhh… It’s okay. I’m just so fucking relieved you’re alright.”

He reached for my hand, which clasped as I tried to reduce the space between us as much as possible. I didn’t have all the words I needed to tell him about how I felt at that moment. I wasn’t sure my brain could comprehend the onslaught of emotions barreling through me.

He was awake. He would be alright. He was smiling at me.

“I thought we’d lost you.”

He didn’t answer, his throat likely raw from being intubated briefly when they brought him in, but he looked at me like I was his entire world, and I looked back at him like he was mine.

“Laurel and Margery are here somewhere.” Our faces were now inches apart, drawn to each other like magnets. The hand that wasn’t clutching his for dear life came up to sweep some of his hair out of his eyes. “You spoke to them yesterday, but I’m not sure if you remember.”

He nodded.

“Laurel’s sorry for what she said. She had no idea what you were going through.”

He indicated to his throat, and I knew without the words what he was trying to tell me. Later, later we would talk, but right now, he was still too weak and in too much pain. I placed a kiss on his forehead, lingering there for a while to breathe him in before pulling away. He scooted over as much as he could, and I crawled onto the bed next to him, burying my face into his shoulder, and, for the first time in a long time, I let silent tears fall.

We drifted off to sleep together, curled up on the too-small hospital bed. It was a wonder we both fit. I half expected to be woken by a nurse shooing me away, but they let us sleep, most likely knowing that this was the first sleep I'd allowed myself since he'd been admitted. My body was exhausted, but with him finally pressed back up against me, I could relax enough to allow myself to doze.

I dreamed a terrible dream of what the world would have looked like if I’d taken even a minute longer getting to him if I had decided to stay outside while Laurel took her time. I tried to force away those images and replace them with reality. He was okay. This was just a slip-up, one we both had been very aware could happen. One I had been ready for, thank God.

It was late afternoon by the time we roused. I woke to Anders’ soft lips pressing into my forehead, the act so tender it lit me all the way up inside. I couldn’t wait to get him home and curl up with him properly in a bed we could both fit in comfortably. I’d show him how much I needed him, how happy I was that he was part of my life, and how much I loved him.

But it would be a while before that was possible. The doctors were keeping him here for another night, possibly two—mandatory seventy-two-hour suicide watch. The phrase pulled at the muscles in my chest, making me feel tight and itchy. I didn’t think Anders had meant to kill himself. I thought he just needed to escape the pain he was feeling, and the overdose was accidental. However, Dr. White, who had been in to see him briefly, advised it was a hospital procedure, given the circumstances. “Anders has used for a long time, Beck. He knew what the outcome of taking a dose that size would be.”

Margery had been calling different rehab centers in the area all morning and had gotten Anders a placement at an inpatient facility thirty minutes away from the city. He would be leaving here and heading straight there. This had always been his plan, but I’d tricked myself into thinking his need for rehab had passed and that if I continued to support him, it would be enough.

I’d been so foolish.

“After the first thirty days, he can have visitors, and you’ll be able to call, even write if you want to.” Laurel squeezed my hand. “I know it’s hard, but he needs this.”

The complete ninety-day program felt like such a long time, though. Longer than I'd even known him, my heart ached fiercely, thinking of what his absence would feel like. Better than the alternative if the alternative was him being dead.

“Did you sleep much?” His voice already sounded better, stronger, color tinging his cheeks again.

“Yeah, you?”

“All I’ve done since I got here is sleep.”

“That’s good, though.”

He hummed thoughtfully and shifted his body away from me slightly as I sat up. I leaned in to kiss him, but his hand came to my chest, stopping me before my lips could meet his. I didn’t read too much into it. If I had been stuck in a hospital bed for days, I wouldn’t want to be kissed either. I shuffled down the mattress a little to give him some space, keeping one of my hands on his thigh, hoping it would ground him like it grounded me.

“We should probably talk.” He mumbled, and suddenly, he looked so timid, so unsure. He was beating himself up for what happened, and I couldn’t let him do that.

“There is nothing to discuss. You’re alive and will be just fine. That’s all that's ever mattered to me.” All that would ever matter, but I kept that bit to myself. “You’ll get out of this hospital, do your time in rehab like we planned, and then we'll figure the rest out together.” I tried to give him my best reassuring smile, but it was clear that Anders was deep in his head.

“Beck.” He looked down at his hands. “I can’t do this.”

I wish I knew how to reassure him, but I'd never been in his shoes. I’d known he would take this slip up hard, but he needed to know that was all it was. He would come back from this and be so much stronger because of it. I made a mental note to speak with Kara for advice on how to relate to him better and how to be the support he truly needed. There were groups, she’d told me before, I could join. I’d do anything for him.

“Yes, you can, Anders. You’ve already done the hard work. This is just a bump in the road. You will beat this. I believe in you, baby.” And it was the truth. I knew Anders wanted to be sober more than anything. He'd already shown me he was dedicated, had already been through the worst of it, and came out victorious.

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

I stayed quiet, letting him gather his thoughts, my heart beating a chaotic rhythm in my chest.

“I can’t do us, me and you.”

Wait, what? I don’t know what I expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. I must have misheard him, misunderstood what he was trying to tell me, but a lump was already forming in my throat. “Why the hell not?”

“It’s too much.” He whispered.

I wanted nothing more than for him to look me in the eyes so I could understand where this was coming from, but he refused to meet mine.

“Maybe if I'd been sober longer, we could have stood a chance of being something, but I have to put my recovery first.”

“You know I support you. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to help you through this. You’ve just got to tell me.” He had to know that.

“What I need is space.”

I didn’t know why he was saying all this. All I knew was that my heart was breaking. I reached for his hand, needing to feel his touch to wake me up from whatever nightmare I'd slipped into, but he pulled it away.

“Beck, I’m an addict.”

“That doesn’t change anything for me. We've been through the hardest part already, and that’s what brought us together. We can do it again.” Things didn’t need to be perfect. I just needed him to let me love him.

“I got through my withdrawal last time because of you.”

“The doctor said it wouldn’t be as bad this time.”

“You’re not listening. I got through it because I found something else to shift my addictive behaviors to.”

He wasn’t making any sense.

“I let you become my entire world, even though it was just for a short time. I became so addicted to the thought of you, being with you, that when you ran after Laurel instead of me, it felt like my whole world had been ripped away. I allowed myself to become dependent on you, and when I thought you were gone, it broke me so completely that I didn’t want to live anymore.”

“It was just one slip…”

“No, Beck, it was intentional.”

Those words were enough to cause the dam to break finally. Tears, thick and hot, rolled down my cheeks, and I desperately tried to wipe them away. Dr. White, the nurses, and even Laurel had shared their suspicions that Anders had intended to die, but I’d refused to believe it until the words were falling from his mouth.

“I knew where you hid those drugs. I found them earlier that day and came downstairs to tell you to get rid of them before temptation became too much. Then I saw you in the kitchen, and suddenly that didn’t matter. The need to put my hands on you, be loved by you was greater.”

I closed my eyes tight, remembering the look on his face when he had walked back into the kitchen, the desperation in the way he'd kissed me.

If I had only known.

If I had only asked.

“But I think the truth is, deep down, I didn’t tell you because I needed an out. I was too wrapped up in you, and if you rejected me or didn’t feel the way I felt about you, then I didn’t want to continue living.”

“I do, though, I do feel the same…Heck, Anders, I’m in love with you.”

He didn’t even pause at the confession.

“Don’t you see, though, that’s not healthy behavior. I can’t put that on you. You can’t live your life thinking that if you left, I would overdose again. That’s too much to put on another person.”

But I would gladly carry that burden. “I’m not scared about that. I know things between us are new, but something about us, Anders, feels eternal. Like this was always meant to happen.”

My voice was coming out more pleading than I would like, but he needed to understand being without him wasn't an option for me. I needed him to know he was shattering my heart into a million pieces. Less than forty-eight hours ago, I’d held him in my arms, thinking it would be the last time I would ever get to. I’d begged then, too, practically groveled, to whatever higher power was listening that he wouldn’t die. That his end wouldn’t be the same as Jonah’s, that I wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Anders had—having to continue while half of my soul was buried six feet under. Now he was sitting there, alive and on the way to being well, telling me those fears were coming true, regardless. That while his heart might still be beating, I no longer had the privilege of being loved by it.

“You can’t mean that. What if six months from now, a year, or ten, you decide you don’t want me anymore? What if I make you unhappy and you want to leave? Could you truly walk away knowing that might be the thing that broke me? I know you, Beck, you couldn’t. You would stay and choose to be unhappy because you wouldn’t be able to live with the consequences of choosing yourself.”

“Anders, please…I can wait. I understand you think you need to do this alone. I can respect that. But there is no outcome I can entertain where we don’t end up together.”

The second the words left my mouth, I knew I'd taken it too far. I could see Anders pulling those old familiar walls up around his heart in real time. A cold, emotionless look clicked into place over his features. Whatever he said next would be designed to cut me to the bone, to push me so far away from him that I wouldn’t want to come back. He'd made up his mind. He wanted me out of his life, whether it was for the best or not, and there was nothing left for me to say that would change his mind.

“What don’t you understand here, Beck? I don’t want you to wait. I don’t want the same future you do.”

“Anders…”

“I mean it. You need to leave now and don’t look back. Don’t even think of me. I won’t be thinking about you.”

That was it. I couldn’t listen to his words anymore. I surged forward, grabbing him, one arm holding him tight to me around his back, the other hand angling his face to force him to meet my eyes. He went stiff as a board in my arms, a look of complete fear shuttering his features. Shit, I was scaring him. He tried to pull away, but I couldn’t let him go, not until he listened, not until he understood. I was powerless to do anything other than hold him tightly and refuse to let him go. He gripped the tops of my arms, fingertips digging into my skin so hard it was sure to leave a bruise.

Shit, shit, shit.

“I love you, Anders.”

An abrupt knock came at the door, and I quickly released him, knowing exactly how it looked. The last thing I needed was to be escorted out by security.

“Is everything okay in here, Anderson?” A nurse said from the doorway. She watched, concerned, as he backed further away from me, pulling the hospital sheets that had come loose back up over his legs.

“Beck was just leaving,” He answered.

At the same time, I said, “We just need a minute.”

She continued to hover in the doorway, clearly not planning on leaving until I did. “Just tell me you love me,” I whispered, and I sounded like such a fool. “Tell me you love me, and I'll wait for you. No matter how long it takes.”

“I don’t love you.”

Lies, fucking lies.

“Go, please go. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“Sir, you need to leave. Anderson needs his rest, and you are upsetting him.”

The nurse moved towards me, ready to wrestle me from the room herself. I got up from the bed before she could put her hand on me. I’d already embarrassed myself enough today. I gave him one last pleading look, but he just mouthed the word go to me and then looked away. I gave myself two more seconds to take him in, two more seconds to capture everything I was about to lose, and then I finally relented. I pulled together what little strength I had left and walked away, leaving my whole heart sitting there in that hospital bed alone.

Exactly how he wanted to be.