Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 22

He twitched in his sleep and whispered "Sandy. Sandy don't."

I wished I had left him at her house. What could he be dreaming about? Maybe her sarcastic charm, but maybe worse.

That was the longest night of my life. While awake and during catnaps, I was terrorized by images of ambulances and furious authority figures. They were always running, running towards me, running after me. They knew that John was sick and that I hadn't taken care of him properly and they would run me into the ditch on the side of the road, where I would fall and scrabble around in the dirt and they would point a gun at me and I would wake up, sweating and breathing hard with my neck cramped all the way to one side.

I was surprised at the way that this affected me. I had been taking care of intoxicated students for months. The only difference I could think of was that, on a call, I had other people to bounce ideas off of. And we usually sent people to the hospital, because the police had already cited them and the hospital would be the most comfortable for them, the perfect hangover cure.

I woke up to coughing. John had vomited and I had managed to snooze my alarms and had fallen asleep, a feat in and of itself. I ripped off my headphones and pushed John back into the position on his left side to let gravity do its work. He coughed and coughed. I rubbed his back and watched him struggle to breathe. I took a tissue and tried to clear it away from his mouth, my non-squeamish nerves almost expiring. I could have joined a dance troupe or an orchestra. What was I thinking? John fell back to sleep and I reset my alarms so I could continue to check on him.

I could not fall asleep after that. I kept staring into the darkness emanating from the window and thinking about how easily I could be sucked in. It was silky and rich with oblivion. I wanted to go for a walk, to get lost and never be found. It would protect me from ever having to be seen again. I had faith in the darkness of the window, in a way that I had never had faith in anyone else, my mother, John, even Flint. I loved other people but they never seemed to be able to live up to the expectations that anyone set for them. I think that's why everyone set their expectations so high. People always fell short but at least they had gotten farther than if they had be shown low expectations.

When he woke up, he apologized and thanked me and gave me a hug and apologized again. All I wanted was to go to sleep but my mouth betrayed me.

"So, you and Sandy..."

He stared at me, like that was the last thing he had expected me to ask. He must not have remembered the previous night. "Sandy is...a friend."

He hadn't answered the question. "And?"

"I used to like her. She never returned my feelings. So we're friends. End of story."

"She doesn't seem to think so."

"We hooked up once. Okay, twice."

I looked at him, willing him to be honest with me.

"She's probably just upset that we haven't been spending as much time with her. And you have to understand, EMS went through a really hard time last semester because of two people in a relationship."

"Why would EMS have suffered because of a relationship?"

"There was this girl who was willing to do anything to get to the top of the pyramid, and that anything included seducing almost every member of EMS, including myself, and manipulating them so she could be promoted to Supervisor. She assaulted Sandy when Sandy tried to reveal how manipulative she had been."

My brain attempted to reach through the fog and comprehend that statement. There was so much there to understand. I wished again for the embrace of the darkness from the window and perhaps of sleep.