Draven finds him lying there because he came early.
He wakes up at 1am and puts on a tshirt and jeans and goes to check on him, walking through the site with his worn sneakers squeaking on tile. He always checks on his dad during these spells, because god-knows-why, because he’s scared, because he wants to make sure he’s okay and wants to make sure he doesn’t need to call a doctor as he’s had to do in the past, because when he wakes up to take a piss at 1am there’s a pounding in his skull that says check on dad, check on dad, check on dad.
He does not see his dad on his cot as he left him, and his first thought was hopeful sentiment that maybe he got to the bathroom in time to vomit, and if he should just go check on him there to make sure he didn’t fall, and then his second response is to fix it. He sees his father’s body and thinks, I can save you still. He does not turn on the light. His father’s head is blown out but he still checks for a pulse, second checks for a pulse, for anything at all, and when there’s nothing he starts fixing. He kneels in the little pool of blood and starts grabbing pieces of brain matter because now his brain is saying fix dad, fix dad, fix dad, put dad back together like you always do, and he doesn’t know what to do with the little pieces of bone and meat once he has them in his trembling hands and stupidly, drunkenly, tries to but them back in, presses it into to mess that is the back of his dad’s head and blinks down in the faint lamplight, fix dad, fix dad, you can always fix dad, none of the bone or meat fits right back in his father’s head like it should so he checks for a pulse again, thumb and forefinger leaving bloody prints on the cold body, fix dad, and there’s no pulse, he isn’t checking hard enough. He rolls him over and shakes him. He can’t remember how to do CPR, it feels like his brain is short circuiting, and eventually he just scoops his father’s torso out of the mess and holds him, fix dad, fix dad, and says please, even when stagnant blood from his father’s head runs over his arms and plasters his shirt to his body, dad, fix dad, fix dad, and he thinks that was what sent him to the phone, pressing in for medical, and they ask what’s wrong with him? and he said he shot himself, and they say where? and he said in the head, and he just says can you help him? Can you help him? and they tell him no over the phone and it doesn’t register, his bloody handprints are left on the phone and on the buttons, fix dad, fix dad, he’ll get better. He’ll get better.
Dad always gets better, he thinks, sitting in the hospital waiting room at 2am covered in his father’s blood, dad always gets better. James sees him and there are tears running down his cheeks at the sight of him. Draven is not crying, but James is sobbing. Draven doesn’t feel anything at all. Dad always gets better. James sits next to him. The blood is drying on his skin and on his clothes. The nurse talks to James. James talks to him. James calms down enough to stop crying. They keep talking and Draven stares blankly at the door they wheeled his father through an hour ago. Dad always gets better.
Two hours pass, and Draven feels shaky. James asks him if he’s okay and he can barely speak. James talks to the nurse, and then James asks him, honey, what’s in your hand, and he just says dad because he doesn’t know what else to say and is full of panic and numbness and grief, and James gags sharply, then composes himself, and then talks to the nurse again, and then James pulls a biohazard bag over to him.
“What’s this for?” he stammers out, and James sits down next to him and takes his left hand in both of his own and holds it out over the bag. Draven has had it in a fist for the past four hours not out of anger, but out of necessity, and he cannot remember why and feels too small to fight it.
“Okay. We’re gonna do this together, yeah?” Draven looks at him, mortified and unsure, but before he can say anything in response his boyfriend continues, “On the count of three. One. Two. Three—”
James buckles his fingers under Draven’s and pulls them back — index, pinkie, middle, ring, thumb, half moons cut and bleeding in his hands from having held them there so long and so tightly, and the clump of curly grey hair and scalp that he’s been clutching desperately to for the hours following his father killing himself sticks to his palm with congealed blood. Draven feels himself hit a point of overwhelming numbness at the grotesqueness of this scene and is not able to react; he lets his boyfriend, who — as it will occur to him later, when he’s able to recall with some amount of lucidity the events of the hospital — has done more for him then he could ever expect of someone, has done it out of love, has done it because of reasons that Draven could never imagine and can’t fathom the idea of, will carefully, lovingly peel it off Draven’s skin and let it drop into the translucent red bag as he sits numbly in horror, will then pull off the remaining strands of silver hair from where they’ve dried swimming in congealed blood on his partner’s palm, will pick the little shard of bone sitting pressed between Draven’s pointer and middle finger and remove it, will cast an eye towards the washroom and somehow through some force of god get Draven there and hold his bloodied hands under warm water and use his thumbnails to scrape his boyfriend’s father’s congealed film of blood from his hands, will try to get under the nails, between his fingers, but it’s soaked so deep it’s like a stain and even when Draven comes around and begins to stammer something, anything in response to seeing the sink go red, he cannot fathom at this moment to process the fact that he was holding his father’s scalp, his father’s hair, his father’s blood and bone, he cannot form words, and when James turns off the water he barely catches him when he faints.
