Until Then

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Kenneth

I've never felt more helpless than I do in this moment. I'm about to watch my friend take his life and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. It took Mateo over an hour to get from the hospital to his bathroom floor. It's hard to believe a man that had carried a sixty-pound rucksack while hiking nine miles in the dead heat next to me during boot camp couldn't make the ten minute trip in under an hour. It was painful to watch and I know it was excruciatingly painful for him.

It's the indignity of it all that really pisses me off. He'd had to call for a ride and then struggle to fold up his walker so he could get inside the car. Then the stairs to his apartment seemed so fucking daunting. To watch him struggle and almost fall five times without being able to help made me consider for a second that I might actually be in hell.

The pills in the large orange bottle rattle as he holds it above his face and shakes them. He barely made it into his bathroom before he threw up from the pain and the antibiotics. Just to add to how miserable his recovery is, he wasn't quick enough to get to the toilet before he had pissed himself. If he could hear me I'd tell him it's not his fault. I had watched them hang two bags of fluid in the short time I'd been in his room at the hospital and those stairs leading to his front door could have easily been crafted by the devil himself.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and brings up the browser. I have a clear view of his search from the edge of his bathtub. Slowly and with only one hand since the other is hanging onto those pain meds like they are the last hope he has, he begins to type in his question.

How much Oxycodone does it take to overdose?

The information is at his fingertip instantly and he quickly scrolls through the various sites that offer a guess or warn about the adverse effects of taking too much of your prescribed medication. He looks back at his prescription bottle and brings it closer so he can read the dose he has been prescribed. His thumb moves quickly to lock his phone, the screen goes dark and he sets it next to him on the ground.

I scream at him, "Don't you fucking dare!" I reach for the bottle but can't get a grip on it. "Mateo! What are you doing?" It doesn't matter. He doesn't even flinch.

He pulls himself up using the bathroom counter, biting out a few choice curses as he tries to put weight on his wounded leg. He leans forward, resting his weight on his elbows on the sick. He looks up into the mirror as if he's checking one last time that it really is his body he's trapped in and I move behind him hoping he can see me like Quinn had today. No luck.

He presses down on the large white cap and spins it off allowing it to fall down into the sick. He dumps a handful of the pills into his hand and flattens his palm, looking down at the white, powdery pills. He closes his fist around them and looks back to his phone on the ground. Please change your mind. Call someone. Call Lucas.

He bends down slowly, grunting and hissing as his muscles beneath the scarred tissue flex. With sweat on his brow and dismay in his eyes, he finally gets himself back up and leaning on his elbows with the phone in his hand. I'm standing right beside him in complete distress, hanging on to the hope he will connect a call to someone that can help him see that this is all temporary.

His thumb slides across the screen and then he beckons the internet browser and I feel like all hope is lost. I watch each letter as it appears in the search tab knowing sometimes the places of despair we find ourselves in are too dark to ever crawl out of.

How quick will my death be if I overdose on Oxycodone?

He scoffs at the answer that appears and then throws the handful of pills onto his tongue and turns on the tap. He can't even look himself in the eyes as he chews the pills to speed up the effect and swallows them down with a long drink of water. If the internet is right, Mateo just started the clock on his last hour of misery.

He lowers his body back to the ground and scoots himself over to the bathtub so he can rest his back against it as he sits and waits for death to come take him. Maybe I can't do anything about what he's done. And maybe in his shoes I would have made the same choice. So instead of being angry as I watch his heroic life slip away, I lower myself to the floor right beside him and wait, just like the little boy in the hospital, to play in the light with my friend one last time.

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