Remember Tonight

"I'm here."

Taking in all of the sights in the small hospital room, I couldn’t focus on anything but the pale broken boy sitting in a hospital bed, wires and tubes sticking out of him and a heart rate monitor being the only noise in the beige room. I had stopped breathing and I stood frozen in the spot I was in. His quick, shallow breathing reminded me that this was reality and I jumped over to the bed.

“Ry?” I whispered hoping he was asleep so I could give the speech I had been preparing on the trip up here. He just mumbled and looked terrified and I just figured it was one of his nightmares. His dad used to beat him and then left him and his mom when he was 15, when I stayed over he would have these nightmares, awful, frightening nightmares, and I was the only person who could comfort him during the distress. I don’t know how I did it, but he looked for solitude in me and I tried my best. As I stared at him, still beautiful even though he was pale, acquiring purple bags under his eyes and hair matted down with sweat, I also noticed the bandages on his arms. Getting closer and taking a seat on the chair provided I noticed him stirring from his sleep but I stopped panicking when he shifted over  on to his side, facing me, and reached for something.

“Sunshine, where are you?” He cried out like a child with the grabby hands and pout, I gave in sliding my hand onto the bed and he immediately clang to it like a lifeline and began breathing normally again. I simply sighed and rubbed my thumb across his knuckles which looked to be scabbed over and bruised from fighting. I felt the need to tell him all the things I had prepared to say, but I suddenly felt those things slip from my mind and I began rambling about everything and nothing.

“Ryder you were so stupid and such a dick to me and I don’t know why I’m here now. You treated me like shit and I have every right to walk away from you and pretend you never existed but I can’t. I denied myself the opportunity to love and be loved these past few years and now that I think about it all, I realized I did love you. I loved you with all my fucking mind, body, soul and spirit but you never showed me the things I needed. You threw me around like a rag-doll, letting you friends grab me and toy around with me when you were too high to care, throwing bottles at me in your little apartment, leaving me in uncharted parts of town. You were a fucking douche bag and even though I was sure I hated you sometimes, I still loved you. I guess that’s what love is, sticking around even though they don’t treat you well, or can’t give you the things you need, you’re there for them because they need you. I put my own shit aside, gave up sleeping, gave up school, and even tried giving up some friendships for you. I tried my fucking best to make you better, to try and help the nightmares that ripped through your body and reduced the strongest, most carefree person I have ever met to a trembling broken boy, and I loved you. I loved that you could show me a side of you that nobody else got to see and that you never hit me. I would never forgive you if you ever hit me, verbal assault is something I can handle but being physically abused would have broken me completely. You stopped yourself every time and that gave me hope. Hope that I could change you, maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. But I do know that you changed me, even though I gave you every piece of me to fix you, you made me a stronger, kinder and more understanding human by all of the bullshit. I don’t know what the hell made me come here but I guess it’s the whole ‘I love you’ thing but whatever. You know I have never been good at expressing my feelings but I’m trying and if you’re willing to try too, I could give it another go. I just” I choked and felt him squeeze my hand but I had to finish. My eyes were squeezed shut and tears had fallen down my cheeks but I need to say it, “love you, you stupid noodle.” I finally had gotten some of it out, and it felt good. I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and I needed to open my eyes and meet his. I could feel him shifting around on the bed and squeezing my hand willing me to open them but I didn’t know if I could face those green eyes that haunted my dreams.