Out of This World

Chapter Seventeen

"He looks at you, really looks at you, in a way I've only seen when he's looking at dope. His eyes linger on the way you close your eyes when you're nervous, and how you tiptoe by people's rooms so you don't wake them up - and I know this, because he's told me. He talks about you in his sleep, for god's sake."

Duncan had a point. All the nights Toby would sneak into my room, I'd lie awake next to him and listen to him mumble in his sleep. All too often, it was about me.

"Boys like him don't come wrapped up in pretty boxes with bows. They come in like a hurricane screaming into a pillow case, with sunken eyes and bruised hearts. And they see girls like you, wide eyed and scared of yourself, and they crave it. He needs you, Marina. Toby needs you like he needs the air in his lungs. And if he loses that, loses you, he's going to lose the will to keep trying. He's going to need you until his heart bleeds and his eyes sting."

"But that's not fair."

"I never said it was fair, but it's how it goes. He loves you so much, he's ignoring the knife you're stabbing into his heart. Because girls like you, you do come wrapped up in pretty bows. But when you open the box, there's someone that doesn't think you can kiss his knuckles until they're healed. There's someone that doesn't think they can do anything but drain the light from people. So him, and you, hell. That's something that's going to be quite the production."

"Stop, that isn't true, you heard him tonight. He doesn't want me."

"He wants you, but he doesn't think he can have you. And does it change anything at all? Does it matter? You love him, and in all the times you've been here, I've never seen you love a damn thing other than your illness."

I started to deny it, say that I didn't love him or my illness, but I stopped myself. Both were true, and everyone knew it.

Duncan knew it so well that he was willing to risk getting in trouble with Dr. Watts to sit in my room with me, let me stay wrapped up in my blankets, and wish the world would stop turning.

He knew it well enough to question whether or not it would matter. But I wasn't ready to answer.

"Do you think he'd do it again?" I asked, changing the subject and craving an answer, "do you think he loves the drug more than he loves me?"

Duncan looked defeated, and I worried I had gone too far. He wasn't my friend, after all. He was my nurse.

"I think he's sick, Marina. He has a disease just like you do. The way you can't get out of bed for two weeks, or you stay up for days at a time trying to set the world on fire, that's how he is with the drugs. It isn't about whether he loves them or not, he's addicted to them."

I nodded. I knew this already, it was nothing new. I just wanted a different answer so desperately.

"I think he was addicted to you too, though. Whether or not that makes you feel any better, I don't know. But he like I said, he looks at you the same way he looks at the dope."

I knew that already, too. I was the worst drug Toby had ever come across, and I hated myself for it.

"What are you thinking, Marina? It's okay to talk about it."

"I loved him, okay? I loved him so fucking much. But he didn't know that, not until the end, and maybe that's my fault because I never told him. I just didn't want to get too attached because then he'd realize how sick I really am, and he'd know we could never be anything outside of here because I'm never going to be okay on the outside. And when he pushed me away, I just wanted to get closer, but it was like there were all these bumps in the road preventing that, and I couldn't get around it. I still wanted him and I'm glad he's gone, because maybe he's better off without me. So I'll stick around a little bit longer and see what happens, but looking back I can't do that again to him. I can't keep storming into people's lives and leaving them sicker than they were before. I wasted so much time waiting for something that wasn't good for us in the first place, and all I did was make him do what he wanted to stop. I drove him towards the dope and it took me so long to figure that out, to figure out how much I truly meant to him. How could I even begin to fix that? How do I just fix the feelings and make everything better when it's all over? It seems unfair, just like the rest of everything."

Duncan just looked at me, lost for words. I don't think I'd ever been so forward with him, or any of the staff here for that matter. Definitely not with Dr. Watts.

"It's not too late, hun. He's gone, but he's coming back. It's only a 21-day program, and they're bringing him right back here at the end of it."

Again, all I could do was nod. There was nothing left to say.

Duncan sighed a heavy sigh, and got up to leave the room. As I watched him walk away, into his normal job in his normal life, I clutched the paper in my hand tighter than I thought possible. Hidden under my pillow, Duncan couldn't see that my hand was holding my lifeline. I hadn't read it yet, but I knew that's what it would be.

It was either going to save me, or kill me.

Anything Toby wrote me would.