Just Sleep

After Gerard tries to kill himself, Frank doesn't sleep for three days.
When the paramedics finally arrive, eyes flashing in the naked glare of the motel lights, they peel Gerard's unconscious body from Frank's shivering arms and he whimpers and grabs at the empty air in his lap with trembling hands. Bright scarlet blood smears the dirty tiles, his sweat-damp clothes and his ex-lover's pale wet cheeks. Emergency clamps and bandages stop the fatal red river flowing and a solemn senior medic mutters into her radio while her partner unfolds a metal gurney and covers Gerard's tear-stained face with a plastic mask.
They won't let Frank ride along in the ambulance and shut the doors in his face, ignoring his pleas because "only family members and spouses can ride along". Barely able to speak through the volcanic anger and fear in his chest, Frank begs the motel manager to call him a cab and cowers alone on the dark street wiping his eyes with blood-stained sleeves until the taxi arrives and takes him to a hospital downtown.
He's never been to Florida before today and he doesn't know anyone within a thousand miles of Pensacola. Completely alone, he curls up dazed and frightened on a hard plastic chair in the ER waiting room and stares with red eyes at a bubbling water cooler while the hours tick by. He can't stop shaking and his lungs are suffocating on the dry antiseptic air as panic squeezes his chest tight like a vice. Muffled voices and the sounds of coughing, vomiting and bleeping machines echo and buzz in his head but no one speaks to him or even acknowledges his existence. By 3am he's so zoned out that he doesn't even notice a young nurse standing in front of him until she gently reaches out and taps him on the shoulder. Flinching, he stares with startled bloodshot eyes at a tall blonde woman in blue scrubs holding out a paper cup of steaming coffee.
“Are you okay, kid?” she asks with a sympathetic smile, her kind eyes crinkling at the corners, “You look like you could use some caffeine.”
“Oh, uh...th-thanks,” Frank stammers hoarsely, taking the cup with numb blood-stained fingers as nausea and fear churn his stomach. It's Gerard's blood painting his skin, his poor precious sad Gee, and he can't remember why they ever broke up right now as the dried crimson stains itch and flake dark red death all over his hands. Back across town the same tragic blood is pooled all over a scummy bathroom floor like a gory scene in a bad horror movie and the memory of it makes him want to vomit. Fuck, the only man he's ever loved tried to kill himself tonight and nothing will ever reverse that damage. What if the medics couldn't save Gerard after all and he's actually lying dead somewhere in the depths of this sterile white maze? What the fuck is he supposed to do if Gee is gone forever? Oh god, oh fuck, fuck FUCK!!
“Hey, shhh, it's alright,” the nurse murmurs, sitting down and rubbing her hand gently across Frank's back as he dissolves into exhausted tears, “Who are you here to see, sweetie?”
“M-My...I'm here cos my b-boyfriend tried to...h-he hurt himself really bad,” Frank sobs miserably, snot and tears clogging his nose and throat as the coffee cup shakes in his trembling hands, “And I-I don't know w-what's going on but I'm n-not family s-so would they even tell me if he w-wasn't okay?”
“Of course they would, honey. Aw, don't cry, I can find out where he is for you now if you like. What's his name?”
The nurse is called Denise and after making some discreet enquiries she leads Frank to a small tiled room shrouded in white curtains where Gerard is lying on a lonely narrow bed. A thin blanket is all that covers his sleeping form and winding plactic tubes are carrying blood, plasma and saline into needles piercing the tiny blue veins in his hands. The arm he butchered in the motel is wrapped in bandages and lying limp across his stomach on the crumpled sheets and his closed eyes are circled with puffy purple skin and sunken into his pale face. He looks painfully still and lifeless, like a waxwork or a broken doll, and Frank stares at his former lover in helpless agony with his hands bunched up against his mouth, holding his breath until his lungs burn. He can taste blood and it takes him a moment to realize he's been anxiously chewing at his lip-ring so hard he's bitten through the tender flesh around it. Forcing himself to take a small wheezing breath, he whimpers Gerard's name and screws his eyes shut against a flood of fresh tears as cold shock makes his legs go numb and he falls to his hands and knees. Denise is beside him in an instant, helping him up and guiding him over to a chair by the bed. Before she heads home at the end of her shift, she persuades Gerard's doctors to let Frank stay the night in his boyfriend's room by lying and saying they're brothers and he's still there; silent, sleepless and sad, when she returns to work the following afternoon and brings him a sandwich and another cup of java. He doesn't want to eat so she leaves disheartened and when he tries a sip of coffee after she's gone it tastes like ashes in his mouth.
***
Gerard is unconscious for days, long after the alcohol and drugs he took are purged from his system, and his injured body struggles and fights for a recovery that might never happen. When he slashed open his arm the blood-loss and trauma caused some of his organs to start shutting down and even though his condition has been stabilized, his brain has slipped into a coma that could last indefinitely. The doctors explain all of this to Gerard's parents when they arrive off a plane from New Jersey on the third day of their son's hospitalization and Gerard's mom Donna starts weeping and cursing God - and Frank - for letting this happen to her firstborn so soon after her youngest son's death. Simmering with rage, Frank is unable to hold in his terror and hurt any longer and starts screaming at Donna that of course this happened since she and her husband made no secret of the fact that they blamed Gerard for Mikey's death after the car accident. They made Gerard feel so guilty it's no wonder he tried to kill himself!
Outraged at the audacity of the angry teenager standing before her, Donna backhands Frank hard across the face and when he tries to shove her away she hits him again and her husband Don has to pull them apart. The argument that ensues is so loud a security guard comes running in and escorts Frank out of the building, leaving him to pace and grumble under his breath outside the hospital parking lot until night falls and he's too weak from stress and hunger to stay on his feet.
Don wanders outside for a smoke after visiting hours and stumbles across Frank shivering on the grimy pavement with his head in his hands, still wearing the same smelly blood-stained clothes from three days before. The teenager's cheeks are red from weeping and scratched from Donna's rings and he looks so small and shattered that the older man takes pity on him and offers him a cigarette before sitting down to talk. Apologizing for his wife's behaviour, Don coaxes Frank up off the ground and takes him to a nearby MacDonald's where he forces the starving kid to eat some fries and apple pie and gives him enough money to get a hotel room somewhere in town. “Just stay clear of my wife for a couple days, kid,” he advises wearily, “I'll take your cell phone number and call you if Gerard's condition changes, I promise.”
Feeling morbid and depressed, Frank finds his way back to the place where Gerard had his breakdown and asks to stay in the exact same room, not caring if it's been cleaned or not. The guy behind the front desk recognizes him and rolls his eyes as he fetches the right key, growling “You better not cut yourself up in there too, son. I ain't in the mood to clean you off the floor in the mornin'.” Frank winces at the thought and nods gloomily, biting another chunk out of his ragged lips and tasting iron and pain as he heads for the stairs.
All the blood, puke and booze from that awful night has been cleaned up but the ugly little room now stinks of bleach and a musty cloying misery that creeps into Frank's messed up head and makes him feel even worse. His stomach is sickly and hurts like his insides have been scraped raw. Without Gerard he's lost and useless in the darkness. Stumbling over to the bed, he crawls under the lumpy covers and hugs a pillow to his shuddering ribs as hoarse sobs escape his bleeding lips. Closing his sore eyes on the nightmares he knows are coming, he huddles into a tiny ball and cries himself to sleep.

Notes

*
*
*
Well, I said I'd write a sequel to Destroy Me :)
Please comment and suggest what you'd like to see happen
and we'll see where it goes! xx