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“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
WERNER HERZOG
The hardest thing I’d ever had to do was watch my best friend die. Or so I thought. Eric and his shit were cutting a close second right now. How could someone so right be so wrong? The suits and ties didn’t mean a thing when the hands hurt, and the tongue was vicious in its quest to spitfire lies.
He had my parents as blinded, as I was at the start. Met at a party, kissed in the dark, fell in love with the lie. How stupid was I? I needed him to just leave me alone. The game of cat and mouse was turning deadly, and it was concerning. He was waking up a monster that I was unsure he or even my parents were ready for.
I sent him a warning text again.
Let go for the love of all that is holy. Let go of the choke hold you have around my neck. I can barely breath as it is.
What, Brenyn, what will you do.?
Play with me and find out, Eric.
Taking a deep breath, I slipped into the room and stripped the day of pretending off. I had a clue what I was doing based on my fading skeleton, so I changed into sweat pants and a baggy tee. I kissed her forward and brushed my fingers over her cheeks, my heart breaks for the woman she was and the woman I know I’m losing.
I took my spot next to her and settled my soul into another restless night of watching my best friend fight for air through troubled sleep. The oxygen prongs inserted in her nostrils were doing nothing to help her at all. Her cheeks were sunken and her skin ghostly.
I wondered if I could find the strength to do this all over again. Because my parents would die one day, and I’d be here again—empty, lonely and fighting to stay stronger than I felt.
The smell of sickness and hospital grade disinfectant had become my signature smell, as had messy buns, track pants and baggy tee’s. My heels sat under the coat rack that my dress suits hung from. My laptop and briefcase were next to that, and my makeup bag sat on the small counter that also held a duffle bag of my belongings. I lived here with her. In this room that smells like her, with death creeping in slowly.
The blinds were closed halfway down the window that’s open a crack to allow fresh air in. I could see the backdrop of an inky black sky twinkling with tiny lucky stars.
Depression wasn’t easy, and it gave me fucking anxiety, but I’d never leave her, not until her last breath is taken. I’d rather be drowning in the suffocation of darkness than have her wake-up through the night and not have my hand to hold.
Friends since five, that meant something. Both now twenty-six and I soon would be left here alone to walk in the life we had made together. I’d be the sole life of the parties now without her holding my hand. Both sharing cigarettes, blowing the smoke that swirls inside our lungs out around us, heads thrown back, laughter causing tears in our eyes. Now look, it was the smokes that were now killing her. They said it wasn’t, but I didn’t believe them.
Liars the lot. She promised me she wouldn’t leave me. We made a promise and an oath as blood sisters forever. It would always be Bellz and me, the trouble twosome.
My chair at the side of her bed creaked as I adjusted myself on the narrow seat. The once-sturdy wooden arms were now rickety and loose with wear. I’ve slept in this chair more nights than I cared to admit over the past sixteen months. I sat there again as I vowed to stay with her always. One leg was draped over the side, my head bobbed against a back that didn’t quite reach high enough to be remotely comfortable and if I ever thought that I would be in this chair like I was night after night, I would have brought in my own. I stole a glance at my best friend, lost to the darkness of a terminal disease, and think, Brenyn, you really need to suck it up buttercup. Nothing is more uncomfortable than dying the way Bellz is.
“You don’t have to stand guard, Bren. I’m not going to run away,” Bellz coughed out from beneath her pile of blankets. Her voice was weak. I’d been there for a whole two hours after pulling a twelve-hour day in court.
I was too scared to settle into sleep as the monitor alerted me of her irregular breathing when I had walked into the room. I had no family I wanted to be with and nowhere to be. I’d rather sit there than in the Ivy Manor at Walsh Court where my mother could grab hold of me and pull me into her depressive state like she was the only one with troubles.
“I’m not standing guard. I happen to like this chair.” Running my fingertips across my eyelids right now was the equivalent to scratching them with sandpaper. I needed at least eighty-eight more hours of sleep. Bellz started to say something, but I interrupted her with an unexpected loud yawn.
“Go home to a bed, Brenyn,” she said, dismissing the fact that she could barely breath and is far too weak to even sit up in her bed unassisted.
“Sleep is overrated.” I smile as I stood to get her a fresh glass of cold water from the pitcher the nurse brought in only a few moments ago. That was the thing, they were in and out all hours of the day and night, so you never really got to fall into a proper sleep. Bellz reached out and grabbed my wrist just as I touched the glass on her nightstand. Her grip was weak, her fingers so thin, and her hand now always shook.
“I mean it, Bellz. I’m dying and you have a whole world of Chicago’s finest criminals to argue for and that requires you to actually sleep.”
I looked at her—sunken cheeks, pale skin, and gray eyes lying beneath a pile of blankets to fight off an invisible chill. She was never warm anymore, no matter how much we all tried heated blankets, wheat bags, hot water bottles—it didn’t take away the chill that had seeped into her bones. My heart shattered to a million pieces onto the over-polished hospital floor. I peered into those gray eyes and see no less of a women today than I did sixteen months ago before she got sick and bound to a hospital bed in a dimly lit hospital room. She was every bit as strong-willed and stubborn as she ever was, and I was still her best friend, the quiet one that hid behind her. The wall flower that danced under her vibrant sunflower petals. She was the loudness and I was the quiet. She was the crazy and I was the reason. I forgave when she held grudges. I smiled weakly while hers reached her eyes. My voice timid, hers so loud it made you wanna hear each syllable.
“I work best on no sleep. It makes me grumpy.” I smiled at her.
She laughed, well tried to. Her body had other plans, causing a coughing fit. I picked up the glass of water with the black bendy straw and lowered it toward her dry cracked lips. She took small spluttering sips as the coughing took hold of her lungs. Her eyes watered and my hands shook. I placed the cup on the small hospital stand next to her bed, where the machine that sits next to it—that helps her to breath when she can’t do it on her own. She was relying more and more on that now.
“It was just a little tickle,” Bellz croaked out, her eyes trying so hard to convince me. “Go lay down in your bed, in your home, Brenyn. I will be ok.” I shook my head at her.
“No, I will not leave you alone.”
“I’m not alone. I have a whole ward full of nurses.”
“They don’t know you like I do, and I haven’t left in weeks. I’m not about to now.” “You mean months and months.” Her eyes fluttered closed as the machine kicked in and hummed, pushing oxygen into her failing lungs. The cancer was taking over. “It hurts, Brenyn.” Her honesty hit me like a sledge hammer right to the gut. I looked at her, my best friend, the strongest woman I knew, rendered to a shell of who she was. This was a pattern I’d become all too familiar with. I tried to sleep in the uncomfortable chair, watching her sleep and listening to the sound of the machines. Praying that she woke and reminding myself that I was strong enough to do this. I needed to be. It was my turn to step out from under her bright yellow, loud petals and let the world see my beautiful and striking purple petal. No longer a wallflower but a vibrant iris.
