The Harder They Fall (53 page)

I’ve never hurt so much as this, George. It makes me want to tear out my hair to stop the pain that’s growing inside me, like a massive tumour. I’m broken and they tell me they can fix me, if I let them. I can’t do that.

I know you’re a tough guy and you’d probably beat this thing, but it has me beaten and I can’t take it. It’s no-one’s fault I feel like this and no-one can save me from it. So I have to leave you all.

What I need to tell you before I say goodbye is that I love you. You must go on - find some rich, handsome man who will look after you. You deserve the best and I am not it. I never deserved to be your best friend. For that I am sorry.

Goodbye George.

Josh.

The convulsions had stopped. The recovery position had slowly morphed, and now he was tightly furled, like a foetus, the breath leaving his body in shuddering jerks, his eyes staring, unseeing. She stayed, her hand gently resting on his hand, her mind tuned to his mind, watching, waiting.

“It’s your birthday. I’m sorry.”

Josh was on the floor, his back to the sofa, so he didn’t have to witness again what he had done. Sean was perched on the end of the coffee table, hands clasped together, tight and tighter still, to alleviate the shaking, numb the pain.

“I know. It’s all right.”

It was a day no different from those that had passed before it, filled with the visions, the replays of then. Josh watched them flash before Sean’s eyes.

“I wish I could take them away,” he said.

Sean swallowed hard and took Josh’s hand. It was cold, as always, the consequence of the nerve and tissue damage. Josh tightened his grip around Sean’s fingers. Cold, but still alive.

“These things make us who we are. If we could go back and change them, would we? Should we? We are Gestalt.”

George stirred.

“He knew,” Josh said. Sean didn’t seem surprised. “He always knew and he kept it locked safely away, my secret that made a liar of him.”

“That’s what people do when they love you.” Sean retracted his hand. “We carry those pieces around with us, waiting and hoping for the time to come when we can give them back, when we can complete the jigsaw.” His gaze drifted of its own accord, settling on the eight pristine sheets of A4 paper. “I’ve often wondered if it would help
them
to know how this feels. To share those letters, to surrender my shield and tell them: what you are thinking of doing? It will destroy the people you love, the people who love you. Their lives will
not
go on with or without you. They will never be the same again.”

Josh shook his head.

“It’s a place far beyond reason, beyond words. If you had shown me those letters, I’d have believed them to be a fiction created by do-gooders like us, with our theories and statistics and our pretence of understanding. And if you’d somehow convinced me they were real, they’d have still made no difference. All they offer is more guilt, and more pain.”

“So how, then?” Sean asked.

It was not a simple question to answer, for it was in itself a multitude of questions. How to stop someone from attempting to take their own life; to help them if they fail; to find a way to live.

“First, you have got to stop blaming yourself,” Josh replied, understanding at once. “You did everything right.”

“How can you possibly say that? I ignored it, hoped it would go away, even though I knew that those first six months…”

“Trickery and misdirection,” Josh stated, cutting him off. Sean put a hand to his forehead, the pain now registering physically, his other hand hanging, limp and trembling, between his knees. Josh took a hold of it and gently tugged. “In the general scheme of things, you don’t do so bad at it yourself.”

Sean raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement. “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said; empty words. “I had to work so hard not to blame you, that was the thing. I should’ve seen it coming, been able to prevent it. All that knowledge cluttering up my big, conceited head, thinking a piece of paper could save a friend. I missed the signs. I missed them all. Every single one of them. The talk of dropping out, giving away your books, your sudden obsession with my research.
My
research. I was arrogant—I should’ve seen it coming when you took the pills and the fact that I didn’t? I told myself it was your fault.”

“Yes, Sean!” Josh was barely able to keep the frustration out of his voice. “It
was
my fault. It wasn’t up to you to stop me. You couldn’t have stopped me. All those signs? Of course they’re there, but we talk about them as if they’re carefully measured and deliberately emitted, but they’re nothing of the sort. I didn’t think to myself ‘tomorrow I’m going to take an overdose’ or ‘as soon as Sean’s away I’m going to slash my wrists’. Those letters—I wrote them in my head for years, but they weren’t part of some cleverly thought-through plan. When I overdosed I wasn’t even thinking I wanted to die, because I didn’t care one way or the other. All I knew was that if I took those pills, whatever happened it couldn’t possibly be any worse than how I was feeling at that moment. So I took them and went to sleep. Then I woke up and carried on. It was no better, no worse. It was just the same as before, other than interfering fools too fond of their labels, who think they understand because they can ‘see the signs’.

“That day, when you went to the conference—it was exactly the same. The opportunity was there, so I typed the letters and ran the bath while they were printing. If you’d have come home then, I wouldn’t have done it then, but I would have done it at some point and not because I’d planned it. You don’t decide you want to die. You realise you don’t want to live and if the chance arises to do something about it, that’s when you decide. And once you make that decision—once
I
made the decision—there’s no going back. What keeps me here is my promise to you that I will never do it again.”

“Present tense?” Sean asked the question almost before Josh had finished speaking.

“A slip.” The realisation cut deep into him, reopening the wounds in his mind. Sean watched quietly, giving Josh time to reconcile this newly uncovered ‘truth’, before he spoke again.

“It doesn’t always have to be a slip, but since you brought it up, do you still want to die?”

Josh didn’t respond straight away, in part because Sean was forcing him to admit that wanting to die and not wanting to live were one and the same. But more than that, he needed to be sure that the answer he gave was the truth, and searched his mind, digging into every deep, dark corner, no thought or memory left unturned.

“No,” he said, finally. “I want to live. Do I wish I’d died in that bath? Yes. You can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to wake up alive, and then keep waking up and remembering—I say ‘alive’, but I wasn’t really, not for a long, long time.

“And you did help me, simply by asking how you could. You listened when I talked—I should’ve told you everything and I chose not to, but knowing I could if I wanted to? That was enough. As for your survival kit idea—I’ll admit I was wrong. It wasn’t idiotic. Those photos, letters, silly little keepsakes—it’s so easy to ignore how much you are loved when you’re in that place. But I’ve ignored it long enough. I’m sick of dragging myself through every day, hanging on to a guilty promise.”

He felt George’s leg twitch against his back and reached behind him, seeking out his hand.

“The past two years have been torture, watching him tiptoe around me, trying so hard to say and do the right thing, believing as he did that one wrong move could be fatal.”

George was fully conscious again and was listening to Josh, but looking at Sophie. She was stroking his head, stopping occasionally to wipe away a tear from the corner of his eye, or her own.

“I want to live,” Josh repeated, “for him, and for me. He makes me feel alive and I owe this much to you, Sean. You gave me the chance to stay and fight, and believe me when I tell you that it has been a fight. Your methods got me through the darkest time of my life, until I was ready to take down the wall, to let myself feel again, the good and the bad. Looking back—maybe they weren’t so far off with the bipolar diagnosis, but it’s symptomatic. I’m ready to live, and to love, even if it means going without sleep for days on end, even if there are times when the black dog is constantly snapping at my heel, even if it means…”

“Ripping up carpets.”

He turned to George and smiled.

“Even if it means ripping up carpets,” he said. “I love you, George Morley. I want to make you happy, prove that I am worthy to be your best friend.”

“You already have.” Slowly George pulled himself into a sitting position. “But that’s it. No more lies, or secrets, because these—what are they called again?”

“Dissociative seizures,” Sean told him.

“Yeah, those. Man, they suck.”

Josh parked up outside Sean’s house and turned the ignition key to the ‘off’ position. It had been just a few hours since Sean and Sophie went home, but it felt like days ago. In the aftermath, he and George had cuddled up on the sofa, using the silence to reorientate themselves in this brave, new world. Then they played
Crash Team Racing
and George was defeated again, but only on-screen. Afterwards they went to nap in Josh’s room, setting the alarm for 6 p.m., and snuggling together under the duvet, Josh finally able to let go, no longer caring if his sleeves rode up in his sleep, which they did; George awoke just before the alarm, with Josh’s arms wrapped around him, the scars a reminder of how far they had come and where they had yet to venture. He covered them with his palms and closed his eyes again. The future, whatever it held, was before them and he was ready for it. The alarm sounded and Josh rolled away. George turned over.

“Hey.”

Josh opened one eye and looked at him, using his trapped arm to pull him close.

“Hey,” he smiled. “How are you feeling?”

“OK. You?”

“Like I want to stay here, like this, forever.”

“Well, Sean and Soph aren’t expecting us for another hour, so you’ve probably got…” George looked at the clock, “…thirty seconds or so, if you want to have a shower before we go.” Josh pretended to be offended.

“Even
I
can be ready in an hour,” he protested.

“We’ll see.”

“Actually,” he turned onto his side and propped himself on his elbow, tracing the outline of George’s lips with his finger, “why don’t you come with me? Hurry me along.” George stared at him in disbelief.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I am. I’ll even wash your back.”

“No. Definitely not a good idea.” The mere thought of it was proving too much.

“And your front, if you like.”

“Would you please stop?”

Josh laughed and kissed him.

“Come on,” he said, “it’ll be fun.” With that, he was out of the bed, pulling George behind him.

What happened next was a bit of a blur, and a dreamy, blissful one at that. To begin with George kept his eyes tightly shut, focusing his energy on staying in control, which worked for all of sixty seconds. After, when he opened his eyes and saw that Josh didn’t care, he let the sensation of his hands, his lips, the cascade of water over their naked bodies, wash over him and set him adrift.

“Yes,” he said finally, “I’m OK with it.”

Sean heard the car pull up outside, and wiped his hands dry on a tea towel.

“I’ll go,” Sophie offered, but he dismissed it and was already on his way.

In the few hours that had lapsed since they returned, Sean had confessed and they had rid the house of alcohol: a practical strategy to keep his mind from wandering back down the years. At times, as they prepared the meal together, if she noticed the regression, she would wait to see if he pulled himself out, only going to the rescue if he was struggling. After all, he’d said this was what he wanted: to face down the ghosts and set them to rest.

“Always bang on time, aren’t yer, Sandison?” Sean grinned, flinging the door wide open.

“I try my best.”

Josh and Sean embraced on the threshold. George edged around them and walked through to the kitchen, where Sophie was trying to stir two pans at once.

“Hi,” he said, setting the coffee beans down and taking over one of the wooden spoons.

“Everything OK?” she asked.

“Better than OK, sort of,” he smiled.

“Same here.” They were distracted by the raised voices now coming from the lounge. Sean and Josh were still winding each other up, taunting each other with insults, arguing over trivialities (the merits of red versus green wallpaper) but this time it was different. They were laughing.

“It’s gonna totally throw the rest of them when we start back at uni next week,” Sophie remarked.

“Yeah,” George agreed absently. He and Josh had been talking when they were sitting outside in the car, and he’d reached a decision about the counselling course. He was dreading telling her, but he had to do what was best for him. She stopped stirring her pan and watched him.

“You’re dropping out.”

“Err…Yes. I am.”

“Why? Because of what happened to Josh?”

“Partly. I don’t ever want to go through that again, and I know it won’t be the same when it’s someone else who’s facing all that pain. It’s just not for me. My head needs a break.”

She examined him for a moment, to decide if it was worth trying to talk him out of it, but she could see that his mind was made up.

“Plus,” he continued, “I need to find a job. We’re going to get a house together.”

This was where their conversation in the car had started: the house next door but one to Sean’s was for sale, and whilst they weren’t necessarily thinking of buying that one in particular, Josh had suggested that getting somewhere together would help him to control his destructive tendencies, should they ever return, although he was hopeful they wouldn’t. Even so, George pointed out that they would be best finding somewhere with wooden floors instead of carpets. It was said with ‘tongue-in-cheek’, of course; he’d lived with Josh long enough to fully comprehend what he was letting himself in for. He was sure he could cope, but not if he also had to listen to everyone else’s problems all day, every day. So tomorrow he was going to see if he could pick up some work at the farm, and maybe, at some point in the future, look into training as an animal psychologist. For now, though, he just wanted a nice, easy job that he didn’t have to think about, so he could heal; so he could love.