Asya:

I was sure I heard someone sighing. My eyes opened, and the world was white.

I almost felt it, the phantom of a shiver bursting through me. My eyes crawled along the whiteness, my ears barraged by the sounds of the beeping that grew faster and faster. I gasped, the sharp hiss of it ripping through the room with a shocking suddenness. A warmth covered my face to reveal something there, collecting my breath.

I found the strength to lift my head, watching strands of my pale blue hair wander over my eyes as they slid off of my face. Staring forward, there was nothing but a blank white wall interrupted by a pine door, and the abrupt sight of my body beneath taught blankets. To my side is a chair and an end table with a half-dead morning glory in a small terracotta pot. The rest of the room was almost completely barren, with only a few generic medical posters on the walls. Light spilled in from behind me and when I tipped my head back, I saw the sky peeking through a window there.

I’m still alive.

The sigh, again, took my ears. The way the breath slid from my mouth felt almost new, like I’d been completely reborn. I pondered this for only a moment before the stale stickiness in my mouth proves how I’ve merely been asleep. I started to rise into a sitting position, but my blood froze when only my left arm pushed against the bed. I looked to my right, staring with increasing panic as I realized it won’t move. My sighing turned into quick panting. I tried to curl my legs up to aid my left arm in raising me. My left leg feebly obeyed, but the other remained flat on the bed. Terrified tears budded in my eyes.

A doctor came crashing in when the beeping in the room reached its climax. His expression of concern transformed into the strangest look as wonder and joy melted into the creases of his wrinkled face. He ran to my side, his hands gentle on me as he broke into an elated smile.

“It’s alright! It’s alright!” He insisted, trying to help me back onto my pillow.

I shake my head vigorously, but when I try to plead with him, he gives me a confused expression. I listen to myself, my breath hitching as I can’t understand the babbling I hear in place of my intended words.

The doctor calmed down, making a soothing hush sound. He began assessing me, but my body won’t stop shaking. He studied and prodded at me, taking a moment here and there to study the machines.

“Asya.” He says, just after studying my chart. He pulls a rolling chair up to the bed beside me. “Do you remember why you’re here?”

I stopped for a moment, fighting the disorientation which clouded my mind. What did I do to end up in a hospital? My eyes closed as I struggled to conjure memories. I remembered a room of orange and a bitter flavor in my mouth. There was warmth and wetness all around me. I’d been so empty I feared I’d never be filled.

I open my eyes when I cannot summon anything more from the void of my brain. I nod. The doctor studies me for a moment and I can’t read his eyes.

“Try to tell me about it.” He seemed to have a trick up his sleeve, a cautiousness to his voice.

I opened my mouth. Nothing but broken nonsense words spilled out.

“You can’t speak, can you?”

I looked into my lap. I knew what I was trying to say, but I couldn’t form the right sounds. There were tears coming to my eyes, as I realized how much I’d lost.

I spend an hour with the doctor, learning about myself. I can’t speak anymore, but I can understand others and read. When I write, my words are mixed with nonsense, but the messages are clearer than when I speak. My right limbs lay almost completely motionless. I can still feel with them and twitch my fingers and toes. My memories are a mess. I don’t remember enough to be sure if its because I’d been high or from the brain damage I suffered from the overdose.

The doctor told me the paramedics had found me in a hotel bathroom, overdosing on drugs I’d washed down with alcohol. He said the person who found me, found me alone.

I stared in his direction, not seeing him. My memories were a wall of orange, and I strained to recall even a hint of why I was in that strange place. Recollections of my despair gave me a nudge in that direction, but I wanted more.

He told me he’d start planning a schedule for me, so I might try to recover and regain as much of myself as I’d be able.

As he spoke, I could barely focus on his words. The more I focused on the memory fragments of the orange room and the bathtub, the more I wished I had the whole thing. The only part of it I was sure of was how I’d wanted to kill myself. I looked down at the unmoving right hand at my side, flinching at it.

I’d failed to take my own life, and now I’m stuck like this. I closed my eyes.

“You’re not good for anything.” A familiar voice from my past whispered in my head with a ghostly sensation of nails in my shoulder. I bit my lip, and the sound of the doctor creaking in his chair sent the feeling away.

“Asya, I’d like to start you on some physical therapy right away. There’s a lot of hope for your paralysis, since you still have some ability to move in the paralyzed areas.”

I opened my eyes and looked at the doctor, who returned my gaze with an earnestness that caught me off guard.

“I’m going to call your emergency contact and update them about your condition.” He smiled, a warm smile. “I think your friends will be happy to hear that you’re awake.” He rose from his chair and left the room, leaving me to sit with those words.

My friends would be happy to hear that I woke up?

As strange and naïve as I knew the thought to be, I’d always assumed I was merely a headache for them. Even if they cared about me, wouldn’t I be an easier friend to have if I stayed in my coma? Even as I had that thought, another part of me insisted that I was wrong. It was a strange paradox, to acknowledge the existence of friends that cared about me, but also disbelieve in their desire to keep me around.

I lay back on the bed, collapsing onto the pillow beneath my head. Gazing up at the ceiling, I wondered what my life would be like right now if I hadn’t tried to overdose. I thought back to that night, when I lay in the warm water of a tub, staring up at a ceiling just like I am now. I strained to remember the thoughts that put me there. The hopelessness that I’d felt had been so deep that my current feelings couldn’t compare. It was like being in the mind of another person who’d never understand.

I faded into the remnants of the memory. The heat of the steamy water was clear, and the memory of my emotions was sharp, but I failed to grasp the thoughts. I didn’t remember the moments before or after the shard I replayed over and over in my head. Why was I in the hotel? What happened after I looked up at the ceiling and wallowed in my emotions?

The information was gone, leaving the seeds of a headache behind. My hand wound into my hair as I cradled my head. The emptiness that filled me back then was still inside me now. The bitter taste, however, was long gone. I thought about what the doctor said. Was that flavor from the chewed up pills and whiskey that I took?

The door opened, and I wondered how much time had passed while I lived in that memory. I opened my eyes and took in the full glory of Gael’s face. He was giving me an expression that was filled with more emotion than I knew it capable of. His icy eyes were strangely warm and wide, his mouth parted with unspoken words on his breath. He had a kind of relief to him, but he was still tense from some kind of anticipation to appear relaxed. I wasn’t sure how someone could seem worried and relieved all at once, but he had achieved it. His hair had gotten a little longer during my sleep, the shaggy black curls almost reaching his chin. Otherwise, he was exactly as I remembered. I looked next to him, noticing the band manager beside him, but no one else. He didn’t bring his fiance.

He was coming to me and I was overwhelmed by the experience of his touch when he embraced me too tightly. I returned the hug with my left arm, wishing more than before that my right one would move so I might experience this all the more.

“Finally, you’re awake.” Gael breathed the words into my hair and I shivered. I hadn’t been close to him in so long. My hand tightened against him and I didn’t care to tell him that his grip on me hurt. I wished that I was able to speak to him, to tell him what it meant to me to see him. I pursed my lips with annoyance when the doctor spoke up, prompting Gael to let me go.

“Now that you’ve seen the good news, I have to tell you the bad…” The doctor trailed off. He pulled another two chairs from the hallway so they both had somewhere to sit. Michael stood despite the offer of a seat, as he often did.

It was strange, being in the room while others discussed me, unable to be a voice for myself.

“While he’s awake, he has still suffered a lot of damage. We did some tests this morning and discovered that he suffers from partial paralysis and he cannot speak intelligible words. Also,” The doctor pulled out a clipboard.

I perked up. There was more? We did some tests, but I hadn’t seen the results.

“We’ve confirmed that his internal organ damage has improved little. He must follow a diet that our nutritionist is coming up with. We have hope that he can recover his paralyzed limbs, but he’ll need physical therapy to achieve that.”

“So he might still play bass again, someday?” Gael sounded hopeful. Michael watched the doctor intently, taking down some notes for Gael’s sake.

“Let’s just try to work on basic movement to start. We can’t know for sure what he might achieve even with a lot of effort.” The doctor didn’t want to say it bluntly, that I may never play again. My chest ached at that.

“He doesn’t have much of a problem using written forms of language. We’re not sure why he can’t speak, as he has suffered no physical damage that would impair his voice. It’s not uncommon for overdose victims with such severe trauma to struggle with communications due to the way the chemicals impair the speech centers of the brain. His ability to write his thoughts as clearly as he does, though, while unable to speak the same way, is somewhat unique. We’ll work with him on it, since we may recover his speech as well.”

Gael remained motionless, expressionless, but I smiled slightly. Even if I’d never play again, maybe I’d still write music for him. Maybe I could remain a part of my own life, even if that role was diminished.

“I’d also like to have him see a therapist. The event itself was traumatic, and he may suffer emotionally from that trauma as he recovers. In a worst-case scenario, he may even develop PTSD, but I’d rather we stay hopeful about it. Many people can learn to cope with their trauma and live happily with time and therapy. I’d also like him to see someone about his substance abuse issues. This might be tricky with his communication troubles, but we can work on that.” The doctor was writing on his clipboard as he spoke, likely repeating these notes down for his reports.

“What about his memory?” Gael asked, his eyes drifting over to meet mine for just a moment.

“Well, we must look into that as well. Many coma patients suffer from amnesia and I haven’t completely screened him for it, yet.” The doctor looked at me. “We ought to work with a therapist on that as well.”

“Can I have a moment alone with him?” Gael looked to the doctor, and I wished that I could see the face he made.

The doctor nodded and rose from his chair.

As Gael stood, pushing his chair to the wall, Michael touched his arm. In a whisper that was just loud enough to hear, he spoke to Gael. He gave me a sidelong glance that reminded me of a bratty kid spreading poisonous playground secrets.

“If he’s partially paralyzed, he probably won’t be able to play bass again. Don’t you want to reconsider finding a replacement for-”

“No.” Gael raised a hand and turned away. “This isn’t a good time for this conversation. Now, would you wait outside so I can be with him?”

Gael walked to my bedside, bringing his chair with him as Michael left, closing the door slightly too hard with frustration. Gael helped me bring the bed into a sitting-up position so I wouldn’t have to work to converse with him. He offered me a small smile, pleasant, but anxious.

“I missed you while you were here.” His hands shook, and he took my hand.

I nodded my response to him, tightening my fingers around his hand. Our moment of touch ended. He drew his hand away.

“Asya, do you remember anything from the night of the overdose?” He spoke to me gently.

Wishing that he wouldn’t ask me about it, I averted my eyes from him. I didn’t want him to know too much, but keeping secrets from him played a large role in how this all turned out. I nodded, offering him that same small, non-reassuring smile that he’d offered me.

“Asya… I- No, we all talked about your situation. We worried about you. We wanted to understand what happened that night. Digitalis found you. She was the one that called for the ambulance, but even she doesn’t know what happened.” He sounded like he’d become frantic in just a moment. His eyebrows knitted together and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He took a deep, quivering breath and let it out for what seemed like a long time.

“I… I should start this slowly. I’m panicking,” Gael seemed to speak to himself. He looked me in the eye, a kind of cautious anticipation on his face. “Why were you in that hotel, the night that it happened?”

I stared at him for a moment. The pills erased memories of my motive. I didn’t know what I would tell him, even if I was able to say it. He seemed to recall my muteness, offering me his phone with a note app open. I stared at the blank space on the screen, unsure of how I would answer. When I started typing, I struggled to write proper words. It took multiple tries to get them right, but Gael was patient.

“I can’t remember that,” my typed words admitted as I faced the screen to him.

He read the words, sighing slightly. He looked almost disappointed in the answer. While I could understand why to an extent, I wondered if there was something specific he was trying to ask me behind the question he’d chosen.

“Do you… Do you remember the overdose?” He asked.

I shook my head.

“What do you remember?” He passed the phone back to me, his eyes showing a delicate war of hope and fear. Which would overcome him?

I paused over the keyboard for a moment, not sure what to include, or how much I’d be able to write.

“I laid in water. I was taking a bath. A bitter taste was in my mouth. Pills? Everything in the room was orange. Too orange.” Just then, I could recall the sound of glass breaking as my hand loosened. “I dropped a bottle.”

I held my breath when I passed the phone back. Afraid, I tried to guess what he’d think of my words. What if he asked me about the emotions I suffered that night? I wasn’t ready to tell him that much.

“Asya.” He started. My heart jumped in my chest at the sound of his voice, saying my name.

As much as I couldn’t remember, I remembered that I had heard little from him for a while, even before my sleep. I remembered the loneliness that that rift between us gave me.

“Do you think it was just about drugs? I mean, was there more to this than just getting high?”

There was a moment of tense silence between us. He hands me the phone, and I just hold it and stare back at him. The darkness that infected the memory told me I wasn’t just getting high that night. I didn’t want him to know, but I should start being more open with him. If I stopped keeping my secrets, I might not be so isolated. I looked at the keyboard, wondering what I’m supposed to tell him. The longer I deliberated on it, the longer I stared at the phone without typing a word, the more anxious he seemed. He had always been someone who was comfortable to sit motionless for hours in silence, like a statue from a cathedral. Now he fidgeted with his hands and watched me intently.

I didn’t want to see his reaction. I didn’t want Gael to know me that deeply. He already knew about my drug use and alcoholism, but I never told him where it all came from. Even if he could be ready to receive all of that information about me, I wasn’t prepared to give up my secrets. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell him.

I started tapping out my answer. The little clicking sounds that the phone played poisoned the silence that invaded the room, growing the tension. It took me a few tries to get the words right.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” the text stated.

He glanced at the words for only a moment.

“Asya, please. Tell me what you felt that night.” He pleaded, passing the phone back. We looked at each other for a while again, reading each other’s emotions in our eyes.

“Emptiness,” I typed. I didn’t look at him this time when I put the phone in his hands.

“Emptiness.” He repeated it aloud. He stared at it like I’d written the word in a language he didn’t understand. “What do you mean by… Emptiness?”

I shook my head. How would I describe what that was beyond just the word? How could I even try to explain it without telling him too much about myself and my problems? He sighed and set the phone down with a small click onto the table beside my dying flower.

“I want to know, Asya,”

My name came from his lips again. He rarely used it so often.

“Were you trying to…” He took a heavy breath. “To kill yourself?” The gaze he aimed at me was so weighted that it stopped my breath.

There it was, the question that was weighing in the air from the moment he sat in the chair next to me. Suddenly, I noticed the way the light from the window had changed in color, growing more golden as each minute passed. I saw a painting behind Gael that I’d never really looked at before, a meadow of blue flowers. Everything outside of me was more attractive than the truth that pounded in my head. I didn’t want to tell him. I shouldn’t tell him. Every moment of silence that followed his question, though, was a moment that the air grew heavier and heavier. The atmosphere weighed down on my weakened body, and I ached to lie down.

Gael was becoming more and more nervous about my response. Slowly, I lifted the phone up again. I looked at it, ready to type a reply to his question that would explain everything. I was ready to type him my life story if it was necessary, no matter how many tries it took to get the words right. He lowered the phone away from my face, though, and I looked back into his eyes.

“Asya? Was that what you were trying to do?” He asked me again. Gael’s eyes were losing their intensity, so filled with concern that I wondered if it was selfish for me to keep the answer from him.

Instead of typing him anything at all, I dropped the phone and held his hand. I nodded, looking down at our hands to avoid the look on his face. Shame bloomed within me like a ravenous peony, its petals and stems pushing painfully against the confines of my chest.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was a whisper. When I tried to meet his eyes, I saw that he was just looking at our hands. He slid his fingers away. “I wish I’d known that you felt like that. I… I should have known. I saw the signs.”

Seeing him this way was harder than handling my own feelings. Knowing that he sounded and looked so devastated, so defeated because of me, was killing things within me I thought had died years ago.

“I think you should get a live-in nurse.” He blurted. “Someone that can help you with things you can’t do and-”

My eyes widened. I wanted to say something, to tell him I was going to be okay this time around. I wanted to make promises I’d break, and I wanted the freedom to try and fail again, to tell myself to believe that it could be different this time.

“I want you to have someone around so you won’t get to try again. I know, you probably think that it’s selfish but… We, the band and I, can’t handle something like this again.” He looked back at me and wrapped my hand in his again. It was a touch of reassurance, but I had no control anymore, even in comforting touches.

I dipped my head down, and I didn’t bother to fight it. He was right. I would probably try again.

“Promise me you’ll try to get better, Asya? You’re such an important friend to me and I need you to be okay.”

I nodded.

“I’ll visit you again soon. This time, I’ll be more attentive to you. I mean it.” His expression was so earnest that I had no choice but to believe him.

When he let my hand go, the air that touched me was cold. Gael rose and pushed his chair back against the wall. He picked his phone up off the ground and walked away. I watched him close the door between us, calling for the band manager to begin a discussion about my future without me.

I don’t remember the thoughts I had that night in the hotel room. However, I didn’t think that even once it could have crossed my mind that things would end up this way. I didn’t believe that I could have expected losing even more control of my life than I’d already relinquished to my bottles and pills. Now, I lay in a hospital bed while everyone else decided how my life was going to go. Now, I didn’t even have the words to dispute them.