Why I Committed Suicide (33 page)

Can’t breathe, goodbye lover, please be ok.

God, it suddenly hurt so badly then, the paramedics gave me some morphine but the bullshit housewife dosage they gave me had absolutely no effect on the pain because of my high tolerance and withdrawals from my fucking heroin habit. Fucking poetic justice right? I asked for more and they told me what they had given me was the max dosage and I should be knocked out soon. I finally screamed at them long enough to get another shot but I could still vividly feelevery wound on my body, especially the bone sticking out of my right arm and the crushing weight on my chest that was still stealing my breath.

I started singing to myself then, and the paramedics probably thought that meant the extra morphine they gave me was working, but it was the only way I knew to distract myself from the pain and horror of everything that was happening.

All the voices we’re talking at once now and that’s the thing about the voices. You either go mad or learn how to sing a song that drives them mad first. Either way everyone thinks you’re fucking crazy. Maybe they are right. I was going fucking crazy.

Oh God what have I done?

At the emergency room there was no sign or news about what happened to Jenifer. Before I even saw a doctor there was a police officer in the surgery room drawing my blood to test the alcohol content. He was a fucking prick about it too, like he had seen shit like this a hundred times before and I was just one more fucked up drunk driver that went off the road driving home from the casinos in Louisiana. When a doctor finally rushed in to see me I told him I couldn’t breathe and he figured out my lungs were crushed. They gave me another shot of something that didn’t help and I felt every excruciating bit of pain as the doctor used a scalpel to slice the skin on the side of my pectoral muscle and force a tube into my left lung. I felt it get stuck on my rib cage and I almost passed out from the undiluted pain but in a moment it was over and there was bloody fluid being pumped from my lung into a bag, my body feeling the sharp shocks every time my lung tried to wretch something into the plastic sack.

And then…nothing.

I got out of the hospital today and went home. I’m a little worse for wear and my first thoughts were about how I could get out to Tyler and see Jenifer as soon as possible. I even had to beg and plead with my parents to help make some kind of arrangement for that. It felt like I was in high school begging for an extra hour of curfew on prom night all over again. I think I basically got their help and attention by letting them know I was going to go out there as soon possible whether they wanted to help or not.
My fucking girlfriend is in the hospital, thanks to a car I was driving and you think any force on earth is going to keep me from her?!
I didn’t fucking ask to be flown across the state with a broken body and no fucking drug or emotional support; Jen and I were together and we should have stayed together.

I got in the back of my dad’s Impala just like when we used to all pile in and go to church on sunny Sunday mornings, only this time we were driving back out to hell and all I could do was silently watch as my dad drove at his painfully slow pace across the state. We were all silent, listening to PBS for as long as we could and then when it faded to static we listened to nothing at all. The elephant was in the room.

It was hard for me to see Jenifer in intensive care; she’s very broken and can only receive visitors for a couple of minutes every few hours. She was glad to see me there, I think, but she was really out of it and her mother was hovering close by, watching me and my mom as we tried to get some sort of positive response from Jenifer. She was lying there in a bed that seemed to envelope her emaciated body, mouth lodged open with a giant pale blue breathing tube stuffed down her throat, and there were millions of machines that connected to millions of needles that connected to Jenifer’s body in various places. Only a dull spark in her eyes and a couple squeezes of her hand gave any indication she was alive, the rest was monitored by the erratic pattern of the machines.
Oh baby, I want to see you smile, I want to see you sit up and pull this shit out of you, light up a Marlboro and tell the nurse to kiss your ass.

Then like a fucking tourist I was abruptly ushered into the waiting room by the nurses. I could see by the look on my mom’s face that she finally realized how fucked up the situation really was after she read Jen’s chart while I was trying to communicate. I guess maybe my parents thought that since I was relatively okay, Jenifer would be in a similar state.

I realize Jenifer’s mom may be more important to her right now since she’s been keeping a vigil and has been there to know what’s happened while I’ve been stuck in Dallas the past few days. Mrs. Lansing has been the only person keeping me updated about what’s been going on in the duration and I thought seeing me might make Jenifer cheer up a little, but she’s so broken that I couldn’t tell if my presence had any effect at all. After our minutes of visitation were up we settled back into the intensive care waiting room with a few other families going through various stages of their own terrible tragedies, hollow sleepless eyes glancing back and forth evaluating each other. There was some uncomfortable brief polite contact, nobody wanting to ask each other who or why they were there, fearing to hear the worst as if the bad karma might spread to their own loved ones.

There’s so much emotion pouring from that room, overloading my senses, every time somebody bumps by me I feel the pain from their experience in my head. This has taken a lot out of me and I’m much weaker than I thought, my defenses are down and people’s thoughts keep sneaking in uninvited.

Talking to her parents about how the accident happened was another event that can go on my worst-experiences-of-all-time list. Two in one week, I’m going for a record. It was having to thoroughly explain to her obsessive-compulsive father again and again about all the ways I tried to prevent the car from going off the bridge that really did me in. Did I do this? Did I do that? Over and over, back and forth.
I COULDN’T FUCKING DO ANYTHING, not one fucking thing, except bring your daughter back to live in this permanent nightmare.

Jenifer, I need to see you privately so we can talk. You are broken but I need you. I need your touch, your help. I need to tell you how sorry I am, I need to beg you for forgiveness. How can I be strong for you through this? I’m so sorry.

The comets

Have such a space to cross

Such coldness, forgetfulness.

So your gestures flake off

Through the bad amnesia of heaven

—Sylvia Plath (The Night Dreams)

I’m in my old room. It’s seems so lifeless to me now and I can’t believe I grew up here. I’m staring out the same dirty window I used to have to get a chair to see out of, looking through the darkness at the park and trees behind my parents’ house.

Everyone is walking around and talking to me like I’m just back from college visiting for the holidays.

Well I’m not. My life,
wife,
is lying in a fucking hospital in bed and I’m 150 miles away surrounded by creepy reminders of another life.

My parents didn’t have the time to drive me out to Tyler to visit so I took the Greyhound bus out there. I feel like shit, my arm’s broken and my ribs are sore but on the bright side I probably won’t lose any teeth. Jenifer looked a little better than the last time I saw her and I brought her some pictures to tape to the metal posts around her bed and her snoopy dog to help make her room seem a little more cheery.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s so hard to see her like this. Her touch is still electric to me, but now it makes me want to cry because when we touch, I can feel a part of every worry and thought she has. I’m still only allowed in there to visit for 15 minutes every few hours, never alone, and it sucks because I can sense she needs me in there
with her
dammit. The rest of my time is spent in the awful intensive care waiting room talking to her parents who can’t accuse me and can’t help but blame me. I can see it in their eyes, transposed or not.

I’m going to have to bring some pot next time, anything to numb myself. Ican’t keep going outside and blubbering.

♦ ♦ ♦

My brain’s on fire and I still can’t sleep. What is happening to me? I feel so fucked up, so alone and small. I sit in my room and try to read or distract myself but there is nothing I can do. Even writing this fucking thing sucks, it’s always sucked. My partner is missing and I need her. If she wasn’t still alive I could at least be thinking of interesting ways to kill myself, that would be nice and easy. If I feel this bad and she’s alive, how would I feel if she had died?
God, would it have been better? Painless?

We’re going to lose the nice apartment that we worked so hard to get and it feels like I’m severing one more link with her to have to do that. Does that make sense? I was so happy with our infinite possibilities there. Yesterday I went back to our apartment for the first time with my sister and too many of our friends came by to say how sorry they were. Jen and I were a fucking team and everyone on town knew us as a unit. After they all left I just broke down shaking and crying in front of my sister. I couldn’t stop because I felt so bad, the never-ending torrent of hurt just builds up too much and has to come out. My sister looked scared because she had never seen me like that and she didn’t really know how to react but she offered comforting words and held me for a while until I could get a grip on reality again. It was just too much seeing our friends and being around all of our stuff.

♦ ♦ ♦

Took the bus out to Tyler again. The ride sucked. The visitation room sucked but seeing Jenifer was good. I stayed overnight this time and slept in the non-offensive chairs, but I still haven’t had the chance to visit with Jenifer alone yet. Her mom hangs around like a protective…well…mom, which is good for Jenifer, but it keeps reminding me that nobody in either of our families really knew how close we were.

Except for seeing Jenifer everything about this hospital is for shit. Everything except her is for shit. No texture, no color, no emotion except sadness. If I don’tfind distraction soon I’m going to seriously lose it.

♦ ♦ ♦

I went to Irving Mall with my sister and got arrested for shoplifting a watch from Dillard’s that I didn’t even want. I guess I was trying to get caught. We were just walking through the store from the parking lot and it ended up in my pocket. I really don’t care anymore. I was more embarrassed they also held my sister while waiting for the cops. Shit, let her at least shop or something, she didn’t do anything.

My parents came and picked me up from the jail after my sister drove home alone in my bug. They were so mad that they gave me the silent treatment, which fits right in with how they treat me and my life now anyway, so big fucking deal right? It was actually kind of nice.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been calling Negro and Fats again lately. Jenifer is still in the hospital, progressing by leaps and bounds physically, but the doctors say the surgery they had to do on her neck is going to keep her from ever walking again. She can’t fucking feel anything from the stomach down and the mental shit between us is not connecting. But I really don’t care about any of that as long as she remembers us. It’s been an eternity though. I’ve taken as many trips out to Tyler as I can. My parents won’t drive me out there anymore and they won’t let me stay there with her. The most they’ll do is drop me off at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Dallas and get me a ticket. I’ve gotten on and off at the small smelly station more times than I can count now and there’s not really a perceptible pattern of people that actually want to go to Tyler. It’s usually just me and a few military personnel on leave going home for a few days. From the bus stop I walk a couple of miles in the heat to Mother Francis Hospital. Sometimes I can hitchhike; having a broken arm induces sympathy from strangers at least.

I watch Jen in physical therapy and realize that there is just so much I am not a part of now, but I honestly want to learn. I still can’t quite come to grips with being responsible for hurting her this badly and I’m getting more suicidal everyday even though seeing her mend is rewarding. God, she’s still so beautiful. I shouldn’t start with the dope again but it makes me feel a little better and Jenifer understands.

I felt so lonely that I called my ex-girlfriend Melanie the other night so I could have someone to talk to. I think I might have been secretly hoping she would hang up on me and make me feel even worse but she came right over and I snuck out of the house to sit in her car and talk. It made me feel better but I felt like I was cheating on Jenifer. I hope she can forgive me, I just needed to talk to someone.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Sam, you must be feeling better, so you have to get a job.”

I only agreed because I need something to do besides dope to make myself feel better. No one in my family sees the depression. I’m either an Oscar-caliber actor or they are ignoring it. It’s pathetic really; I’m feeling so much worse. I didn’t write about the experience of moving our stuff out of the apartment in Denton because it hurt too much. All the stuff that was ours for so many years is now separated again and it just feels wrong to me on so many levels.

I’ve been hanging out with Melanie some but she’s not a good substitute for Jenifer. Nobody is. I talked about the accident with her some more and cried again. It’s embarrassing but therapeutic. None of my other friends know how to act around me now. Dammit, we were friends, remember!

Everything I do reminds me of what has happened. My refuge is doing smack, which takes all the bad away but it ends up leaving me more depressed later. I got a job working as a chef’s assistant, a sous chef, at the Doubletree Hotel. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with food service ever again but it was an easy gig to get since Melanie works there as a cocktail waitress. Thankfully I work mostly the earlier shifts back in the depths of their huge kitchen and I don’t have to see her too often.