Chapter 24 （Chemo）Therapy
TWENTY-FOUR
(Chemo)Therapy
I wake up in my studio without a clue what the fuck is happening. I’m on the bed, it’s dark outside, and West is standing by the window, looking down at his phone.
The gruesome puzzle starts piecing itself together in my head, random parts coming at me with the precision of heat-seeking missiles.
I feel the urge to throw up again, but with a few long, deep breaths, I power through.
West sits next to me while I struggle, grounding me with a hand on my leg.
“That’s good. Just breathe for right now, brother. It’s all you need to do.”
I force the air in and out of my lungs, but they’re so tight—like a belt is wrapped around my chest. My brain is coming apart.
Coming unglued. I’m crumbling. Crucial parts of me continue to break and fall away.
I sit up on the side of the bed and put my head between my knees because the room is still spinning, and I can’t look.
“Maybe when you’re able to talk, you can tell me what’s going on. Why you were in a hospital bathroom in the middle of the night.” West’s voice deepens with dread. “Did something happen to Tristan?”
I cover my face with both hands. “It isn’t Tristan, it’s my brother.”
“And?”
“He tried to kill himself.” I hope I say it loud enough, because no way am I saying it again.
“What?” West asks, no longer calm, but sharp and disbelieving. “Is he alive? What the hell happened?”
I can’t fucking breathe. My stomach heaves like I’m on the roughest waves.
“Did he die? Bro, you need to tell me.”
“He’s in intensive care.”
“Jesus Christ. Did you find him?”
“Tristan and I did.” There. Now he’s all caught up.
I scratch my fingernails against my scalp, then lie back down and curl up on my side facing away from him.
Like a film reel projecting on my inner eyelids, all I see is Connor in the bathtub, Connor naked on the floor, and the blood…
everything painted red. My stomach rolls again, and I gag, heave, and cough, tears from the effort streaking down my face, saliva coating my chin.
I no longer care where my vomit lands. I don’t care if I drown in it.
West gets me back to the toilet.
The film rolls on. Connor on the floor. Tristan’s face. The moment I lost him. The moment when the truth hit him—that I had done this to them. It was all—every bit of it—my fault.
West doesn’t move for a long time. He remains at my side or sort of behind me. He isn’t doing anything. He’s just kind of…here. If it were me, I'd be here and all, but I'd probably be watching YouTube videos or something.
So here we are, two friends on a floor. Because that's what we would have to be, right? For him to still be here? We would have to at least be friends.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says.
“I think he’s gonna be okay,” I manage to croak out. “I hope so. I mean—he should be. We got there in time. I think.”
“No, brother. I’m sorry. For what happened with Tristan. It was fucked up, and not a day goes by—”
“West.” I reach back and somehow manage to grab hold of his arm. “I forgive you.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I’ve never heard him sound so vulnerable. It takes a full chunk out of my heart.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”
“I love you. You know that, right?”
I do.
I go home and sleep some more on my couch after I have a couple shots of bourbon. Loud banging on my door wakes me. Fighting against the hangover headache, I get up to answer it. It’s dark out again.
When I see Tristan standing there, my instinct is to pull him close and worry about the rest later. But I stop myself, because Connor was right. In clean clothes, fresh from a shower that washed all the blood away—he is so much more than I ever deserved.
So, I stand still. “How is he?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “Can I come in?”
Reluctantly, I step out of the way and let him pass, closing the door behind him. I take a deep breath before I follow him into the living room where he collapses on the sofa, waiting for me to do the same.
But I can’t.
“Please sit,” he says, as I stand there, not looking at anything in particular.
I rub my eyes with both hands. “How’s Connor?”
“Sleeping. But he’s okay. I mean—” Tristan sighs. “He’ll live. Sit with me.” He pats the cushion.
I don’t move.
“Archer, I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds fucking exhausted.
“Don’t be.”
“I am. I don't know why I went off on you last night. I didn't mean—”
“You did. You meant it,” I say.
His eyes blink up at me. He looks afraid. Of me. “I barely remember it. If I told you this was your fault, I didn’t mean it. This wasn’t you—”
“Please stop, Tristan. Just stop.”
Because I haven’t made a move to get any closer, he stands and approaches me. When his hands brush my arms, I back away.
“Don’t do that. Please…” he says, anxiety wearing his voice too thin.
I speak before he has another chance to. I’m not going to stand by while Tristan tries to take any responsibility for this. “You weren’t wrong. This was my fault. This was me, not you. You’ve been there for him every hour, every day, always, and he needs you. He needs you more than I do.”
Tristan draws in a sharp, quick breath, like I punched him in the stomach. “But I need you.”
“You don't. You need something different. Something so much better.”
“No,” he says, the word fierce and certain. “No, no, no. I need you. I love you—”
“Fuck that.” I shout at him, causing him to jerk. “I took advantage of you, and now I’m ripping your life apart.”
“You’re not!” He reaches for me, but I sidestep him so I won’t feel his skin on mine.
I see it again—the sick film in my head—the two of them on the bathroom floor. I drive my nails into the back of my neck to make the image go away. But it won’t go.
I was poisoned, and it turned me into poison. “Please leave.”
“Archer, no. I can't. I won't.”
“GO,” I shout. Then quieter, “Tristan, I want you to leave. I mean it. I’m not fucking kidding.”
He stares up at me. There’s disbelief at first, then defiance. I watch as it comes and goes. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen, the snuffing of his beautiful light. Once it’s gone, all that’s left is resignation. Not defeat, but something worse.
A forfeit.
I think I expect him to argue with me. To distract me like he always does. To ignore what I’m saying and change the subject—to make me feel better—to pull me out of this swirling vortex of shame and fear and nothingness.
Because when he gives up and leaves, I’m shocked.
So fucking surprised.
Connor was right. I didn’t even see it coming.
In the hours and days that pass, I tell myself I was right to let him go.
I had a good friend in Seattle named Darren.
Darren had leukemia, diagnosed at age 22.
On Saturdays, I used to hang out with him at the cancer center while he got his chemotherapy.
We played blackjack, and I drew sketches for him.
We talked about The Mariners, music, school, cost of living—the usual.
Through it all, I learned a few things about chemotherapy.
Chemo drugs target rapidly dividing cells—the cancer.
They find the cells, they stop the replication process, and they kill them—ideally.
Hair is also a rapidly dividing cell so it can’t grow in the presence of the drugs.
Same goes for bone marrow, which is busy trying to crank out some decent new blood cells.
The drugs are toxic. They make you sick and miserable, but in the end, you might get to live, cancer-free.
And then your hair eventually grows back. But—fingers crossed—the cancer won’t.
To put it another way—I know that eradicating myself from Tristan’s life will hurt and make him miserable for a while, but the end result is he’ll get to live—Archer-free. And so will Connor.
But for me to live through losing him and everything that led up to it—it turns out I need actual therapy.
My episodes start the same every time. I’m doing nothing, then I’m sweating.
Sitting in front of the TV in the air-conditioning, I start dripping sweat.
Then the shaking comes. Tremors wrack my body and bend me over while I grab onto whatever is nearest to steady myself.
I lose my breath. My chest hurts. I fear I’m dying.
I cough as my stomach clenches. I drool.
I choke on my vomit before I make it to the bathroom.
If it only happens two or three times a day—that’s a good day.
I can’t leave the house—I can barely make a sandwich.
West stays with me a lot the following week because of these episodes.
He knows I’m afraid I’ll fall down and crack my head open on something because I tell him I am.
He watches me go through the same thing over and over, but he never says anything about my needing help. It’s a conclusion I come to on my own.
Being wealthy comes in handy in times like this. One day I’m puking my guts out, having an epiphany, the next day, I’m in front of a therapist who said she wasn’t taking new clients until I offered to triple her hourly rate. I would have done more than triple it, though.
Once I’m seeing her twice a week and meet with a psychiatrist to get properly medicated for my Acute Stress Disorder, I’m able to function in the world again.
For a while there, I lost the ability to shut myself down, and—according to my therapist—the resulting flood of “repressed emotion” overwhelmed me.
Medication helps. It shores up my remaining defenses, and I get a handle on myself again.
I do grapple with how I treated my brother, though.
Tristan’s words that night in the hospital cut right to the quick.
What kind of man lives two miles from his brother for four years and never checks in with him?
If you see a baby bird with a broken wing on the sidewalk—what do you do with it?
I’m sure there are plenty of schools of thought on this, but what I did was I picked it up, broke the other wing, and left it to die.