1. Chapter One #4
Only? Only lasted? Did he - did he just say only?
Nolan asks another question.
I don’t hear it. All I hear is that one word; only.
Only?
I can still feel it. I can still feel how the terror had been like acid in my veins, eating away at me, dissolving the parts that felt human until there was nothing left. Until all that remained was an imprint, a shadow, a ghost.
Sometimes I wake up convinced I'm still back there, my lungs seized up, no air getting through.
I'll already be thinking the same thing I did that night; It must almost be over, right?
I've got to be close to the end. Any second now, I’ll finally die.
Then reality sinks in and I realize it was just a memory, a nightmare, and I can breathe perfectly fine.
I don’t remember when my fight to breathe came to an end.
I remember how each little bit of air I managed to get felt like sandpaper in my lungs.
I remember the cool feel of the floor on my bare skin and the warmth of someone’s hand on my shoulder.
I remember the men laughing at me as someone nearby said words I couldn’t make out, their tone desperate and pleading.
I remember thinking that I just had to endure a little longer, a few more seconds, and then I’d never have to again.
It’d all finally be over. I would finally be free.
But I don’t remember when the breathing stopped altogether.
And I don’t remember when it started again.
Only 45 seconds?
It was a lifetime. They never let me reach the end. Even now, all these months later, I’m hanging on that edge - not dead yet, but not alive either. I still can’t breathe. How can no one see that?
I can’t fucking breathe.
I am so sick of trying to breathe.
I’m not suicidal. Really. It’s just that I'm useless, voiceless, like I screamed everything out that night, scraping myself raw and open, and now the wound won't heal. The screams won't stop.
It's just that I'm so tired.
Only?
Only 45 seconds?
I've been without air every second since, doc. I'm suffocating right now. Can't you see it?
When will it stop?
Please just make it stop.
I'm being held when I open my eyes.
I’m on the floor now, Nolan's arms around me. He’s whispering soothing words, the opposite of how we were this morning when all I could do was sit there silently as I held him. Not that it matters. The words evaporate the moment they reach me, becoming meaningless, just a buzz.
My file must have fallen with me. It lays open to my left, the papers from inside scattered, one corner of the top one bent.
I get my answer. They don't have my real name.
Of course they don’t.
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.
But I can hear my mamá’s soft voice, her fingers in my messy curls, as she tells me goodnight.
My name in her mouth had always sounded so beautiful.
Prettier than all those prayers she recited and hymns she sang.
Holier, somehow. She loved Jesus, my mamá, but she always whispered low that I was still her favorite.
Whenever my pa caught it, he’d pretend he was offended - not on Jesus’s behalf, but his own.
It’d make me laugh and laugh, the way he’d grumble until my mamá kissed him on the cheek and promised he was a damn close second.
It matters.
I want to tell them my name.
I want to tell them so many things.
I want to tell them everything.
But I can’t. They took that away - Mica and Jake and all the others. What I want, who I was, that name - they stole it all, ruined it all, locked it away and left me here with nothing. It matters, but it doesn’t get to matter, so I’ll have to work on letting it go.
“You back with me?” Nolan asks from far away. Except he's not far away. He's right here. I can feel him, warm and solid against me. He's not a ghost. He's real. “Matt?”
It’s as good a name as any, really. Close enough. Good enough.
I tap him, like the doctor said I could. Tap for yes. He hugs me tighter.
“Good. That’s good. He doesn't want to ask anything else, okay? He just wants to do the vitals he talked about. Then we can go. No more talking. Is that okay?”
I tap again, letting my eyes fall shut.
Nolan has to move me for some of it, my brain disconnected from my body. I feel dangerously unwound, like I'm apart from the moment, from the world. Just a ghost again. It was silly of me to have felt like anything else. I was just Pinocchio pretending to be a real boy. Pathetic. Useless.
The doctor asks if he can take my blood and I manage to nod, but when I look at the needle as it pierces my skin, there’s barely a whisper of sensation. It’s an idea of pain more than anything, like the needle is just an illusion.
Or like I’m the illusion.
I try not to panic. I know that I'm real. I know it. They can see me. They're talking to me. Even if I can't talk back, even if I'm not really a whole person anymore, even if I'm a ghost, I'm still here.
Only 45 seconds.
I'm real, I try to tell myself. I'm real, I'm real, I'm real.
How much longer before it starts to feel like it?