Eight- Santaroium

        “Sanity,” I mutter.

        You look at me from over a magazine, December issue of Women’s Health. December from not last year, but the year before that.

         “What’s that?” you ask.

        “Mm.. I was just thinking that sanatoriums should be called insanatoriums.”

        “The PC term is Mental Health Facility,” there’s a tiny smile on your lips that you minimize for appropriateness.

        “Ah.”

       

        You put the magazine down on one of the piles on the circular table in between both of our seats. You take my hand. Our seats are perpendicular to one another, on either side of that corner table.

It’s just that, last time I sat right next to you and I had to keep asking you to hand me another one. Reading celebrity gossip from three years ago is surreal. 

        You take my hand. I scoot in my chair so my body is facing you, toes and torso pointed toward you. You look like you might have something to say, and this here is a gesture of receptiveness. You open your mouth, and it looks like you’re pondering, like you’re about to say something incredibly astute, but instead you lick your lips, scrape your teeth over some dead skin.

        I want to kiss you.

       

        “This is fucking boring, eh?” you finally say, under your breath like it’s a dreadful secret. We wouldn’t have dared to say anything like that the last time we were here.

        “Yeah, dude, I’m hella antsy.”

        You pick of a copy of Highlights on that table between both our seats and you gesture it towards me with a familiar grin. Devious, like you know something I don’t.

        “Want to help me find all twenty fish hidden in this image of a factory?”

        “No shit!” I exclaim, and lean over to see it. “Is that the same Highlights as last time?”

        “The very same,” you flip to a page with a poem about a watering can, accompanied by a pleasant illustration of the same thing. And it’s been vandalized with sharpied writing! Angry eyes and angry eyebrows and a hick-toothed mouth turn the pleasant can into some kind of offensive Can Creature. You point at text. It’s your handwriting. I remember now.

        You laugh quietly when you point it out. It reads, “Super powers don’t need a function!!” Need is underlined several times. You read it aloud, even eyes and pointed expression. I chuckle loudly.

Jason’s mom glares at me. I shrink down in my seat, sheepish. Guilty. Sorry ma’am.

        “It’s been… what, like, five months?” I whisper loudly after she looks away. “I can’t believe that’s still here.”

        “I can’t believe you expected me to choose a functional super power.”

        “Well, prophecy? Really? In a Super Squad dynamic, the prophet person is like, an on-call guy. He doesn’t go on the adventures.”

        “What can I say? I’m lazy, I guess.” You’re not.

        “Selfish, really!” I retort. It’s important to keep talking, I can’t go back to awkward silence. “While I’m out there teleporting around, Robin Hooding some banks, you’d just be sitting at home watching Seinfeld, reaping all the benefits of my efforts.”

        “Yeah but I’d know how your adventures would go down before you even got back, so I could start making financial and tactical plans. Or what not,” you smile. You’re flipping through the Highlights, mindlessly, not looking at the pages but for the occasional glance. You just need something to do with your spare hand.

        I let go of your hand, because it’s hard for me to speak without the ability to gesticulate.

        “Would you still pick prophecy?” I ask.

        “Nah, I think now I’d go for having a cyborg arm that can turn into any weapon or tool at will,” you point your fist at me, flex your arm like you’re firing a gun.

        “Go Go Gadget Vibrator!” I joke through devious teeth.

        You bite your grinning tongue and cast a sideways glance to Jason’s mom and older brother. It instantly silences us. She’s biting the skin around her nails, and glancing down the hallway where Jason’s room is.

        I imagine we’ll be taking about her in depth, later. Reflecting on how she must be feeling. Being here again, waiting here again in this silent room with all these strangers, all also waiting to hear about the conditions of their own family members.

        I look her way also, frowning. We look back at each other. Your lips are thin and you nod awkwardly. I take your hand in mine, you reciprocate a squeeze.

        “Hey, Mrs. Cheung, this is the same Highlights as last time,” I tell her. “Exact same!”

        “Oh? Really?” she’s distracted, it’s understandable. She doesn’t know me very well, either. “This Cosmo was here last time, too,” I point to an issue on the table, atop a stack of other old magazines. The cover is bright yellow. Pink text reads Own His Orgasm! and Chic Hairstyles For Fall.

       

        You, you’re more helpful. More kind. “We were thinking about going to the cafeteria, if you want us to bring you something.”

        Her wry smile is polite when she dismisses you. She says no, but thanks.

        “I’ll bring you some tea,” you say gently, anyway. You standing up is a signal for me to do the same. I follow you, heading toward the elevator, down the hall opposite the hall that leads to where the doctors took Jason.

        “You’re hungry?” I ask.

        “Not really.”

        We pause before the elevator, and I’m looking right at your face, studious, and you’re looking right back into mine and I think we’re both just nervous and trying to be there for the other; both so concerned with what the other must be thinking. You narrow your eyes. I narrow mine.

       

        I can’t imagine, love, how you must feel right now.

        “Well, what about you, then?” you ask.

        “I’m not really hungry either, but if I see something—“

        “Nah, girl, I mean like, would you still choose teleportation?”

        The elevator’s arrival is announced by the Ding! and the doors open before us. There are two other people inside. There’s a mirror on the ceiling. Both of them are looking up.

        “It’s the most useful superpower hands down,” this is punctuated by a large flailing of my arms, “Of any superpower! Both in crime fighting and in your personal life.”

        You make a tiny segue into Harry Potter, so natural I barely make notice of the topic shift. “It’d be bomb to be a wizard. They can teleport and do all kinds of other crazy shit.”

        “Plus they get to wear cloaks to school. You think cloaks will ever make a comeback?”

        “Well now, we can only hope!” you say as we make this kind of amorphous singular gesture where all of a sudden your arm is wrapped around my shoulder and mine is wrapped around your torso, thoughtlessly. Natural.

        “We should start a fashion design company,” I’m looking up at us in the mirror, now, too.

        “Which we’ll work on while we’re fighting crime?”

        “You’ll work on!” I say, “Since your gift of prophecy is useless.” The elevator opens at our floor. We get out before the other two occupants.

        “It wouldn’t be useless! It’d be damn helpful now, wouldn’t it?” you actually sound kind of angry. You’re getting defensive. We had this argument, only more loudly, last time.

        “What, so we’d have to still wait around in this goddamn place even though you know the outcome?”

        “If I knew the outcome, the waiting wouldn’t be so fucking soul crushing!” you exclaim loudly, gesticulating in a manner reminiscent of my own wild arm movements. Jason is right, I notice, we are starting to sound alike.

        “He’s going to be fine,” I say, hushed. Soothing tone, soothing tone. Please Avery, please don’t you freak out now. I can’t handle it.

        “We thought he was fine last time,” you mutter. You look away, but your hand is tighter around my hand. You always have this way of showing me that as distant you feel, there’s still a closeness. Body language, gestures, context.

        “Yeah, well, no offense or anything but he’s kind of a dickwad and he’s totally a dumbfuck.”

       

        At this point we’re in the cafeteria. In it, and just kind of walking around it. I figure you’ll buy Jason’s mom the tea you promised her when we’re ready to go back.

        You choose a table with two seats. You sit in a chair. I sit on the table. You lean your forehead against my leg, pathetic and kind of adorable and you’re finally letting me care for you. I take your beanie off your head, put it beside me, and play swirly-fingers with your white hair. Your roots are coming in black, and sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if you wore your hair natural.

        “The thing that pisses me off,” you sit up suddenly. “Is that he we care more than he does! And oh my god, his mom. I’ve just been staring at her face thinking, oh my god, this woman has a son who cares so little about her emotional well-being that he brought her back to this fucking hospital.”

        “Yeah dude, it’s fucked. The whole thing is fucked.”

        “Life sucks for everyone, man, not just him.”

        It’s refreshing to hear you say this. Normally it’s what’s on my mind, and when I express it you always have something clinical to say about how people who suffer depression are the way they are because it’s an illness. Only, medication and counseling haven’t been working and we’re back here, again, pumping his goddamn stomach and waiting in the goddamn waiting room just to hear yes, he’s still alive and hear well-meaning physicians tell us that this is what we can do to make sure that the length of time until we’re back here again is longer than five months.

        We talk about Jason’s depression like it’s an addiction, and like his drug of choice is all the different ways he can die.

        This time, he swallowed pills. Last time, he jumped off the fire-escape from your floor of the apartment complex you both live in. I remember hearing his bones crack. I remember being certain he was done, until I saw him. His face looked sour, bloodied up.

        “I mean, whatever, we’re just going to keep a more watchful eye on him,” you conclude.

        I don’t admit it to you, but I’m torn between hoping he’ll come out fine and hoping the doctors can’t save him this time.

        I don’t admit it to you, because you love Jason in a way that I don’t. And I love him in a way that you don’t. He’s a dear friend to me, yes, but my love for him isn’t needy like your bromance. You know him better than I do, for sure. You care more about keeping him in your life.

        I care, yes. But I care in a different way.

        I can’t tell you, because you know in a much larger context, that he’s worth saving. But I keep thinking, guiltily, why do we bother? He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be saved.

        We bring Jason’s mom the tea we promised, and we go back to our seats and we wait. We just wait.

        And even if it turns out that, physically, he’s fine, that means nothing because he’s not okay. I have my doubts that he ever will be. I have my doubts that I have the strength, baby boy, to fight for him the way you do.

        But as you tighten your fingers around mine, and look into my face with such adorable hope, I pray for his wellness with you. Only because I can’t imagine how devastated you’ll be if this goes any other way.

        And one more thing I don’t admit to you, but I wish I had the gift of prophecy, too.

        “He’s going to be fine,” I say, hushed. Soothing tones, soothing tones.