I collected my thoughts, dragging myself back to the reality of the conference room and its heavy quiet. I rested my eyes on a framed album cover on the wall. The orange background of it raked into me like claws, reminding me of the walls in that hotel bathroom.

“Gael.” I broke the silence. “When I found Asya that night... “ I closed my eyes, imagining him. “They told me he’d taken an entire bottle of pills with whiskey.”

The silence in the room grew heavier. Absinthe shifted in her chair.

“I… I used to do pills with him. I… It was all my fault he even started doing them. But we… We only needed a few to get high. I… Gael... “ I opened my eyes, meeting the wide gazes of everyone in the room all at once. “I don’t know what he was thinking, taking them all like he did.”

I fell apart, curling my hands into my hair as tears raced down my cheeks out of nowhere. Absinthe didn’t extend a comforting hand to me. No one said a word for a while. I cried against the hush that overtook the atmosphere.

Why didn’t it occur to me until now? That first night, the paramedics told me they’d found enough to fill a bottle in his stomach. I didn’t even care about it back then. I wanted to know if he would live. Now, I began wondering.

“What if he didn’t want to just get high?” Absinthe interrupted my sobbing, her voice almost too thick to be understood. I let the tears pool on my face, which became itchy as the tears soaked into my skin. Her words hung in the air. I lifted my head as Gael sat in a chair, his eyes wide and aimless. He almost missed the chair before he sat down and pulled himself to the table.

“Are you saying it was a suicide attempt?” The manager spoke for the first time. Asya told me once how he suspected the manager disliked him, so the man’s silence didn’t shock me earlier.

Gael continued to stare at nothing, his body moving almost on its own as he shifted uncomfortably at the proposition.

“He… He couldn’t do it…” Gael mumbled, shaking his head quickly. “No. Asya wouldn’t.” His hands went to his head as if the concept of it would explode his brain and he’d have to hold his skull together to stop it. “There wasn’t a suicide note or… Or anything.”

“He might have.” I realized. “I was there when he started drinking again. He was miserable. And he only got worse and worse. I mean… He was raped and then his boyfriend left him.” My words came out faster and faster. I couldn’t stop. “I was there for it all, Gael. He drank harder and harder after what at his birthday party. Even after his court victory, he didn’t seem relieved or happy or anything at all. He was always just… dead eyed and silent. And when you got engaged, he couldn’t stay sober for a moment.”

“Why would my getting engaged affect him?” Gael asked, looking at me with a strange look. He seemed confused, a little annoyed at being accused, and also terrified all at once.

“Because he…” I wasn’t sure if I should tell Gael. It was Asya’s biggest secret.

I shut my mouth and looked down, pledging silence. It didn’t matter, though, because Absinthe finished the sentence for me.

“...Loved you.” She said. “And you didn’t love him back.”

Her tone was gentle and not at all accusing, but Gael took it like it was a sentence for a crime.

“I… I never… I never noticed.” Gael’s voice was soft and tremulous. “Is that why he kissed me? Years ago?”

I looked up to watch them speak. I never knew Asya kissed Gael. Absinthe nodded, and you could almost witness Gael’s world falling in on him.

“It wasn’t just you. Everyone treated him differently when he came back from rehab. Even his fans.” I noted.

I tried to empathize what he’d gone through, to have worked so hard to fix himself, only to discover everyone still considered him a hopeless addict. I was the worst of them all. Gael and Absinthe at least set him apart to support him. I’d just mocked him and then turned him back into an addict when he was weak and vulnerable.

“He needed to go to therapy more than he needed rehab.” Absinthe said. “He had so much in his life he wasn’t equipped to handle, and no one to take it to. Even if we did things to make him miserable, he’s still the one that chose to drink and take pills for it. Blaming ourselves won’t help. If…” She seemed to choke on the uncertainty of that ‘if’, “If he ever wakes up, we need to make sure he’s seeing someone. He needs therapy so he can learn how to handle it without drugs and alcohol and… death.”

The power of the word ‘death’ hung over us.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Do you really think he wanted to kill himself?” Gael asked, frantic and small voiced.

“I don’t know.” Absinthe admitted. “But he’s been struggling for years.”

“I know he could have done it,” I stated.

I saw the way he put drinks away, the way he took his drugs. I’d seen the void in his eyes in between every smile. I watched the tears that fell when he was too far gone to stop his emotions. The only time there was relief on his face was when he was too high for reality to torment him.

“I knew he was suffering. I should have sobered up sooner. He needed the help of a proper friend,” I continued.

“We can’t change what already happened.” Absinthe said. I looked at her, almost angry at her for saying something so obvious, even if she meant well by it.

“Let’s think about the song we’ll play for him.” Gael interrupted. He looked like a breeze would knock him over. He started writing sheet music, but he wasn’t ready yet. The notes were so jumbled and nonsensical, the song they made would have sounded awful. We didn’t stop him, though. If he needed to write, he needed to write.

I got out of my chair. “I’m going to go home.”

Gael kept drawing notes like he didn’t even hear me.

“I’ll send you some ideas later, okay?” I promised. There was no way I could write lyrics or chords right now. Tonight, I’d write everything that I thought of when Asya came to mind, and I’d send it all in an email to Gael. Right now, though, I needed to have a glass of water and take each sip with the wish that it was vodka instead.

Asya:

There’s a song in my head. I’ve never heard it before, but the words are soft and sad and beautiful. There is a quiet symphony of instruments in the background, almost covered by a mournful voice, but present enough to grace me with their beauty. The voice sings to me, but I can barely understand the words at first. As days go by, they are clearer. As I listen to them, I’m reminded of the life I lived. It hurts to remember those days. Even the long past smiles I once smiled were tainted by a hopelessness and a longing too powerful to ignore. The song preaches lessons about life and love, warning me away from mistakes I’ve already made. I try to shut it out of my mind when the beauty of the song is rendered unrecognizable by its lyrics. They’re the same handfuls of phrases, now. They repeat over and over in a voice that left me a decade ago. The scent of peonies mingles with the notes, and the twisted song grows darker.

I want to leave it all behind me, but I can’t fool myself forever. I want to stop looking back, and I should, but the past is too daunting a thing to ignore. I’m stuck here and I can’t stop letting it all haunt me, ruining me with every moment. The calm of the song becomes chaos, but the melody and the words haven’t changed. It’s all in my head.

Then I began to wonder why it is that this dream has gone on so long.

Digitalis:

Again, I spent a day at Asya’s side, brushing his hair for the nurses. In my hands, it is dry and limp, the color fading rapidly. I wish they’d let me bring in my own hair products to wash him with. I water his morning glories, a task I insist upon taking myself. Something superstitious in me wonders if it will help him if they flourish.

“Does that feel better?” I ask him, knowing he won’t respond. I set the little watering can down on the side table of his room. The sunlight fills the blue petals of his flowers and they seem alight. “It’s been over a month since I had a drink or anything else. Are you proud of me?”

His face was still, his chest raising gently with his breaths. He didn’t need the respirator anymore, so his face was easier to see. The circles had disappeared from his eyes and his skin seemed smoother, but also much paler. I imagined he should look healthier than he did, living in this hospital so long.

The doctors say that even if Asya would wake up, his organs and brain are badly damaged. He might end up spending the rest of his days in a hospital. If he’s lucky enough, he might live under the care of a home nurse, instead.

I took the time to learn about his condition. I learned about all the terrible things that might afflict him if he woke up. I had to turn my computer off to end the stream of potential horrors he might face if he ever ended his sleep. It had scared me when all of this began, but now the fear threatened to devour me. I couldn’t bear to lose my dearest friend. The more I read, the more it sank in that I could just as easily have landed in the same condition. Greater than the addictions that were once firmly anchored in my brain, fear controlled me, now. If I ever took another pill or let myself drink, I’d end up the same as Asya.

Somehow, we finished the tribute song for him. It took a month for everyone to get together and collect ourselves so we might write something worth performing. We wrote a song about what he meant to us, the times we spent together, and the loss we suffered without him. It was such a wonderful thing, with Gael singing and playing the piano. I lent my voice and the softest guitar I could play. Absinthe played her drums, and the way she used to fill a concert hall with noise became the same skill that filled one with silence. We wrote a part for the bass that we would never play. We displayed the chords on a screen beside our own sheet music for people to see, but never hear.

When we left the concert hall, the media plagued us as always, asking us questions and begging for comments about the song and the friend we wrote it for. I didn’t even bother to say so much as to deny them any commentary. I closed my eyes and walked through them as though they didn’t even exist. Later on, I would read that my silence shocked people. The world expected me to be the loudest voice on the news, milking the song for all I could. Saying nothing had more effect on the news than any words I may have chosen. Years ago, if I knew this, I might have used it to gain popularity or to sway my fans. Now, I didn’t even care.

I continued to return to the hospital room with Asya, watching him breathe for hours. Sometimes, his hand would twitch or his eyes would roll underneath his eyelids. It was the only thing that told me he was alive. I had learned to stop hearing the constant beeping of the monitors that once drove me insane. Sometimes, I used their natural rhythms to write songs with and I even wrote some poetry here and there. Maybe I would dedicate my next album to Asya, if the thought of it didn’t make me too sad.

“Asya,” I whisper. I like to test him, sometimes. I like to see if he’ll stir and rise from his pillow. He never does. He doesn’t even twitch.

I sigh.