Page 14 of Pippin & Nacho

I didn’t need to remember my dream because I’d had the same sensations over and over as a child at that dreaded facility that changed me forever. No, it hadn’t changed me. It destroyed me and reshaped me into something unrecognizable.

Ruined. Broken. Pathetic. Weak.

It was no wonder I had this nightmare so viscerally tonight after my recent ordeal at the hospital.

My mind flashed images of sterile rooms, being held down, and then the cold went away, replaced with burning and dizziness. I woke up in my room with white concrete walls, white sheets, and a barred window. My mind woke up to confusion and pain, not knowing where I was. Everything was fragmented. My memories shattered into pieces like mixing several jigsaw puzzle sets into one pile. My prison. My hell.

I hated sleeping. Sleeping brought more than the darkness of the evening. It brought the monsters back into my mind.

The movement in my bed helped me catch my breath. Nate. My Atlas. My Polaris, guiding me back on the right path to keep me from getting lost. I was a tiny star in the vast universe, but he was the biggest and brightest star who pulled me in with his gravity—

“I’m here. You’re okay. Go back to sleep.”

His soothing words did nothing for me tonight. There would be no sleeping. I hurt everywhere with ghosts haunting in my head, and my mind kept pinging all over the place, unable to focus, flashing between my past and my present. They were pieces of threads tied up in knots that I struggled to untangle.

And my knee hurt like a bitch.

He lay down next to me and gently tugged on my bare shoulder. Goosebumps spread over me, but the good kind. Not the cold kind. Not the creepy hospital kind.

“I can’t. Not tonight.”

I wish he’d sleep with me every night. Maybe I wouldn’t have so many nightmares, but I wouldn’t dare ask. He must come to me. Otherwise, I’d feel more broken by begging, asking… I’d done it a couple of times, and by the following day, I’d be sick from my weakness.

Still, the relief with Nate here always became overwhelming, so much so that it nearly hurt as much as the nightmares. Was that even possible? How could someone so comforting also hurt? Because he’s not mine. We were only friends—friends through thick and thin, but nothing more.

Nate sighed and sat up with me, my arms wrapped tightly around my folded legs. His caring and tender fingers combed away my bangs. I’d just gotten my hair cut recently, but they cut it crookedly because I’d only paid ten dollars for it. I needed it fixed. Maybe I could get another tattoo while I was at it. But we were trying to save money, which was impossible, especially when I spent so much.

Then there was the ambulance and hospital bills that were due soon. Shit.

His finger swirled over the mandala pattern on my arm, and I relaxed and focused on Nate’s soothing touch. God, he was so good at bringing me back. Nate was so smart, empathetic, and patient. Cleaning tables in a bar was wasted on him. He could do such great things if I weren’t around, but I was too selfish to let him go.

He rested his chin on my shoulder as he continued tracing the pattern on my forearm, smelling of sleep, limes, coconut, and all things Nate—my favorite smell in the world.

“Sam, perhaps it’s time. I feel helpless because I can’t help you the way you need and deserve.”

My head shook back and forth frantically, knowing what he was saying. “You’re amazing. My best friend. You help more than you think.”

He sighed again. “You still have nightmares all the time. I can’t help with those. They aren’t going away, even after years, because we aren’t doing enough to help you cope with them. We aren’t… professionals. I’m just not smart enough to help you more than I am.”

My heart and gut clenched at his efforts to hide the word ‘doctor.’

“Stix and Stone use group therapy. It’s with others just like them. They’re doing really well with it. It would be in—”

I scooted away from him. No doctors. Never. It was bad enough I ended up in the hospital. I gripped my hair and shook my head. “No!”

“I know it’s scary, but that one doctor wasn’t normal, if he was even a doctor at all, and those people weren’t real nurses. They were evil. Most doctors aren’t like that, Sam. Most doctors are good and really want to help people. Look at the ones who healed you the other day. They made you better.”

We’d had this conversation before… so many times. Too many times. Nate would never understand the innate fear—the sweating, the cold, the pain, the indifference to suffering… Sometimes the memories made me want to just die to silence them. I knew logically that not all doctors and nurses were bad. I wasn’t irrational or stupid despite my lack of an education. That didn’t stop the panic and anxiety. Just the thought had me breathing too hard, and my body broke out in a new sheen of sweat.

Nate swirled his finger again over the tattoo, bringing me back. He was so good at bringing me back. I didn’t need a doctor. I needed my Polaris.

“What about your tattoos?” he asked.

“What about them?”

I reached for a lock of his hair with my other hand as he touched me… More soothing and easy breathing.

“They use needles. That doesn’t scare you.”

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