Page 77 of Dark Ink

It was just sad.

I found myself still speaking to Rian even though I knew he wasn’t there.

“Where is the funeral going to be? Did you get an address? No bother. We’ll figure it out. Check your phone. Check your apartment. I’m sure you have the key. It’s going to be alright. I’m here, I’m here.”

I knew I couldn’t let Rian fall. If he fell, I’d never get him back up. So I groaned and forced myself, no matter what, to keep my feet underneath me.

My voice was cheery as I helped Rian toward the wrought-iron gates where we could hail a cab to his place. Where I could set him down for a second or two. Where I could breathe.

“I didn’t mean what I said. I want to be with you. I want us to be together. We can make it work, you know? We can make it work if we just try.”

Every step was excruciating. Every step Rian seemed to get heavier. Every step I wondered what it would be like to just let my burden go.

But I kept walking and I kept talking as if there was anyone but the rain to hear me.

“I’m going to help you. I’m going to be there for you. I’m here… I’ll always be here…”

Rian

When I took that first hit, with the full intention of taking many, many more after that, I expected to end up in a hospital like before. Days missing like lost puzzle pieces. Weeks just disappeared. My body thin and weak like it was when I was a child. Tubes snaking into my arms. A machine keeping time with my faintly beating heart. I expected to hit rock bottom. To blink awake to an unknown, empty future. To begin the slow crawl back up the well with bloodied nails and gritted teeth. I expected to be alone once more.

But if I was in a hospital bed, it was moving. Jolting occasionally. Shifting right or left at certain intervals. Pushing me back against the cushions like gravity itself. And if I was in a hospital room, someone was playing music. Soft enough not to make out the words, loud enough for it to enter my fuzzy mind like steadily drifting fog. And if there was a needle slipped into the vein of the underside of my wrist, it was a soft needle. A gentle needle. A needle that for some reason drew up and down my skin like a paintbrush, delicate and careful.

I blinked slowly, groggily, and windshield wipers swept aside a splattering of raindrops to reveal a sight I never could have gotten from the window of a city hospital: rolling green hills, low wooden fences crawling across the landscape like stitches interspersed with sections of yellow gorse bushes, dark clouds on a vast horizon. One thing was certain though: I definitely felt shitty enough to be in a hospital.

A groan slipped from my parched lips as I stirred. A seatbelt cut into my throat; or at least my too sensitive skin made it feel that way and I struggled to breathe. Late autumn wind rattled against the windows, but the air inside the car felt brutally hot to me: unmoving, stale, humid. It reminded me of the drug dens I was fully prepared to end up in—those filthy, boarded-up torture chambers, except without the saving grace of the actual drugs. Claustrophobia came for me with a vengeance as I pressed my fingertips weakly against the fogged-up windows.

I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be unconscious. Out of my mind. Blissed out. I wanted to be killing myself slowly, or not so slowly, I didn’t fucking care. If I couldn’t have a hospital, with its morphine and crisp white sheets, I wanted a dark hole and a dirty needle. I didn’t want in between. I didn’t want a second chance. It hurt too fucking bad.

Just when I was about to give in to panic, a pill was slipped into my clammy palm, a water bottle eased between my shaking thighs, and blissful, ice-cold air was sent cascading over me from a rolled-down window. I fumbled with the pill, not even questioning whether it intended me ill or good. My throat stung as the water went down my throat, but I swallowed more and more of it till I was gasping. I collapsed back into the seat and squeezed my eyes shut to breathe shakily through my nose.

“Just give it a minute or two,” came Eithne’s voice. “You’ll feel better soon.”

I fought back the urge to throw up, to claw at my skin, to unhook my seatbelt, open the door, and leap out of the moving car into oblivion. A soft, gentle touch was back at my vein, the one on the sensitive underside of my wrist, and it was just enough to distract me, its running back and forth like a paintbrush.

When I cracked open my eyes once more, I saw a signpost flash by on the side of the winding road. We were going to a place I swore I’d never go again. I wasn’t in hell after all, just purgatory. Merely on the way to those fiery lakes.

“You’re taking me to the funeral,” I said in a hollow voice.

Eithne kept her gaze on the road, one hand on the steering wheel of my car, one hand on me. The windshield wipers counted the silent minutes. We both stared out over the landscape, tall grasses thrashed in the wind, swept up and laid low like waves.

“Are you feeling better?” Eithne asked after a while. “That always helps Stewart when he’s… that always helps Stewart.”

Eithne’s eyes finally darted over to mine. I wasn’t sure what to expect in them. The last thing I remembered of her was her leaving the administrative building at the Dublin Art School. Her telling me she never wanted to see me again. How she’d come back to me, I didn’t know. Nor how she’d learned about my father. His funeral. The ranch out on that godforsaken piece of land. She must have found my car keys and convinced me to get in the car. I wouldn’t have complied if I’d known where she was taking me. She must have lied. Told me she was taking me home. Or to hospital. To do the nearest drug den.

She should be angry. She knew I’d done something with her brother. She should be angry, too, because I’d fallen into the same trap that I’d sent away her brother for falling into one too many times. She should be frustrated or annoyed or depressed or frightened. I must have been in a bad state; I know, because I’d meant to be. She should be, most of all, through with me.

But what I saw in Eithne’s darting gaze was none of that. I saw instead that she was my student again. I, her professor. She was eager to please. Looking for approval from me. Seeking something that I alone could give her. She’d just turned in an assignment and I was to grade her. Ms Brady and Professor Merrick.

“Eithne,” I tried to say, shaking my head till the knives against my temple convinced me to stop. “Eithne—”

“I’ve got your things in the trunk,” she interrupted, as if knowing what I was going to say and not wanting to hear it. “I was going to pack you a bag, but there was already one packed in your closet. I added a black suit. I have my things as well. We’re alright. Completely alright. Nothing to bother yourself about.”

Her finger against my wrist had started to move faster, a little too fast. Could she sense the wheels coming loose? Could she feel that if she let me speak I would tell her to turn around? To take us back to Dublin? To leave me on the side of the road with my bag and what was secretly hidden amongst the toothpaste and aftershave?

“This is the right thing to do, Rian,” she hurriedly said as she flicked a switch to make the windshield wipers move faster, the rain having increased as we drove deeper into the late afternoon storm. “I don’t know everything about you and your father. But I know enough to know that it’ll be difficult for you, for whatever reason. But I know that this is still the right thing to do. It’ll be good for you. It’ll, it’ll help you. I’m sure of it.”

Eithne was nodding to herself as she kept her focus on the road, the twisting black asphalt slick because of the rain, scarred with cracks because of disuse. I saw again the stressed, anxious student. Ill-prepared for her test. Uncertain of the answer. I saw her chin tremble. Her eyes pricked with the threat of tears. Her hand moved to increase the speed of the windshield wipers even though there was no need at all.

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