tw: suicidal ideation

first night

There’s a choker wrapped around your neck. It’s a pendant, a heavy one—I complimented it before we went out tonight. Now, huddling in the cold with the paramedics, giving them your information, I find myself wondering if they will take it off. Will they deem it a hazard? Will you claw at it with cold, desperate fingers, staring at their neon vests through your horizon-colored contacts? I’m not sure, so I just keep reciting your phone number through the fog of my breath.

“What’s her birthday?” 

“Uh. I don’t know, I’m sorry. We’re not that close. I’m sorry.”

I tell them your name and number. I tell them the dorm I think you live in. I tell them what happened, or at least what I remember. That’s all I know. I don’t know your birthday. I don’t know if anything like this has happened before. I just know you want to kill yourself in 22 days. I just know you’re scared that your mom will scream when you do—if you do.

It’s true. We’re not that close. I’ve never even seen your real eyes.

That night though, it didn’t matter. What mattered is that I held you in zero degrees, held your hand so tight I thought it would break. I held you for so long my fingers couldn’t feel my keys when I fumbled for them later that night. I held you for so long I can still see the marks of your desperate hands gripping onto my knuckles, you crying to go, me crying for you to stay.

Every word I was saying to them wasn’t for them; it was for you. Every word I said to them, every inadequate, measly detail about you that I told them was for you. A plea, a plea that maybe somehow, over the sirens and through the fog, I would say something you could hear.

Instead, all I hear is your bone-chilling scream as you’re strapped down in the ambulance. It echoes in my head on the way home.

second night

Four nights later, my friend stands a few paces away, giving my information to the paramedics. I sit in the cold, watching my breath fog up my phone screen as I debate who to call, excited to laugh with someone over the insanity that this was my second EMS call in four days.

I’m giggling, drugged up on nothing but endorphins and the joy of having my friends here to witness the medics gather around me to take my blood pressure.

I know someone in every group that walks by. They all come to ask what’s going on. It adds to the delirium I’m feeling—recounting the story of how my knee buckled while in Taekwondo, repeating, “yeah I can walk on it but not well,” and “I don’t know, I think I was cursed or something this week.” It makes me marvel at the absurdity of sitting injured in front of Sayles, at 11 p.m., surrounded by bright-eyed medical students, getting my second call from the Dean of Student Wellness this week asking if I “need any support from Brown University administration after my latest distressing incident.”

As my fingers start to freeze, I’m still laughing. As I think of my friend in the hospital, I’m still laughing. As I limp up the stairs to my dorm, aware of the plans I’ll have to cancel, I’m still laughing.

What I’m not fully aware of, through my adrenaline-painkiller-what’s-happening haze, is that my friend left her UTRA applications to walk over in zero degrees and prop my arm up on her shoulder, and my other friend left her original plans to accompany me (under the guise of seeing my dorm for the first time), and my girlfriend left her warm bed to walk alongside us and support me.

They hold my hands in the cold, so hard I’m worried my fingers will break. They find my keys and unlock my door. I struggle onto my lofted bed, and they help bandage my knee, concern and amusement in their smiles.

As I’m falling asleep, their laughs echo in my head, an aching somewhere other than my knee.

third night

It’s been a couple of days since then. Now I’m sitting on my bed doing nothing, and my friend from the first night is probably in her bed too. They never did take the choker, although they did take almost everything else.

My knee is screwed up—how badly, I’m not sure. I’ll find out after the MRI later in the week.

None of that really matters, though. What matters is that I’m here now, warm, with my friends curled up on my bed, my brother is visiting when I need him most, and no one is holding anyone in zero degree weather.

It’s pouring outside. Every time I find I can’t walk, I know I have someone to call. Every time a friend finds themself collapsed on the ground, I know where I will be.

It’s pouring outside. Tonight, everyone is okay, holding onto one another. Regardless of tomorrow, we will keep holding on. Forget the cold. It’s okay that the world fell apart last night. 

What I really want to know is: are we still good for lunch tomorrow?