The Apple on suicide watch - A short story

The Apple On Suicide Watch

"Do you always have to be right?" She asks.

"No," I answer, "it just sort of always works out that way."

She gives me that look; the tilt of the head, the slight eye roll.

It's my first year of University, and I'll admit that at seventeen there's quite a lot out in the universe that I don't understand but making Fry Bread isn't one of them.

Her name is Karen, at twenty-three she believes that five years has garnered her some extra wisdom but I've found age has no baring on it. We started seeing each other a few weeks ago after we met at the university aboriginal meet and greet dinner; she's there for marine biology and since we're both in the sciences we had a lot to talk about.

"I know how to make fry bread." She says as she mushes the dough around on the small counter of my dorm room. Next to her is a small pot of vegetable oil sitting on the hot plate.

"You have the stove on max," I have the fire extinguisher out and ready to go. "You're going to burn the school down, I like the school, I'm going to miss it."

"I've never burned anything down before."

"I have, it's not pretty."

"It'll be fine."

She makes a ball of a piece of the dough and tosses it into the pot, which begins to instantly sizzle. She waits about twenty seconds and flips it, a small bit of smoke comes up and I tense on the handle of the extinguisher.

"See..." She pulls out the finished piece and puts it on the paper towel. "Good."

"Ok." I say. She's not done.

She puts the next piece in and starts balling up the third.

This goes on for about four minutes, an assembly line of movement as she cooks up each piece. I might have relaxed if I didn't know chemicals as I did, and then I heard it, the slight popping sound followed by a crackle.
I reached out with my right arm and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back from the stove just as the four foot flame shot up into the air. I then unplugged the stove, and dropped a lid on top of the pot.

But just to be safe I hit the wall with a spray of white fire retardant...being a small dorm room that might have been an over kill. The air turned white, the powder landing on everything.

I looked like a snowman.

---

Karen and I spent the next three hours cleaning the small room; taking off the bed sheets and stuffing them away in a garbage bag, wiping down the cupboards five or six times. It's not just the powder, its the thick sticky coating that gets into everything.

It was after midnight by the time we were ready to deal with ourselves, which meant going down the hall to the communal shower. Karen went first while I stood guard, occasionally going in to make sure she was doing ok, or needed anything, or wanted to talk or any other reason to see her in the shower.

I lent her some of my gym clothes to wear, and quite honestly it was sexy as she curled up in the corner of the bed to read.

I grabbed the garbage bag, change of clothes and made my way down the hall back to the showers. Going through the door I could hear that one of the stalls was going, I'm pretty sure that Karen had shut hers off; aside from an idiot like myself who would be showering at midnight in the middle of the week.

Stripping down and with a towel wrapped around myself I take a moment to look in one of the mirrors. My hair is white, kind of like a bad play when young people try to make themselves look seventy; this stuff is going to be hard to get out.

I come around the corner into the shower room and head for my favourite, there's nothing special about it so much as its on the far end; less people have to see me naked. Out of the corner of my eye I see him, sitting on the floor of the running shower is a guy fully dressed, head against the wall crying and holding a knife.

I stop and look at him. It's not something you encounter everyday, there's no real right way to find out what's happening.

"Hey...are you ok?"

He looks up at me, shakes his head and I recognize him; Steve, or Shane, something along those lines from my floor at the end.
"Do you want me to go get help or something?"

"No...I just want to be left alone." He lays his head back against the wall. "Can you just leave me alone?"

I look around the room for guidance, maybe somebody else to do this; maybe I should go get my clothes back on and then go get help. What happens if I do though, I'm thinking the knife isn't for protection, and I have an idea why he's soaking himself under a warm shower.

Nope. Going anywhere would be a bad idea.

"Hey, maybe you shouldn't do what you're thinking of doing."

He looks at me again, I can't tell what's his tears and what's the water. "Why not?"

"Because I'll have to stop the bleeding, and the only thing I have on is the towel I'm going to use; I've been told I have a lovely penis but is that really the last thing you want to see."

He stares at me. I assume because he's not sure if now is the appropriate time to make jokes; he'll find it funny later.

"How about I turn off the water." I move forward, he watches me the entire time as I reach in and turn the water off. "You want to give me the knife?"

He shakes his head.

"No, ok." They don't train you for this. "I have to ask...why?"

"I'm tired." He says. "I don't want to so this anymore."

"This?"

He shakes he head. "Anything."

"I'm going to get dressed." I put on my best mom voice, falling short. "Don't do anything for two minutes, that's all I'm asking, just don't do anything for two minutes ok."

He just rests there, that's not a yes or no. I move quickly to my clothes; dropping the towel and putting everything on. I skip over the socks and put my sneakers on and move quickly back to Steve with the towel.

"Oh come on..." I blurt out as I get back to the shower, he's cut his wrist and its causing blood to pool next to him. The water dilutes it. I move into the shower and grab his wrist and put pressure on the slice, taking some comfort in the fact that he sliced wrong; that should give us more time.

"Don't touch me."

"It's not my first choice." I try moving him out of the shower but he pulls back. "Dude, look at me." Back to my moms voice.

He looks at me, angry and scared. More scared.

"You aren't going to die, I know enough first aid to know that; so You have two choices her; you get up and sneak with me down the hall to my car, I drive you to the emergency room. Nobody here knows, nobody finds out. Or I dial 911, they come in an ambulance that wakes everybody up, and everybody in the building sees them take you out."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"Ok."

I nod and help him to his feet.

---

It was three in the morning by the time I got back from the hospital; I had to sign him in, then wait around to file a report with the police, and then talk to the shrink. Most of the time I could only tell them what I knew, his name was Steve...turns out it was Shane...and he wasn't attacked.

I did have to explain why my hair was white and why it was unrelated to the event; the shrink had a few extra questions about that. The hospital gave me a room to shower and change, a nurse taught me how to get the blood out from under my nails.

Karen's curled up in bed facing the wall, I'm tired so I slide in behind her and cuddle. She rouses with a deep breath.

"Where have you been?"

"You used up all the hot water, I had to wait for it to heat up again."

"Funny." She drifts off back to sleep.

I smile, and drift off as well.

---

We slept in till noon, and since we missed morning classes Karen and I decided just to spend the day relaxing. First order of business though was to find some food over at the cafeteria.

It was here while moving through the buffet that we ran into Arthur, nice astronomer student from a few rooms over from me.

"Did you hear they took Steve to the hospital last night?"

"Steve? You mean Shane?" I ask.

"Same difference."

"How do you know that?"

"Thomas, he found blood in the hall, led him back to the shower, so he went around seeing who's missing and called the hospital for him."

Leave it to Thomas, he's in the law program and wants nothing more than to be a crown prosecutor. Nothing gets by him. A simple conversation with him always feels like an interrogation. "He find out if he's gonna be ok?"

"Yeah, tried to kill himself though."

"Thomas tell everybody this?" I look over at Arthur.

"No, just some of us."

"You wanna keep it under your hat, might be Shane's not gonna want the world to know."

"Yeah, sure, I guess."

He agrees, but I don't believe him. Karen pays for my meal and the two of us head for one of the far tables.

"You didn't seem surprised."

"What?" I look up.

"Someone tells you a dorm mate tried to kill himself in the shower last night and you don't seem surprised." She smirks. "I wondered where you went."

"I stopped by for my keys but you were already asleep, you didn't miss much."
"But you're ok." She asks softly.

"Yeah," I say, "not the first suicide I've been involved with." This was true, I'm from an isolated reserve with very few job options and a history of alcohol abuse; we lose someone every other year.

Just the first time I've been that close. I'm kind of proud of myself though, being able to handle it as well as I did.

"People are always taking the cowardly way out." She casually says, pulling me out of my own thoughts.

"What's the cowardly way? Suicide?"

"Yeah, it's the easy way out; for people that can't deal with their problems and can't afford to run away from them."

"There's nothing easy about suicide." I say, and she looks up at me. "It's definitely not cowardly, takes a lot courage actually."

"Are you joking? Sometimes I can't tell when you're joking. Cause its not funny."

"I'm not joking." I consider what I'm going to say for a second. "Nobody wants to die, not even suicidal people, they don't want to be dead. Every cell in our body is programmed to want to live, that's why we're afraid of death, we fear it, we get sick to the stomach just thinking about it. People killing themselves get that same feeling, they're just as scared, its just they're more scared of something else with living they don't see any other option."

She stares at me. "Everything you just said, is complete and utter bullshit. Killing yourself is selfish, and shows the world you don't give a shit about what happens to your family, or friends."

"They don't want to die."

"Then they have a funny way of showing it."

"They want help, and nine times out of ten probably take the better option if someone points it out to them."

"You blaming everybody else for not pointing it out to them?"

I pause for a moment to consider my answer for that, I want to say yes; I have my reasons for saying yes. I'm starting to think though that she has her reasons for thinking otherwise. So I look for a compromise. "Maybe."

"Chickenshit answer."

"Yes." She called me on it, leaves no room to go. "Maybe."

She stares at me.

"You're taking it rather personally."

"Or I just don't like the idea that you're blaming other people for a choice they made."

"I blame other people for not helping."

"Help what? Sometimes they don't ask for help, sometimes they act all happy and then one day you find them hanging from the rafters. Not your fault, just them saying 'fuck you, live with this.'"

She puts her fork down, probably not in the mood to finish eating. She chews on her lip for a minute.

"I'm sorry." I say.

"No your not, what you think is what you think; that's not going to change." She smirks. "I'm gonna go back to my room, change, get started on some homework I should've finished last week."

"Ok."

She leans across the table and kisses me on the cheek and then stands; I grab her hand.

"My father," she says, "I was eight, clearly I'm not over it."

"Nobody would expect you to be."

"Yeah." She says, not convinced and then lets my hand go as she moves off for the door.

This is going to be a problem. Not just for her, but one that's going to impact our relationship.

I don't want to die, I fear death like crazy; at the same time though I have my moments, moments of just not wanting to live anymore. I've discovered as I've grown up there's more and more moments of it.

I'm going to have to tell her sometime, if we see this as a relationship that's going anywhere.

I don't think she's going to take it well.

---

It was three weeks before Shane returned to school, and if went as well as I expected it to show; and I assume what he feared.

When he first came back he spent most of his time in his room from what I or everybody else watching could tell. He would be seen in the morning, breakfast before classes; people that know him would whisper and where he would sit would be awkward silence.

We wouldn't see him around dinner runs, just the occasional delivery to his room.

When it came to seeing me though, I don't think I know how to read what he might be thinking. People know what he did, does he know that it wasn't me. Occasional he'll look at me as he goes by, expressionless; I'll nod or give him a weak smile and but he'll keep moving.

I realized early on that this is what we would fear the most, the stares and whispers. The wondering what people say about us; what they would do.

What's Karen going to say?

I've watched closely when we had breakfast together, but she doesn't pay him any attention; and so far he's never come up as a topic when she's been around. As far as she was concerned, Shane was the same in her head as he was before the incident, non existent.

I've decided earlier this month to tell her what's happened in the past, what's possible in the future. I just have to find the right time, work up the courage and hope the two coincide with each other.

It has to be a night when I think I can live with her not wanting to see me the next day, or any other day after that.

As that feeling might not happen, I should just pick a night.

That night was three days later; Friday.

---

It was Thursday when Shane came to visit me.
I was at my desk working on equations I just wasn't getting when he came up to the door; hoping for any distraction I turned with a little more enthusiasm than I should have but dropped it too quickly when I realized who it was.

I hope he didn't notice.

He opens with "Hey."

"Hi, how are you...how are you doing?"

"Better." He nods, searching. "I was going to come by earlier, but you always seem to have company."

My turn to nod slowly.

"I wanted to say thank-you." He pauses. "For that night, that wasn't me at my best, and wasn't fare to put you through that."

I smirk. "No, that's alright, that's..."

"No, thanks. I'm not dead. Thank-you."

I nod. "No worries. How's, not being dead working out for you?"

"Good. I'm on meds, I'm talking to someone once a week; I'm moving along." He looks into the hall for a second, checking to make sure nobody sees him. "And I know you didn't tell anybody, don't worry about that. Thomas tracked me down."

"Cool."

There's a moment of quiet. "Ok," he says, "I just wanted to say thanks. And see you around." He starts out the door.

"Hey!" He turns back. "You tell your family?"

"Someone did."

"But not you?"

"Sorta, I talked to them after they knew."

"How'd they take it?" I have my hopes, some kind of silver lining in putting a secret out there.

"Not well." He picks at the door frame.

"If you could, would you have told them before you did anything?"

"No, maybe, it's out there now, I don't like it being out there." He thinks about it. "I don't know, maybe they would've helped...I don't think they would've listened."

"I told my mom."

He stops picking on the door and looks at me.

"Told her what?"

I chuckle. "I told her that I was experiencing the emotional effects of a lowering of the serotonin levels in my brain."

I didn't know at the time how to tell my mother I was capable of killing myself. I would've said anything to avoid using the word 'suicidal.' It would've been disappointing. I knew what was wrong, I knew all the biological reasons behind it; I knew it wasn't my fault...logically, but feeling like I did, I felt it was.

"What did she say?"

"She had no idea what I was talking about." I take a breath, its still a harsh memory. "So I told her I needed help. So she took me to find some."

"And it worked?" He was also looking for hope, the sense that what he's going through will end, that he'll feel functional again. He wants to know that he can plan further than the end of the week without that feeling of dread.

"I'm still here." I smile.

"Thanks." He moves off.

I sigh. It's true, that feeling of dread leaves, but certain fears stay with you; for instance what someone you care about will think about you.

All at once Friday couldn't get here fast enough and was coming up too soon.

---

"I ordered Chinese."

"I thought we were going out." Karen sits on the bed with her knees up, book on top of them as she reads.

"You want to go out?" I'm at my desk, fiddling on the computer; it would look like I'm defragmenting it but that's just busy work.
"It's Friday night, who doesn't go out on a Friday night?"

"Nerds?" I shrug.

"Nope. Monday to Thursday you can be a nerd, Friday and Saturday you're a party animal."

"What am I on Sunday?"

"Regret."

"Ok, we can eat some Chinese and then head out?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

She goes back to her book, as I study her for a moment before going back to my computer. Now would probably be the most ideal moment, before dinner and definitely before going out.

"Karen."

"Yes." She looks up again, casual.

Its the fear of the unknown. It's telling someone something you don't want the world to know in the hopes they love you enough to keep that secret.

"So..." That's a good start. I'll have to follow it up with something further.

"So?"

"So I've been thinking there's something I should probably tell you going forward." I can feel the adrenaline, drop in my stomach, tingling in my fingers and light headed.

"Going forward where?"

"Dating."

"Ok." She puts her book down on the bed, giving me her undecided attention.

"Sometimes, sometimes...I have certain mental issues, and sometimes they show up. Now and again."

"What kind of issues?"

I watch her face, trying to decide if she's realized where this conversation is going. If she hasn't. I can see concern but can't read anything else.
"Sometimes I get depressed."

"Oh."

Oh? What does oh mean?

"Are you depressed now?"

"No, no; right now I'm fine; right now everything's good."

"So this isn't just you feeling sad, this is something that happens enough times its a thing in your life; its not if it happens, its a when it's gonna happen."

"Yes." She gets it. "Yes, I don't know when, or if ever it'll be again; its just..."

"How depressed?"

"How depressed?"

"Do you you get." She studies me, and I get the sense that she'll know what I'm thinking. "How depressed do you get?"

"Very."

"Like you sleep all the time, cry at dumb commercials, need hugs; do you turn into igor?"

"Sorta."

"How depressed?" I know what she's asking.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" She drills it home.

"Yes, at the wrong time, without help, I could; probably. But yes, that depressed."

"But you got treated?" I nod at her. "Hmmm."

She looks at her feet, she moves them lost in her own little thought. "Ok."

"Ok?"

"We'll have some Chinese and we'll go out." She picks her book up and goes back to reading.
I watch her for a moment. What does that mean, is she going back to her book to show me that its not a big deal? I would've like a little more feed back, but if that's how she wants to convey how she's feeling then I'm not going to argue it.

I focus back on the computer.

---

The club was packed. I held Karens hand as I moved through the throngs of people pushed in together dancing to the beats coming from the many speakers.

"Can you get me a drink!?" She yelled after we found a free area; I nodded as I moved on while she started dancing with herself. I didn't mind, I liked being apart of her night out but was not and never would be comfortable with dancing.

Over the next hour she dances and I partly danced holding her drink and my water; alternately giving her one or the other.

Then time slowed down with the music, and I noticed that she was watching me while moving.

"I can't do this." She says.

"What?"

"I can't do this anymore." She's serious.

"Do what?"

"I can't put myself in that situation again, I've been through it once..." She shakes her head. "I couldn't handle it again. What if we have kids? What if we have kids and you kill yourself, how is that fair to them? How is that fair to me? I can't do it, I just can't do it."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"I'm sorry."

I don't know what to say. I'm a little bit lost. "Is there any chance you could...not break up with me."

She shakes her head; and grabs onto me for a hug. "I am sorry." She lets go and moves off into the crowd, disappearing into the people and dim lights.

That was worse than it had to be.

---