This was not how I imagined spending my night.
This was not ever something I wanted to do.
This was…it was fucking terrible.
“What’s your address?”
“Uh, I’m not sure, but we’re in SCC, in Kemper,” I rattled off the dorm building’s name, hoping she’d be able to find it. After I told her the room number, I asked, “How long until someone gets here?”
“Less than ten minutes. Dispatch has already been notified,” the dispatcher spoke, pausing before he added, “Stay on the line with me until they get there, okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered, wondering if I should do more. Should I stick a hand down Mel’s throat and make her throw up? Would her gag reflex even be there since she was passed out? I had no idea. I didn’t know these things. I wasn’t prepared for this.
Was this how she tried to kill herself last time, pills? Where the fuck did she even get them?
Pinning the phone against my ear with my shoulder, I moved around Mel and bent to reach the container under her bed. When I pulled it out, I saw that it was her name on the prescription—some long-ass drug name I couldn’t hope to pronounce—and that the prescription needed to be refilled every month…but, judging from how many refills there still were and when the prescription was given, I doubted she’d ever gotten them refilled at all. Maybe once, but didn’t doctors usually force you to meet with them at least every year before refilling the prescription?
I didn’t know. I didn’t have problems like that. I didn’t know how these things worked, or why Mel had kept something like this from me. Not once in all of the time I’d lived with her had I seen her take any pills, and not once did I hear the jingle of pills in a bottle.
Was she trying to be better by herself? Was she trying to fight to live on her own terms? Stupid. Everyone needed help once in a while, and some people needed to take pills. It didn’t mean they were less of a person than others; it’s just how things were.
“Mel,” I whispered to her, setting the pill bottle on her nightstand, right in front of her TV, “what did you do?”
My heart damn well stopped when I watched her lids crack open, her gaze glassy and hazy. Her lips were dry and cracked, but she still managed to whisper, “It’s my fault.”
“What?” I leaned over her, shaking my head. “No, no, it’s not your fault.” I knew though nothing I could say would convince this girl otherwise. She had it in her head that everything bad that had happened to her was her fault, that everything with me was her fault. People like her…I didn’t think you could ever convince them that they were wrong, to not put the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Her shoulders couldn’t handle it.
“I’m sor—” Mel’s eyes rolled back, and her lids remained half-open and half-shut. It was a horrible thing to see. She was seconds from telling me she was sorry, as if she had anything to apologize for.
Damn it. I should’ve paid more attention to her, should’ve been there with her. I should’ve anticipated something like this happening, but I was too lost in my own world, playing pretend with Levi and then hating myself for what I did to my best friend. All the while I’d neglected poor Mel.
“Wake up,” I told her, shaking her shoulder, trying to get her to open her eyes again and talk. As long as she was talking, I knew she was alive.
But she didn’t come back to consciousness. She did start moving, however.
Not just moving. Seizing. Her body started to shake, every part of her shuddering fast, including her head. I immediately had to look away, water forming in my eyes as I heard the dispatcher speaking into my ear, “Did your roommate regain consciousness?”
“For ten seconds, and now she’s seizing,” I said, unable to look at her, unable to watch.
“How is she laying?”
“On her back.”
“Do you think you can turn her onto her side? Or at least her head? She might choke—” That’s all I needed to hear. I didn’t need the dispatcher to go on, but he did. He did, and I tuned him out as I grabbed Mel’s thin, almost weightless body and rolled her.
She was still shaking, too.
Suddenly a knock bounced through the air, and even though it was hard to both hold Mel’s seizing body and the phone against my ear, I barely had time to glance to the door before it opened. I hadn’t locked it.
Never had I been so relieved to see another face, especially the face that appeared.
“Levi,” I said, offering him the phone. I couldn’t talk anymore, and I didn’t want to listen to the dispatcher. I needed to focus on Mel, as difficult as that would be. Her seizure stopped the moment Levi fell to his knees beside us, taking the phone.
As Levi talked to the dispatcher, I wiped aside Mel’s short blonde hair. No longer was it in a cute pixie cut. It was nearly three inches long all around, long enough to get stuck on her face with sweat. And her body was sweating, but it was a cold sweat, the kind of sweat your body exerted only when it wasn’t feeling well.
I wanted to tell this girl not to leave me, that this wasn’t over yet, that she was stronger than this, but I couldn’t. I could only stare down at the pale,
