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“He’s going to be alright.”
How could he say that, when he wasn’t even aware of how much he has suffered for the past few months?
Nevertheless, Horatio thanked the doctor and shifted his gaze back to the limp, lifeless body lying on the bed. He could pretend that everything was fine and that Hamlet was just deep in his slumber, but how could he, when he knew that Hamlet usually curled up into a ball and tangled himself up in the midst of the blankets when he slept, and now his form was just as stiff as a piece of cardboard and as pale as snow on the first day of winter?
His disheveled, slickened hair damp from the events that happened not too long ago and his eyes now closed, Hamlet looked peaceful, his face void of creases and worry and melancholy. Which offered little comfort to Horatio provided that for the past few months, peaceful wasn’t exactly the best word to describe him.
He still looked on in hopes of witnessing his eyes, the windows to his very soul reveal themselves to him again, albeit void of the enthusiastic sparkle that resided in them heretofore.
*****
The car ride back home was, needless to say, awkward.
Horatio was driving, but he couldn’t place his full concentration on the road when the occasional wet cough shook Hamlet’s frame, breaking the fragile silence sporadically. Glances steeped in worry were coerced from Horatio every now and then, though all he could see was the back of Hamlet’s blonde mop of hair as he gazed out the window longingly. His mobile phone lay motionless in the backseat, its recent outgoing calls having declined by Hamlet’s stepfather. He wasn’t busy, he simply didn’t care.
The silence made Horatio uneasy. It reminded him of the water. What one would hear, should they, by force, hold themselves under on a whim. Nothing.
He desperately hoped that Hamlet wouldn’t realise the correlation.
*****
Horatio thought he was progressively doing better.
Before everything went wrong, it was all smiles and kisses. Smiles as radiant as the first rays of sun silhouetted against the ageing night sky, and kisses as sweet as flowers coated with a glassy layer of morning dew.
Then it happened.
Human life was fleeting. Fleeting like the tints of a rainbow appearing after a rather violent thunderstorm. Fail to savour it and soon it’ll dissipate, fading from view forevermore. It was the same with something as delicate as human existence. Neglecting loved ones around you could be done effortlessly, even unconsciously. But would you still say the same, when they leave you ultimately?
In this case it was Hamlet’s father.
It devastated Hamlet. A young boy, at the maturing age of 19. He was already going through a lot, though he had his father to support him through the highs and lows.
Everything changed when he left.
His health spiralled down into a bottomless pit of despair. Horatio tried, but Hamlet just wasn’t himself anymore. The light at the end of the tenebrous tunnel grew feeble every passing day, and each step towards the right direction was arduous. Until giving up seemed like the best course of action.
Horatio had found him unconscious in the midst of the asphyxiating whitewashed tiles of the bathroom and the lukewarm water of the bathtub.
Unconscious, but still alive.
*******
Hamlet’s apartment. A place that Horatio has been to countless times. The familiar dilapidated front door with the burgundy welcome mat and the paint peeling off the walls. He wasn’t poor, but as a student in college he wanted to save up his money for the future.
Arriving at this prosaic but all-too-familiar place, it evoked indescribable feelings within Horatio, and he usually got lost within the vast sea of jubilation and gaiety that washed over him. Those emotions all originated from the thought of seeing Hamlet again. For days where he would wallow in his self pity and get lost in his incongruous melancholy, Hamlet lit up his whole world. His smile, in all its radiance and luminosity, appeared to him like the sun would after a seemingly never-ending night. When violent winds and tempestuous storms tore through his whole being, Hamlet was there.
It came and went in waves. It washed over them, tearing down the sandcastles and names they wrote in the sand as children. It left with one of their greatest treasures— their youth. It shaped them into what they were today, but at what cost?
This time, with the knowledge of what Hamlet did to himself mere hours ago in this very place, it offered little comfort—pained him even. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like seeing Hamlet being tormented by the waves of grief that never seemed to ebb. He wished he could do something to revert it back to the way it was; but death was irrevocable. He couldn’t reverse the whirlpool of time that inevitably sucked in all kinds of matter. He couldn’t make Hamlet forget the pain and desolation that incarcerated him over the past months.
He could only try not to think about it too much.
*********
Horatio held a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.
“My head hurts.” he had croaked.
And so Horatio rushed to his aid.
Hamlet was sitting on the bed when he returned.
“Two sugars, just how you like it.”
Hamlet just looked up at him, his eyes full of this pensive sadness that Horatio couldn’t really deduce. He didn’t show any indication that he wanted to pick up the cup, so Horatio simply set it on the desk.
He wasn’t really aware of what happened but in a trice, Hamlet’s juddering frame was against him, bony arms locked around him, nose buried in Horatio’s soft raven hair. Tears leaked through the flimsy material of his shirt. Horatio’s eyes dilated, his breath hitched in his throat, but he returned the gesture all the same, wrapping a quivering arm around him.
“I’m sorry,” Hamlet’s choked sobs came muffled, his face buried in Horatio’s shoulder. Two simple words were all he said, yet they alone and this intimate gesture were imbued with meaning. I never meant to leave you. I never meant to hurt you.
He could hear Hamlet’s unsteady inhale, feel the heat of his body, and in that single moment, they were in their own world, in the centre of their own vortex, just the two of them against the flow of time and the entire universe; but it was fine, they had each other, and nothing, no one could interfere.
Not even Death himself.