Chapter Text
The skies opened over Nearby City late in the evening. By midnight, the quiet streets of the great city were running with rivers of rainwater, surging into the stormwater drains (or bubbling out of them, depending on whether your part of the city maintained them well). As the great clock tower in the city center tolled twelve times, a small gray car swam its way through the city streets about a mile and a half away.
The steady drum of the rain, combined with the quiet whooshing of the wipers, nearly put an already-exhausted Hero to sleep right then and there. He sighed and pinched himself on the thigh. It would not do at all to hit someone out here and then be forced to stand in the rain until a tow truck arrived. Right now, Hero’s thoughts were focused on home. He blinked hard and kept his eyes trained on the road ahead.
Once he pulled into his apartment block’s underground parking garage, the noise from outside dulled even further: now, with no rain and no wipers, there was just the quiet hum of the car engine as it wound its way down towards his spot. Once his car was safely parked, Hero allowed himself a good yawn before getting out of the car. It always fascinated Hero how quickly and how far his energy tanked as soon as he left the hospital. An hour ago, he’d been wide awake, rushing to staunch the bleeding of a worker on one of the big highway upgrades who’d gotten his hand crushed by a falling tub of concrete. Once upon a time, the mangled, fleshy mess of the worker’s hand would have made him sick. By now, though, all he had felt in that moment was an adrenaline-fuelled determination to keep that man alive and kicking. Of course, back in medical school he’d learned about the biology of stress and rapid rises and falls in energy levels. Still, on a more human level, it surprised him.
On the rare quiet days where Hero didn’t return from work exhausted, he’d jog up the stairs from the garage to his floor. Today, though, was an elevator day. The thing rumbled and growled like an unappeased beast anytime it started moving. Hero vaguely wondered if one day he would get stuck in there. The other thing he wondered, as he always did, was whether his wife was back from work yet. Since Hero was the only one of them with a car – his wife was fortunate enough to be within walking distance of her own workplace – he could never tell until he stepped into the apartment.
The beast dinged pleasantly as it deposited him on his floor. Hero trudged down the hall to his door, which he unlocked and opened.
For all he could say about where life had taken him and his wife, one thing he could not and would never complain about was money. This was a place most people his age could only aspire to live in one day: it was spacious, well-equipped with amenities (including two dishwashers, which was a little overkill) and cleaned by a lovely woman and her husband – friends of his parents, incidentally – who came in once a week. If only Hero could actually be here a little more often.
There was a slight mist in the apartment, which made Hero smile. That meant his wife was home. Judging by the lack of noise, she’d just gotten out of the shower.
Hero took off his shoes at the door – his wife was very insistent about that – stretched, and padded over to the bathroom. Confirming his instinct, the hair dryer started going as Hero approached. He peeked inside to see Mari in all her glory blow-drying her hair, which fell in long wet black ropes to sit just above her bottom. Hero knocked twice before stepping into the room.
Mari turned to him and smiled: a warm, genuine smile that excited him as much now as it had when he was fourteen. Having someone who was genuinely happy to see him at the end of every day did wonders for Hero’s mental health. “Hello, doctor,” she said, her voice a little scratchy.
“Hello, Mari,” Hero replied. He walked up behind her and hugged her bare stomach. Mari giggled a little, but continued to dry her hair.
“How long ago did you get back?” Hero asked.
“About half an hour ago,” Mari replied. “The security trustee decided to tell us at eight that they wanted revisions to the security deed. Apparently there was some indemnity they wanted that we hadn’t given them. So we had to do that. And then the partner was mad at us for not picking it up in the first place, and so on.”
As befit two overachievers, the pair of them had divided themselves into medicine and law. While Hero was a few months into working as a resident in the ICU of St Catherine’s Hospital on the outskirts of Nearby City, Mari was a second year graduate in the banking and finance team of one of the state’s biggest law firms. From everything Mari had told him about the work, that seemed like a kind of hand-mangling of its own.
“At least it’s not like your last deal,” said Hero, squeezing Mari’s belly a little. A couple of weeks ago, Mari had had some kind of very complicated financing deal going on with an international client that had left her coming home at two in the morning most days. That had not been fun for either of them.
“Always looking on the bright side, you are,” Mari said. She turned in his grip and gave him a quick peck on the lips before going back to drying her hair. Hero smiled. Back in college, a situation like this would have led to Mari riding him on the bathroom floor. Now that they were older, more tired and less tolerant of sex on hard surfaces, they had learned to appreciate the more subtle things in life. With a kiss on the cheek, Hero left Mari to her work and went to the bedroom to put on his pajamas. Of course, his first pick was always the joke pair with red crosses all over them that Kel had gotten him for his birthday a few years ago. Mari found that one very amusing.
Though he was just about ready to drop, he waited with the bedside lamp on until Mari joined him, her hair now back to its long and flowing beauty. She slipped on her own pair of pajamas and got into bed next to him, letting out a long sigh as she did so.
“Are you going in early tomorrow?” she asked as Hero switched off the light.
“Yep,” Hero confirmed. “I think I’ll have a bit of time in the morning on Friday, though.”
“Stupid injured people,” Mari murmured, pulling herself closer to him. “Taking my beautiful husband away from me.”
Hero chuckled and rolled onto his back. Mari took up her customary position with her head curled up against his neck and one arm over his chest, with one of Hero’s arms bracing her neck. Perhaps it wasn’t the ideal position as far as comfort was concerned, but that was how they’d slept together for many years now, and neither were going to change it anytime soon.
But sleep was not to come yet. On the bedside table, Hero’s phone thrummed to life, buzzing and jolting around on the table like it was personally urging Hero to get up. Mari groaned. “Turn that thing off,” she complained. “They can’t have you anymore. You’re off.”
“It’s not work,” Hero replied, checking the caller ID. In fact, it was a number Hero didn’t have saved.
“Who’s calling you at this hour?” Mari asked, irritated.
But Hero was too curious and too well-mannered to leave the phone. Instead, he answered. “Hello?”
“Hey, this is Hero Montoya, right?” came the voice on the other end of the line.
Hero frowned. He recognized that voice. “Wait… Gonzalo? From med school?”
“Yeah, that’s me. I’m really sorry to disturb you this late. I was actually just planning on leaving you a message, but, uh… since you’re here now…”
This was bizarre. Gonzalo had been a sort-of friend of his in the first year of med school, but to Hero’s knowledge the two of them hadn’t spoken for a couple of years. “Has something happened?” he asked.
“Okay, so… this is kind of a breach of patient confidentiality, but… well, I’m not sure what else to do, to be honest.”
“Go on,” said Hero, allowing a slight hint of irritation to creep into his voice. Mari, glaring daggers at the phone, would have allowed a lot more than just a hint.
Gonzalo sighed. “We just got a T40 in. T40.1X4A, to be exact.” Though Hero didn’t remember all his diagnosis codes off by heart, he did remember this one. The number of times this one popped up had skyrocketed even in the short time Hero had been working at the hospital. Most people seemed to blame the recession. T40 meant narcotics poisoning: this specific one was heroin poisoning.
“We don’t know anything about him,” Gonzalo continued. “He was found by an off-duty paramedic convulsing in an alley next to a restaurant. By the time he got here, he was in bad shape. Pulmonary asphyxiation, all that. Came very close to dying. Anyway, we were able to resuscitate him. But he won’t speak to us or communicate in any other way. The only time he said anything was in recovery, while he was still half-asleep. He kept calling out names and crying for people. I didn’t think much of it until I heard him say ‘Hero’, then ‘Henry’, then ‘Hero’, over and over again. I remembered you. And he was saying some other name that I thought was ‘Mary’ but wasn’t quite right. I remembered your girlfriend had a name sort of like that. Anyway, just a shot in the dark, but is there anyone you know who might have ended up in a position like this?”
A crushing weight settled over Hero’s body.
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay. Well, if you want to come and see for yourself, I’m in Cleveland. Not sure where you’re based these days. Is that too far?”
Hero rubbed his forehead. “I’ll… ugh, I’ll figure something out. I’ll drive over there tomorrow morning. Should be there by midday.” It was a five hour drive, but… well, Hero couldn’t exactly leave this one alone.
“Thanks, Hero. And, again, I’m sorry to have disturbed you this late. Have a good night.”
“You too, Gonzalo.”
Hero hung up and let out a deep sigh.
“Did something happen?” Mari asked, the concern clear in her voice. Hero, staring at the ceiling, couldn’t see her face. He didn’t want to see her face for what he was about to say, either. This topic was a raw, festering wound even still. But Hero couldn’t just say nothing.
“It’s Sunny,” he said quietly. “He got brought into a hospital in Cleveland for a heroin overdose.”
Silence from the other side of the bed.
“I can’t just leave him there,” Hero reasoned, half justifying it to himself. “He’s… gone to hospital, for Christ’s sake. I can’t just ignore that and wait until one day I get the call that he’s choked to death in some skid row somewhere. This is Sunny we’re talking about. I need to do something.”
“He can’t be here,” Mari said, trying to keep the quavering out of her voice. “I can’t… I can’t do that again. I can’t go through all the lies and the deception and the stress and the broken promises again. I can’t. Especially not now that we have these stupid fucking jobs that take up our entire lives. Sunny can’t stay here. He can’t be here.”
Hero let out a deep breath.
“Hero, look at me.”
Hero turned and saw a face defiant but marred by pain. For a moment, his eyes flicked down to the hand Mari had on his chest – specifically, the ring finger with only a wedding band.
“I won’t bring him here,” he said. “I’ll… find something else. Someone else. But I can’t just leave him where he is. You know that.”
Now it was Mari’s turn to look away, rolling onto her back to face the ceiling. She put an arm over her eyes. “You can’t help him if he doesn’t want to be helped,” she pleaded. “Please don’t let him drag you down with him. It… it can’t happen again. You remember how miserable those years were.”
“Of course I do,” Hero replied. It was hard to forget.
“There’s only so much you can try before you have to give up. But you don’t give up on things, Hero. And especially not people. I’m… scared that he’ll use that.”
“I’m not going to write him off until I see a good reason to,” said Hero. “It’s been four years. I think he deserves another chance.”
Mari didn’t respond to that. Instead, she turned away from him onto her side. Hero pursed his lips and turned off the light. Even now, Sunny found a way to create painful choices.
Hero dreamed of the sunny, leafy park in Faraway, and a young, dark-haired boy sitting with his blond best friend as he explained to him what all the different flowers were.
The next morning, after a lot of agonizing over the right way to go about this, Hero summoned the courage to call in sick. He’d always hated lying, and the rest of the team at the hospital would be working their butts off without him, but he couldn’t see any other way to get the necessary time. Meanwhile, Mari, with the exception of a quip that at least he got to take a day off today, was quiet. They ate breakfast in silence. Sunny loomed over them both. Though, Hero reflected, it was a delusion to think that he would simply vanish from their memories after he vanished from their lives.
“I can drive you to work, if you’d like,” he offered as Mari washed her cereal bowl in the sink.
“Okay,” Mari replied after a moment.
They got ready for the day together: Hero in casual for today, Mari decidedly not. It always broke Hero’s heart a little to see Mari mentally armoring herself up in the mirror every morning like she was going to war. She never used to do that. She also never used to wear makeup. That, too, had only changed once she started working. Even her expression changed when she was going to work, becoming stern and guarded. The one hint of Mari the human in Mari the lawyer was the purple headband which Mari wore everywhere – part of her long pact with Aubrey.
The clacking of Mari’s heels echoed loudly through the garage as they walked to the car. At this time of day, everyone was leaving, so they spent a lot of time inching upwards to street level. The stop-and-start motion only made the quiet inside the car more awkward. But Hero had long ago learned to tell when Mari didn’t feel like speaking, and not to press her when that happened.
The traffic meant that it actually took them longer to get to Mari’s office than it would have taken Mari to walk there, though neither of them mentioned that. “Have a good day,” Hero said, kissing Mari on the cheek.
“You too,” Mari replied, letting out a quiet sigh. “And stay safe, okay? Cleveland is a long drive.”
“I’ll take breaks. And I’ll cook dinner tonight for you as well.”
That did make Mari smile. Home-cooked meals were a rarity for both of them nowadays, which Mari was always bemoaning. She seemed to think of him as some kind of Michelin star winner. “I’ll be looking forward to it,” she said. “Love you.”
“I love you too,” Hero replied. Mari got out of the car and marched off towards the office. Meanwhile, Hero pulled back into the street, getting a few angry honks as he did so, and headed for the interstate.
The drive quickly settled into monotony as the billboards and fields blurred together into a single, dull entity, leaving Hero’s mind with no option but to wander. He remembered himself as a high schooler, still working things out with Mari, hanging out with the group of six. Hero, Mari, Kel, Aubrey, Basil… and Sunny. The first five were all still in contact. Hero was eternally grateful for the friendship of the three younger kids, who had taught him a lot about the world. All three of them were so big now, a long way from the noodly little creatures they’d been when the group first got together.
But reminiscing about the past didn’t only go one way. Hero’s mind went forwards through time, watching those memories go dark and wither at the roots. He remembered Mari’s quiet younger brother, his eyes sparkling with intelligence but never with the confidence to match it.
Sunny’s collapse seemed to come both slowly and at a terrifying pace. Towards the end of his junior year, his grades had started to drop precipitously. He started skipping school, and fought constantly with his parents and with Mari – Kel reported that it was often loud enough to hear from his parents’ house. As his senior year came and went and it became clear that Sunny would be unlikely to graduate, let alone go to college, things started spiralling. Sunny would disappear, sometimes for a day or two at a time, and return at late hours in an incoherent daze. He was always asking to borrow money for something or other, usually from Basil, sometimes from Hero himself. None of it was ever paid back. He became volatile, switching between rage and pitiable pleading whenever he couldn’t get his way. When the younger kids graduated and went off on their various paths – Aubrey joining Hero and Mari in Nearby City, while Kel went off to his first college stint and Basil kept guard in Faraway – Sunny stayed in his house with his parents who, over time, made less and less effort to conceal the contempt they felt for their youngest child.
It was Hero who had found him out – assuming, of course, that you didn’t count Basil. While back in Faraway on break from college, Hero had discovered a syringe, cotton balls, a heavily burned metal spoon and a baggie full of what looked like mud in the bookcase in Sunny and Mari’s room, buried behind ancient books that hadn’t been taken out in years. That had caused another huge blowup, but eventually Sunny admitted it: he’d been using heroin, frequently.
Then, once Sunny started telling people he was going to rehab, with the promise that this time, this time, he’d stick with it, the despair began to set in. None of the rehab stories turned out to be true: no facility in a fifty mile radius had ever heard of Sunny. Things started randomly going missing: Hero’s parents lost an antique family heirloom, while Sunny and Mari’s parents found that their jewellery drawer was getting awfully light. Sunny swore up and down that it wasn’t him – in fact, he’d get furious at anyone who asked him about it. Whatever trust Hero had in that denial evaporated as soon as Kel caught him climbing out the back window of his parents’ house at three in the morning with a bunch more expensive items in his pockets. All the while, he kept sitting on Basil for money, the last of his friends who was willing to extend him his generosity. Again, there was no explanation for where that money went, nor was it ever paid back.
Though it felt bad from Hero’s end, he was lucky enough not to be in Faraway at the time, being at college with Mari in Nearby City. Even then, at one point Mari’s hair started falling out from the stress. The effects rippled outwards to everyone. Basil had started having recurring panic attacks, which at the time seemed unrelated, though their true significance would be revealed later. Kel – trusting, happy-go-lucky Kel – had morphed into something with a harder edge. It was hard to tell on the surface, since he kept up the same facade he always had, but Hero could tell clear as day that his brother had changed. Aubrey had been more resilient, perhaps unsurprisingly: after all, this wasn’t her first rodeo with addiction.
Nobody knew quite what to do with Sunny. Nobody knew how to help him. Sunny himself spurned all efforts to keep him in check, unrepentant to the last. Where that fury came from, Hero could only speculate, but it consumed him. Even as his body paled and thinned, the rage remained. And so time stumbled forward.
And then…
Hero’s breaths came quickly, and the road ahead of him blurred. Before things could get any worse, he pulled over to the side of the interstate and laid his forehead on the steering wheel. This memory was the most painful of his life.
It was the morning that he and Mari were to be married, with the ceremony in the Faraway church. Everything was going okay until Mari called him with a little issue: she couldn’t find her engagement ring, a beautiful diamond-encrusted thing that Hero had spent a lot of money on and that Mari cherished dearly.
Where could it have gone? They deluded themselves into wondering if it had fallen on the floor somewhere. They even called over Kel, Aubrey and Basil to help search. But all of them knew the truth from the beginning. They knew what had happened to it, though even at that point they were reluctant to assume that of their former friend. It was only when Sunny stumbled into the house fifteen minutes before they had to leave, barely conscious and his rented suit spattered with mud, that the truth they all knew was confirmed.
That day, Mari reflected all the rage her brother had thrown at her over the years back onto him a hundredfold. It had taken Hero and Kel’s combined strength to keep her from attacking her brother as he lay insensate on the living room couch. She screamed and ranted and raved at him, a bubbling tar pit of hatred, and he heard none of it. After that, his dad drove him to the next town over, dumped him there, and left. He did not return.
Few people in happy marriages could say that their wedding day was the worst day of their lives. It was not a pleasant club to be in. They had to interrupt the ceremony several times for Mari to retreat to the priest’s rooms to scream-cry, with Hero and Aubrey there to comfort her. The reception wrapped up early.
When it became clear that Sunny wasn’t going to come back of his own accord, the group then faced the dilemma of what to do about it. Kel was, by that point, done with his former friend. Mari lurched between weeping for the brother she’d lost and spitting venom about the man he’d become. Basil was a mental wreck as well. So it was left to the odd pairing of Hero and Aubrey, assisted by a supporting cast of Aubrey’s friends from her delinquent phase in high school she referred to as the Hooligans, to scour nearby towns looking for him. But Hero would be lying if he said his heart was in it. He had no shortage of anger to direct at Sunny either. And so, a couple of days into the search, with no trace of Sunny, Hero and Aubrey had a conversation beneath a telephone pole that would seal his fate.
“Angel says he found nothing in Riverside,” Aubrey said, leaning against her motorcycle. “Nobody in a decent distance from here has seen him. He’s gone somewhere far away.”
“I don’t think he wants to be found,” Hero said wearily.
“Do you want us to keep looking?”
Hero was silent for a while before responding. “Do you want to keep looking for him?”
Aubrey folded her arms. “Are we giving up on him?”
“That’s not… I’m not trying to…”
“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t. I just want to hear you say it yourself.”
Hero gave her a pained look.
“I’m serious.”
Hero sighed. “Yes. I think so. I don’t think there’s any more we can do.”
Hero let out a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to ground himself by listening to the cars passing him on the interstate. A few teardrops stained his pants. After a few moments to breathe, he continued driving. He turned on the radio to avoid having being forced back into the depths of his own mind, though it wasn’t like the mindless pop tunes helped very much with that.
Cleveland wasn’t quite as depressing as its reputation suggested, in Hero’s opinion. Maybe that was just because it was a nice day today. There were billboards everywhere with the face of some basketball player Hero vaguely recognized. Kel would know him. The hospital itself was very flashy. It looked expensive. Given Sunny’s situation, Hero suspected he’d end up paying for the stay. It was lucky, then, that money wasn’t much of a concern for him.
Gonzalo came down to meet him in the lobby himself. He looked just as exhausted as Hero. Hero smiled. “Busy morning?”
Gonzalo sighed. “Damn right. I was in at five this morning and somehow the place was still bustling. People need to pick more considerate times to hurt themselves.”
“My wife would agree with you,” said Hero. “Anyway, how’s he doing?”
“The poisoning symptoms are now gone. He ate a little bit for breakfast. But he still won’t talk to anyone. He just lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. Normally we wouldn’t keep someone like this under observation for more than an hour or two after revitalization, even with how close he came to dying, but I managed to convince the powers that be to keep him here for you. Still, he’ll probably be discharged as soon as you’re done talking to him. I’ve also told the nurses you’re coming, so hopefully they’ll leave you alone while you say whatever you need to say. Uh… just for safety’s sake, he wasn’t judged enough of a risk to be restrained, but if at any point you feel like you’re in danger…”
“I know,” said Hero with a tired smile. “Done this song and dance a few times on your end.”
They got in an elevator – this one, unlike the ones in both Hero’s apartment and hospital, did not grumble and jerk as they moved.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Gonzalo said quietly. “We’re seeing so many like him these days. Seems like the whole country is hooked on some opiate or another. And when we get the stuff tested, it’s… well, it’d be easier to list what isn’t in it.”
“Did he have any on him?” Hero asked.
“No, but we picked up the paraphernalia he was using, and there were traces on there. We didn’t send it in for testing or anything, but it looked like nasty stuff.”
The lift opened and the two strode down another long, brightly-lit white hallway. There were doctors and nurses everywhere, travelling between one room and the next. The hallway opened out into a reception area where there were a lot of very worried-looking people sitting and waiting. Hero always felt sorry for them. They could get angry and volatile when there was no information available, but the enormous stress they were under made it hard to blame them for it. Then again, all the nurses at work said he was insanely thick-skinned, so maybe that was the minority view.
Gonzalo led him down another identical hallway and stopped outside a nondescript room. “He’s in here,” he said. “Take a look through the window and check that this is who you’re thinking of.”
Hero peered inside, but as soon as he caught sight of the figure laying in the bed, his head jerked away of its own accord. “It’s him,” he said.
“Okay. Just one more thing before I go. Since you seem to know this guy, could you just tell me his name and age for our records?”
“Sunny Suzuki,” Hero replied. “Sunny like the weather. Suzuki like the vehicle brand. Uh, and he’d be… twenty three years old now.” How time flew.
“Thanks,” said Gonzalo. “I’ll leave you to it, then. And I’m sorry about this.”
“Better here than dead on the sidewalk.”
“Well, you’re right about that, I guess.”
And then Gonzalo was gone, and Hero had no further excuse to delay. He opened the door.
The hospital room was laid out in a very similar way to the ones at St Catherine’s. There were a couple of small windows on the back wall, high enough off the ground to be unreachable. The bed itself was reasonably plush by hospital standards, though those things were never comfortable.
The person in the bed was another matter. Sunny’s hair was long and shaggy, and it looked like he’d grown a wispy little mustache - not intentionally, if Hero had to guess - but the face underneath all that hair was unmistakable. His clothes were filthy and torn, and his skin was pale enough to pass for Basil or Aubrey. And he was thin: desperately, desperately thin. Even from where Hero was standing, the lines of Sunny’s cheekbones and jaw were clearly visible.
Hero paused for a moment and took a deep breath before walking over to sit in the lone chair next to Sunny’s bed. Sunny’s eyes didn’t move from the ceiling. The only sign of life was the slow rise and fall of his chest.
“Sunny?” Hero said gently.
That shocked Sunny out of his stupor. He jerked in place and his head whipped to face Hero, his jaw falling open. His eyes were bruised and bloodshot.
“How are you feeling?” asked Hero.
Tears sprang to Sunny’s eyes, and he turned away. Hero waited.
“Why… why am I still here?” Sunny asked in a rasping voice. “I… I told them… I have…” One arm slowly reached over to the other and pulled up his sleeve. On the underside of his wrist was some kind of small tattoo. It didn’t look professionally done. Had he done it himself? Hero squinted at it and frowned, trying to figure out what it was.
“DNR,” said Sunny, a little impatiently.
“Sunny… I can’t read that. The paramedics probably couldn’t either. And… that’s not something to take lightly. We have to abide by that request if your heart stops.”
“That’s… the point,” said Sunny. “Why won’t they just let me die?”
Hero chewed his lip and gazed at the floor.
“Sorry.”
“No, Sunny, I… it’s just… I’m not sure what to do. I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought.”
“Next time I’ll stop being such a fucking coward,” said Sunny. “I’ll just find a cliff or a roof or something. Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”
Hero’s head whipped up. “Sunny, no! None of us… nobody wants that! Please don’t.”
“Not much else I can do anyway,” Sunny muttered. “There’s nothing left for me. I’m dead already.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re alive, and while you’re alive there’s always hope for things to change.”
Sunny’s face twisted into a mockery of a smile. “Mari used to say stuff like that. Don’t think she would anymore.”
Hero dodged the barb. “Sunny, I’m not going to leave you here to die. That’s just not going to happen.”
“You can’t stop me,” said Sunny. “I’ll be out of this hospital and then I’ll disappear. I don’t have a house or anything. You’ll never find me. Or my body.”
“I’ll be back,” Hero promised, “and I’ll have found a place for you. You’re right that Mari won’t let us take you in ourselves. It wouldn’t be a good idea anyway because we’re gone most of the time. But I will find something. I promise you.”
Despite Sunny’s best efforts, tears appeared in his eyes again. “More people to disappoint, huh? Lie to? Thought you’d had enough of that.”
“I believe that your fate isn’t decided,” said Hero. “I believe that things can change. Yes, it’ll be hard. But I believe in you. Because, even after everything, you’re still my friend. I know you. I know you can get better.”
Sunny covered his eyes with one arm, eerily reminiscent of his sister. “I’ll fuck it up,” he said. “I always do. All I do is disappoint people.”
“Sunny, if you really do believe that in the bottom of your heart, then there’s not much I or anyone else can do about it. But I’m willing to bet that there’s a part of you that believes in something better.” Where was all of this coming from? Hero sure hadn’t prepared any of it beforehand. Did he even believe this himself? The Hero of a few years ago sure wouldn’t have.
Rolling over onto his side to face away from Hero, Sunny let out a sob. Hero wiped his own eye with a thumb. “Where will you go after you get discharged?” he asked.
“I’m u-usually… on Euclid, around where it h-hits Superior. Near the library.”
“Okay,” said Hero. He wished he’d thought to bring a pen and paper. “Euclid and Superior. If… when I can figure something out, it might be a couple of days before I can come back. Are you… going to be okay until then?”
Sunny didn’t say anything, but Hero thought he saw him nod slightly. With a sigh, Hero stood up and put a hand on Sunny’s shoulder. Sunny tensed up but didn’t shrug him off. “I know it’s been a long time,” said Hero, “but… it’s not over. This isn’t how things have to end for you. I really hope that one day we’ll all be able to have a picnic together, just like old times. All six of us.”
The man curled up below him said nothing. This conversation was clearly over. Hero left the room and took a deep breath of the sterile hospital air. This was the smell of his life now. Anywhere he went, it followed him.
As he made his way back to his car, he began to think. Realistically speaking, Hero’s optimistic promise to ‘find something’ boiled down to one person – though it was two people, really, since both roommates would need to be consulted on this. Nobody else Hero knew would have both the will and the ability to take Sunny in and look out for him. It felt cruel to toss something like this at them with no notice, particularly given what had happened to put them where they were, but Hero genuinely didn’t know how long he had before Sunny succeeded in killing himself. He would be making a lot of apologies on this phone call, that was for sure.
Hero pinched the bridge of his nose and dialled a number.