I Fell in Love with Hope(14)

It’s difficult to ignore what you love, even when its existence is as conditional as what you hate.

Neo brushes the edge cautiously, like a palpable heat rises from within. The blank pages daunt him. It’d been a while. Once he lets the pen’s weight settle in his palm and summons the courage to lay it on paper, Neo, drop by drop, recreates his ocean.

He writes every day now, at random times, on random surfaces. He and I watch movies on Eric’s tablet at night and read during the day. He takes notes in the margins of the books and pauses the movie to grab a page when an idea strikes.

We take walks when Neo has the strength. We lay in the gardens for air when it’s cool. He writes on my shirt sleeve on a particularly sore morning, on his pant leg too. We hide his stories together. I bring him food, and when his parents arrive, he hands me the box. I swear, at times when I return with it, that he breaks a smile.

—

Tonight, something changes.

Tonight, Neo and I’s routine breaks. Tonight, dinner tray in hand, I slip an apple from the basket in the cafeteria on the way to his room. But alas, when I open the door, Neo isn’t alone.

“You get results like this again, we’re taking you home. I don’t care if I have to force it down your throat–”

Neo’s father stops talking the moment I walk in. He stands over his son’s bed, papers clutched in his fist, this time in the shape of blood work. It looms over Neo, although he doesn’t flinch. He lets his head hang like whatever comes his way will come, and that is that.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve knocked,” I mumble, tucking my chin to my chest. Neo sits, the lower half of his body under the covers, his face downcast same as mine. Hair covers his eyes, his thumb and forefinger shaking around his wrist.

“It’s fine,” his father says. Politely so. He ushers me forward with a wave. “Bring it in.”

That man doesn’t frighten me, but one of my rules is never to interfere. I can’t break it. There are many moments I wish I could’ve, but this moment may be the greatest of them.

Neo’s father either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the pain whimpering through Neo’s lips when I lay that tray down. He stares at him, not with hate or anything so grotesque. He looks at Neo with expectation, a nod of encouragement his final say.

He’s going to watch Neo eat. Because eating disorders aren’t about vanity. They’re about control. And he wants to take whatever his son has left of it.

—

When the door shuts behind me, I can’t bear to leave. I barnacle myself to the nurse’s station and wait. I wait for over an hour. I wait and wait, the clocks mocking me, slowing in time’s favor. I wait till Neo’s father finally leaves. I wait till he slips his coat on, disappears down the hall, and into the elevator.

Then, I sprint.

I slam the door open. Neo isn’t in his bed. The room is bare in darkness, sheets undone, cast aside. There are no torn books or pages. Only the tray I’ve come to memorize the weight of sits upside down on the tiles, discarded, like the day Neo flipped it over in his anger. Only now, it’s empty.

Retching breaths and light peek under the bathroom door. I go to it, dread in my throat. On the other side, a boy sits, a fraction of himself.

Neo’s back slams against the wall, vomit staining the edge of his mouth. Tears fall from bloodshot eyes, the realization dropping in his chest, sending spasms through his chest.

It was never supposed to go this far.

He pulls at his hair. The heels of his palms cover his eyes. He bangs his head and pushes himself into the wall like he wants to become a part of it. Like he wants to disappear.

Vulnerability craves isolation. Desperation weeps in it.

He fights at first. When I kneel to his level, he pushes me away with clenched fists, whining. I don’t say anything. I give him my arms and my quiet and hope that’s enough to coax his fear away. I hope it’s enough as he collapses and cries into my shoulder.

“I hate him. I hate him so much,” he says, heaving for air. My palm drags over his spine, drawing slow rhythms to guide his breaths.

“He loves me because he has to,” Neo cries. “That’s worse than hating someone. He knows I’ll never be who he wants me to be. He knows I’d rather die here than be who he wants me to be. I’m no one in that house. I have nothing there!”

His voice is a chorus of rough notes, his anger cracking. Even before he was sick, Neo’s life wasn’t his. It was never his. Wet sobs unravel a hurt beneath the surface as he comes to terms with the fact that it may never be.

“I am nothing,” he says, without air, like a ghost. Like it’s true.

“You’re not nothing.”

“I’d rather be nothing than hate myself.”

Neo’s shredded poems and pages ache like phantom limbs. He bites his lip to hold in a whimper, a grieving cry for them. He cries for them and the boy his father will never let him be.

“You know, I used to believe in God,” he says. “He makes me hate God.”

Love and hate aren’t interchangeable. They don’t mean the same thing, but they are not opposites. If it were a doctor or a nurse forcing this pain onto Neo, this humiliation, he wouldn’t care. He doesn’t. They have no constitution in his life past fleeting moments. His father is a powerful animal in that regard. He loves Neo and Neo loves him too. Even if it’s because they must. Love gives people the power to be treacherous. Being hurt by someone you share such a thing with is draining—a needle under the skin or a knife in the rib.