Just One Call

He never could sleep at night. Plagued by incessant thoughts, as if his brain went into overdrive the moment he laid his head on his pillow. He took to wandering the narrow lanes of Cambridge, until he found himself sitting on the steps of a small church, cigarette in one hand, orange pill bottle in the other. The bottle rattled as he played with it, trying to count how many pills were still inside, and then wondering how many he’d have to take to fall asleep. And that led to how many he’d have to take to sleep for good. The idea was curious, sticky. The idea started to grow on him. No having to answer questions about why he had such dark rings under his eyes, or what reason he had for being depressed or anxious. He had a good life. Not luxurious by any means, but good. And he could live with good. Or at least, he should be able to live with good.

But now he was questioning whether good was good enough. And not for the first time, either.

He thought, for a brief moment, about calling someone. He wasn’t sure who. No one would be awake at this hour, and he didn’t feel like waking them up to talk about this. He’d wait to talk to them, as he always did. But waiting turned to even more indecision, which turned into an outright refusal to broach the topic with anyone.

He was tired. Always tired. The kind of exhaustion that was more than lack of sleep, but invaded right down into the muscle fibers, the marrow of his bones, and dragged him down, like wading through a pit of molasses. Every morning was a struggle to roll out of bed, to even get in the shower, to put on deodorant or brush his teeth. Stepping outside was the equivalent of pushing through a steel door. And once there, he moved by sheer muscle memory and desire to maintain his façade.

Yes, a façade. A mask. He didn’t need to let everyone in on his business. Discussing emotions was awkward. So far, the façade was enough to motivate him to keep moving. To keep pretending to be something he wasn’t: happy. Avoiding the inevitable inquiries that would follow the discovery of his depression meant concealing his feelings behind a sheen of contentment.

The pills rattled.

Twelve, he guessed. At least twelve more pills in the bottle. He’d probably need all twelve to be effective. He looked at the label. Klonopin. A sleep aid. Well, for most people. He hadn’t taken a drag of the cigarette in several minutes, and it hung between his two fingers limply, dripping ash onto the church steps. The church had a small garden, with a few headstones at least two hundred years old, the names of the dead so worn out no one could tell what they said anymore. The whole church was ringed by a small iron fence. And, to his surprise, there was a girl standing at the little gate, peering at him.

It was two in the morning. The girl’s face was shadowed because of the street light hanging over her. He looked back at her. Though he couldn’t see her eyes, he knew she was locked onto him. She lifted the latch of the gate and stepped through, following the stone path to the steps. She was wearing a slim dress, coming to her mid-thigh, and her heels she held in her hand. Her hair fell down her back, but it was messy despite the amount of hairspray he could smell coming from her. For a moment, she stood over him, studying him closely.

“Can I help you?” He asked.

She shrugged. “You just looked like you could use some company.”

“Nope. Not really.”

She ignored him and sat down on the steps. “Can I have a bit?” She asked, nodded towards the cigarette.

Surprised, he handed her the cigarette he’d practically forgotten he had. She took a long drag and blew the smoke out slowly, the tension easing throughout her body, as if the smoke carried with it all of her stress. She went to hand it back to him, but he declined, and she put it back to her lips.

“I’m Del, by the way.”

“Del?”

“Short for Delilah. What’s your name?”

“Merrick.”

“Really? I like it.”

Silence. That awkward chasm between what was said and what else to say to a stranger. Merrick hated that void. He always tried to say something just to keep the awkwardness from widening the chasm. But inevitably, whatever he said made it worse, even more awkward. He decided to keep quiet. Let the strange girl do the talking. She was the one, after all, who decided to join him on the steps of the church. It was on her to keep whatever conversation going if she wanted.

“Why are you out here?” Del asked.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Isn’t that what those are for?” She nodded at the pill bottle.

Merrick realized he’d still been playing with it and stuffed it into his pocket. “Yeah, supposedly.”

“They don’t work?”

“Not for me.”

“That’s too bad. Why can’t you sleep?”

Merrick sighed. He didn’t want to have this conversation with a complete stranger. He kept quiet, but he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands now that Del had the cigarette and he had put the bottle in his pocket. His fingers wanted to be doing something. He looked around and plucked a flower from the soil. His fingers tore one of the leaves from the stem and he began to tear it along the thicker veins until nothing remained of it.

“I was out clubbing with some friends,” Del said after a minute of silence. “Celebrating my entrance to university up north.”

“Good for you,” Merrick replied, a little more venomously than he’d meant. But Del didn’t seem to notice or just didn’t care.

“Only, I’m not really going to university.”

“Yeah? Then why lie to your friends?”

Del shrugged then took another drag from the cigarette. “I wanted a proper send off. Ya know? I wanted one more night to pretend like I actually have a future, as if I was stepping into the next grand adventure of my life, instead of towards the final chapter.”

Merrick stared at her in surprise, unsure how to respond. That was a lot more information and a much deeper topic than he’d expected to be talking about with someone he’d just met.

She smiled back at him. “I’ve got stage four stomach cancer. Doctor gave me twelve months to live. I’m heading to a hospital for an aggressive course of chemotherapy to see if I can extend my life by another few months at least.” Despite the glum prognosis, Del still smiled.

“Why wouldn’t you tell your friends about that? They would want to know.”

“Meh, they’ll find out soon enough. I guess I didn’t want to bother them with this. I don’t need the pestering, the fawning, the guilt of knowing they’re spending their own free time worrying about me. None of it would help.”

Merrick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Yeah, but what about how they’ll feel when they discover you lied to them. They’ll feel hurt. Guilty. Ashamed you felt you couldn’t trust them with this. It’ll wreck them. You should go back and tell them. Or at least tell someone.”

Del flicked the cigarette to the ground and stamped out the last remaining ember. She remained sitting for a moment before getting to her feet. “Yeah, sounds like good advice. For both of us.” She winked and then walked away, her bare feet slapping against the flagstones.

Merrick was too stunned to say anything back. The girl disappeared just as quickly as she’d appeared, and now he was left alone, once more on the steps of the church. The girl knew nothing about him. Yet, she’d seen right through him. His carefully constructed mask had been stripped away by a stranger. He began to wonder if anyone else had seen through it. How much did his friends or family know? If they did, why didn’t they ask him about it? No, they couldn’t know. They shouldn’t know. The girl knew. One glance at him, and she had seen what was going on in his head.

Talking to someone was the last thing he wanted to do. It was different for Del. She had cancer. That was something outside of her control. Something understood by society. Talking about it with others wasn’t awkward. Not like delving into emotions. Especially feelings that didn’t make sense. Feelings that juxtaposed the rest of his life. People couldn’t ever understand how depression didn’t care about how good your life was. It didn’t care that you had nothing to be depressed about. Instead, it twisted everything. An innocent comment was transmogrified into something more sinister. The slightest wrong was blown out of proportion. They didn’t know that it wasn’t his fault he was depressed, the same way Del couldn’t be blamed for getting stomach cancer.

But maybe they would know it if he just spoke with them. Told them what it was like. He didn’t need to tell everyone. He could start with just one person. That was it. Just one person. Maybe that would be enough.

He reached into his pocket. But this time, he didn’t pull out the orange pill bottle. Instead, he grabbed his cell phone and flipped through the contact list. There was one name he found and dialed the number. He waited for an answer. A few rings. And then, “Hello?” The voice was groggy on the other end.

“Hey, it’s Merrick. Wondering if we could talk.”