𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭, charlie conway

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 | a season in hell

     "AND THIS IS WHAT we call life! — If damnation truly is eternal! Isn't the man who tries to mutilate himself damned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It's the fault of the catechism. I'm a slave to my baptism."

Charlie struggles to get a grip on things as he works on his summer reading assignment, a really long poem titled A Season In Hell, written by Arthur Rimbaud. The book was old, which meant he was struggling to understand it, but every once in a while, a passage like that of the one above would stick out to him. As of now, the life he leads seems to lack meaning; breathing seeming to be a personal punishment. He agreed with the words "I think I am in hell, therefore I am." That's what you get for reading at four in the morning.

Charlie had intended to propose to Crystal last week, waking bright and early to go and tell her before his hockey practice. Frankly, he wasn't sure he would attend practice at all, knowing that if Crystal wanted him to stay he didn't have the heart to leave her. Strangely enough, even though this whole thing wasn't going to be entirely honest, he was excited to pretend. He needed the relief that she knew he loved her when he wasn't there.

It was a sunny day, bound to be beautiful, but all color was soaked out of Crystal's room by the time Charlie arrived. No one was in there but Chris, sitting on the unmade hospital bed with his head down. She must have been around somewhere, maybe getting an x-ray or using the bathroom.

"She's not here, Charlie." Chris manages to speak — he hasn't in hours. "She's not here."
"...Then where is she?" He asks, not understanding.
Chris looks up, "She's not here."
"You aren't-"
"She went in her sleep."

Chris had gotten Crystal to bed early, having taken the job of holding her from Charlie upon his departure. She was breathing then. But by the morning, he woke up to her cold in his arms. He didn't even have to question it; he knew she had died, and had been dead for several hours. Chris just set her down at his side and went for a nurse.

Before they took her away, the nurses and doctors had figured out enough to present a cause of death — one of the tumors on her brain had continued to grow, creating too much pressure on her skull and in turn, keeping her nervous system from sending the messages she needed to live. She had simply stopped breathing because the piece of her brain that was supposed to tell her body what to do was preoccupied with immense pain. Knowing why it happened didn't make it any easier to fathom. Chris had called his mother and told her the news, saying to tell Carrie and to not bother coming to see her now because he knew she would really lose her mind. He wanted to be alone anyway. What he hadn't factored in was that both Charlie and Casey were planning to come, because he had no idea.

Casey arrives at the moment Charlie realizes it all, having stayed behind to park the car. She only has to see Chris for a moment to know the horrible truth.

"Where's your mother?" She asks.
"She's not here, I told her not to come be here."
Casey runs out of the room, Charlie still processing. His legs seem to give out and he takes a seat in a nearby chair. He brings his hands to his face, and from there he doesn't remember much of the rest of the day, just that at some point he left and found his way back home, and that sometime that evening he spent an hour or two throwing up, seated on his bathroom floor.

Of the last week, he remembers very little as well. He had only left the house once, to help Chris make funeral arrangements, as Donna just couldn't do it. Casey ended up going with them, knowing that someone so young shouldn't have to be figuring this out for themselves. She regretted running to aid Donna first rather than her son, but the last thing she needed was Carrie and Chris losing their mother too.

It was four in the morning on the day of the funeral, he hadn't slept in days, and he was doing summer reading because that was the only thing he could think of to distract himself from the suit hanging on the back of his door in this dark morning. Yet the only thing on his mind was the fact that Crystal would understand this book better and faster than he ever could. That, and the fact that he was probably going to lose his captainship, if not his entire place on his hockey team. He wasn't even mad about it, because he had no desire to play anymore. Charlie saw no point in most things anymore.