The Rainbow (Frerard) [underwater_sky]

September - Last Words (Part Five)

            At work, the day crunched on. I wanted to be home. Suddenly it was torture to be here, and I felt as if I was having a panic attack anytime I looked at the clock and I would realize I still had an endless amount of hours in this limbo-like panic. I called Hunter, and asked if everything was okay at lunch. He told me that everything was fine, that I was overreacting. "I'm sorry, I mean, I just have a bad feeling, and I know that's nothing, really, but can you check on him?" I was asking, and I knew it was foolish. But there was that pain, in the center of my chest, which would not relent. I had not been sleeping well and my anxiety seemed to be doubling because of it, and due to the realization at four in the morning, I felt exhausted and wretched. Hunter humored me, though there was a thin distance in his voice. I thought he was mad at me, but it took me until after I hung up to realize that he was afraid too.

            When I got home that night, I went up to check on him. And everything was actually okay. He was in his room, reading again, but apparently he had been painting earlier in the day. Hunter had eaten most of his meals with him, and spent most of the afternoon together with Paloma.

            "He was thrilled," Hunter insisted. He shifted in his seat at the kitchen table, and then, after a while, explained that he had noticed the sadness, too. We talked about it for some tense minutes, gripping hands over the table. We tried to drink tea to calm down, but it seemed to do nothing. I checked on Gerard one final time. He was heading into bed now and I stepped in the room to help him with that.

            "How are you doing?" I asked him.

            "Fine," he said, and he seemed to mean it. I felt like I had at the beginning of the diagnosis, that I was reading into small signs and symbols as if they were manifestations of something more. I needed to stop, and just believe him. Just trust him. I undressed him, and got into the bed with him. Madness still stared back out at me from his whiteboard, and though it sent chills down my back, I did not touch it. Gerard fell asleep quickly, but not before I kissed his forehead and told him I loved him, to hear him say it back. I whispered into his ear as he slept and I got up from the bed, and then went down into my room.

            I saw the camera on my desk, and I knew that there was one thing I still had to do. I got to work on the photos from the morning, knowing that it would help keep me grounded. Inside the dark room, the past few days came back to me in a flurry. I thought of work, of my interview, and of the response that I had gotten from it today. There would be another round of interviews for me, this time with the higher up execs to make sure I was "company material" or something like that. I had gotten the news today, but it hadn't even registered with all the tension I had felt. I nodded blankly, and took the info down on my pink memo pad. It was written on my forearm, and stared up at me as I placed the photos in solution. I had gotten more emails from my parents and Scott, but not bothered to reply to them yet. They sat in my email inbox, taking up no space in reality, but their words came across my mind here and there. I tried to keep my attention on the photos, but even when I began to develop them and their images became clear, when I got to the one with Gerard and Paloma, poetry began to enter my mind. In the room, he comes and goes, talking of Picasso. I breathed in and out a heavy sigh, and I thought about what I had told him. I thought about how much I loved him, and how all of this love seemed to be contained within this small darkroom closet as it came out of the photos. It was as if this was the right light washing over me, hypnotising me, and making me drift off to the smell of chemicals.  When I finished my task, I stayed in the darkroom awhile. I was sleep deprived; I felt it all over me. I was about to come out, when I heard a small knock at the door. Hunter was on the other side.

            "I know you're busy, but when you're done, can you see me?"

            "Yeah, sure," I said, taken aback. I wasn't expecting him to come and get me, and as soon as I answered him, he scurried away and back into his room.