Oh, you learn about it
Oh, you harvest

Until you can make no more
All that’s eating inside
All that’s eating inside
Can’t take no more…

- The Gathering, “You Learn About It”

Waste

Afterwards, it all seemed like a blurry dream. He could remember so vividly telling his friends saucily as he left the Lounge: “All of you, go think hard of what your priorities are. I’m gonna go get drunk.” He could remember them coming with him and laughing about how that final exam could go screw itself, and that there were always second chances and redo’s.

It was the end of the school year, spring was making way for summer, the girls were pretty and dammit, they had deserved it! This last exam would be a breeze and it was at Monday anyway… they might be able to study at Sunday as well. Tonight was Saturday and tonight getting drunk was their priority.

And so they’d done. He couldn’t remember how much he’d drank, in hindsight. There had been a cute girl involved, and at some point she had left while he had never learnt her name, and then the three of them had been debating world politics and there’d been more booze and he’d drank deeply. There’d been vodka. He could remember that. He could also remember the bartending asking him whether it would be wise to drink more, and he’d just laughed and waved that away.

Then there had been the bathroom and someone pounding on the door and shouting that the pub was closing and that he’d better get the fuck out of there before he’d be locked in all night. He had hugged the toilet pot and had been unable to keep his eyes open. The stench of vomit was sharp in his nose and the taste of it was even worse, in the back of his throat. He had never responded, until someone had cried out, worriedly – and Kevin had been there with him for a while… through the bleary haze and the incredible nausea and sleepiness there’d been voices, and movement.

“Crazy kids these days,” someone had said and Ethan had thought /yup, that’s me, crazy as a loon,/ before unconsciousness had claimed him again. Someone had been prodding him once in a while. “Are you awake? Stay awake. Come on, wake up.”

Ethan had wanted to tell him that he wanted to sleep because he didn’t feel too good, but all he could do was vomit. And sleep some more, only to be roughly awakened again at what seemed like every five minutes. He had cried, too. He couldn’t remember why, but he had cried pitifully and no one had known he was crying, because the only person he was hugging was the toilet pot. He’d been a crying miserable heap of pain and desperation and he’d felt so sick, so sad, so utterly fed-up with it all. It had felt like some wall that he had built within himself had cracked and was crumbling, and there was a tidal wave of emotions behind it. He’d never even known. And he’d been so sick – confronted with the sickness and the emotions, he’d opted for the easy way out: unconsciousness.

So he’d fainted, but people had kept awakening him so often that he did not know anymore what was dream, reality or darkness anymore.

Until he truly awakened in a room that was filled with too-bright sunlight. He felt as if he’d been grinded through a meat-mincer: bruised over his whole body and sore everywhere. He squinted against the sunlight and found that even his eyeballs felt bruised. His hand went to his face to shield his eyes, and he found that there was something attached to his hand that throbbed dully; an IV drip. And that was when it all snapped into focus.

The terrible headache, the white room, the IV drip. He was in a hospital.

/Damn/.

He had not been in a hospital since… ever since… not since…

His hands trembled and suddenly he was crying again. His wall had cracked last night and he couldn’t stop the tears anymore. Tears that had been ignored and pushed under the surface for half a year were now demanding to be released – tears that should have been shed half a year ago. They were way overdue.

Half a year ago his mother had died of lung cancer.

He had looked up the statistics and told himself that he shouldn’t be exceedingly bothered by the sickness on itself: it was a very common disease and around the world, every 30 seconds someone died from it. His mother was just one person in those 30 seconds. There were better ways to die, he thought, but it was an illness much like any other. His mother even got the most typical and usual one of them: it occurred in 75 of all lung cancer cases and his mother had gotten the one that was more typical to happen to women. It had been called Adenocarcinoma, a name that had somehow stuck to his mind like a bad taste you can’t get rid of.

During their vacation on the beach, his mother’s cough had gotten worse. He had told her to quit the cigarettes, and that he would quit with her, if he did. He could remember that night so well; sitting on a terrace that looked out over the sea where the sun was setting. She was drinking iced tea and he was having a beer, and they’d been smoking their cigarettes. The smoldering tips of their cigarettes were the exact same hue as the setting sun. His mother; looking healthy, tanned, and rather happy, had coughed and it sounded as if the cough was deeper, as if it almost hurt.

“Maybe I should see a doctor about this,” she had said, killing her cigarette in the ashtray.

Ethan had looked at his own cigarette and had nodded. “You should,” he’d agreed, wondering what his father and sister would say about mom finally going to the doctor. His sister Leona (and even his half-brother Nate, over the phone from Australia where he lived these days) had been arguing about it for ages; idealistic hippie as she was, she continually stressed that smoking was bad and that they should quit. She’d be happy if mom got herself checked out, definitely. And dad, too. He’d quit the cigarettes years ago because his doctor had warned him about his health and told him to start exercising. Actively exercising meant that he got short of breath fairly often, so he’d quit the cigarettes as part of getting into shape. Ethan remembered his extended comments about how his sense of smell had improved so much, and how he could now run for miles without getting out of breath. That was exactly what he was doing now, by the way; he was taking Leona for a jog over the beach. Ethan and his mother had watched them go and waved at them from the terrace. They’d been gone for over an hour at that point.

“I’m sure it’s nothing bad, though,” Ethan had added. “But if he wants you to quit, I’ll quit with you.” He’d wondered how well he could keep that promise once he got back to Uni again, but anything to encourage his mom in the quitting process.

After the vacation, she’d indeed gone to see the doctor. And indeed, he /had/ told her to quit, but he’d also sent her to the hospital. Within a week, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Within a month, she had been undergoing surgery to try and cut away the tumor, but alas, that had been only a temporary reprieve.

On the 19th of January, Ethan had listened as that horrible rasping breath of hers ceased forever.

He’d quit his cigarettes immediately afterwards. It had been easier than he thought; all he had to think of was his mother’s labored breathing in those last days before she died.

His brother, sister and father were heartbroken, but Ethan kept himself strong. He’d cried a little during the funeral, but once he got back to University he’d tried to distract himself from it as much as possible. His friends were great; they did everything to cheer him up (most of it came down to booze and girls, though) and took him out as often as he wanted to, so he did not have the time to sit in his dormroom to mope. Everyone was so great to him, and partying seemed like the ultimate fuckyou to the death that had claimed his mother.

He told himself that she’d want him to party and live and prosper.

He told himself that he was getting over it, because he was smiling again.

He told himself that lung cancer was a common disease and that death was a part of life, and that his mother would be waiting for him at the other side of the border and that they could pick up exactly where they’d left off.

His father, however, took a major blow from his wife’s death. He called Ethan often and spoke tearfully about his wife, until the point where Ethan just did not want to pick up the phone anymore. Ethan avoided his family and dreaded going home for summer holiday. His father had arranged another beach vacation for the three of them in July, and he had not been looking forward to that. An argument with Leona had learnt him that he’d better come along, though, because he’d been neglecting them and he was hurting his father big-time with his aloofness. Nate wasn’t much use to his father since he’d never gotten along with his stepmother (never mind the fact that he lived on the other side of the world now and long-distance calls were very expensive), and his father needed to vent somewhere. He needed to lean upon someone else besides Leona. So out of obligation he’d agreed to come along. That’d be in a few weeks and he had not exactly been looking forward to it, because he didn’t want to be confronted with his depressed father and his angry sister again.

But now he was in the hospital and the last time he’d been in a hospital was when his mother lay dying, and he was confronted with it after all. The memory was way too vivid for comfort and with his defenses so low anyway, he simply crumbled underneath.

Damn, and he’d thought that he was doing so well in getting over it.

Now there had been a bit of skillful self-deception.

There was a doctor, later on, who snapped at him for being an idiot who drank himself nearly to death, and a nurse, who wasn’t much friendlier and told him basically the same things; that he was an idiot and stupid and selfish, that he could have just stopped breathing and died last night, and that hospital beds were expensive and that his idiotic behavior made him occupy the bed of someone who might need it.

Their accusations made Ethan feel very guilty and he was out of the hospital that very afternoon. Kevin came to get him, and Ethan sat down next to him and did not speak the whole way after the initial: “Are you okay?” and “Fine.” He didn’t feel quite fine; he still felt battered, bruised and his head hurt something fierce, and his eyes hurt from his crying session early this morning. In short, he felt like shit. The car ride nauseated him, so he just leaned back and closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

When Kevin pulled up before the dorm, he opened his eyes again and looked at his friend. “Who called the ambulance?”

“I did,” Kevin said. He took his keys out of the contact and smiled wryly. “You can’t remember that I tried to kick the toilet door in when I didn’t get any response out of you?”

Ethan shook his head.

“I was afraid you might have choked in your vomit or something. I’m glad you didn’t, buddy.” He opened the door and got out. Ethan followed his example and squinted against the bright June sunlight. “I’m glad too, I guess.”

“How the hell did you managed to get yourself so far gone, anyway?” asked Kevin, looking at Ethan from over the roof of his car.

Ethan shrugged. “I guess I was trying to forget something. It didn’t really work, though.”

Kevin nodded solemnly while he closed off his car. “Your mother?”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I’ve known you for a while, man. And it’s not as if it isn’t glaringly obvious.”

“Why the hell did you let me drink that much, then?”

Kevin’s dark eyes narrowed. “Maybe because you’re not the only one who is trying to deal with his shit, Ethan. Thought of that already?” He turned away abruptly and obviously intended to walk away to enter Northeast Dormitory, leaving Ethan alone in the sunlight and in confusion.

Ethan blinked and tried to ignore the bruised feeling of his eyeballs. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you even remember?”

“Dude, I was fucking drunk! I hardly remember anything!” said Ethan, throwing his hands up in exasperation. He didn’t feel too great about having to defend himself against something he didn’t even know.

Kevin still had his back turned to him, but Ethan could see the tension in his shoulders. “Oh Jesus fucking Christ. You don’t remember the phonecall?”

Had there been a phonecall? If so, he really couldn’t remember. “No.”

Kevin slowly turned around and sighed. “Mara dumped me, dude.”

“She WHAT?” Now there was a shocker. Kevin and Mara had been together from the moment they met in class last year, and it had always seemed like everything was perfect between them. The way Kevin spoke of her was always with adoration and pride, as if he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have her. Which he had been; Mara was a cute girl, and fun to hang out with. Ethan liked her a lot. “When? Last night?”

Kevin nodded somberly. “Over the phone.”

“Why?”

“Because apparently she met someone over the internet and she really ‘clicked’ with him.” Kevin’s voice dripped acid and disbelief. “There was such great chemistry, and she felt like she was falling for him, so she went to meet the guy last night. To be sure, you know? She called me from his house and his bed.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Apparently I still feel the same,” said Ethan. “Shit, I’d take you out for a beer but I don’t think that right now wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

Kevin smiled wryly. “That’s okay.”

They were still standing on the parking lot before the Dormitory, and around them birds were chirping and someone cycled past. Ethan felt rather surreal. “So you got plastered last night, too?”

“Not as bad as you, though. I managed to get rid of most of it before I got really sick.”

“And Johnny?”

Kevin shrugged. “Who knows? He was busy hitting on some girl. You and I drank the most. It took me a while before I realized that you had not returned from the toilet yet.”

Ethan suddenly remembered the two of them hanging on the bar, and Kevin musing on how he might want a cigarette to get truly wasted. ‘No man,’ Ethan had slurred, lying his arm around Kevin’s shoulders. ‘You’ll end up like my mom. That shit kills you.’

“I remember now. You said: everyone has his own day to die,” said Ethan.

“Did I?” Kevin smiled. “I can’t remember. I have some holes in my evening as well.”

“So what happens now?”

“We go inside and we wait for your dad to arrive, I guess. You do know that the faculty called him, right?”

“No I meant with Mara and you-“ Ethan blinked again. “They did /what/?”

Kevin rolled his eyes and laughed. “You nearly died with alcohol poisoning, dude! You were hospitalized! Of course they called your father!”

“Aw, fuck!” He really did not want this right now. Neither did his dad. He had hoped that his father would never find out, and he had resolved never to tell him…. Or at least, not until much later and they’d all become a bit more mentally stable. His father definitely did /not/ have to know that his oldest kid had nearly gotten himself killed only half a year after the death of his wife. Shit, his dad had enough to worry about. Since the death of his mother he had been working part-time, because he was too devastated to function normally at his job. He was distracted, emotional and not as sharp as he should be, so his boss had placed him on some semi low-priority project so he could still maintain his job. He’d been lucky with that – most bosses would have fired him for sucking at the job, but Ethan’s dad had been working at this company for years and his boss was a friend of the family. “And he’s already on his way?”

“He’s on his way,” said Kevin. “I suppose he’ll be here in an hour or something. It’s a three hour drive from where you live, right?”

“Shit.”

“You could say that,” Kevin agreed, not very helpfully.

“Let’s go inside and bitch about Mara, then,” Ethan said. “I really don’t want to think of this right now and the sunlight is making my head pound.”

They did. In the relative shade of the Lounge Ethan lied sprawled over one of the couches while Kevin sat next to him on the floor. They had their study books with them, but they never so much as glanced into them. Kevin had just thought it’d look good to the other students and to Ethan’s dad when he showed up. Since Kevin studied English, his last exam mostly existed of essay-writing and he had finished his term paper a long time ago. Ethan just didn’t give a shit. This last exam would be a minor one and he wasn’t able to get his Bachelor’s Degree before August anyway. He’d have to try two redo’s in August so he was not worrying much about this one. He’d cross that bridge when he’d come to it. Right now all he wanted to worry about was his crappy body and the upcoming confrontation. And, of course, commiserating with his best friend, who had been dumped very ungraciously by his girlfriend of nearly two years.

The doorbell sounded, announcing the arrival of Peter Good. Ethan jumped up from the couch (and reeled as he had gotten up way too quickly) and opened the door to greet his father. His father surprised him by enveloping him immediately in a bear hug. “You scared the bejeezus out of me, Ethan!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” offered Ethan lamely. “You want a cup of coffee?”

His father nodded. “That’d be nice. I’ve been driving for the past four hours, I could use one.” And as he followed Ethan to the couch, he added: “Hi Kevin. Thanks for taking care of my son.”

“No problem mister Good,” Kevin said somewhat uncomfortably. “He’d have done the same for me.”

Ethan stared at his friend for a moment and realized that he would have. Because that was what friends were for; you picked them up when they’d fallen and expected to have them do the same for you. Last night Kevin had picked him up and had most probably saved his life – Johnny had not even missed him after he had been gone for forty-five minutes last night and even on this day he was nowhere to be found. Kevin had picked him up from the hospital, his father had driven four hours… and Johnny probably never even knew what had happened. Oh, he’d feel awfully guilty afterwards, Ethan was sure of that. But Johnny had gone away with a girl and had turned his cellphone off, and he’d probably show up in an hour of two, full of himself and proud of his conquest of last night, and Ethan could have died and he’d never have known until later. It was harsh, but at least Ethan now knew who was his real friend. Johnny was a great guy, but too egocentric to depend upon. Kevin had known about Ethan’s grief before Ethan even knew it, himself, and he would have protected him if he had not fallen, himself. If Mara had not called, then things wouldn’t have gotten this far. It would be stupid to blame Mara for this whole mess, because he had still drank all that alcohol by himself, but some associations you just couldn’t stop.

He poured his father his coffee and sat down next to him. “Sorry I gave you a scare, dad, I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m just glad to see you’re alright,” his father said. He suddenly looked very, very tired. “Don’t do that again, you hear me? One alcoholic in the family is bad enough.”

“Nate isn’t an alcoholic.”

“He’s sure had his problems as a student, though.”

“Haven’t we all?”

His father shrugged. “I’m not telling you not to party, Ethan. You’re a student, you’re young. Of course you party. I’m just telling you not to kill yourself. Is that so much to ask? After losing Nate to Australia and the death of your mother, I don’t think I could handle losing you as well.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Ethan. Shit, he wanted a cigarette. For the first time since the withdrawal period in January, he felt himself craving cigarettes like crazy. What he wouldn’t give to… “I was just stupid. It won’t happen again.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” his father said.

He had to say it. He had to confess. Maybe the urge for a cigarette just masked it. There was a drive, a need to say it. “I was trying to forget, dad. I’m so sorry.”

Next to him, he felt Kevin get up and leave discreetly, but he paid it no heed as the expression on his father’s face changed from worry into sadness. “I’m sorry too,” his father blurted out, and the next moment Ethan found himself being hugged by his father in the middle of the Lounge of Northeast Dormitory, and even if someone would enter, he’d never feel embarrassed for the tears he spent on his father’s shoulder. It felt good to let them go…

It had been coming for a long time.