Perfecting Patience

Not long after buying the necklace, Sydney sent me a text message asking if I was okay. She said she and Aunt Sarah were worried about me. Parts of me hoped Patience had put her up to texting me, but it was nice to feel cared about anyway. I liked Sydney and Sarah, and for a brief moment, I even considered how nice it would be when they became my family as well.

At the three-week mark, when things should’ve been getting easier, I was still all fucked up. I could remember how crazy I was for the months we were apart after the death of her father, and this time was way worse. At least before I lost myself in the music, but even my music wasn’t curing me.

We’d just finished recording for the day when my phone started to ring. I set down my guitar and answered.

“Zeke?”

The voice wasn’t familiar.

“That’s me. Who’s this?” I lifted my bottle of water and sucked it down.

“This is Sarah, Patience’s aunt. Do you have a minute to talk?” She sounded off.

She was usually so outspoken and happy. I could hear the tension in her voice through the phone, and that tension made its way into my stomach.

“Yeah, of course I have time. Is everything okay? Are Patience and Sydney okay?” I knew when I asked that one of them wasn’t.

The guys were mouthing something to me, and I just waved them away. I stepped out of the recording room and into the lobby. Falling into a big chair outside the door, I braced myself on the arms, waiting for the bad news I knew was coming.

“It’s Patience. She’s in the hospital.”

Her words were simple and to the point, but they took a minute to make their way through the fog in my brain. When they finally reached their destination and I fully understood what she’d just said to me, the floor beneath my feet went away and I was falling. At least that’s how I felt.

Patience needed me and I wasn’t there. Suddenly, every reason for us breaking up and me leaving didn’t seem so clear. None of it mattered when she needed me. Nothing mattered if she was hurt.

I jumped from the chair and ran outside. I hailed a cab before I spoke again.

“What happened?” I asked.

I jumped into the first yellow car to pull up. The driver looked back at me like I was crazy, then turned on the meter. I called out my address and shut out everything but Sarah. Her deep breathing filled the silence and her worry somehow worked itself across the country and into my heart.

“She overdosed. It was accidental, but still it happened. Apparently, she’s been taking an obscene amount of Xanax every day. A few weeks ago when she got hit in the face with the soccer ball and she went to the emergency room, the doctor gave her something for the pain. She mixed the two and her friend Hope found her in her apartment when she didn’t show up for a game.”

The moisture in my mouth was gone. Between that and the shock, it took me a minute to respond.

“Is she okay?” The words came out as a whisper as I struggled to push them past my lips.

“She’s okay, but I’m having her admitted. She’s a sick girl, Zeke. When you left, it only got worse. She finally admitted to medicating herself. She’s been having panic attacks all the time and she quit seeing her therapist. I really feel like this is for the best.” I could hear the tears in Sarah’s voice.

How could I have lived with her and not known all of this. I thought she was getting better. I thought she was moving past all that, but really, she was medicating herself. I hadn’t even known she was going to a therapist.

It hurt to know I was the “soccer ball” her aunt referred to. I was the reason she went to the emergency room. I was the reason she overdosed, and I wanted to shut down because of it, but shutting down wasn’t an option, not when Patience needed me.

She was a sick girl. Her father had made sure she would have issues to move past for the rest of her life, and even if we were just friends, I would help her. I’d put her before everything else in my life, since she was the biggest part of my heart, and I’d be there for her no matter what she did or didn’t do to me.

“I’m on my way,” I said before we hung up.

She filled me in on the hospital information, and I was packed and headed to the airport in the blink of an eye. I texted Finn and told him what was up, and an hour later I was in the sky.

Sarah picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the hospital. Patience had been moved to the psychiatric floor, and even though technically she hadn’t tried to kill herself, she was on watch.

Sarah let me go in to see her alone and I was thankful for that. So much needed to be cleared up; so much needed to be said. If for nothing, I felt like I owed Patience an apology. Of all the people in her life, I should’ve known what she was going through. I should’ve been the one she ran to, but she didn’t. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t come to me, but I had no other choice but to believe it was because of something I did wrong.