The Freshmen - 28. Chapter 28

September 14, 2004

Mount Sinai Hospital, Eleven West

New York, NY

Jeremy

The marketing brochure for Eleven West described it as a “blend of personal concierge attention and superior amenities that provides guests with a refined atmosphere of serenity, privacy, and comfort.” They weren’t wrong. It was like being at a nice resort without a pool or a spa. I looked out the window enjoying the view of Central Park sprawled before me, a landmark I didn’t get to see in Tribeca. Memories of my walk there with John Carullo began to haunt me, and that prompted me to remember how he’d gone off and met someone new, then all but jilted me.

I could have let that propel me to fly off the handle, but the drugs I was on mellowed me out. I wasn’t sure which one it was, but they calmed me down so much I was kind of mazy. It was like my brain didn’t work as fast as it used to, and I found that frustrating. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. When the staff came in and I signaled to my brain to smile, there was a delayed reaction, like it took a couple of seconds for that facial expression to actually occur. I felt like a zombie, but based on where I’d been yesterday, I was okay with that, at least for right now.

I was sitting upright in my bed, having just spent the effort to take a shower and get myself ready. My eye had started to bloom and it looked like shit. I wanted to be mad about it, but I couldn’t rouse that emotion. I was just so mellow. The weird thing was that I could now more clearly identify my mood swings because I was so calm, but at the same time that made it worse, because I could now see just how extreme those fluctuations were.

A gentle knock on my door was followed by the door opening slowly until it revealed Jacinta. “It is good to see you,” I said sincerely. I got out of bed and gave her a big hug. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

“It is not a problem,” she said. She backed up and ran her hand across my cheek. “I am so sorry you were hurt.”

“The physical pain was nothing; it’s the mental pain that is bad,” I said. My room had two chairs with a side table in between them, so we went over and sat there.

“I am glad you are getting help,” she said. “I have been so worried about you.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling at her. “I’ll be fine.”

She swallowed hard, as if to steel herself to raise a touchy issue. “I am concerned about Mr. Kris.” I was still furious with him, but I just couldn’t muster that much outrage right now.

“Why?” I asked, and not in the nicest way.

“He is so sad,” she said. “He told me he has to move out, but he has nowhere to go, and no one to help him.”

“He knows why he has to go,” I said firmly, even as I felt my resolve fading. I was going through hell. I didn’t want to see that happen to a guy I cared about.

“I will not talk about him if you do not want me to,” she said. Like I’d turn down hearing gossip about Kris.

“No, I want you to tell me about him,” I said.

“This morning, before he went to work, he was going to walk out the door, and he just started crying. It was almost sobbing. I hugged him, and held on to him for about five minutes, before he could pull himself together,” she said. I just stared at her, amazed, because that was so unlike him. I remembered all the shit that had happened to him this past weekend, then I started feeling sorry for him until I remembered that as soon as he’d gotten back to New York he’d gone out to the clubs to find new guys to fuck.

“He’ll find a new guy, a new shoulder to cry on,” I said dismissively.

“He said that he is miserable because he can’t talk to you; he can’t explain things,” she said. “I do not know what those things are, but that is what he said.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, in a bitchy way.

“He wrote you a letter and asked me if I would bring it to you,” she said. She pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to me, and did it in a way that made her seem like a spy making a drop. I was too curious not to take it. She looked at me, almost pleading, so I nodded.

“I’ll read it,” I promised.

“Thank you,” she said, with considerable relief. I asked her to bring me some outfits, and made a list of all the things I wanted. She promised to stop by in the afternoon and drop them off. She left and I sat there, holding the letter in my hand, then finally opened it.

J,

I have so many things I want to say to you, but I know you won’t hear any of them until I explain what happened the night we got back. I’m so pissed off at Sebastien that I’m tempted to go out and find him and kick his fucking ass.

I took the car to my favorite club, called Fuego. I was not trying to hook up with anyone, I was just hoping to connect with some of my friends there. I got to the bar, grabbed a table, said hi to a few people, but I was so depressed the whole thing was a buzzkill. Just as I was about to leave, I saw Chris Mendoza dancing with Sebastien. Chris and I are friends, and usually bullshit when we run into each other at clubs. I stared at him long enough to catch his eye, then motioned him over with my head. He gave Sebastien a really nice kiss, then excused himself to walk over to see me. Sebastien watched him and when he saw he was coming to see me, the rage in his eyes was so strong it was like they turned into red orbs.

I told Chris that I’d dated Sebastien, and how psycho he was, then Chris suggested that we bail and go somewhere else. We went to a bar near where he lives and just sat down to talk. I didn’t discuss any of the shit that happened this weekend, with the exception of my trip to Carruthers & Schluter. We basically closed down the bar talking about the company, their plans in New York, and how maybe I could be a part of them. When it was time to leave, I told him that we were pissed at each other, and he offered to let me crash on his couch. That’s where I spent the night.

Chris is a really handsome guy, but he and I have absolutely zero sexual connection, primarily because we’re both tops. Nothing happened between us. I’m hoping you’ll believe me, but if you don’t, you should call Chris and ask him.

I got your message where you basically told me to fuck off, and I am totally devastated. I told you when I get mad I need some space, and that’s what I was trying to do, but I didn’t want to end us. I need you to help me cope with all of this shit that got dropped on me this past weekend, and I want to be there to help you out with things as you try to get better. What we have, our relationship, is so perfect. We complement each other so well it’s scary. The more time I spend with you, the more I care about you. This was all going so well, and now it's turned to shit. I want, no, I need to fix it, but I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even know if you want to do that.

Can you at least tell me where I stand with you? If you want me to move out, I will, and if you want to break up with me, then that’s how things are, but I’m not going to let what was a really beautiful relationship go without at least fighting to save it. Please talk to me. I need you.

Kris.

I read it again, even as I chuckled at his masculine handwriting that was very precise. My penmanship was so much more elegant. I processed all of his words, but it was the last three that really jarred me. He was the only person who had ever needed me, the only person who had relied on me. What’s more, we were both totally alone at this point. He needed me, but it dawned on me that I needed him just as much.

Now that I needed to communicate with him, I felt trapped in this room. I’d given up my phone when I’d been admitted, and without it I had no idea what Kris’s cell phone number was. I called for the concierge and he appeared almost instantly. The service here really was top-notch. “I need my phone.”

“I’m not sure that I can get that for you, Mr. Schluter,” he said politely, and a little nervously.

“I am here voluntarily, and that means that I can get up and leave if I want to,” I insisted. “So either you give me my phone, or that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Will you at least let me make a phone call first?” he almost pleaded.

I was mellow enough to agree to that. “I’ll give you an hour to bring it to me. Will that work?”

“I’ll do my best,” he answered.

“In the meantime, add this name to my visitor list,” I said, and handed him a piece of paper with Kris’s name on hit.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and vanished.

I watched the clock, and when one hour was up, I called the concierge. “It’s been an hour,” I said curtly. “Bring me my phone.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Dr. Jones asked that you wait to talk to her first. She should be here shortly.”

“Fine,” I agreed. She would probably be in a foul mood because she had to run over here just to meet with me. She’d be incredibly annoyed at my impulsive behavior. I braced myself for a major confrontation, even though my mind was short-circuiting it with its calmness. It only took ten minutes before she came breezing into my room.

“I hear you want your phone,” she said.

“Not even a ‘good afternoon’?” I asked caustically. “Yes, I want my phone.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I want to call Kris,” I said. “I added him to the visitors list.”

She sat down in the same chair Jacinta had occupied, while I took the other one. “You know how important this is, you not getting too upset while we try to get your medications in line. Explain how talking to Kris works with that strategy.”

“He needs me,” I said. I handed her his letter and gave her a couple of minutes to read it.

“Do you believe him?” she asked me.

“I do,” I said. “He’s a very honest person. Jacinta said he was crying this morning, so much that she had to comfort him. That is completely out of character for him.”

“Still, it could be an act,” she said.

“He went through just as much crap this past weekend as I did,” I said. “You talked to Casey. You know what it was like.”

“I still don’t see why you have to risk yourself, risk your psyche, when in a few days you’ll be able to handle this so much better,” she said.

“Because this isn’t about me,” I said. “He needs me now. I know I can help him.”

She eyed me carefully. “You’re determined to do this?”

“I am,” I said, then tossed the ball back into her court. “Don’t you think he was sincere?”

“I have no way of knowing whether he was honest or not, but a quick call to Chris Mendoza could probably answer that question,” she said.

“To get his number I’d have to call my father, Stef, or Will,” I said with dread.

“I don’t think you should talk to Will, at least not right now,” she said.

“Why?” I challenged.

She opened up her attaché case and handed me a printout. “That’s the email I sent to your aunt, and that she forwarded on to everyone in your family. The second page is Will’s response.”

I read his cold words and recoiled at them. Then I thought about it a little more. I usually found him annoying at best, so it might not be a bad thing to have him leave me alone. “Then I won’t call him,” I said.

“I want you to understand why I’m nervous about you meeting up with Kris right now,” she said. I glared at her. “I think you need to know the risks, so at least you can plan for them.”

“Fine,” I said, because it dawned on me that, in this situation, I’d have to listen to a bunch of crap from her, but in the end I’d get my way.

“You have a tendency to build your life around one person and wall off the rest of the world,” she said.

“I do not,” I objected, even though she was right.

“You did it with your mother, you did it with your Pop, you did it with Alex, you were doing it with Zanie,” she said. “And you were doing it with Kris.”

“Isn’t it normal to do that when you’re dating someone,” I said, my ego defenses at full strength.

“The way you do it is not healthy,” she said. “I think that is why you created issues with your family, to isolate yourself with Kris.”

If I accepted what she’d said, it would cause me excruciating pain, because then I’d have to grapple with what an ass I’d been. “I did not create issues.”

“You did, and even Kris knows it,” she said firmly. “The fact that you don’t see it, and that you can’t admit it, tells me that you’re not ready to reconnect with him.”

“We can help each other work through this,” I objected.

“You can help him do that, but he will give you the ability to close yourself off from the rest of your world, especially your family,” she said. “Now is the time to address these issues. It will only get more unpleasant if you let it linger.”

“How can I help him if I can’t see him?” I asked logically.

“You can tell him that you want to be with him; you can tell him that as soon as you’re done with your intensive therapy and you’re out of the hospital, you want him to be there for you; and you can tell him to email you while you’re in here,” she said. “But you’re not going to do that.”

“I’m not,” I agreed.

“So I have only one condition to set,” she said. I didn’t see why she felt she had the right to set any conditions, but I opted to listen to her.

“What is it?”

“You let me call Kris and talk to him about this, and about my concerns,” she said.

“So you can sabotage me, and keep him away from me?” I demanded, full of outrage.

“No, so he knows what you’re dealing with, and he can help you grapple with it in his own way,” she said. I pondered that, and even though I didn’t like it, I also felt like I had no choice but to cave. She could call my family and explain this to them, and they could probably come up with awful things to do to punish me. I glanced around at my nice room and thought about how horrible it would be to be in a normal hospital with an obnoxious roommate.

“That works,” I said grudgingly. She handed me my phone then I pulled up Kris’s number and gave it to her. “I want to call him first.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I won’t be able to talk to him until this evening. She looked at her watch. “I have to run. I have an appointment.”

It suddenly dawned on me that my spur of the moment decision to demand my phone was not just an inconvenience; it had disrupted her whole day. “Thank you for all that you’re doing for me.”

She smiled ruefully. “You’re welcome.” Then she left.

I went to call Kris, but when I looked at my phone, it went dark. “Damn!” I said loudly. Of course the battery would choose that moment to go out. I had no idea why I always had bad luck. Even the universe was against me. I called the concierge, and he agreed to track down a charger for me. I was so anxious to reach out to Kris, but I was stymied by my phone’s lack of energy. I also pondered how much clearer my mind was, now that I had a mission.

The door opened and the concierge walked in. “I found a charger that should work, Mr. Schluter,” he said, and handed it to me.

“Where did you get this?” I asked him.

“It’s mine,” he said with a smile.

“Thank you so very much,” I said. “That is really nice of you.”

“It’s really no problem. If you’d like, I can pick up another one for you when I go home,” he said.

“I would really appreciate that,” I said. I went over to the bedside cabinet, pulled out my wallet, and gave him a $100 bill.

“Chargers don’t cost that much,” he said, as he eyed the C-note.

“The rest is for you,” I said. He made to object, but I stopped him. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a call.” He nodded and left. I thought about using my own phone, but the last thing I needed was to lose the call, so I pulled up Kris’s number, wrote it down, and used the hospital phone. He didn’t answer when I called, probably because he was busy and didn’t recognize the number, so I pulled up his work number and called that one.

“Kris Schulenberg,” he said officiously as he answered. As anxious as I’d been to reach out to him, I suddenly had no idea what to say.

“It’s me,” I finally stammered.

“J?” he asked excitedly.

“You still recognize my voice,” I said a bit playfully.

“It is so good to hear from you!” he gushed. “Oh my god. How are you doing?” I heard some voices in the background. “Fuck off,” he said to them, making me chuckle.

“Jacinta brought me your letter,” I said. “I know you’re busy, but do you think you can stop by and see me when you get a chance?”

“I’ll be right there,” he said.

“I’m sure you have work to do. Go ahead and finish it up. I’m not going anywhere,” I told him.

“I’ll come see you as soon as I finish up this latest project,” he said.

“Lawanda wasn’t all that keen on us meeting, so I had to cave to one condition,” I said.

“What condition?”

“She wants to talk to you. I gave her your number,” I said.

“I’ll have to remember to answer it even if I don’t recognize the number,” he said. It was like he was speaking to set some sort of oral reminder in his brain. “What does she want to talk about?”

“She claims that I tend to connect with one person and wall everyone else off,” I said.

“Do you do that?” he asked.

“Most likely,” I said, frowning as I admitted it. “She probably wants to coach you on how to handle my psycho ass.”

“That’s great!” he responded. “I can’t wait to hear how fucked up you are.” I chuckled with him, and it felt so good to reconnect with him.

“I added your name to the visitors list,” I told him. “I have my phone back, so if you have any problems, call me.”

“Why aren’t you using your phone then?” he asked.

“The battery died, and I didn’t want it to go out while I was talking to you,” I said.

“I cannot wait to see you,” he said, then we ended the call. I looked in the mirror and my face was ridiculous, since I was smiling as big as I ever had but at the same time I had this massive black eye. That made Will’s rejection of me almost pleasant. I decided to mess with his world, so I took a picture of my face, making sure that I looked somber, then sent it to Aunt Claire with a note telling her that I was doing better. My entire family would scorn him once they saw the damage he’d done to me. It was a bonus that this was his birthday, and if I was lucky, that may just cast a pall over it.

I hadn’t expected Kris to be here at 5:00, but now that it was 7:00, I was getting kind of annoyed. I mean, if he was serious about us, wouldn’t he make a point to at least come see me sooner? Just before my mind could go into a downward spiral, where I decided that he was playing me, I suddenly mellowed. It was like my psyche was a plane that was plummeting towards the ground, and I’d just managed to pull it up and avoid the crash. Maybe these drugs were working? I got so happy I was almost giddy. It would be so nice to be a person who could be more consistently calm and not freak out about every fucking thing.

There was a knock at the door and the concierge came in, pausing to hold the door open behind him. “You have a visitor,” he said, then stepped aside.

I stood up and saw Kris, carrying a vase filled with red roses, looking as amazing as he had when I first met him. “Hey,” he said a bit nervously.

“Are those for me?” I flirted.

“They are,” he said. He handed them to me and I put them on my nightstand. “I was trying to think of things to impress you.”

“We’ll have dinner served shortly, Mr. Schulenberg,” the concierge said. I looked at them both curiously, then the concierge left.

“I went to Keen’s Steakhouse and got dinner for us,” he said. “I got you what you ordered last time. Jacinta told me what it was.”

“Thank you,” I said. I moved forward and he enveloped me in his arms, and it felt so good we just stood there embracing for the longest time.

We only separated when the concierge came back. He set up this little table for us, put down a tablecloth and utensils that were definitely not bargain-basement stainless. Then he put the plates on the table and removed the lids. “Voila,” he said, grinning.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. He smiled, then left.

“You hitting on the cute concierge?” Kris asked in a playful way.

“You know, this is the first time I noticed that he was cute,” I mused, even though now that Kris pointed it out, he definitely was attractive. We started eating our dinner.

“Wow, you really must be depressed if you didn’t even notice he was hot,” he said to me in a way that was partly sympathetic and partly teasing.

“I really was, until I called you,” I said.

“That’s what Lawanda wanted to talk to me about,” he said. “She’s worried that I’ll make you so happy you’ll forget all of your other issues.”

“So what did you two decide to do?” I asked. I marveled again at how calm I was. Normally I would have flamed him for presuming what to do about my state of mind, but now I was relaxed and open.

“The plan is that we can be together as long as you’re making progress,” he said. “That means you have to really dive into the reasons why you wall yourself off and why you wreaked havoc on your family.”

“That’s something I need to do anyway,” I said, and smiled at him. That completely blew his mind, because he’d been bracing himself for a tirade. I almost wondered if he was testing me, but I just blew that off. Stunning.

“You are doing better,” he said, and that made me really smile. I lived for his praise.

“It’s amazing,” I said. “Normally I would still be screaming at you while you tried to escape from my wrath.”

“I was expecting something a little more intense,” he agreed, making us both chuckle.

“You know, for the first time since I’ve been diagnosed, I think I might have found a drug regimen that will help me,” I said.