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He gets migraines now.
In the past, headaches were just something that affected other people. It didn’t matter how long he kept himself awake, or how many meals he skipped. In his head, at least he felt normal. Black coffee was his best friend before; a mug or two kept dreams at bay until everyone else had drifted off to sleep. And then it was just him, and the moon, and the plays he read in secret, hidden under his bed until they were safe to unveil.
Alas, the cat was out of the bag now. The dramatic flair he felt in his heart had seeped into every aspect of his life. Even his death. Or at least it would have, if it had worked.
There was always someone watching now. An orderly, his parents, all checking he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Would it always be like that? Could he eat without someone monitoring every bite to make sure he wasn’t throwing it back up, or sneaking it into the flowerpot? Could he sleep without every single nap being noted on the chart by his feet?
Funny. He wanted to die to get rid of all this regulation. Instead, the control others had over his life had expanded, like a tumour.
He lives for visits.
Not from his parents, who hover all hours of the day, querying and questioning. He feigns sleep just to avoid them; a dutiful son he is not. Nor does he savour visits from doctors, who tell him he’s doing “incredibly well” and “he’ll be back to Welton in no time”.
Welton. That’s what he waits for. Any scrap will do, from whether Charlie had managed to control his temper, to what they’re serving in the dining room in his absence. The only fight he’s put up since waking is his adamant return to school. His father is unsure, his mother worried, Mr Nolan mistakenly impressed. Yet all agree that he will go back if that will please him, ease him. He can’t help but light up during his friends’ visits; he craves news of anything besides these four white walls and the same miserable faces that haunt him day by day.
Not that his friends weren’t equally shocked the first time they saw him. First come Charlie, Meeks and Pitts. Neil is surprised; it wasn’t the group that he was expecting. Still, the strength of Pitts, the quick thinking of Meeks, and the sheer determination from Charlie means they sneak past nurses, bursting into Neil’s room, breathless and half-laughing. Like he remembers them.
Their smiles fade when they turn to him.
Neil is aware he looks a mess. The doctors tell him he’s lucky that the gun misfired, but he doesn’t feel that way; not with the scarring from his temple dripping down his cheek like hot oil. The gauze against his face itches, and something in him wants to rip it off, and rip and rip and keep ripping until there’s nothing left.
He wants to laugh and joke, but finds that there is very little to say. Meeks tries to teach him the Latin he missed, but it makes Neil’s head pound, and he can almost feel his brain leaking out of the hole in his head. It’s just a delusion though, and disappears as quickly as it comes. What drags him back to his senses is Charlie’s hand wrapped around his own, which had started to prod at the gauze.
Meeks and Pitts leave quite quickly after that, and it’s not until they’ve gone that Neil realises that Pitts hadn’t said a word during the visit. Charlie explains that Pitts was the chattiest when Neil was unconscious, but it’s a stretch of the truth at best. It doesn’t matter though. Charlie is holding his hand, even when it trembles, even when the visiting nurse gives him a glare.
Keating comes too, a few days later. His father is back working in Chicago – Neil’s stomach clenches when he thinks of the cost of all this, the ambulance, the treatment, the therapy that comes after – and his mother is at home resting. Keating slips in like a shadow between dozes, but when the teacher is there, Neil is more awake than he’s been in weeks. There is no sorrow in Keating’s eyes, nor pity. He doesn’t ask why; he already knows. As he leaves, he squeezes Neil’s shoulder, and hands him a brown paper package, messily tied with string, but the most beautiful gift ever given.
It’s a book of poetry – what else would it be? He feels bad for not recognising the author; the curriculum, even Keating’s, doesn’t linger on female writers. Like the plays, Neil has a compulsion to stash it away, hide it like some buried treasure under his pillow until he is alone, and the words can flow over him like a lover.
Keating has marked a particular poem, and Neil’s breath catches in his throat when he reads it. It’s a comfort and a warning at the same time, a promise of the future and a condemning of what had passed. He reads it over and over until the words engrain themselves onto his brain. He mumbles them under his breath during mealtimes. The doctors must think he’s mad. In their eyes, he probably is.
As helpful as the book is, it’s dangerous. If his father saw it, it would be torn from his medicine-addled grasp, and thrown from the window. So Neil makes a plan; get the book back to Welton, and follow it.
He gives it to the only messenger he can trust. Todd often looks like Neil feels, pale and red-eyed and shaking. If he were strong enough, he’d scoop the boy up and hold him, tight and warm until both their sorrows have faded. Their conversations will have to do. Todd’s confidence has taken a knock; he’s back to whispering, and visiting alone, though Charlie sometimes appears suspiciously quickly after Todd has left. He hopes Charlie is looking after Todd; doing Neil’s job while he can’t.
As frightened as he seems, Todd still shines brighter than any of his other guests. Their conversations stick in Neil’s addled mind, follow him into sleep and soothe him when memories come. He coaxes and cares through every meal, holding Neil when his body rebels against the tirade of medication and food and misplaced guilt.
When Neil gets migraines, it’s not the morphine that eases them. It’s the gentle kisses that Todd presses against his forehead and spare temple.
Neil doesn’t know what they are, but doesn’t care either. He is Todd’s and Todd is his, and as long as they’re together, anything is possible. Poetry is possible, romantic and tragic and funny and honest and secret and stolen and beautiful.
Todd assures him that the book is safe, under the care of Keating once more. Neil is relieved and motivated. Though he’s memorised one poem, the book is filled with so much more; so much more to read and hold in his shattered soul. Some would leap at the chance to be rid of Hellton, but the thought of it is the only thing that keeps him going, makes him take his pills, and makes him sleep and eat and want to live.
For Todd, and Keating, and Sylvia Plath.