# Catching Up Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Regrets We Accumulate
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It was nice here. Quiet. My thoughts were at ease, the void cradled me comfortably; if this was death then it would be a good way to pass. I felt light, as if all the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I don't remember how long it had been since last time I felt so free. Well, I did, it was back in Volcadera before everything went belly up. But all that was in the past, there was nothing I could do now. Fang and the nightmares couldn't follow me any longer.
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Was this all there is to it? Is this all that life contains? I mean, I had regrets still. Maybe that is a constant of living, that we don't get to finish all our business before our business is finished for us. No long heartfelt bedside goodbye after wrapping everything up with your family gathered around you; sons and daughters, grandchildren and spouses saying one last goodbye as you flatline.
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I had hoped to raise a child some day. Back in Volcadera I secretly dreamt about what it would be for us to get good jobs, a house, a car and then settle down with kids. If I had a daughter, I'd spoil her to heaven and back. Teach her everything I know, take her far away from all the misery I had to live through back home and give her the best life possible. Amber, would be her name. She would have eyes like her mother's, and heart full of love and curiosity. I wonder what her first words would be, when she would take her first steps. Taking her to her first day at preschool. Graduating. Finding love. Starting her life on her own, once she's become a person of her own design. It hurts so good. I can almost feel her laying in my arms, brushing her hair. Then the feeling fades, and I'm alone in the dark.
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I had hurt so many people in my life. I can't even blame anyone else, my parents may have been terrible and abusive but I got a chance to live as my own man and I squandered it horribly. Some things can't be fixed once broken. I wonder how it would have been if I a normal upbringing, who I would have been. Maybe my parents wouldn't have named me something as retarded as Anon. Maybe my friends wouldn't have turned their backs on me. Maybe I'd never got into that whole mess that made me move to Volcadera in the first place.
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Maybe all that would have happened anyway. I had a chance to turn into a good person at Volcadera too, but I screwed it up. I just dug myself a bunker to hide in, I didn't want to improve myself or have to care for other people. I just wanted to be left alone, not take any space and not be singled out again. But ignoring people is just as hurtful. Like with Fang... I didn't listen to them, I just ignored everything too complicated to understand and that I didn't care to learn more about. I pretended to know about music, I pretended to play along with the nonbinary schtick, but for what? Sex? Attention? Love? I built a false persona pretending to be someone that would like them, but in the end it just fucking hurt them even more than if I'd just stayed away. Maybe if I'd tried to actually understand, I could have helped them. If I had tried to fathom being nonbinary, if I had actually tried to love music? I sure had been bullied enough times for who I wanted to be, with people pretending to care for me just so I'd open up and give them more ammunition. Letting Fang be Fang was the least I could do, remembering to say 'them' shouldn't have been what broke us apart. Since then I had vowed to at least honor their wish.
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That day at the beach... It had been running on repeat ever since that day. I'd done it over and over and over again, trying to get the words right. Trying to rewind time to fix it, but some things just can't be put back together after being broken. There was nothing left to fix, no magic word to bring Fang back to me. I'd failed to move on, failed to live. Stuck in the past, retreading my mistakes ad infinum. I had failed to see the life in front of me, missed the people that actually still cared about me and that I mattered to. I'm sorry, everyone.
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I assume this is it. My last moments in existence, before Anon is but a passing memory. No kids, no big impact on the world, no-one that would miss me. Just hurt left behind in the memories of others left behind. Maybe it's better this way. All I could have been, all I could have done, gone. All fading away long before I managed to screw up any more.
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So I let go.
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In an apartment building far away, the screaming sirens of an ambulance break the morning air. The trees are gently blowing in the wind, the leaves rustling just so lightly as they serenade the summer breeze. Children are playing in a park as their parents watch over them, the mailman is biking around with his satchel doing his morning round. The cogs of the world keep rotating in unison. The ambulance pulls in on the dirt path, gravel crackling under the wheels as it enters the yard. Two paramedics jump out, ready to do their job, keep up their routine. The kids have stopped to watch. The mailman has stopped to let the paramedics past. For a short moment, the cogs stand still.
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In a stairwell, stands a crowd. The initial panic has subsided, but there's an air of unease. A raptor with medical experience has done what she can, but she won't move the man laying at the bottom of the stairs in case he would had gotten a spinal injury from tumbling down. A bright yellow stegosaurus is standing there in shock, someone tried moving her but she was unyielding. Tears are rolling down her face, all the words she had planned to let out were stuck so far down her throat they might as well dissolve into the sinking feeling in her stomach. They might never have the opportunity to be uttered. The paramedics move up the stair, they say something but she can't hear them. It's all a blur. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She had heard shouting. This wasn't how it should have gone. She chokes on the words in her throat, all the things she was supposed to say. She screams at this horrifying new reality, for there are no words that could ever convey the pain coursing through her.
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Outside, the birds are singing. The sun is shining. It is a beautiful morning. The mailman has resumed his morning round. An ambulance pulls out on the road, driving fast with the sirens blaring once again. The kids stop briefly to watch before they continue playing.
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At the hospital, the emergency ward is the same as it always is. An old man is perishing in a bed from a mortal injury as the doctors desperately try to keep him alive, a kid with a broken arms sits next to his mother waiting for aid and a mother in labor is being wheeled away while her husband frantically tries to light his cigarette. Then a young man in a bloodstained jacket is wheeled in on a stretcher as the doctors gather around him.
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Wait. I was supposed to do something important, wasn't I? I think so. I know I am forgetting someone. I had something scheduled, but what? I remember a faint sound of muffled crying.
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Where was it coming from?
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It's so very far away, impossible to pinpoint. And I am so very tired, right now...
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By a hospital bed sits a yellow stegosaurus clutching the hand of a man lying motionless with closed eyes. Her eyes are red from tears, but she has none left to cry after all those she had spilled already. The doctors had informed her about his situation; heavy concussion, broken leg, multiple lacerations, comatose. The young man is unconcious, but it looks like he's at peace; only sleeping. It is as if a slight nudge could wake him at any moment, and if she just gently touched his cheek he'd be back by her side. Maybe, just maybe, he'd open his eyes soon. Wake up as if he had just been taking a long nap. What if she could never tell him all those things she had carried, what would she do then? You're gonna carry that weight. Carry the weight like she knew Anon had carried the pain from Volcadera all these years. He left the school, but the school never left him. She wondered how long she could stay here before her good memories of Anon would have all been replaced by this unconscious bag of skin and bones; just the thought made her shudder. How could she ever forget him? How could she ever forgive herself when she did?
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A car pulls up to the parking lot outside, Rosa and Tracy had convened to try and take care of Stella. Rosa even managed to get her husband to handle the kids so she could handle Stella. Stella had been staying by his side all week, and they knew she wasn't taking care of herself. None of them wished to be the one to tell her that he might not come back, that she would be hopelessly waiting until she herself forgot how to live. So instead, they talked about the weather, how work was faring, and what their plans were for summer. Tracy was carrying a few reheatable meals in a bag and Rosa had gone to Stella's place to fill a bag with supplies and fresh clothes, carefully remembering to take the elevator instead of the stairs when heading up. She hadn't wanted to see any possible trace of it.
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Time was still in the room, while people came and went. From time to time Stella left to talk to those visiting her and Anon, she took walks in the hospital's park, she went to the cafeteria to get some hot food when some of her other friends stopped by. But it was as if life was passing by in slow motion, drowned in tar and dulled out. It didn't feel real. After all, Anon was strong and healthy. He was seeing a therapist, taking his meds. He was in a better place than he had been in a long while, and she got to share some of the best moments of her life with him. So why did it end up like this? She often sat by his side talking to him, telling him about her life and how she was doing, how everyone else was doing, how much they missed him. How incredibly much she missed him. That she didn't know what she would do if he never came back to her.
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She liked to imagine he was just resting. At night she was dreaming about how he would wake up, smiling and happy to see her. Every morning she was ripped from those dreams, back to the bleak reality and the crushing loneliness it brought.
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Rosa started visiting less often, she had a life after all. Stacy was busy with the diner, she said they were shortstaffed. Stella's mom and dad had tried to be supportive, but even they had eventually suggested her to move on. Being anchored to those gone isn't any way to live. It had been just above two weeks, maybe they were right. One last night, then. She had to be strong for him. She went up to the bed, his face still looking all too peaceful. His chest rising and lowering, his warm body lying there. She crawled up next to him, with her head on his chest. Felt him close, took in his scent. She had to remember this, before everything else comes to pass. Wrapping his arm around her, she cries. Deep, heavy sobs lamenting all that would never come to pass. All the memories that would never be made. All the love she would never be able to share.
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It had been like falling through the ice on a bright winter day, being washed away by the current. As if I was drifting away, tauntingly close to the coveted surface and the air above that I could still see the sun but with no way to break through.
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There was that sound again, muffled but audible. Still so far away, but it stirred something within me. A deeply rooted memory, of a time long past. There was something I needed to do...
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I must focus, I had a task. I remember a faint yellow outline, with a splash of green on top. I can't drift any longer, or I will never come back to it...
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Memories of pain, fear, terror. The realization that the fading light was the end of the road. Of the nothingness beyond.
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So I scratched, tore, screamed at the fading light. Bubbles foamed at my mouth, a soundless roar drowned out by the depths. I punched at the ice until my knuckles were aching, if I had to go they would have to drag me kicking and screaming. I had someone to meet.
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In a hospital bed, in the dead of night, a man opens his eyes for the first time in weeks.