Flipping the Coin
CHAPTER 6
HEALING
The next morning, my mother arrived about 9 o’clock, and she brought my phone and charger. We talked for quite a while. First, she told me that the police had come and taken Father away. Then they had asked her and Carl about me being abused. At first, they were reluctant to say anything, but when the police assured them that, if she and Carl told them about the abuse, they would have enough evidence to hold Father until there was a hearing, so they had told the whole story.
I told her what I had told the police. There were tears in her eyes when she said she was sorry she hadn’t gone to the police years ago. “It’s complicated,” she said. “I do love you, but I love him too, even though I’m a little afraid of him. I just didn’t know what to do.”
It’s okay. I guess I understand.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“Maybe I can. I’ll try, but I can’t ever forgive him.”
“Thank you,” she said. Then she asked why I had tried to kill myself, but I only gave her some of the reason. I told her the beating that Roshan and I had gotten was part of it, but I didn’t tell her about all the terrible emails I had received. And finally, I said, “I just can’t stand to be with Father anymore. He’s beaten me, he’s threatened me, and he’s verbally abused me. There’s no way I can go back to the house while he’s there.”
She sat nodding as I talked, and again I saw tears in her eyes.
We didn’t say much after that. When she was ready to leave, she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. I couldn’t remember her ever kissing me before.
About an hour later, Dr. Goodwin came in and asked how I was. This time, I gave him a straight answer, telling him I thought I was doing better.
“Good,” he said, “What can you tell me about the Rajavis?”
For the next half hour, I told him everything I knew about Roshan‘s parents. I ended up with, “I think I’m in love with Roshan. I think we’re both in love, but I’m not sure about him yet.”
“What makes you think he might feel the same way?”
“From the way he kissed me that night we got beaten up, I’m pretty sure he’s gay, but I don’t know if he loves me.
“It sounds to me as though you need to talk with him.”
“I plan to.” We were siIent for a few moments until I said, “Umm…Now, I have something really embarrassing to tell you.” He raised one eyebrow in a funny way he had. “I… don’t seem to be able to get… an erection.”
I was afraid he would laugh, but he only smiled and nodded. “That’s most likely the medication you’re on. We can try backing off that some and see what happens. I do think you may be on antidepressants for a long time. Usually, once people get depressed, the depression doesn’t totally go away. With some counseling and antidepressants, most patients manage just fine. We’ll talk more about counseling before you leave.”
“Okay,” I said. “Have you made any progress with Orion being able to visit me?”
“I’m working on it, but I don’t have all the pieces in place yet. Hopefully, it’ll be soon.”
A little later, a new doctor came in. He took the dressings off my wrists and said, “They look fine.”
To me they looked awful. They were red and scarred. I asked him, “will the scars ever go away?”
“Not completely, but they won’t be as red as they are now. If you wear long-sleeved shirts, most people probably won’t even notice them. And of course, plastic surgery could help reduce them.”
After I knew that school had closed in the afternoon, I called Roshan, who answered immediately. “Oh my God, Mitch, I’ve been so worried. How are you?”
“Better,” I said, “but they’re not ready to let me go yet. Roshan, I really need to talk with you alone and in person. Is there any way you can arrange that?”
“I think so. I’ll try to come after dinner tonight. If I can’t, I’ll call you. I can’t wait to see you!”
We talked for quite a while and he asked a couple of times what I wanted to say to him, but I reiterated that that had to be face-to-face. While we were talking, Carl showed up, so I said goodbye to Roshan. Before he hung up, he said, “Mitch, I love you.”
“Me too,” I said, my heart doing a little flip. “We’ll talk more later.”
After I put the phone down, Carl came over and gave me a big hug. I was surprised because we weren’t a hugging family. My mother had given me one this morning and now I had gotten a second one on the same day.
“I guess I should thank you for finding me in the bathtub. To be honest, when I first became conscious in the ER, I was furious and I could think of nothing except my anger and my feeling of failure. I’m not angry anymore, but I still feel like I’m a loser. I can’t say I won’t ever feel depressed again, because the doctor says I probably will, but I can promise you, if I ever feel suicidal again, I’ll tell you. No more nasty surprises. Thank you for finding me in time.”
He smiled and said, “My gosh, Mitch, I think that’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make. For my part I’m just very sorry that I didn’t stand up for you a long time ago. I knew what Father was doing to you and I kept my mouth shut, because to me he was kind and proud of me and I didn’t dare take the chance of losing that. I guess Mother told you about the cops coming and what we said. I’m glad now that it’s out in the open, and I’m ashamed and so, so sorry I never said anything.”
By then, we were both in tears. I reached over and hugged him again, saying, “Do you think maybe we can start again?”
As we hugged, and with his head on my shoulder, he said quietly into my ear, “Yeah, I’d like that, Little Brother.”
We continued to hug as we talked. He started by saying, “Mother told me you don’t think you can live in the house with Father anymore, and neither she nor I can blame you for that. Do you have any idea yet where you could go?”
“Not really. I’d live homeless before I went back to live with him.”
“We won’t let it come to that. Let’s work on it. Maybe I have a friend who could take you in for a while. We’ll see.”
Soon after he left, dinner came. It was the usual hospital food coming from a steam table probably someplace in the basement of the hospital. But I was hungry, so I gobbled it all down, thinking that it certainly wasn’t as good as the food at the Rajavis!”
Just as an orderly was taking away my dinner tray, the Rajavis came into the room. Mrs. Rajavi said quickly, “We know you want to talk with Roshan alone, so we’ll only stay a very few minutes. We just had to see for ourselves that you really are better and to tell you that we all love you. Please do take care of yourself, and if you’re ever feeling like that again, come and talk to us.”
I told her that I would, and we chatted a few more minutes before his parents left, telling Roshan that they would meet him in the lobby.
This was the first time I had seen Roshan since we’d been mugged. Like me, he still had a lot of bruises. His right arm was in a sling. His lips were very swollen.
The first thing Roshan did after they left was to hug me with his good arm. “Wow,” I said. “That’s the third hug I’ve had today. I’m not used to getting hugs from anybody, but I love them.”
We grinned at each other, and then Roshan took my hand and holding it palm up looked closely at my scars. Except for the doctors, he was the first person to see them and I could see he was crying. That brought tears to my eyes and we both hugged, tears falling silently down our cheeks.
When we broke the hug, Roshan sat down and said, “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“Okay,” I began. “First, are you gay?”
“My kiss didn’t tell you that?”
“I had to be sure.”
Roshan looked into my eyes. “When I took you behind the stores that night and kissed you, I was scared shitless. I was afraid you might be disgusted and hit me, but you weren’t, and you didn’t, so I’ve kind of assumed that you’re gay too. Am I right?”
I nodded. “Okay. Here’s my second question. Do your parents know you’re gay?”
“Yup,” he smiled proudly, “and they’re fine with it. Of course, Mother’s a little sad that she probably won’t have grandchildren, but she’s accepted that. They both say that they only want what is right and best for me.”
I heaved a sigh and said, “So far, so good. Now, according to what you said on the phone, you truly love me. Is that right?”
“Oh yes! I was scared that you wouldn’t ever be able to love me!”
“I have, ever since the first day I saw you, but I realized later that that was because you were so good-looking, and I didn’t even really know you. That shallow, first-look love has grown ever since and now it’s very real. What I can’t understand is why you took to me in the first place. I’m skinny, I’m ugly, I’m not terribly smart, I’m a loser, and I’m usually depressed. I just don’t understand what you see in me.”
“Well, first of all, I don’t think love is at all logical, so don’t look for anything rational in it. More important than that, I don’t know if you’ve looked lately, but you’ve begun to fill out. I always check that out in the locker room. Next, I don’t think you’re ugly at all. I think you’re really very cute in a very all-American way. I wouldn’t expect you or want you to look Iranian. And I don’t think you’re a loser at all. I think you’re fine just the way you are. As for not being smart, that’s not true. I don’t believe it. I think you are smart, and what you’ve learned about butterflies proves it. I think being depressed and hurt by your father has made it hard for you to do as well in school as maybe you can. And even if you can’t do better in school there are a lot of different kinds of intelligence. I certainly see it when you’re working with your butterflies and I think you could be a really good scientist someday. So, don’t worry about that. As for being depressed, I’m just not gonna let you be that way anymore.”
I’d never heard anyone talk about me so positively before. When he stopped, he hugged me. It was too much for me to take. So while we hugged, I cried and cried. It was the beginning of my getting rid of my negative emotions and the beginning of my learning to like myself.
“Now,” he said when we finally stopped. “You need to know that just about everybody in school knows what you tried to do. Many of them have said to me to tell you that they’re really sorry and they hope you’ll feel better. Mom has said that, when you go back to school, kids may not know how to act with you at first. So just try to act normally and let them see that they can too.
“One more thing. I don’t know if anybody has told you, but the police caught the four boys who beat us up. They were stupid enough to brag about it in school, and after you did what you did, the police got a lot of calls turning those four boys in. While you’ve been here, they were arrested and were arraigned in juvenile court. They were given community service to do, there’s a retraining order on them mandating they keep far away from us, and they’re on probation. Oh yes, and the bicycles have been returned.”
I thanked him. Then I took hold of him and kissed him on his cheeks and forehead. We couldn’t really kiss yet because his lips were still recovering from the beating. When I stopped, I put a finger very gently on his lips and felt his scar. “I’m so sorry if the scars will affect your playing the flute. You play it so beautifully,” I said.
He thanked me and said that he’d been having cello lessons from his father for years. “I still have a long way to go, but I’m making progress, so I could just switch instruments.”
At that point, the nurse came in and told Roshan that it was time for him to leave. He asked for just a moment more, she nodded and left. Then he hugged me hard as I kissed him happily.
When we finally stopped, he asked, “I know the doors are locked. How do I get out?”
I laughed and said, “I’m sure one of the nurses at the desk will let you out. It’s just me they won’t let out. But they will soon.”
He waved from the door and walked down the hall to the end of the corridor as I watched. When he got to the door the nurse buzzed it. He opened the door, turned, blew me a kiss, and was gone.
Eventually one of the nurses came and settled me in for the night. She said that the doctor had ordered a cutback on one of my medications, and since I had had a full dose this morning, she wouldn’t give me any that evening.
When she was gone, I smiled in the dark. I reached for the box of tissues, pushed down my covers, took hold of my cock, and pictured Roshan naked and beside me. It didn’t take long. When I finished, I cleaned myself with the tissues and threw them away before I lay back, smiling, and soon dropped off to sleep.