What My Best Friend Did by Lucy Dawson

in my ears, like I’m surfacing, “but it’s a concern that it happened at all. It shows how strong the drugs she took are, that they’ve had a very real effect on her body.” Her eyebrows knit together in concern and she waits for us to digest what she’s saying. “She wasn’t aware of what was happening, though. It won’t have caused her any distress.” She pauses again, as if that knowledge is somehow supposed to make a difference. It doesn’t.
    “Is she all right now?” Tom asks the only thing that really matters.
    “We’ve managed to stabilize her.”
    He looks at the nurse bravely. “Could it happen again?”
    “It might, yes. She’s young and strong though, that’s very much in her favor. I’ll come and get you just as soon as they’re done in there, take you back through, OK?” She smiles reassuringly, calm with experience and being older than us—all of about thirty-five, I’d say. “You know, this bit is actually harder for you than it is for her.”
    I want to laugh at that, albeit hysterically. I watch her enviously as she leaves the room; smoothing down her subtly highlighted hair, stepping neatly and nonchalantly out of the nightmare.
    Tom stands up, reaches into his pocket and pulls out some change. Then he walks over and slots it into the machine, placing a cup under a spout that dispenses not even enough brown liquid to half fill it. Then he empties three packets of sugar and stirs it lightly with a plastic stick.
    “Try and drink this,” he says, coming back and handing it to me, “it’ll help.” The tea is the color of watered-down tar and is giving off the bitter aroma of burnt tires, but it’s warm, so I huddle over it and even take a small sip. He collapses down next to me, drained by the dissipating adrenaline.
    We sit in silence for a moment more, then he says, “You did tell them everything about Gretchen? Didn’t you?” His mind is still circling.
    “What, that this isn’t the first time she’s tried to do this?”
    It’s like forcing a door marked Private. I feel invasive and voyeuristic discussing such intimate and painful secrets from Gretchen’s past like you might say, “Did you mention she’s allergic to aspirin?” I know Tom doesn’t want to do it any more than I do.
    He nods, with difficulty. “So they know that …”
    “Tom,” I say, my head swimming. “I told them everything I could.” Which, strictly speaking, is true.
    “I’m not having a go, Al, I’m just trying to think of something, anything we can do that might help her.”
    Watching him desperately struggle with trying to make sense of this is breaking me. I put my cup down and reach for a magazine, setting it on my lap, but tears are welling up in my eyes again and the model’s smiley face goes all blurry. They threaten to splash over, down on to the ancient cover, which is undulating like sand dunes but is as crisp and brittle as old bone—a thousand different liquids having been spilled and dried on it.
    Tom’s hand gently appears and removes the magazine, as he reaches an arm around my shoulder and draws me to him. As I release a sob on his shoulder he says, “Shhhhh” quietly, and, “It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.”
    But I don’t see. I don’t see how this can be all right in the slightest and him soothing me is almost more than I can bear. After everything I’ve put him through … as if that wasn’t enough, now this. What kind of person am I?
    “Her mum and dad,” Tom says, obviously trying to think rationally, “they really should be here. Did Bailey …” He says his name stiffly.
    “I expect so. I’m sure he would have done.”
    I can feel him tensing up, his arm tightening around me. “Well, you say that, but—”
    “Tom!” I exclaim bleakly, which he totally misinterprets.
    “Don’t ‘Tom’ me!” he bursts angrily. “If he’d just got to her when he said he was going to”—he releases me—“he might have found her earlier!