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There’s a numbness that permeates every inch of Charlie’s being. After untold hours - days? - of crying, sobs wracking his body and leaving him with puffy eyes and a headache that thunders in his temples, he has suddenly run out of tears. He has purged every emotion from his body and now he is an empty shell.
Staring blankly at a wall.
Lying listlessly in bed.
Shuffling down the hall to pour a glass of water or use the toilet.
It doesn’t feel like he exists in the world - he’s not real anymore - and he doesn’t understand why he even continues with such base functions as eating, and drinking, and peeing.
If Nick doesn’t exist in the world then neither does he. But no, Nick’s body is still there. Charlie saw it. He saw it at the hospital, laid out on a bed, cold and still. Charlie wishes his own body could mirror his beloved’s, become still and undemanding, without needs that he is forced to fulfill.
It’s not that he does not want to live. It’s that he doesn’t know how. Charlie doesn’t understand a world in which his husband of 25 years, the person he has shared his days with, his highs and lows with, for more than two-thirds of his life isn’t right there beside him. He doesn’t know how to go about his days alone when for nearly four decades his plans have been entwined with Nick’s.
But they aren’t anymore. Nick doesn’t have plans. He won’t go to work, or cook dinner, or walk PB & J. Charlie thinks momentarily about the dogs, a dull sense of worry permeating his fog until he remembers that Michael had taken them for a long walk and fed them while Tori had sat with Charlie, sitting silently beside him and stroking his hair while he cried.
How had that been only hours ago? The digital clock on the bedside tells him it is 3:47 AM. Charlie isn’t sure when he last slept or for how long. The time between then and now is both moments and years.
He thinks it has been two days. Thinks that Nick died on Wednesday morning and that it is Friday now. Tori and Michael are the only people he has seen. Sarah will arrive today. Charlie doesn’t know how he will bear it.
How will he look into the loving face of his 75-year-old mother-in-law who has outlived her youngest son? She shouldn’t have to go through this. Charlie’s stomach lurches at the memory of Sarah’s wail though the phone when Charlie had called her, sobbing, to tell her. He dashes to the toilet, gagging and bringing up watery bile because there’s nothing else for his body to purge.
Charlie needs to eat. He knows he needs to eat. He knows how easily this kind of stress and the disruption to his routines could send him back into disordered patterns that he has fought to leave in the past. But he can’t even think about food. He doesn’t feel hungry. He doesn’t feel anything.
***
Sarah pulls Charlie into her arms the moment she sees him, tears spilling onto her weathered cheeks. Her partner, Thomas, follows a few steps behind her with their bags. He, too, hugs Charlie, his expression sad and concerned as he pulls back and silently claps his hands against Charlie’s shoulder.
Together they make their way into the house, Sarah and Thomas setting up in the spare room where they always stay. With other people in the house it is harder to be numb. Harder to cease to exist. The dogs are excited by the visitors, demanding attention and fusses, which they are granted, though perhaps with less exuberance than usual.
“There are my girls,” Sarah coos at PB & J, smiling through the tears that never seem to fully stop tracking down her face as she pets their soft heads.
Thomas sets about making them all tea, and he digs up some biscuits and fruit and sets them out, the apples cut into slices as if prepared for a child. It helps though; Charlie manages an oat biscuit and a couple of pieces of apple, and he says “thank you” to Thomas in his croaky voice that has been used for nothing but sobs in days.
Tori and Michael show up again in the evening. Michael has a foil-covered lasagna in his hands, and the five of them eat together, sharing food and hugs and words of comfort. Charlie feels the empty seat at the table acutely. They’ve had dinners like this before, but Nick should be there by his side. He should be jumping up and doing a silly little dance step as he moves towards the kitchen to get another bottle of wine or energetically telling a story, hands moving expansively in emphasis or demonstration. But he is in cold storage, rather than here in the warm embrace of his loved ones where he belongs.
Charlie misses Nick’s large, warm hand wrapping around his own. Misses the casual arm slung across the back of his chair, fingers brushing his shoulder where there was often a bruise made with dedicated intent by his husband’s mouth.
A sob catches in his throat at the thought that the fading purple that currently marks his skin will never be renewed. There are eyes on him when he looks up. Sarah gives him a sad, understanding smile, but Tori looks away quickly. Charlie thinks he sees tears in her eyes.
***
Even though the house is full of love and comfort, Charlie’s bed is cold and empty. Here, he cannot avoid the gaping void where Nick should be. It is impossible when he rolls over and his hand intuitively reaches out, seeking the warm body that should be beside him and instead finds only cool sheets.
When he sleeps - in short, fitful bursts - he dreams of Nick. Sometimes he dreams that Nick is there beside him, curled up against his back. Others he wakes, drenched in sweat, from dreams about Nick scared and in pain as he waits for the ambulance, or cold and lifeless, skin tinged slightly blue where he lies on a hospital bed.
Charlie sits in the bathroom after one such dream, splashing his face with water to wash the clammy feeling from his skin and waiting for his body to stop shaking. He can’t shake the image from his mind. Nick, his beautiful husband, always so full of life and joy and love, had looked so wrong lying there with his face blank, skin more than typically pale, no colour painted across his cheeks.
Charlie had held his cold hand, trailed his fingertips across the freckles that stood out too starkly on his bloodless skin. He had smoothed down a stray strand of blond hair the way he has so many times before. He hadn’t stayed long; he couldn’t stand to see his love this way. He wanted to remember the bright, vibrant, alive person Nick had been, not this grim simulacrum.
But he couldn’t forget. That horrible image was seared into his brain, overriding all of the years of good memories. He hoped that it wouldn’t always be like that - that one day this one memory wouldn’t hold so much more space than it deserved - but right now it was too fresh. The wound was still raw and gaping. Even when it began to heal, it would take time for the edges to slowly knit themselves back together. And he would never be the same; this wound would leave a scar, long and raised and tender to the touch.
It wouldn’t be as easy to hide as the ancient scars on his arms, but Charlie didn’t think he wanted to hide it. He didn’t want to pretend that he was okay. That he would ever be okay.
He would forever be missing a piece of himself. Even if he lived for another 40 years (he couldn’t fathom living as long without Nick as he had lived with him), even if he fell in love again, found joy again … a part of him had died along with Nick, and it would always be missing.
He would never be the Charlie Spring who hadn’t sat next to Nick in form that January. The one who grew up alongside his best friend, married him, had a life and a home and a series of deeply loved dogs with him.
He could never be that Charlie. But for all the pain - the way his heart hurt in his chest and his head refused to stop hurting and he felt like his world had been picked up and shaken violently - he would never wish to be. He might never again be the Charlie who had Nick by his side everyday, but it would be worse to have never been that Charlie at all.