“I begged her to stop taking them, to get help, told her I’d take her to narcotics anonymous—anything. I even found out who her dealer was and threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t stop selling to her. It only pissed her off once she found out, and she just got another dealer. I threatened to go to her parents, and she threatened to kill herself again if I did. I was juggling so much with school, my father, and the stress from trying to keep up. Whatever love Emma and I had for each other was dissolving; she wasn’t the girl I had fallen for, and I didn’t know how to help her.
“Finally, I reached out to her sister and begged her to talk to her. She was able to get through to her in a way I hadn’t, and we’d grown closer while trying to help Emma.”
“So she was clean for a while?” I ask.
Mason shrugs with a head shake. “No, she just got better at disguising it. I tried to be there for her, but everything had put a strain on our relationship. It was the end of our sophomore year when my frat house was having their last party before the summer. She didn’t want to go, but I had to, and after a few hours, I was pretty drunk. The year had taken a toll on me, and I went for the beer and alcohol hard. By the time I checked my phone that night, I had six missed calls from her, three missed calls from her sister, eight text messages, and three voicemails.”
“Jesus. What happened?” I curl my feet under my body, inching closer to him.
“She texted that she was done, couldn’t go on living like this, and wanted to put both of us out of our misery. Claimed I didn’t love her anymore so what was the point of living. It was stuff she had said before when she was doped up, so my first reaction was that she was losing her shit again. Her sister left me a voice message to go check on her since she wasn’t in town. I reassured her that I would, but then a fight broke out at the party, and I got distracted for half an hour trying to break them up and clean up their mess.
“By the time I listened to Emma’s earlier voice message, it was an hour later, and it didn’t sound like the usual messages she left me when she had been high like before. I texted her that I was coming over, but she never texted back. I couldn’t drive for shit, so I stole someone’s bicycle and raced over there as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure if she was just sleeping it off, but my gut told me something was wrong.”
I blink away the tears in my eyes. I’ve never seen Mason like this before. His shoulders slumped, his eyes sad, and his hands in fists.
Swallowing hard, I brace myself for what’s coming next.
“I found her in her room, unconscious and unresponsive. Her eyes were half open, her body stiff. I knew CPR, so I started compressions right away and tried to revive her, but I knew I was too late. As soon as I saw an empty baggie on the nightstand, I knew she’d taken a crap ton of pills.” Mason keeps his head and eyes lowered, and I can tell how painful this is for him to repeat.
“You don’t have to continue, Mason…” I tell him softly.
He finally looks up at me. “I want to share her story with you. I’ve kept it inside for so long.”
“Okay.” I nod.
“I called 911, but it didn’t matter because she had stopped breathing long before I even arrived. They pronounced her dead at four fifteen in the morning, and once the autopsy results came in, we learned she had overdosed on so many pills, her heart stopped within twenty minutes. She had taken more than just her usual opioids too. When she left the voice messages on my phone, she’d already swallowed them all. She’d called her sister to tell her she loved her, but it was the letter they found a week later that destroyed me for good.”
I can’t even begin to imagine the pain he went through, so I don’t say anything as he takes a break.
“She blamed me, said I didn’t want her anymore, believed I had fallen out of love with her and was seeing someone else. She popped pills to relieve the pain I was causing her when they were what caused the wedge between us in the first place. I begged her…I fucking begged her to stop.”
Mason’s face falls in his hands as his voice strains, and I can no longer keep my distance. I wrap my arm over his hunched back and lean my head on his shoulder, trying to offer comfort anyway I can.