Page 95 of Light Up
“You did say come, right?” Corey asked.
To be able to laugh was everything.
Tal cleaned them both up and they settled in bed.
“Do you remember everything yet?” Corey asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Can I tell you something you don’t know? Something we didn‘t discuss.”
Tal swallowed hard. “About why you were sectioned? You don’t have to.”
“I don’t want your friends to know and you not. It feels wrong. I would have told you, eventually. If we were… Well… Eventually. I would.”
“Okay.”
Corey stared up at the ceiling. “It was December. I was nineteen and a student at the Royal College of Music. And happy. My mum and dad would have been so proud of me. “
He gave such a heavy sigh, Tal tensed.
“Raj and Gabe, two friends from school, came down to London to see me. Raj was really clever. He was studying medicine at Cambridge. Gabe was doing sports science at Loughborough. We’d had one drink in a pub and we were heading for a nightclub when a car mounted the pavement and came straight at us. I… I tried to push Raj out of the way. He was the closest to me but…” Corey shuddered.
Tal took hold of his hand.
“The car swerved at the last minute and I’d pushed Raj into its path. He died. Gabe lost his legs and I got a skull fracture.”
Tal swallowed at the lump in his throat.
Corey turned to face him. “You can imagine how their parents felt. There was a witness, a woman, who said I’d tried to save Raj, but in that split second of pushing him the wrong way, I killed him.”
“Oh Corey.”
“He might have died anyway if I hadn’t touched him. I’ll never know. I fell apart in hospital. A psychiatrist told me I needed to let go of my guilt, that everything would be all right in the end. I knew I’d never be all right. Not for the rest of my life. How could I be? I should have been dead, not Raj. Everything was so dark then. I had some sort of amnesic breakdown. I think it was the only way I could cope. I stopped talking, eating or drinking. I was put on a drip. My brain couldn’t cope with thinking about anything. All I wanted to do was…die. That’s when I was sectioned.
“It was horrible. When I did start thinking, my head was so full that I ran too far the other way. I was diagnosed with hyper anxiety disorder which meant I couldn’t calm down, not mentally or physically. I felt compelled to run, to swim, to clean stuff, to talk, to walk…anything to keep me occupied. I didn’t sleep until my body physically shut down and I collapsed. I went from one extreme to the other over and over.”
Tal was horror-struck. He didn’t know what to say so he said nothing, just clung to Corey’s hand.
“There was a lot of therapy. Well-meaning doctors trying to persuade me it wasn’t my fault when it clearly was. Of course I hadn’t meant to do it, but it made no difference. It was my fault. It was me who had the idea about going to London. Me who decided on the pub, then the club and the route we walked. I pushed my friend the wrong way and his parents never forgave me. Nor did Gabe and his parents. Sports science ended. Having no legs shouldn’t have meant the end of all Gabe’s dreams but for a nineteen-year-old, it did. Gabe no longer wanted anything to do with me.
“By the time I came out of hospital, not mended but less broken, I didn’t want to go back to university. I didn’t feel I deserved to have that life. I went to live where no one knew me, not that anyone wanted to keep in touch, and I started my life again.”
Tal pressed his face into Corey’s hair. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. It was a terrible thing to happen. Thank you for telling me.”
“Apart from doctors, I’ve never told anyone before.”
“No one?” Tal pulled back to look at him.
“I didn’t really want close friends. It felt safer. Lonely but safer. How could anyone like me, trust me, want to be around me?”
“How did your uncle react?”
“He thought I was drunk and had stumbled into Raj, that was why he’d fallen in front of the car. He didn’t want to accept I’d physically pushed him. Being drunk was more acceptable. Huh. He told me he never wanted me to talk about it again. He only came once when I was in hospital. Though I didn’t care. He didn’t love me. I was an obligation. At least he gave me a roof over my head.”
“God, Corey!”
“Are you sorry I’ve told you now?” he whispered.
