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- It was almost 4 am when my phone began to dance, buzzing and skittering across the table, desperate for my attention. I had only been asleep for an hour or two, otherwise it would have taken something more extreme to get me up. It still took three long buzzes, followed by a yelp and a crash as the phone fell on my cat, for me to get to my feet and answer. I flipped the phone open and saw the name that I had considered deleting over and over in the three years since graduation. I mashed my thumb at the green button beneath the screen and brought the phone to my ear.
- “Peter,” I said, closing my eyes and lowering myself back onto the bed, “do you know what time it is?”
- There was silence on the other line, and for a moment I thought he had hung up right when I answered. I pulled the phone away to check but it said the call was still active. I only caught the last part of something he said as I put it back to my ear.
- “-for bothering you,” he said. “I’ll let you go back to sleep.”
- I sighed and rubbed my eyes.
- “No, I’m awake now. It’s alright.”
- The line grew silent again, but I didn’t bother to check the phone. He would either say what he had called to say or he would lose his nerve. I wasn’t angry at him, but if he thought I would do small talk that early in the morning, after three years of silence, he didn’t know me as well as either of us had once thought.
- “Hey,” he finally said. “This is going to sound weird.”
- “I’ve yet to have a call after two in the morning that didn’t.”
- He might have laughed, or maybe he coughed. I wasn’t really sure.
- “Ian, I’m dying.”
- “Wow,” I said, wondering if that sounded wrong. “That’s terrible. How long do you have?”
- “I don’t know. I went down the vein, which I heard is the way you’re supposed to do it, but I never really looked up how long it’s supposed to take. I’m starting to get pretty cold, though, so I don’t think it will be much longer.”
- “Oh,” I said, my eyes opening to stare through the darkness at my ceiling.
- “Yeah.”
- Water was sloshing in the background.
- “Aren’t you going to say anything,” he asked. I realized I’d been quiet for a couple of minutes.
- “Do you want me to?”
- “I don’t know. I just want someone to talk to while this happens. I’m not afraid of being dead; I want that. It’s the dying that’s scaring me.”
- “Well, I don’t really know what to say.”
- I sighed.
- “Why me, I guess?”
- There was a long silence, broken by a few faint splashes.
- “You’re the only person I could think of who wouldn’t make me feel bad about this.”
- “Why are you doing it?”
- “Because I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
- It was a perfectly acceptable answer, but it wasn’t something I had ever expected Peter to say.
- “And you’re sure?” I said. “You’re sure this is what you want? It isn’t too late to call an ambulance.”
- “Yeah,” he said softly. I wasn’t sure if he was just calm or if he didn’t have the strength to be any louder. “Yeah, this is what I want.”
- I nodded even though he couldn’t see it.
- “Well I’m here,” I said. “You can talk to me if you’ve got anything to say, but otherwise I’m just going to be here. Is that alright?”
- “Yeah. Thank you,” he whispered, and I was sure he was getting weaker.
- I kept the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the ways his breathing changed. Every now and then there was a splash as he shifted in what I assumed was his tub. Then his breathing got slower and there weren't as many splashes. Then, after a while, I stopped hearing anything. My ear was hot under the phone, so I pulled it away and closed it. I placed it on my nightstand and laid there, staring at the glowing numbers on my clock until I drifted out of consciousness.
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