Meeting with Patrick

As much as Kelley wanted to know what was bothering Patrick she also wanted to get some much needed sleep. For some reason the same dream kept running through her field of sleep for the past week or so. She was familiar with the dream, she should be, she has been having the same dream since she was fifteen. However it normally only happened in late summer, towards the end of August when the sun was out and the clouds were crawling across the sky. She never had the dream in the seasons prior to summer, which she thought would make an interesting case study however she really did not have the energy, or patience to try and see what that meant.

She decided that she really would not be getting any sleep, and try as hard as she could, she could not make the conversation she just had with Patrick a dream. She was still holding the receiver in her hand, and the sound of dial tone was blaring through the ear piece. She swun her legs around and let the cold hardwood floor wake her up even further, chasing the idea of sleep right out the window. She grabbed her favorite baseball cap from the hook on the back of the bedroom door and went to the bathroom to splash her face and brush her teeth.

She grabbed her cell phone and after locking her apartment door behind herself, went down the stairs and out to her car. Her breath was pluming out in front of her as she half walked, half ran to her car. The cold night air made the idea of sleep a distant, faded memory of a dream that was once so attainable. If the cold floor of her apartment, or the cold night air had not woken her up, the blaringly loud radio that made her nearly fly through the roof of her car certainly did. Apparently she had been listening to a good song last night when she got home and forgot to turn the volume down before turning off the car. With her heart beating a million miles a minute in her chest she turned the car out of her parkinglot and headed down the road to Matt's to meet up with her best friend Patrick, who was she was sure, waiting there for her already.

When she arrived at Matt's she saw Patrick's car in the parking lot, she pulled into the spot next to his and turned off the car, remembering to turn the radio down this time. She stepped out into the cold night air, watched her breath plume again and went to the front door of the restaurant as quickly as possible. The dream was still on her mind as she walked into the warmth and light of Matt's, a twenty-four hour restaurant that catered mostly to the "bar rush" and night-owls at this time of night. In the smoking section she could see Patrick in a booth waiting for her, he had his usual cup of coffee in front of him and across the table was a glass of Diet Coke, with a straw, waiting for her. She was oddly touched by this tonight, for some reason, however this was common. Who ever showed up first would order the drink for the other, or the server would remember them from their weekly visits and have it waiting for them. Being one of the night owl crowd, Kelley had found out, was also being known by the wait staff. It was nice to go some where and be known, it made her feel welcomed.

"Hey Patrick," she said as she slid into the booth across from him. She was setting her purse down and was looking at him, right away she could tell that everything was not right with him. She was wondering what could be making him feel the way that he was, nothing ever seemed to shake him up. She remembered the last time that she saw him like this and that was only because his mother, father and sister had been killed in a car crash, now that she could see how he was feeling she became really concerned for him. "My God Patrick, what is wrong with you?"

He raised his head just enough for her to see into his eyes. She was able to see that both of them were severely bloodshot, he had large, dark bags and circles under each eye, his face was sullen and slack. He looked like he had not slept in a few days. His fingers were jittery and his speech was broken, in short he looked like he was suffering a psychotic break.

"No..Note...Nothing. Nothing. Why? Why? Why do you...do you ask me this?", each time he paused in his speech his face twitched and his eye would blink open and closed rapidly. After he was done talking he let out a small little noise that sounded like a combination whimper and laugh.

Kelley felt chills run up and down her back as soon as he opened his mouth to answer her. She had never seen a person like this, read about for school, but never encountered an individual in person suffering psychosis like this. She was terrified and full of sorrow for Patrick. "Patrick, when is the last time you looked at yourself?"

He immediately looked down at his fingers as he started to rub his forefinger and thumb together rapidly, so fast it sounded like sand paper on wood. His eyes had turned into slits, his eyes were sparkling black diamonds behind them. Kelley could see enough of them to know that he was hiding something, but what was it, and would it make any sense if she could get him to tell her what was on his mind?

When he didn't answer after thirty seconds, instead he just sat there looking at his fingers as he rubbed them, Kelley decided to try again. "Patrick? Did you hear me? I was wondering when was the last time you looked into a mirror?"

This time he looked up at her and showed her his palms, they had swollen, red, infected lines down the middle of them. "Right before I did this to myself," he sounded like a child (psychotic child that is) that was showing a drawing they had just done to their parent.

"Oh God Patrick!" Kelley could tell that they had been gashed wide open and then had been left to heal on their own, or rather they tried to heal on their own. Both of his hands were criss-crossed lines of jagged red all swollen, the skin looked as if it was ready to bust open along the lines. She instinctively reached out and held his hands in hers, all she needed to do was look at them for less than a second before she decided they had to go to a hospital. "I have to get you to a hospital right away. These need to be treated."

It was as if he broke out of his psychotic episode for the briefest of moments when he heard the word hospital, he reacted quickly. He pulled his hands out of hers and set them neatly on his lap, he looked at her with a calm and sedate face, his mouth stopped its twitching up and down as did his eye. He looked at her and simply said, "No. If I go there I will be killed. You can't make me go."

Kelley dismissed this last dialogue as craziness and stood up, grabbing his hands out of his lap and nearly dragged him out of the booth. She was surprised at how much she was able to move him considering that he was nearly a foot taller than her and had fifty more pounds of muscle on him. The surprise abated however when she looked at her friend for the first time and saw how much of him had wasted away. She then realized in her mind that the last time she had seen Patrick, actually seen him in person, was over two weeks ago. She didn't waste any time thinking about that, instead she simply pulled on his hands and dragged her friend out of the restaurant.

The waitress had called the paramedics as soon as she had seen the obviously homeless, psychotic rambler walk in through the doors. It wasn't until she recognized his leather jacket that she decided to let him sit in a booth, away from anyone else in the restaurant. She knew it was the nice young man that came in here with the stunningly beautiful, yet distant, girl every week and sat and talked and played cards to pass the time away. She had always thought that they would make such a cute couple, but it seemed like they deliberately stayed away from the thought of it, she always wanted to know why. She remembered that they always drank coffee for him, and Coke for her. She led him to the table and got the drinks, when she got into the kitchen she called the paramedics right away.

As Kelley tried to pull her screaming, kicking, swearing friend outside to the waiting ambulance Linda, the server, came over and grabbed Patrick's legs. "I recognized him from his jacket Sweetie, although at first I didn't know it was him. Not everyone has a jacket like this," she said while using her chin to point to the faded leather jacket with a winged dragon on the back of it. Linda looked at Kelley and told her, "I called the bus when I set him down at the table."

The paramedics came in when they saw the women struggling with Patrick through the window of the front door. Two men came running in and took over for Kelley and Linda. Patrick was subdued and then placed onto a stretcher by the two men, Kelley noticed the odd pairing of the men. One of the men was tall, over six feet, and looked as if he was built like a dump truck. He had huge shoulders that nearly stretched the seams of his uniform shirt to shreds, the sleeve of the shirt ended in the middle of his bicep it looked ready to burst and shred. His skin was a dark black and it seemed to glow under the lights of the restaurant. The other paramedic was a short white man that had a muscular build to him, but he looked like a child next to the mountain of a man across from him. Neither of the men spoke to the women, they just loaded Patrick onto the stretcher and then rolled him towards the door.

Kelley could hear the men talking to each other, neither one of them paid any attention to her as she was walking behind them asking, "Is he going to be alright?" She had always been a girl that was able to tell a person's character just by looking at them, or by shaking their hand, as soon as she saw these two paramedics come into Matt's she immediately got a bad feeling. She was not going to let Patrick go with them alone, not without a fight anyway. When neither one of them answered her she ran to the front of the stretcher and stopped in front of the men, forcing them to stop. When the shorter white man bumped into her they finally stopped. He turned around to see what he ran into and was looking right into her blazing eyes, "I asked if he was going to be ok?"

The man opened his mouth to say something, Kelley was more than ready to answer anything that was thrown at her, however before he could mouth any word a booming, authoritative voice came at her from the giant black papramedic, "MOVE!"

Kelley stood where she was however her reaction was as if she had just been slapped. Her eyes had narrowed to slits, she could feel the blood rushing to her face and knew that she had red blotches on her cheeks, she silently damned her fair skin. "Excuse me?"

She thought for sure he would change his tone, or try making her move in another way, however he said the same thing, only added a few words. "I SAID MOVE YO' ASS!" This time shoved the end of the stretcher after he spoke and ended up pushing the white man into Kelley, that was the only reason why she moved.

As the paramedics moved past her and loaded Patrick into the back of the ambulance Kelley was on her feet, furiously she yelled at the paramedics, "YOU SONS OF BITCHES! HOW DARE YOU KNOCK ME OVER? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

They shut the double doors of the ambulance closed, not before she got one more look at Patrick. His body looked so thin and gaunt under the blanket, his skin was gray and green in spots. She was able to see his face before the doors were shut, she will never forget the way his eyes looked. It was as if the iris of each eye had turned completely red, he had bags that seemed to sag down past the bridge of his nose, it almost seemed like his eyes would slide right out of his head. She was not sure, but she thought she could see a smile on his face, although it was not a smile of pleasure, more a grimace of pain. Before the asshole paramedics said anything to her she whispered out loud at the sight of Patrick, "Jesus Christ."

It was then that she heard the wailing of a siren, she saw the flashing of lights go past her peripheal vision, and then she turned her head in the direction of the lights. She saw an ambulance driving full speed towards the exit off of the double highway in front of Matt's. She was now thoroughly confused, weren't the paramedics already here? That made her turn her attention back to the assholes that knocked her down. Kelley was never a girl that would have been classified as lady-like, she could swear with the best of them and she could handle herself if needed, in other words she was not afraid to kick ass and cuss someone out. She looked right at the big paramedic and noticed the gun sticking out of his hand, pointed at her. "What the fuck is going on here?", she asked right before she heard a popping sound.

She felt a hot stinging sensation in her shoulder before she felt the hard cold pavement knock the wind out of her. As she lay gasping for breath in the cold night air, tears streaming down her face, the only thought going through her head at that moment was that the little bastard just punched her in the shoulder. What else would make her arm feel the way it does right now, once she could breathe she would take a look at it after she kicked him right square in the balls. The two men got into the cab of the ambulance and after starting the engine floored the gas pedal and screamed out of the parking lot, about ten seconds before the real ambulance showed up. Kelly had gravel kicked into her face as she was trying to get any kind of oxygen to her brain, her face was red, the cords of her neck were standing out. She did not feel any of the small pebbles as they hit her in the face, making it bleed as they dug into her skin.

After what seemed like an eternity she was able to get her lungs to allow air into them, the first breath she was able to take felt like she swallowed fire. She could have sworn that her throat was lined with sand paper it was so raw. She was afraid that she might cough up some blood later. After the coughing spasm subsided she was able to tilt her head up towards the twinkling stars of the heavens and feel the cold, cold air as it rushed over her tear stained face. Just as she was standing up from her kneeling position the other ambulance from the highway turned into the parking lot and rushed up to her. It was evident to her that the two men that jumped out of the ambulance were professionals and that she could trust them. As soon as they learned she was not the person they were supposed to pick up one of them went into Matt's. He returned rather quickly with a stunned, confused look on his face. Kelly lowered the oxygen mask that the other medic placed on her and croaked, "Give me a minute and I will tell you everything."