CW: death, blood, grief

I've been on the phone with Joseph for three years.

I keep him on speaker. That way, he can talk or listen to others, depending on his mood. We had almost forty people on the phone at his funeral. No one spoke to him; no one knew why I wore his phone around my neck. He didn’t want me to say.

Now, everywhere I go, I keep him in my jacket pocket. The phone-necklace attracted too much attention, and was gaudy–very gaudy. Tacky even, we realized, Joseph and I.

Last Saturday, I decided it had been a while since we'd all gotten together, so I invited some people over to play board games at me and my girlfriend Kaylee's apartment. Kaylee works odd hours at the hospital, night shifts mostly, and I might go days without seeing her. When she got home Saturday, I asked, "Have you talked to Joseph in a while?" She insisted that she does all the time.

“You say hello when you come in,” I said, “but do you really talk?” I'd taken out some board games, but after a couple of hours, no one had shown, and I was getting pretty upset. I thought that surely Pat would come.

Pat is Joseph's widow.

Pat drove up. He burst in without knocking and said, "Where is he?" I pointed to the phone, which, for the occasion, I’d set on the coffee table. Pat nearly banged his shins on this table bursting in like that. "Let me talk to him," he said, snatched up the phone, ran down my hall, and slammed our bedroom door.

I heard him shouting for several minutes, things like: "Where the fuck are you?" and "Tell him—" presumably me "—to stop doing this!"

With this vacant look, Pat came back and replaced the phone, just tossing it onto the table. He'd not hung up, I saw, miserable with thanks. Thus relieved, I carried the phone like nitroglycerine back down the hall and laid it on Kaylee and I’s bed, then slid down the wall, gasping. I exchanged a word with Joseph, or, rather, apologized for Pat, but Joseph was too stunned, or upset, to reply. I believe he’d gone to his gray place, the place I worry that he inhabits most of his time now.

When I brought Joseph back into the party, the gathering, I caught the tail end of Pat downing a red Solo cup of Jack Daniels. He pounded his thighs and bared his teeth at Kaylee and me like a chimp. I opened up Monopoly but discovered Pat couldn’t remember the rules, grew combative when we corrected him. We gave up.

***

When it happened, Joseph and I were on the phone. Sometimes, I worry that Pat is jealous.

Joseph and I were making plans for a Super Bowl party. It was Saturday, when neither of us worked, being teachers–me Spanish and him ELA. Joseph made that noise–a shrill, rattling–that means a seizure is starting. I heard a crash, rushed to my car, and drove to his house. The door was locked, so I broke the window on the back door, reached through, and let myself in. It felt like a movie. Joseph didn't respond to my shouting. That worried me since his seizures–the worst ones I'd seen–usually only lasted a minute or so, and it took me over ten minutes to drive to his place.

I looked downstairs and couldn’t find him. It felt intrusive going to the upstairs bedroom because I wasn't entirely certain that Pat, his widow, was at work, and I didn't want to walk in on my friends in bed. I opened the bedroom door and heard the sink running in the master bathroom.

Best I can figure, Joseph was wandering around while talking, and he fell and hit his head on the vanity. The impact must have been tremendous as his face was gashed across his forehead to the eyebrow. Blood had pooled on the tile floor, turning his green t-shirt black.

I'd taken a CPR class to earn my teaching license, but I blanked when I saw Joseph's yellowish skull. I attempted chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth.

I used his phone to call 9-11.

I've never hung it up, nor mine. To keep the call alive, I bought Joseph’s phone plan off his father in those numb hours after the accident, the man not realizing my intention.

***

Sometimes we talk all night. Joseph listens to me sleep, or I leave him on the coffee table with stand-up comedians playing on Netflix. Years ago, when we were roommates, he liked to fall asleep listening to stand-up comedy.

It was when we lived together that Joseph tried to tell me about his gray place. It’s where he goes during seizures–the ones he can remember–and he talks to God. Understandably afraid, he asks to come out intact. Joseph’s fear is that during a seizure his might lose something–his hearing, his eyesight, the feeling in his left arm.

***

Now, my phone is behind one update. iPhone batteries are supposed to last for 2-3 years, so we're on borrowed time. I will talk Pat into sharing the phone for these last months. Pat's got a new boyfriend and has been cagey about this idea.

***

I met Joseph at summer camp. We were fourteen, and he had this older guy with him, like a twenty-year-old dude, and I'm still not sure if the man was there because Joseph was such a wild ass kid or because of the seizures. One night, we snuck away from his handler or whatever and met three girls in the woods with a bottle–hold on, let me get Joseph. He tells the story better.