When I awoke, the weight of the cold was gone, replaced by something softer – a bed. For a moment, I thought I'd left Earth and slipped into something quieter. Something distant. I never believed in the afterlife, not after everything, because how could a God who's supposed to love unconditionally, treat me this way? Still, I hoped it was a place where the pain stopped, and my Mum would be waiting for me. I imagined her arms, warm and familiar, folding around me like they used to before the world grew sharp. But then the beeping began, a relentless reminder that even in salvation, there would always be something left to endure. The faint hospital sounds became clearer – the shuffle of rubber soles, the hum of machines, the sterile smell of disinfectant – and I understood Rose had called the ambulance after I lost myself.
The doctor's words sliced through the fog: "Near-fatal overdose of…." I never learned if it was the oxycodone, the thing I used to numb the pain, or the mix with marijuana. Near-fatal meant I had failed at something else again. Even death didn't want me.
The doctors told me there's a fine line between insanity and depression and I had used the line as a skipping rope. The nurses said I was lucky to be alive, but it didn't feel like luck. It felt like punishment. My mind was a tornado of regrets, spinning memories I tried to forget – nights on park benches, bruised knuckles, empty bottles, and the ache of a silence that never left. But amid the chaos, I saw Rose again, her ginger hair and freckles glowing as she stood in the doorway, watching me. For once, I didn't think she kept her distance to protect herself from my "ugliness," like it was a disease – but to admire me.
She was as beautiful as her name suggested – Rose – soft but full of thorns, brave enough to get close. And she didn't look at me like a pathetic monster. She looked at me like I was someone worth seeing. The next few days intertwined with each other like poorly stitched fabric, and I was in and out of consciousness, but she was always there. Each time I awoke, she'd tell me I was in the I.C.U, but what stayed with me wasn't the tubes or the monitors – it was how she looked at me and said, "I see you." Not the version of me I wanted to bury, not the version the world had spat out – but me.
Her presence was like a sunset's soft glow, wrapping me in warmth I'd never known. She had saved me—pulled me back from the edge without even touching me. In that moment, I realised that maybe, for the first time, I wasn't just existing. I was still here, still breathing, caught between the boy I had been and the man I could still become.
A week later, I was discharged – my body fragile, my mind raw, and already planning to return to the streets and numb myself again. That was the pattern. That was what I knew. But Rose must have known too. She saw through the smile I tried to fake. She cared more about me than I did. She offered me a place to stay, on one condition: I had to get a job and go to a rehabilitation centre.
I didn't say yes right away. The word caught in my throat like broken glass. But I followed her home, because there was something about her house – the chipped mugs, the smell of cinnamon, the soft hum of music through old speakers – that made me feel safe, like maybe I wasn't completely lost. I applied everywhere I could walk to, each step an apology to my past self. My unclean appearance was a testament to my failures – matted hair, sunken cheeks, clothes that carried the scent of the streets. Rejection met me at every door, handed out like pamphlets I never asked for. Until finally, someone looked at me like I was more than a junkie. A tired man with kind eyes gave me a chance at a diner down the street. Just dishes and sweeping floors, but it was something. It was real.
I worked forty hours a week, to attempt to give life a real shot. My hands were calloused, my feet blistered, and most days I was so exhausted I couldn't think straight. I didn't care about being clean. Not really. But Rose did. And for her, I decided to try, because her happiness mattered more than my own brokenness.