Usually when you save your best friend's life they're eternally grateful, hug you, tell you they love you, etc.
When I did it I got my ankle broken and was almost impaled on a garden rake.
Today I am back home after a massive two day bender at Tom's house. I won't go into great detail as to how everything went down, and not just because I don't remember a lot of it. It's just the same old shit. Though to be fair, everything was cool for a long fucking while, it's just that we both reach that threshold of drunkenness and don't even realize what is happening until it's too late. Last night it happened at around 10:30. We had been hanging out in his room when he excused himself. He was gone for a long while so I eventually got bored and went looking for him. He was in the living room blasting his mother to hell and back. Apparently she had stopped by unexpectedly and had chided him for drinking after he had gone nearly a month sober. He was screaming, cursing, calling her a drunk bitch, the whole deal. When I told him to calm down he called me a cunt and told me to stay out of his business. Then his mother asked a question I already knew the answer to.
"So I take it you're no longer interested in going to AA with Christine and I?"
"No, god damn it. You're allowed to drink so why the fuck can't I?"
This pissed me off. No, what really pissed me off is he looked like a fucking five-year-old who'd just been scolded for putting a peanut butter sandwich in the VCR. He sat there on the couch, arms crossed, pouting and shooting daggers at me and his mother, whoever happened to be speaking at the time. So I asked him to join me in the garage so we could speak privately.
Now I'm a writer but I seem to have a poor way with words. There was probably a nicer way to point out his problems than saying, "I should have known you were gonna renege on us you pansy ass motherfucker. Maybe it's time you grew a pair." Still I don't think this warranted him punching me in the face and knocking me backwards into a pile of garden tools. The tines of a metal rake dug into my back and laid me open like a Christmas ham. This didn't injure me to his satisfaction so he grabbed my foot and wrenched it hard enough to break my ankle. We both heard the pop. Also in the midst of this scuffle someone broke a shot glass, and I picked up the shards with my bare feet. I was too loaded to feel much pain at the time, but when I woke up this afternoon my body reminded me of the events of last night. Funnily enough, when I stripped to get in the shower I found that someone, possibly me, had put a self-adhesive gauze bandage on the cut on my back. I didn't tell the ER doctor about the cut on my back or the ones in my feet. In fact I think my roommate overreacted a bit by taking me to the hospital in the first place for my ankle. Of all the things I can't recall, I remember sitting in her car going, "I'll be fine, I just need to go home and ice it. I'll be back on my feet in the morning." Twelve hours later the fucker is still throbbing and keeping me awake.
He came to my house today around 3, wanting to apologize. I was in bed at the time but Kendra, my roommate, sent him packing and threatened to call the cops, something she chastised me for not doing last night. I probably should have. But I don't want them in my business. I let that asshole sober up. I talked to him not twenty minutes ago. He apologized for breaking my ankle. He also complained of a hangover. I'm not feeling real sympathetic right now.
"You're a true punk, Christine Winter, with a real DIY attitude." Kendra's always saying this to me. The woman speaks the truth. I do what I think needs to get done, and I get it done by any means necessary. If I have to suffer a hundred more broken bones to get my stupid asshole of a best friend to get himself some help, I guess that's just what's gonna have to happen.