Another Chance for Love
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CHAPTER 2: Friends and an incident.
John is about halfway home when Kevin and Dave find him.
"Hey boss." Kevin calls out. "Do you believe what that little faggot Carter did today at the awards ceremony. I'm going to give him wot for on Monday, he'll regret forever that day he oomph….."
Kevin doubles over as John's fist, hits him in the stomach. "You will leave Carter alone, he doesn't deserve any more trouble from you. It took a lot of guts for him to do what he did today and as long as I'm still Head Boy, no-one is going to bother him."
Dave looks on in confusion and wisely decides to keep his mouth shut.
"That's goes for you too Dave." John yells and runs off towards his house.
"What's up with him?" Kevin wheezes, after Dave helps him up.
"Dunno Kev, lets go, we can always catch up with him later and find out."
John arrives home, to find his parents getting ready to go out.
"John is that you?" Raymond Dixon calls out.
"Yes dad." John replies.
"Your mother and I are going out for cocktails and dinner with the Jone's as we thought you will probably go out celebrating with Kevin and the others tonight."
"Yeah dad, you must have been reading my mind."
"Well if you get back before we do, leave the door on the latch." Veronica Dixon calls out.
"I will mum, have a good time."
"You too, son, don't drink too much." Veronica Dixon says as she and Raymond head out the door to the car.
"I plan on doing a bit more than that." John says to himself quietly.
John then heads to his father's liquor cabinet and grabs a couple of bottles of father's best scotch. Then he goes to his room, sits at his desk, opens one of the bottles, takes a big swig and starts writing.
Its five past seven and Jessica, Wendy and Mark are standing at the front entrance of the Carter house. Mark knocks on the door and a few seconds later it is opened by Sarah Carter.
"Hi Mrs Carter, is Steve in?" asks Mark nervously.
"Hello Mark, yes he is. Hello Jessica and….."
"Wendy, my girlfriend." Mark says.
"Hello Wendy." Sarah Carter then turns and calls out. "Steve, some of your friends are here to see you."
"Ok, mum." comes the muffled reply from upstairs.
"Just go on up to his room, you know the way Mark." Sarah Carter tells them.
The three of them head upstairs and Mark knocks on Steve's bedroom door.
"Come on in." Steve calls out in a quieter voice than usual.
Mark, Wendy and Jessica enter Steve's room and find him sitting at the head of his bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and his eyes red and puffy as if he has been crying for a while.
Jessica goes and sits next to Steve, while Mark and Wendy sit together on the end of the bed.
"Are you ok?" Jessica asks, the concern in her voice evident.
"I am, no I'm not, I don't really know Jess." Steve replies.
"Why didn't you tell me before, that you were gay, Steve?" asks Mark. "We've been friends for a long time, it wouldn't have changed things between us."
"I was afraid that it would Mark, that's why I didn't tell you. I was afraid of losing your friendship."
"You twat, you're like a brother to me, we'll be friends forever." retorts Mark.
"Thanks Mark, you don't know how much that means to me." replies Steve quietly.
"If its not prying, how long have you known that you are…..?" asks Wendy.
"Dodgy, since I was eleven, Wendy."
"Dodgy. Well that's a novel way of putting it." Wendy says with a laugh.
They all laugh at that and Steve even manages to smile.
"How did your parents take to the news?" asks Mark.
"Well mum says she's known for a while and dad's still getting used to the idea of having a dodgy son." Steve replies with a faint smile.
"So are you seeing anyone?" Wendy asks.
"I was, but he couldn't accept himself for who he is and it would have compromised him too much to be seen with me, so its off." Steve replies as a tear runs down his cheek.
"Oh Steve, I'm so sorry." Jessica says while giving Steve a hug.
"So who was it Steve?" Mark asks.
"Sorry Mark, I can't say, its not my place to, if he wants to stay in the closet, I won't 'out' him."
"Well he deserves to be, after what he did to you." Jessica says in an angry tone.
"Please Jess, I don't want to cause any more trouble for him, he has enough problems as it is."
"Ok Steve, for your sake, not his, I'll keep quiet."
"Wot's this, keeping secrets from us, you two. You can trust us you know." says Wendy.
"I know Wendy, but I would just rather not say at the moment, I may tell you at a later time, but just not now."
"Ok Steve, I won't pry any further."
Mark reaches over and gives Steve a friendly punch on the knee. "We're all going out for a coffee, want to join us Steve?"
"Not tonight Mark, its been an exhausting day for me, I just want to have an early night. Next week maybe?"
"Ok Steve. Well I guess we should be going, if you want to have an early night. See you at school on Monday."
Steve shoots Mark a grateful glance as both Jessica and Wendy reach over to kiss him on the cheek.
"Take care Steve, if you need someone to talk to over the weekend, you know where I live." Jessica says quietly to him.
"Thanks Jess." Steve replies.
"Yeah, take care Steve." says Wendy. "I'll be busy this weekend keeping this one," pointing at Mark, "out of trouble."
Mark goes a deep shade of crimson as he takes Wendy's hand and leads her and Jessica out.
Steve gets up and lets them out, then goes to the living room and says goodnight to his mum and dad. He then heads to his room and gets into bed, but sleep is a long time coming as thoughts of John Dixon keep intruding and what life could have been like if the world was a different place.
Its around 9:30pm and John has been alternating the evening with drinking, writing and crying. By now one of the bottles is empty, what he wants to have written is sitting in two envelopes on his bedside drawers. The phone has rung a couple times that evening but he is feeling too numb to answer. It was probably just Kevin and Dave anyway and they are not the people he wants to see. The one person he wants, will probably never speak to him again after what happened this afternoon. He opens the second bottle, takes a drunken swig and staggers off to his parents bedroom. He goes to his father's bedside drawers and opens the top draw. Just as he expected, his father's sleeping pills are there. He takes them back to his room and sits on his bed. He cries for a while and then opens the pill bottle.
Before downing its contents he says quietly, "I'm sorry Steve, but this way I'll never hurt you any more."
He swallows the pills with another swig of scotch and lays on the bed quietly crying and repeatedly saying, "I love you Steven Carter", until he loses consciousness.
Raymond and Veronica Dixon pull into their driveway at around 10pm and notice that the light is on in John's room.
"He didn't stay out late." remarks Raymond to Veronica.
"Well he does have soccer practice tomorrow." Veronica replies.
"That's our John, a real Dixon through and through." says Raymond.
Raymond and Veronica get out of the car and enter the house. "I'll just check on John and make sure he hasn't had too much to drink, you go and get ready for bed, dear." Raymond Dixon tells his wife.
"Yes dear." Veronica replies noticing several messages on the answering machine. "Now why didn't John check those?" she thinks, he is usually good about that sort of thing.
Raymond goes upstairs and looks into John's room, he sees John lying on the bed apparently asleep, and then notices the envelopes, one addressed to him and Veronica and one to that Steven Carter kid, who caused such a stir at the awards assembly. He then sees the empty pill bottle in John's hand.
"CALL THE AMBULANCE!!!" Raymond yells out as he rushes to John and feels his neck. A weak pulse is still there and he picks John up, shaking him a bit to try and get him to wake up. "Wake up John, Wake up John, don't go now." Raymond keeps saying to his son.
Veronica arrives about a minute later and sees what Raymond is doing. "What's wrong, what's wrong? The ambulance will be here shortly. 'OH MY GOD', what have you done Johnny?" she cries, noticing the empty pill bottle on the bed.
"Veronica, go and open the door and I'll try to get John downstairs, go quickly we don't have any time to lose."
Veronica hurries downstairs and opens the front door while Raymond tries to get John to walk with him. As he passes John's bedside drawers, he grabs the two envelopes and shoves them into his pocket. He manages to help John half walk, half stumble downstairs just as the ambulance arrives. The ambulance officer enters, takes one look at John and yells for his partner to get the stretcher.
The ambulance officer turns to Raymond and Veronica and says, "What did he take? And how much?"
"Mogadon and about 24 of them." Raymond replies wishing that he had never had need of them.
"Will he be ok?" Veronica asks the officer.
"It depends on how long ago he took them." the officer replies, taking John from Raymond and carrying him out to the stretcher, placing him on it and helping his partner put it and John into the back of the ambulance.
"You go with him Veronica, I'll follow in the car."
Veronica gets into the back of the ambulance and sits next to the officer who is waving something that stinks to high heaven under John's nose, in order to try and get to be more awake. The other officer closes the back of the ambulance and gets in the front and takes off with sirens blaring. Raymond follows the ambulance and in about 16 minutes they arrive at the emergency section of the hospital.
The two ambulance officers get John and the stretcher out, while Raymond helps Veronica. John is lying on the stretcher, semi-conscious and mumbling something that no-one can make out. The stretcher is wheeled into an emergency room while one of the ambulance officers briefs a doctor on the situation. Raymond and Veronica are thanking the other officer for their quick action as a nurse walks up to them and asks them to fill in some forms.
"He will be in there for a while, so you may as well fill these in while you wait." the nurse says to them. "The doctor will come out and talk to you as soon as he can."
Raymond and Veronica, numbly sit in a couple of the waiting room chairs and fill in the forms. While Veronica takes the filled in forms back to the nurse, Raymond remembers the two envelopes in his pocket and takes them out. He puts the one with Steven Carter's name on it back in his pocket and opens the other as Veronica rejoins him.
"What's that dear?" Veronica asks, noticing the envelope and the letter.
"I found this on John's bedside drawers, I think we should read it, it may tell us why he did what he did."
Veronica sits back down next to Raymond and they both silently begin to read.
'Dear mum and dad,
I'm sorry that I've done this to you, but I had to. You see, I'm gay and I couldn't live a lie any longer pretending I'm straight. I'm sorry to be such a disappointment to you, but I thought if I went and died, you wouldn't have to live with the embarrassment of having a gay son. You see your son is such a coward, I wish I had the courage and strength of the person who has made me happier in the past couple of months than I ever have been. Steven Carter is that person, he had the courage to tell the whole world he is gay, but I couldn't as I didn't want to upset the plans you had made for me and I was too scared to come forward when he made his speech. I even bashed him before the ceremony to preserve my 'straight boy' image. I met up with him after the awards ceremony and he gave me another chance to be honest with myself, but I couldn't do it and now I've lost him forever. When he got up to leave he said Be Happy to me, but I can't without him, he means more to me than I could have believed. I'm so sorry mum and dad.
All my love,
John
When they had finished, they both had tears in their eyes.
"Oh Raymond, why would he think such things?" cried Veronica.
"I don't know dear, perhaps we should have told him about your brother James, who went to Australia, when he was younger. It may have helped him to know that he has a gay uncle. Why couldn't he tell us, he is eighteen now, old enough to decide his life for himself and not worry about what we had planned for him."
Veronica leans on Raymond's shoulder crying softly.
"Veronica, John also wrote a letter to Steven Carter, I think I'll take it around to him tomorrow morning and let him know what has happened. If he has made John feel the happiest he has ever felt, I'll see he will forgive John and come to see him."
"Would you dear, I do hope he does forgive John. I only want John to be happy."
"So do I Veronica, so do I."
About 30 minutes later the doctor comes out and walks up to Raymond and Veronica. "Mr and Mrs Dixon?" They nod.
"He is going to be ok, he'll be sleepy for about a day and we want to keep him here for observation for a couple more. He was lucky in that most of the pills hadn't dissolved in his stomach yet and we managed to flush out a lot of what had. Come back tomorrow, and he should be lucid enough to speak to you. We will be moving him to one of the wards soon."
"Make that a private room, money is no object as far as my son is concerned." says Raymond Dixon.
"As you wish, of course." the doctor replies.
"Can we see him before we go?" asks Veronica.
"For just a few minutes, he is still extremely sleepy and not liable to make much sense."
Raymond goes up to the doctor and says, "If a young man called Steven Carter comes here to see John, let him see him, no matter what time of the day or night."
The doctor leads Raymond and Veronica into the emergency treatment room where John is. They go up to him and see he is looking paler than usual, his hair is all messed up and he has a drip in his arm.
Veronica strokes his face and he briefly wakes up, sees his parents and mumbles, "Mum, dad, I love Steve Carter." and goes back to sleep.
Veronica keeps stroking John's face whispering "We know son, we know."
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