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I was sitting at my desk when I was suddenly struck by a great sense of terror. At that moment I just knew that something was wrong with Gatsby. I didn’t waste any time, I jumped out of my desk and ran for my car. I broke the speed limit getting back to his house, but I’m still glad that I did. Knowing that he’d planned to be in his pool today, that’s where I ran.
When I got to the pool I froze in my tracks. There was George, holding a gun, pointing it straight at Gatsby. I yelled out in alarm, and George startled. He pulled the trigger as he flinched, and a cloud of blood bloomed in the clear water of the pool. George ran off quickly, and I dived into the water after Gatsby.
He was coughing as I pulled him out of the water. Put my hands over the bullet wound in his shoulder and applied pressure. His butler had come running at the commotion, and I yelled at him to call an ambulance.
I don’t know how long I sat there, soaked and shivering, before help arrived. An ambulance whisked Gatsby away to the hospital, and the police cornered me for a statement.
I wasn’t kept very long, and I rushed back to my cottage as soon as I could. After changing out of my soaked clothes I lept back in my car, still parked haphazardly in front of Gatsby’s house, and set off for the nearest hospital.
When I rushed to the front desk and asked for Jay Gatsby, the secretary assured me that he was fine, but that he couldn’t have any visitors at the moment. He was in surgery getting the bullet removed from his shoulder. I was just relieved that he was alive at all. I don’t know what I would have done if I had gotten there too late, if I had found him floating dead in his own pool.
I sat in the hospital waiting room through the rest of the morning and all the way into afternoon until I got news about Gatsby. He had just gotten out of surgery and was settled in a room. I demanded to know where he was, and I rushed off as soon as the secretary told me.
When I got to his room, he was still asleep. He looked different sleeping, calm, peaceful even. Gatsby had never been at peace in all the time I’ve known him. Maybe not ever. Here, in this hospital bed, having cheated death, was the first time I had ever seen Jay Gatsby truly at rest.
I kept watch at his bedside until they kicked me out for the night, and I was back as soon as visiting hours began the next day. Jay was conscious by then, and I was filled with a profound relief as I met his eyes when I walked in the room.
“I think you saved my life, old sport.” He said, voice brittle and tired.
I was struck speechless with relief, all I could do was sit at his bedside and try not to weep. That was what most of the next few weeks of my life were, sitting at Gatsby’s bedside keeping him company. I would go straight to work in the morning, and then straight to Gatsby as soon as I left. The entire time he was in the hospital I was the only soul who visited him. Not one person from his parties, not one business associate, not even the boarder who had been staying in his house came to visit. For weeks on end it was just Gatsby and I. When I wasn’t with Gatsby, I was thinking about him, what he would be doing this time of day, what he might like to talk about, if there was anything I could bring him.
According to the doctors, Gatsby had been healing perfectly, no complications and no infections, despite the fact that he’d taken a bullet to the shoulder. Physically he may have been getting better, but I could tell his mind was deeply unwell. Ever since Daisy left he’d been quiet, but this was something else. He still spoke to me, but he didn’t carry a conversation like he had before, his enthusiasm was gone. Daisy had taken his shine from him when she left, and that bullet snuffed whatever light he still had.
However dimmed he seemed in the hospital, he managed to get worse once he was cleared to return home. I was the one who drove him back to his big empty mansion, and he was silent the whole drive, unseeing eyes trained on the road ahead of us. I walked him through his own house all the way back to his bedroom. I hesitated when he just stood in his open doorway, but when he finally closed the door behind himself I was left with nothing else to do but return to my own cottage next door.
I checked on him the next morning before I left for work, I wouldn’t have been able to work at all if I hadn’t, but when I received no response at the front door I felt compelled to enter uninvited. The front door was still unlocked, and as I made my way to his room I noticed that the entire house seemed coated in the same layer of dust it had been the day before. I gave a courtesy knock on his bedroom door before I opened it, but I received no response.
When I opened his door and looked around I saw Gatsby lying in his bed, on top of the blankets, still dressed in his hospital gown. Deeply concerned, I rushed to his bedside to check on him. He was awake, but he wasn’t well. That close to him I could tell that he still smelled like the hospital.
His wound obviously hadn’t had the dressing changed like it was supposed to, and I doubted that he had eaten anything at all. I doubted that he had done anything at all since I left him the day before.
It was such an unnatural state for the man I knew. Gatsby had always been on top of things, his fashion, his grooming, his household. Seeing him like that was so profoundly wrong that it drove me to action almost immediately.
First things first I brought Gatsby out of his bed and into his master bathroom. He followed my lead unresisting, but the whole time he was encouraging me to leave.
“No need for the fuss,” he said, not meeting my eyes as I led him through his own bedroom, “things just slipped my mind.”
I ignored his attempted reassurances, and he realized this and went quiet as I perched him on the edge of his large bathtub and began removing his dirtied bandages. I drew him a bath as he sat there staring at me.
“I’m going to go bring back some food,” I told him, “you take a bath while I’m gone and then I’ll change your bandages.”
He looked up at me with a pleading expression, “Nick-“ he started, but I cut him off before he could get much further.
“Take the bath, Jay.”
As I turned and walked out I could hear the sound of a hospital gown fluttering to the floor, and the splash of water. It didn’t take long at all for me to find something in my own pantry to bring back to him. The quickest thing I could make was some sandwiches, a pile of which I crafted with haste, and then I rushed back to Gatsby with the plate in hand.
When I entered his room I set the plate down on his desk, and then peeked into the bathroom. He was still in the bathtub, so I set myself to looking through his closet and trying to find something comfortable. I poured over silk and satin shirts, brocaded and embroidered vests, but I finally managed to find a simple set of clothes at the very back. It was still a very finely made outfit, but it would definitely be far easier on his still healing bullet wound than anything else in his wardrobe.
I brought the clothes with me to the bathroom, set them down on the counter, and helped Jay out of the bathtub. He wrapped a towel that I handed him around his waist and I sat him back down on the edge of the bathtub so I could apply his fresh bandages. My fingers brushed the damp skin of his collarbone as I maneuvered the roll bandages, and when I was done my hand came away slightly wet from the water still clinging to his skin.
After Gatsby was dressed I made him sit down at his desk and eat while I tidied up his room. When I was finished cleaning what I could I fetched Jay a glass of water from the kitchen, and I encouraged him to drink as much of it as he could. He sipped halfheartedly from the glass and stared out the window.
I stayed by his side the entire day, I spoke to him about any topic that came to my mind in the hopes I would get a stronger reaction out of him, but by the time night fell I had come to terms with the fact that Gatsby was gripped with melancholia. It wasn’t uncommon in men after the Great War, but seeing it in my formerly lively friend had me overtaken with worry. That night I brought Gatsby dinner, changed his bandages once again, and put him to bed myself. As I closed his bedroom door behind me I was filled with certainty of what I would do next. I would be seeing Jay Gatsby through this, no matter what.
I had watched over Jay in the hospital for nearly all of autumn, and I continued my watch through the entire winter. Most days were much like the first, he couldn’t summon the energy to get out of bed, to care for himself, or to care for his household, so I did it for him. I brought him meals that I knew he could stomach, I made sure his healing wound was tended to, I kept the fire in his room piled with wood and burning bright to keep him warm.
I knew that this would be a full time job, so I quit my job at the stock exchange. My plan was to live off my savings, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rent of my cottage without a steady income, so I asked Jay if I could board in his house. He only responded with a “Whatever you want old sport.” So I moved in, and I focused on Jay.
Some days were better than others. Sometimes he would get up and be dressed by the time I got to his room. For days he could seem like he was doing better, and then the melancholia would wash back over him.
The few staff members left in the house left the two of us alone, which I was grateful for. So, for that cold New York winter it was just Gatsby and I, day in and day out. As the seasons changed and Winter melted into Spring, the melancholia seemed to be melting from Jay, day by day just a little more. Until one afternoon Jay and I took a walk around the garden, blooming with new life, and he very suddenly veered our topic of conversation to the one thing I had never dared to mention in front of him.
“I realized something Nick,” he began, “I don’t think I ever really knew her at all.”
“Her?” I blurted out, confused by the turn of conversation.
“Daisy, old sport, I mean Daisy.”
“What brings this up Jay?”
“I was just thinking, I met her when I was so young, and she was everything I thought I wanted in life, but when I think about her now I can’t seem to remember why.”
“She was beautiful,” I offered, “and she was rich.”
“Beautiful, rich, and what else?” He questioned.
“I thought I loved her Nick, I really did, but I can’t name a damn thing about her that I liked beyond what was on the outside.” He looked over at me then, realization painted across his face. “I don’t even know what I would have done with her if I did get her in the end.”
“Well you seemed set on marrying her.” I replied, trying to figure out where his change in attitude had come from.
“Oh and we saw just how well a marriage based off looks and money goes, didn’t we old sport?”
He laughed, face lit up by the soft spring sunlight, the first time he had laughed since that terrible summer, and he was beautiful. He had the look of a man who’d just had a great weight lifted from his conscience, from his life. The gentle wind tousled his hair, and I watched Gatsby look around his blooming garden with the awe of someone seeing it for the first time. After months of fighting his own demons, he was a man freed from the ghosts of the past.
“So you don’t want her anymore?” I questioned, just to confirm it, just to hear the words spoken aloud.
Jay turned then and gave me a smile unlike any other I’d ever seen. It was soft and private, a smile that just belonged between us there in that moment, in the gentle freedom of the garden.
He said to me, “Nick, I have everything that I want right here.”
Even after I was no longer needed around the house, Jay insisted on providing me a room, and we continued to spend nearly all of our time in each other's company. Jay didn’t start throwing parties again, said he never liked them anyways, and I wasn’t complaining. Instead, the two of us would go out into the city and attend all manner of social clubs and sporting events. We made a few acquaintances, none that we would ever truly call friends, but the company we kept rarely mattered as long as we had each other.
Unfortunately for me, Jay had set his mind and determination to a new goal. He was fixated on finding a wife for me. Near everywhere we went I noticed him chatting up the young ladies, and at first was worried that he was doing it for himself, that he would find another Daisy, but no. He would chat with these women for a few minutes, and if they passed whatever obscure qualifications he had they would be led over and passed off to me. It was quite tiresome, the endless parade of suitors that Jay pressed on me, and one evening I just couldn’t take it anymore.
It was a quiet evening, Jay and I had been drinking in one of his parlors and it had grown quite late, and the two of us were quite thoroughly drunk. Jay and I had just been speaking about some theater production that I can’t quite remember the name of, when Jay not so subtly changed the subject from the production itself to the actors, namely the actresses.
“There’s this girl I know,” he began, arm draped over the back of the couch we were sharing,” I think you would really like her, she’s one of understudies, I ought to introduce you two after the show.”
“I’m sure she’s lovely,” I responded as I slumped further back into the couch,”but that really won’t be necessary.”
“Nonsense old sport! It would only take a few minutes, I’m sure you two would get on like a house fire.”
“You said that about all of the others too.” I snapped, too drunk to summon my patience.
“Just give her a chance Nick,” he insisted, turning towards me, “if you don’t like her then I’ll just try again, you’ll find someone eventually.”
My temper flared at his persistence, “Why won’t you let this rest Jay! You keep throwing these girls at me and begging me to pick one, why?”
When I raised my voice I leaned in closer to him, and here, even as drunk as I was, I could see the desperation in his eyes.”
“Because you deserve something good, Nick!” He yelled back, I could see tears brimming in his eyes now. “You deserve someone to love you in the way that I can’t!”
At that moment it seemed like all the air had been sucked out of the room. In the dead silence, tears started falling down Jay’s face, stricken with horror at what he had just let slip out.
“Jay,” I started, voice soft, “you’re my best friend.”
We were just inches away from each other, and I raised my hand to his cheek to wipe off the tears.
“No need to let me down easy, old sport.” He tried to say with his usual bravado, but it came out broken between sobs. He looked pained as he pulled away from my hand.
“I love you too.” I reassured as I pulled him into a hug, his tear streaked face pressed into the crook of my neck.
“Not the way I mean it Nick,” he whispered, “you don’t love me the way you could love a woman.”
I pulled him away from me, just far enough so that I could look him in the eyes.
“Jay Gatsby,” I started firmly, “I love you more than I could love any woman, I’ve loved you since the summer I met you, and there is nothing that will change that.”
I could see the realization dawning in his eyes, the understanding, the hope. I drew him back into an embrace and we sat on that couch clinging to each other until we fell asleep.
The next morning I had a terrible hangover and a ferocious ache in my back. Jay and I didn’t say anything to each other as we were awakened by the morning sun, he wouldn’t even look me in the eyes as we parted ways to clean up in our own rooms. By the end of the hour we were sitting across from each other in his dining room, eating breakfast, and avoiding eye contact. We both spoke at the same time.
“We can forget-” “I love you, Jay.”
He froze, fragile hope shining in his eyes.
“You do?”
I reached across the table and held his hand.
“Always, Jay.”
He looked away, down at our clasped hands.
“What do you suppose we do about it then?”
“All the same things we’ve already been doing, all the same things that everyone else does when they’re in love.”
“But this is different, we’re both men.”
“It’s not that different, really, less public of course, but not that different at all.”
“So you’ve done this before,” he said, a statement rather than a question, “you’ve been in love with another man?”
“A few times,” I responded, “I've had a few relationships, and a few flings here and there.”
“In New York?”
“Once, before we met, a photographer.”
“Just the one before we met? None after?”
“None after I met you, Jay. I was already too in love to even consider it.”
He looked back up at me and smiled, that beautiful private smile just between us.
“Now I see why you never entertained any of those girls I tried to introduce to you.”
We both chuckled at that, but he grew serious quickly.
“And you’re sure about this,” he questioned, “you’re sure that you won’t find yourself wanting a wife?”
“Jay Gatsby, I promise you that I will never love anyone the way that I love you. You have me, now and forever, until death do us part.”
He had tears in his eyes again, but so did I, as overwhelmed with joy as we both were.
“Until death do us part, Nick.”
I could feel his grip tightening, like he was trying to keep me from slipping out of his grasp, and I raised his hand to my face and kissed it. He let out a small gasp, and when I looked up he was blushing, pink as the roses in his garden, and altogether the most lovely thing I had ever seen.
We had already been living in the same house, keeping each other constant company night and day, so truly very little changed in our routines. We went out, we came home, we started frequenting places where people like us spent their time, and we made actual friends. People who would visit when we were sick, who would come over even if no party was being thrown, people who really cared, because at the end of the day we all had the same joyful secret, and we all had to stick together.
Spring bloomed into Summer, and Jay’s confidence bloomed with it. We walked in the garden, fingers intertwined. We put on the record player and we danced, just the two of us, realeaning old steps and making up some of our own. We kissed for the first time in the golden light of the sunset, side by side on the edge of his pool.
We had spent most of the day going back and forth between lazing in the poolside chairs and swimming in the cool water. With the setting sun painting the sky pink and gold. I had grown tired and pulled myself up to sit on the edge of the pool as I watched Jay. His skin glistened as drops of water rolled down his body. He slicked his hair back and the way his muscles moved with the action made my pulse speed up.
He swam towards me and stared up at me from the pool.
“A little help, old sport?” He asked, reaching out his hand.
I obliged and helped him up out of the water, and right on top of me. He bowled me over and the two of us lay on the ground laughing, him laying half on top of me. He was cool from the water, a balm against my own sun-warmed skin. As he rolled off of me he reached up and we intertwined our fingers. We lay there, hands clasped, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, as we let out laughter run its course.
I sat up first, and I got the pleasure of looking down at Jay, bathed in the afternoon light, skin glistening with water, smiling up at me. He pulled himself up, and we were suddenly very close, just inches apart. We both leaned in, and our lips met in a tender kiss. Gentle at first, hesitant, but quickly building in passion and intensity. I found that kiss bitten lips were a very good look on him.
We became very affectionate with each other, after that, like we were making up for wasted time. If we weren’t kissing then we were touching. While we couldn’t do it in public, we more than made up for it in private. It got to the point that even our friends, all of whom were of similar persuasions, got sick of us.
One hot summer night, mid July, we were in our bedroom, and we’d been kissing rather passionately on the couch. Clothes were removed, but when Jay brought his hand down to my belt, he stopped. We broke apart, just for a moment, and he looked up at me, eyes sparkling with excitement.
“You’ll have to show me how this works, old sport.” He said.
So I got down on my knees and showed him. He returned the favor afterwards, and I certainly had no complaints.
We were quite content through the rest of the roaring twenties, but when the depression hit it threatened to ruin everything. Our whole life was built on Jay’s fortune, the only reason we didn’t lose it all was because he hadn’t placed everything in the stock exchange. We did have to adjust our lifestyle. We sold the waterfront mansion and moved into a smaller one, still enough room for guests, but no sprawling floor plan filled with rooms that would never be used. We had so many good moments in the old house, but the bad ones still lurked there as well, and the change of scenery was refreshing for the both of us.
Our fortunes went back up when prohibition was repealed in 1933. Jay was able to sell liquor openly from the chain of drugstores he owned, and in the hard times it was a profitable business. We had been keeping to ourselves for years when I got the letter.
Tom and Daisy were dead. Tom had been shot by the husband of his latest mistress, and Daisy had followed him a week later, crashing her car while driving drunk. They weren’t good people, but Tom had been my friend, once, and Daisy had been my cousin, so I did mourn, just a bit. Jay supported me, but we both knew that the two of them got exactly what they deserved in the end. The only one who had been dealt an unfair hand in this situation was their poor daughter, Pamela.
She had been left orphaned, and since I was her closest living relative, she had been left to me. I wasn’t prepared to have a thirteen year old to care for, I’d never planned to have children at all. As I sat panicking in our living room, Jay wrapped me in a hug.
“Everything will be alright, old sport. I hardly think we can do a worse job than her last set.”
“I don’t know how to raise a daughter! I didn’t think I’d ever have to care for a child, and now she’s just here!”
“I’ve heard that most children come as surprises.”
“I don’t even have an income to support her, Jay.”
“I do.”
“I can’t ask you to pay for a child that you aren’t even related to.”
“You aren’t asking, I’m doing it. We do these things together, Nick. Besides, I’ve always wanted to be a father.”
Jay was an excellent father indeed. We had a rough learning curve, but we adjusted quickly to having a daughter, and Pamela adjusted to having us too. She’d never talked to her parents about her interest before, never been asked for her opinion on anything, Tom and Daisy had just expected for her to be a beautiful fool. We knew better though. We sent her to school, we encouraged her interests, when her school reported that she was the top of her class, we were ecstatic.
Five years passed like nothing, and soon enough Pamela was talking about her future. Jay had always encouraged her to chase her dreams, so when she told us she wanted to attend nursing college, he agreed immediately. We had a small party before she went off, and then it was just Jay and I in our empty nest. We made good use of our new amount of free time and space.
Just one year after sending our daughter off to college, the unthinkable happened, a second world war. When America joined the war, our daughter went with it, fresh out of nursing school and straight out to be an army nurse. We knew there was nothing we could say to stop her, but we wished she would have stayed where she would be safe. Jay and I had both seen the horrors of the first world war, and we just wished we could have protected her.
When the war ended, Pamela came home with another army nurse, a lovely young woman named Mary. They said they were just friends, but Jay and I both recognized the way they looked at each other, and when they moved into a little one bedroom apartment together in the city, we weren’t surprised.
As we got into our old age the world never slowed down. Cold wars, missile crises, drafts, protests, assassinations. The world kept on going, and so did Jay Gatsby. He had decided that for his eighty-fifth birthday, he wanted to throw a party, just like the ones he threw in the twenties. Everyone was invited, but the shine of a Gatsby party had worn off for most of New York.
That first party turned out to be far smaller of an affair than one of Jay’s ragers back in the day, but it was just as fun. We drank and we danced and we lugged with our friends. When they left late that night we told them we’d be throwing another party the next weekend, and that they should bring anyone and everyone.
As word spread, the parties grew. It never reached the level of chaos that Jay was known for in his younger years, but that was for the best. The police would have certainly been called, and they would have arrested our guests just for being there, for how they were dressed, or for who they loved.
As the eighty’s rolled around, we started seeing a change. Ever so slightly, people like us were starting to become more open, more confident, and even more accepted. It was certainly still a risky thing to announce to the public, but Jay and I had lived all our lives doing risky things for love. In our nineties, we felt entitled to finally say it loud and proud.
It happened on a live TV interview, in the year 1983. Jay got requests for appearances sometimes, especially when he offered to tell stories about his parties in the twenties. He went on there and sat through the normal barrage of questions, and when the interviewer finally asked him about any women in his life he said it.
“No women in my life, I’ve got my wonderful husband of fifty years, Nick.”
The response in the studio had been so chaotic that the interview was cut short. It was such a big story that we were even in the newspaper the next day. No matter how much negative attention it got us, and it did get us a lot, it was worth it. We were finally living as ourselves, after half a century together. We kept up our parties for a few years after that, but we were both well into our nineties by then, and nothing lasts forever.
I woke up early one morning, the sun wasn’t even up yet, and I looked over at Jay. We both had white hair now, we both had wrinkled faces, we both had aches in our joints, but Jay had always been the lively one between us. Laying there next to me, he looked so peaceful, and I was struck with how much I loved him, just how happy I was to have shared my life with him. I was still so tired, so I reached over, held his hand, and went back to sleep.
Neither of us would ever wake up that morning. When someone came to check on us they would find us dead, hands still clasped together. We had gone peacefully in our sleep, not two minutes apart from each other. Our funeral had so many people in attendance that they didn’t have enough seats in the church. We were laid in the ground, side by side, never to be parted again.