In his mind, it was Kaitlyn who helped him make it through the war. He carried the only thing he had left of her, a picture of the two of them at Navy Pier two weeks before he was deployed and the promise rings they had exchanged before he left. There was never a time he didn’t look at the picture of them together in all his years in the Army. Of course, the picture was beginning to fade from the wear and tear from carrying it, but he kept the photo and had it framed and placed next to his bed where he could look at Kaitlyn every morning and every night.
He wasn’t sure what they called people who only had their heart set on one person. His mother was the same way. After his father left them, to his knowledge, his mother never dated anyone. When he was gone for those four years, he had come home to visit on occasion, and his mother hadn’t introduced him to any man. Adam had decided that he’d make his job and the students he taught his life and that’s just what he did. They became his children although they were fourteen years old.
Scott left the Army at the same time as Adam, both heading back to their lives before they joined the Army. Scott found work as a dispatcher for 9-1-1. Since he served as a Special Forces Communication Sergeant it was the perfect job for him. They hung out as much as they could when they weren’t working, buying their first motorcycles and taking long rides on the highway or on some country road in Indiana, which was only a few miles outside of Ohio.
Scott was known to be a daredevil when it came to fast things like motorcycles. He at times drove faster than the legal limit, Adam following behind him. Neither wore helmets when they rode. Adam’s mother wasn’t a fan of motorcycles and protested when he talked about buying one. She was furious when he showed up with a brand-new motorcycle and no helmet. He eventually talked her down and promised that he’d be careful when he was out riding.
Once Adam was home and working as a teacher, he became curious as his emotions regarding Kaitlyn began to reignite. Now that he was three hours away from her and no longer on the battlefield where he could get shot and killed, he wanted to find her and did an Internet search. He’d found out where she was living and on a warm, sunny summer day, Adam climbed on his crotch rocket and drove to Illinois.
He drove slowly through the semi-empty streets, cautious of children playing near the road. He came to a stop sign across from a small church. There were cars parked along the street and in the parking lot next to the church. It wasn’t Sunday, so he knew that there had to be a wedding at the church. People appeared and began to stand along the sides of the walkway outside the church. He nodded to himself when he saw to his left a limo decorated with a Just Married sign on the back and two strings of cans and paper-mâché streaming from the bumper. Before he shifted to drive away the doors to the church sprang open and out came the bride and groom. They walked down the steps as family and friends threw what he assumed was bird seed at them as they made their way to the parked limo. The bride was laughing as she dashed down the sidewalk, her hand intertwined with the groom’s.
Adam wasn’t sure if it was all the noise around him including the motor from his bike, but the laugh sounded familiar. He looked in his mirror and was glad that no one was waiting behind him. He maneuvered and parked the motorcycle along the side of the street and watched as the newlyweds made their way to the open door of the limo where a man stood, holding the rear door open. The woman laughed again, but it was her face that made his heart stop. It was his Kaitlyn, he was sure of it.
Her smile.
Her laugh.
Her beautiful brown wavy hair.
His heart broke all over again. He watched as they kissed before getting inside the limo. He shifted gears and without looking, drove through the intersection. A car horn honked at him as they almost collided with one another. He sped off down the road, tears watering his eyes under his sunglasses. The love of his life had gone on with her life as if he had never existed.
A couple of miles down the road he pulled into a parking lot of a park. He shut off the engine and looked around. There were no other cars in the lot. He placed his face in his hands and wept. He’d lost her forever. She looked so happy, so beautiful in her wedding dress. That could have been him next to her. He was a damn fool to let her go and now he would have to live the rest of his life without her. He should have fought for her and made her reconsider. He should have told her that he wouldn’t be in the military forever.
He dried his eyes with his shirt and started his bike. He would go back home now. There was nothing more he could do. He had loved deeply and lost the one thing that meant everything to him, knowing she would forever stay in his heart.
27
Kaitlyn had waited years for Adam to come back to her. Even though she loved Ben, her heart would always belong to Adam. It had been said that there was one soulmate for every one person in this world. Kaitlyn’s was Adam. She was sure of it. He made her laugh in ways she’d never laughed before. He was the first man she’d ever slept with and gave her whole heart to. He made her complete. His touch ignited her, even when he didn’t touch her. She could feel it when he was near. He made her feel good about herself, like she could do anything she wanted to. He never held her back; if anything, he pushed her forward toward whatever she had her heart set on.
They wrote to each other every week and called as often as they could. Several months after Adam left and was deployed in Afghanistan, Kaitlyn received a letter saying that she should let him go and that he didn’t love her anymore. She cried for days, weeks, and months. She stopped going out with her friends to parties, mostly because it reminded her of how they met. She didn’t want to meet anyone else or love again. She was content living alone and being single. In her heart, she knew that he still loved her; she could feel it. Something must have happened to him, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t write her back no matter how many letters she mailed to him.
As time went by she focused more on her studies and spent all her time in the library. If she didn’t have exams to study for, then she read all sorts of books, hoping one day to write her own novel.
The only time she seemed to hang out with her friends was when they walked to class together. She laughed at their jokes and pretended that she was interested in what they were talking about, but all she thought about was Adam and how he was doing. If he were still alive. Wouldn’t she feel it inside herself if he were dead or hurt? That’s how much she loved him. She knew that people died from broken hearts because it happened to her grandparents. It wasn’t six months after her grandma passed away that her grandfather died of a broken heart. She had sat with him the day before and he told her how much he missed her. When she came back to the hospital early the following morning, she was told that he had passed away just moments before she arrived.
She’d spent several hours a week scrolling through the Internet and obituaries looking for any information on Adam, praying that she wouldn’t find his name in any of the articles. Her life seemed to only be focused on him. She knew that it wasn’t healthy, but she loved him and wanted nothing more than for him to show up at her dorm and say he was sorry and that he missed her and would never leave her again.
She would catch herself wondering if he was still fighting the war or if he were stationed somewhere else. Kaitlyn for a while would search the many faces of men who walked by her at school or that she saw at the coffee shop off campus, which also became a hangout of hers. She hoped that one day Adam would reappear and surprise her, but he never did. He was only in her dreams and would forever stay in her heart. Each passing day, he never showed, and she closed her heart to love. She had taken the ring off her finger and placed it on a chain around her neck.
After a year of studying and making the Dean’s list, Kaitlyn slowly began to lose herself. She had on several occasions, been late to class because she forgot to set her alarm and slept in from studying all night. One day she raced out of the dorm into the pouring rain and ran right into another student. She looked at him and for one split second he looked almost like Adam, b
ut it wasn’t her Adam. Although the eyes were the same color, his face was shaped somewhat differently. The nice man helped her with her books that were getting drenched in the rain and suggested since she was already late to class that they should dry off over a cup of hot chocolate.
“So, what is your name?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Ben,” he replied.
“Ben what?”
“Ben Gordon, and yours?”
“Kaitlyn Costa.” She found herself staring at Ben’s face. There were so many things that reminded her of Adam. His eyes were blue, depending on how the light hit them, and he had the same shade of brown hair that Adam had, or she assumed he had, since she’d never seen him with long hair, but he wasn’t her Adam. She’d have to come to realize that Adam wasn’t coming back. He ended their relationship and she was to move on without him. She had gone through the withdrawals of their now-nonexistent relationship. Shock, denial, fear, loneliness, and then anger. Anger was the worst and her friends pointed it out to her more times than she could remember. “Quit being such a bitch, Kaitlyn,” her friend Lisa had said several times. So Kaitlyn started to distance herself from them more and more.
Ben and Kaitlyn talked about what classes they were taking for the jobs they would have after college and about their lives growing up. Nearly an hour later, Kaitlyn stood from her seat at the booth, gathering her things. “I need to get to my next class,” she said.
“Will I see you again?” Ben asked.
“That would be nice,” she replied, though part of her wasn’t sure she was ready to be in a relationship when she still constantly thought of Adam. Ben asked for her number, but she insisted that he give her his number and that she would call him when she was ready, whenever that would be. He wrote his phone number on a napkin and handed it to her and she walked away.
It was another month before she called Ben, wanting to wait until after exams were finished. They met for lunch at her favorite coffee house down the street. They started to spend time together. At first it was only a couple of hours, but then that led to days, then weeks. By the time the following summer came, they were inseparable. Kaitlyn hadn’t replaced the love of her life but had tucked him away to the back of her heart where on occasion she would allow herself to think of him, remembering their time together and how happy she had once been.
She knew it wasn’t fair that she still loved another man as deeply as she did. She kept his letters and the picture of them at Navy Pier before he left. She kept them hidden away inside a book that she knew Ben would never open or read. Ben was not the reading kind and she was okay with that. There were other things that they had in common, like watching movies together and occasionally walking around the block, at least until after graduation.
The day graduation came, Ben had gotten down on one knee and asked her to marry him in front of the whole graduating class. Of course, she was embarrassed, but that was Ben, always seeking attention and wanting to be front and center. That was the difference between Adam and Ben. Adam, she knew, would have made the moment more romantic and private. Just the two of them, alone where they could make love afterwards. Adam didn’t need all eyes on him like Ben, but she did love Ben—maybe not in the same way as she did Adam but she loved him nonetheless.
When the day came, and they were to be married in the church near Kaitlyn’s hometown, she thought of Adam. Wrong she knew, but God, she couldn’t let him go. He was an addiction she couldn’t live without. She just wanted Adam to tell her to her face that he truly didn’t love her anymore. That he wanted her to be happy with Ben and that he was the perfect guy for her. Or he could say that he was wrong and that he loved her more than anything in this world, but of course that didn’t happen. He never walked through the doors of the church and proclaimed his love for her as she hoped he would.
When the inner doors to the church opened and the music began to play, she began to walk down the aisle in her father’s arm. She looked up and saw Ben waiting for her at the other end. Everything that she had thought about minutes ago was tucked away never to be thought about again.
The wedding lasted less than half an hour and then they walked arm and arm down the aisle as Mr. and Mrs. Ben Gordon. When the main doors opened, Kaitlyn and Ben were greeted with their family and friends waiting to throw the traditional birdseed at them as they walked down the stairs and toward the limo waiting for them.
Kaitlyn laughed, her head turned back toward the people behind her and smiled. She hadn’t paid much attention to the man across the street sitting on his motorcycle, otherwise she might have stopped him before he rode off, nearly causing an accident. But she hadn’t seen him. She hadn’t known that Adam was there watching her.
28
Five Days after the Accident
Morning
Officer Moore sat at her kitchen table. Her thoughts were on the doctor’s visit the day before. Dr. Meadde had recommended that an ultrasound be done to see what could be causing the discomfort, abdominal pain, and recent abnormal bleeding. She had always had irregular periods, but she knew it had to be something else causing this, along with the sharp pain that was surfacing more often and the sudden constipation, all within the past couple of weeks.
“What is it?” Moore whispered as she listened to the whoosh whoosh sound on the screen as the wand moved around on her lower abdomen.
The technician didn’t speak, only moved the wand around in the gel placed on Moore’s stomach. She stopped only to type something on the computer in front of her and then moved the wand again. “The doctor will come in and talk to you after I’m done, after she looks over the images,” the technician said, her face showing no expression.
Moore was trying to keep calm and not let herself think that something was wrong. The doctor would look at the images and send Moore out the door with a clean bill of health. Well, that’s what she kept telling herself. Think positive, not negative her father used to tell her. It just puts more stress on the problem at hand.
When the technician finished, she wiped the gel off and placed the wand back in the cradle. “The doctor will be with you shortly.” She left the room, leaving Moore to stew in her thoughts.
Moore couldn’t bear to know if there was something tragically wrong with her. What if it was cancer? Her mother died of ovarian cancer. Moore still had many years of her life left to live. She knew the day would come that she’d die alone. But she swore at that moment that if she did have cancer and she beat it, she would tell Woods that she loved him and had loved him for years. She only stayed away because they worked together. “What a stupid rule,” she mumbled into the empty room. She could’ve been living with the man and maybe been married. Now her thoughts were getting ahead of herself. What if he didn’t feel the same about her? What if he just wanted to be friends now, after the way she treated him yesterday? She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the thoughts away. She couldn’t think about that right now. She had her health to worry about. She’d deal with the rest of her life after she talked to the doctor.
Moore had been here before, maybe not in this same room, but Dr. Meadde was her doctor since she was pregnant twenty-eight years ago. The same awful silence filled the room as she waited for the doctor to tell her the news. It was a day she’d never forget.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door and in walked Dr. Ann Meadde, looking more distinguished with her short white hair. She had stood by Moore’s side and helped her with the decision to give the baby up for adoption back then.
“Let’s see what we’ve found here,” Dr. Meadde said. The doctor grabbed the warm gel and applied some onto Moore’s skin. She took a couple more measurements, then whipped the wand around near her ovaries, circling until she came to a stop.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What did you find?” Moore asked nervously, holding back the tears.
Dr. Meadde pointed to the screen. “I’d like to have this image confirmed by another doctor, but it looks like it may be a tumor.”
Moore swallowed. “Is it cancer?” God, please don’t let it be cancer, she thought.
“We’ll have to do more tests to confirm. When’s the last time you had labs done?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It shows in your record that you haven’t been here for your annual in two years. What’s going on, Moore? You’ve always been on top of things. Your health, for one.”
“Yeah, I know. With my dad dying and all, I just pushed it aside.”
“I don’t think we would have found it two years ago. Sometimes these things just appear out of nowhere,” Dr. Meadde stated. “I’d like for you to fast tomorrow—no liquid or food after midnight or in the morning until after labs. I want bloodwork and a urine sample done. I’ll send these straight over to the other doctor and call you with the results within a day or two.
A day or two? “Okay,” Moore replied. How was she going to keep herself busy over the next two days?
Moore stood from the kitchen table and walked into the bathroom. After brushing her teeth, she grabbed her jacket and keys. “Let’s get this over with,” she mumbled. Once in the truck, she drove toward Franklin hospital where Dr. Meadde’s practice was. Moore didn’t like going to doctors where she lived. She didn’t want anyone knowing her business, especially when it came to her health.
Once labs were done, she drove straight to McDonald’s for a cup of coffee. “Oh, what the hell,” she whispered softly and ordered a sausage egg McMuffin with cheese to go with the coffee.
She parked in a semi-empty lot next door to the restaurant and ate. She seemed to eat more when she was stressed. She knew this was going to be a long and endless day ahead of her. She’d have to plunge herself in her work just to keep her mind off what the doctor may have found. “It may not be cancer so stop making yourself sick over this,” she said in the privacy of her truck. “Dr. Meadde will find nothing wrong.” She was trying to keep her mind on a positive note. It never paid to think negative about things.
The Accident Page 15