"Yes, sir. Can we keep this confidential? I'd like everyone to think of it as an anonymous donor."
"Of course."
Chris came up after my all day evaluation showed positive as a match, but Nora's kidney's had started to function better according to her medical team, so they decided to hold off and see how it would it go. She wasn't quite at the End Stage Renal Disease level, but close enough that they wanted to put her on a list anyway. I didn't want to wait it out. I wanted to give her my kidney now to save any future issues from happening, but everyone else said to wait. Her doctor was amazed at her improvements and said her kidney's probably wouldn't need dialysis like they thought. At least not yet.
Chris and I finished watching a movie in my hotel room. I hadn't been up for talking much, so he spent a lot of time smiling at his phone.
"Seem pretty enamored with that screen," I said, clearing the thick silence between us.
"I love this girl," he said. "I swear she's the best thing that's ever happened to me."
I moved the curtains back so the sun entered the room, then I stood there wondering why I was annoyed at what he said.
"I think I'm going to do it," he said, still smiling at the screen.
I shook my head. "Predictable."
"I'm asking her on Christmas."
"That's pretty fast, man. Be careful."
"Careful of what?"
I unzipped my backpack and pulled out Nora's scarf, along with the picture I printed out of her sitting in my car. I snapped it during our last time together and of all the glamorous photos taken of her, that simple iPhone image mesmerized me. I sat on the bed and nudged Chris. "Hey, go ahead and call her if you want."
"Nah. Can't. She's at work." He finally set the phone down and tapped his fingers on the nightstand. "You and Nora had sex yet?"
"No."
"You mean to tell me you didn't hit that yet?"
"Hit that?" I laughed. "That should've just pissed me off but I'm too blanked out to worry about it."
"Blanked out? Like depressed? Maybe if you had a little nookie."
"Your maturity level astounds me. There are three words I use to describe sex and 'nookie' and 'hit that' don’t make the cut. You know my past. I'm not interested in what a woman can do in the bedroom anymore. And yes, yes, I do like sex and I've been tempted to let it go that far with Nora. I'm not dead, Chris. I just know I'd rather be stimulated up here first." I pointed to my temple, then to my chest. "And here. Any woman can make a man have an orgasm, but how many can create that same level of pleasure in a man's mind and heart? That's her. That's what she is to me."
"Like a mental and emotional orgasm? What does that even feel like?"
"Stimulation, intense excitement that can lead to physical pleasure, but doesn't start there."
"Dude, what? Layman terms, please."
"She makes me think. She challenges me. She changes me. I feel like everything I'm supposed to be has been awakened by her. I can't explain it."
He stopped listening and beamed at his phone again. Watching him text her, the one he thought he loved, I kept thinking no one could love someone like I loved Nora. If only she knew that. I loved her too much to see our relationship become nothing more than another Hollywood divorce.
My phone rang.
"Hey, London," I said. "What's up?"
"They are thinking she might wake up soon. Thought you'd want to know."
CH. 20 - Nora
London and I finally landed after a long flight. I couldn’t stop crying. Occasionally, she looked at me with concern in her eyes and held my hand, but I still couldn’t figure out why I was crying.
“What is wrong with me?” I said. “I feel horrible and I don’t know why.”
“I’d feel horrible too if he did that to me.”
“Who?”
“If someone cheated on me and then told the world she was so much better in every way, I think I’d be pretty upset too.”
“Oh, I told you I don’t care about Spencer. He can keep her.”
“No, I’m talking about Sawyer.”
I walked toward the exit of the plane and she followed, going on and on about how I need to wake up, take it easy, and not worry about anything. “We’re here for you,” she kept saying, over and over. I wanted to scream and tell her it wasn’t Sawyer, it was Spencer. We kept walking through a large maze of people and I turned to say something to London, but she wasn’t there. “London?” I yelled. “London? Where are you?” I turned in circles, scanning the faces. Noises increased. People turned into blurs of color as I continued to spin in circles, faster and faster. “London?”
She appeared beside me. “I’m right here, sweetie. Are you okay?”
I cocked my head at her, started to speak, but couldn’t. She grabbed my hand and helped me through the ocean of faces. Never in my life had I seen a busier airport.
“Where did we land?” I said, squeezing her hand.
“Home. You’ll be home soon. It’ll all be over soon.”
Thankfully, we reached the baggage claim in one piece. We stood there, side-by-side, waiting for our bags to come around, but didn’t see them. Then I saw him. To my left. He looked perfect. Hair all messy, his hoody hugging his neck like my arms used to. And then she ran to him, jumped into his arms, and they kissed passionately without noticing the people around them. A tear tried to fight its way to my face, but I kept it there in my eyes. She wore my red scarf, the one I gave him that night on the bridge.
London rubbed my cheek, but I pushed her hand away. “We need to leave.”
“We can’t, sweetie,” another voice said from behind me.
“Mom?”
“You’re doing great.”
“No.” I thrashed my head violently, confused and broken. “I can’t stay here while he’s here. I can’t stand to see him like this.”
“See who, dear?” Mom said.
“Sawyer,” I cried. “Please, please make him go away. Make it all go away.”
Sawyer looked at Mom, then me. He moved closer to me and his eyes closed. He reached his hand toward me. I tried to stop him, but didn’t have the strength to swat him away.
“Nora,” Mom said. “He’s been here the entire time waiting for you. He wants to see you.”
“No,” I screamed. “No. He needs to go.”
The people around me shook their heads in agreement. Tons of voices whispered different things to me. I tried to zero in on a few of them, but they all blended together, then began to chant in unison, “He’s not the one. Just a cheater, like the rest. He’s not the one. Just a cheater, like the rest. He’s not the one.”
I closed my eyes. “Everyone leave me alone!” I shook my head. “Leave me alone!”
CH. 21 - Sawyer
I stared at the nurse’s lips as he explained everything to me in the hallway, but I couldn’t focus on her words. When she finished, I nodded and said, “Is she going to remember me though? Remember our memories?”
She hugged a stack of folders to her chest. “Hang in there. When patients wake up out of a medically induced coma they are often confused and confusing to others. She probably had some very real dreams while asleep and may even still feel like she’s in a dream state of sorts. She was only under for two weeks and her brain is functioning just fine. Try to relax. She’ll remember you soon.”
I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to believe her, but things weren’t in the habit of going well for Sawyer Reed and I was beginning to lose hope. Was I just supposed to leave and not visit her during the rest of her stay? What if she got home and didn’t know me?
Chris texted me. How’s it going, S?
She doesn’t want me here. She was screaming and crying and asking for me to leave.
What? Why?
They think she might be delusional I guess … or not remember me yet.
You want to fly back home with me?
I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
Boston?
I don’t know.
I’m just about to leave the hotel. You coming back here?
No. I need some time to think. Go ahead back. I’ll catch up with you later.
I left the hospital, drove into the city, then took a taxi to Bow Bridge. Snow flakes were stuck to the sides of the bridge and dusted everything with a white glow as I walked up and looked down at the water. It was mostly frozen and collecting snowflakes on top. I pulled out her scarf, which now smelled nothing like her, and watched as white dots covered the red. I thought of my brother walking in on his wife, sprawled out on her white quilt with a puddle of blood around her head, then a childhood memory rushed into view, pushing that horrid picture away.
I must’ve been about seven years old. Quin and I raced each other on the frozen lake outside of Mom and Dad’s house as Mom fed a wild deer in the distance. I stopped mid-race and watched the deer take the food from her hand, like he had so many times before. Mom smiled and brushed her hands on her long coat, then turned to us and smiled. I waved. She waved back.
Quin elbowed me. “Come on. Race ya again.”
“I want to do something important when I grow up.”
“Yeah, me too. I want to be the best hockey player to ever exist.” He nudged me again. “Let’s go. One more race. You’ll win one of these times … maybe….”
I shook my head. “I want to do something really important. Like Mom just did.”
“Mom? All she did was feed a that dumb animal.”
“That’s not how I see it.”
The deer grazed its head against Mom’s red coat, looking for more food in her pockets. She gave him a small apple, which the deer took happily before running off into the woods, leaving Mom there satisfied and content. It may have been small, and maybe to most people it doesn’t mean much, but to me … Mom showed me that even the smallest things can be important. No need to be big and change the entire world. She loved even the wild animals around her that didn’t do anything for her. She even treaded lightly on the grass. Once, around my fifth birthday, I asked her why she walked so funny in the grass and she said, “I don’t want to hurt the ants. They work so hard all of the time, I’d hate to kill them without reason.” She thought about things and people more than herself. I always said I wanted to be like her. I wanted to make a difference even if it meant taking the time to care for wild birds and deer, and I tried, believe me I tried, but I seemed to fail at everything I ever did.
Mom used to say, “Do your best, that’s all that matters. If your best is the rest of the world’s worst, there’s nothing to worry about as long as you are giving it all you’ve got. Don’t spend your life competing with the rest of the world, always trying to be better. Be yourself, son. Be the best you that you can be and I’ll always be proud of you.”
I walked down to the bridge and made my way to the frozen water. Seemed to be pretty solid, probably about an inch think or so. I stepped out on the ice where the snow began to gather and knelt down, then wrote, I’m sorry, Mom in the white dust. I leaned back and reclined onto the ice, staring at the cloudy winter sky as snowflakes melted on my face. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said into the air. “If you can hear me, I want you to know that I’ve always tried my best, but I feel like giving up now.”
On what? I asked myself inside. Life? Relationships?
“I just want to be alone, Mom. I want to be alone so I don’t hurt anyone.”
I wished for her warm arms to wrap around me again, like she did all those bedtimes before she died, but the frosty air was the only thing that hugged me.
My phone beeped. A text from London. She’s still really confused. She keeps asking me where we’ve landed and they gave her ice chips and she thinks they are flavored. Try not to worry, but maybe you should go back to your team. I think it will be fine.
Is she still saying she doesn’t want me there?
She seems afraid of you or something. It doesn’t make much sense, but I’ll keep talking to her as she comes out of the fog and let you know what happens.
I put my phone back in my pocket and sat up. Go back to the team, she said, as if that were the easiest thing in the world to do. I thought of Mom as my eyes took in the beauty of the winter scene, imagining myself in all the hockey gear, ready to fight for another win. I pictured Coach and all that he’d worked for and I knew I needed to go back to help the Bruins make it all the way. If I couldn’t make things right with Nora, maybe I could make it right for my teammates. Maybe, for once, I wouldn’t fail at something.
After my first game since returning to play—which we lost—a fresh determination stirred within me. London said that Nora was still adamant about not seeing me and although I couldn’t forget her, I tried. I focused on the other guys in black and yellow. I focused on the ice and the plays and my opponents. We lost the first game since I returned, but I upped my passion in our next practice and Coach could see it in my eyes. I guess everyone could. Jones stopped me before I exited the ice and asked what came over me. I smiled and shrugged. “Just want to do the best I can, whatever that is.”
“Whatever it is,” he said, “it’s pretty awesome. Nice work, Reed.”
I waved the compliment away. For some reason, it felt like a distraction.
“We just might win this,” he said, slapping my helmet. “Keep it up.”
He went back into the locker room and I stayed there on the ice until everyone exited. I glanced around at the scuffed up ice. Something about that … I don’t know … I always loved the ice after it’d been skated on for so long. It told a story the clean, perfect ice didn’t. It had scars and life and mistakes.
I held my chin up and inhaled, imagining the seats filled with fans donning our colors, their eager faces waiting to see if we’d pull through and give them something to scream about and I wanted to give them just that.
We won the next game. And the next game. And the next one. It’d been almost two months since I last saw Nora, but London kept in touch with me. She was finally going home and she remembered me, but while she was dreaming in her coma she decided that I’m not the right one for her and she wanted nothing to do with me.
I didn’t want to push it yet. She needed to recover fully without whatever stress she thought I’d bring her. So I continued to focus on the team, getting so into it that we were on a major winning streak with no signs of losing. The other guys were pumped and happy. Locker room talks grew louder and more pranks were played. It was fun and I told myself I’d enjoy it, no matter how much it killed me that Nora wanted nothing to do with me.
Women are not life, I kept reminding myself, but it didn’t take away my thoughts of her. Every night at midnight I’d close my eyes and hear her voice whispering, “You called,” wishing it were real, but it never was and the more I immersed myself into the Bruins, the more her voice became a distant memory, like the end of a song fading out to its drawn out end.
The music stopped playing.
CH. 22 - Nora
As soon as I got home from the hospital I asked Mom and London, who pretty much gave me no choice but to delight in their help while adjusting to being home again, for some time to myself. They busied themselves in the kitchen while I rested in bed and turned to Google for advice. I read everything I could about other people recovering from E. Coli and HUS. Some people got lucky like me and went home with few complications, although I did need therapy, medication, and they'd be watching my kidney's for a while. Others, however, never came home.
After reading for a while I decided to look up stories of people who dream while in a coma. I had these intense, vivid dreams that seemed so real at times.
I scanned the search results and clicked on, Learning from the Hidden Conscious While Comatose.
The article came up and I immediately began to read.
When I woke from my coma I tried to convince my family that I was actually on a cruise for a few months and met a lot of amazing people. They nodded and agreed, knowing it was only dreams, but they
were such realistic dreams that I spent the next few weeks asking my wife if a memory I had was real or a dream. But the best part about this is that my mind was trying to teach me while I was asleep and I'm sharing this on my blog so that others who experience this can make sense of it.
As soon as you wake up, record those dreams in as much detail as possible. Then go through each one and try to figure out what your fear or pleasure is in the dream. Maybe you fear losing your job or maybe you find pleasure in something you never knew. Try it out and leave a comment letting me know what you find. And while you're at it, buy my book to read the full story and find out what my dreams taught me.
London tapped on my door. "Brought you some butternut squash soup."
Mom trailed in behind her. I sat up straighter and welcomed the steamy bowl into my hands. London gave me a motherly look.
"What?" I said.
"You really need to talk to Sawyer. Your dreams weren't real and he cares about you a lot. This should be taken seriously coming from me, your trusty cynical friend.”
"I don't know. What if my dreams were trying to warn me?"
"Oh, for the love of it all," Mom said. "You've been doing this since you were a child. It's probably my fault."
"Doing what?" I said.
"Your father always tried to push you to accomplish anything you set your mind to and I always stepped in with logic and fear. You've never been good at making decisions and you avoid things you don't excel in. You're living in my fears." She sat on my bed and slumped her shoulders. "Honey, do you love the boy or not?”
I lowered the bowl to my lap and stared at the creamy orange soup. Mom touched my arm and London stood there eager to know my answer.
"Could I have some time to think?" I asked.
"You think too much," London said as Mom sighed.
"I need to think. It helps me feel."
They left the room and I immediately picked up my phone. Weird to be left alone for so long. It felt so normal to sit around with my family and not have a million places to be, but I was definitely ready to get back to work.
Marilyn Grey - [Unspoken 06] Page 11