Unglued (Holding On)

by Rachael Brownell

  Ethan: It’s been delivered to Natalie’s house for you.

  So he knew that I ordered the photograph. Did he know that I was in England? Did he know that I was at his show? Did he see me in the gallery? I need answers. I need to know what to do next. Do I text him back? It’s been two days since he sent me that message. Does he think I’m ignoring him?

  I have to talk to Natalie. She’ll know what to do. Crap! Natalie. I wonder how she’s doing this morning. She won’t be up to talking about Ethan. She may not even be awake yet. I need to get to the hospital and check on her.

  The sun is starting to peek over the mountains now, filling the sky with light and announcing the start of the day. What will today hold for me?

  I hear my phone alert me to a new text as I pull into the hospital parking lot. Brad is probably wondering where I am. Maybe it’s my mom. Whoever it is has to wait because I have to turn my phone off before I reach Natalie’s floor. Intensive care doesn’t allow you to have your cell phones on.

  Walking into the lobby, I immediately spot Morgan and Natalie’s parents. Everyone is on their phones, so I keep going towards the elevator bank. I’m sure I will see them when they head back up to Natalie’s room. The elevator arrives on the fifth floor, and I approach the nurse’s station and wait for someone to open the doors for me.

  “Can I help you?”

  “May I please go back and see Natalie Johanson? I should be on the approved list of visitors. My name is Rebecca Blake.”

  Her face tells me that something is wrong. Immediately, I flash back to walking through the lobby. Natalie’s parents look like they have been crying. Morgan looks angry. Something had happened. How did I miss that?

  “I’m sorry, but she cannot have any visitors right now. Her parents just went downstairs. You should probably go and find them.”

  I head back to the elevators in a trance. Something is wrong, really wrong. Why could she not have any visitors? I need to find Morgan. I power my phone back up so that I can call and find out where he is.

  The elevator arrives in the lobby as my phone alerts me to a waiting text message. I open up my box to find three new messages, the first of which is from Morgan. I also have one from Brad and one from my mom. I open Morgan’s message and collapse onto the floor of the elevator as the doors open. I see Brad’s face for a split second before everything goes black around me.

  Morgan: Natalie’s not doing well get here ASAP

  The lobby is full of friends and family when I finally come to. I’m laying down on one of the couches with my head in my mom’s lap. I can see Brad and Morgan talking in the corner. Lainey and Jill are coming through the front entrance as I sit up and they rush over to me.

  “What’s going on, Becca. Morgan sent us both a text to get here quickly but didn’t tell us why. What’s wrong with Natalie?”

  Lainey was talking so fast that it took me a moment to comprehend what she was saying. No one really knew what was going on with Natalie. Everything had happened so fast that I hadn’t called anyone, and I’m sure it was the last thing on Morgan’s mind.

  I started from the beginning and gave them the shortened version. I told them about finding her in the laundry room, and I told them about the tumor and the surgery. I didn’t know much after that. There were about twenty of us or so, and we all stopped talking when Natalie’s parents walked back in the room. Natalie’s dad was holding up Natalie’s mom who was crying and having a hard time walking.

  It took him a moment to compose himself while we all stared at him and waited. He cleared his throat twice before he was finally able to look up and make eye contact with anyone.

  “Natalie took a turn for the worse last night. We’ve just finished speaking with the doctors, and it looks like there are going to be some complications from the surgery. They put her in a medically induced coma so that her body can rest, but they are going to have to do surgery again.”

  Everyone was quiet. Stunned silence was the best way to describe it. I was afraid to move. I was afraid to speak. The quietest sound would have been able to be heard down the hall and around the corner.

  I had questions. How long before the next surgery? How long was the coma going to last? What exactly went wrong? I wanted answers. I needed answers.

  I finally excused myself and walked over to where Brad and Morgan were standing. Brad took me in his arms without hesitation. I immediately felt tense, flashing back to my dream once again. When he wrapped his arms around me from behind, I had to pull away. It was too much like my dream. I knew that this was real, and that the dream was just a dream, but the dream had felt real, too real.

  “I need fresh air. Morgan, will you come outside with me?”

  He didn’t answer but instead turned and headed towards the exit. I shot Brad a quick smile and follow Morgan out the front doors of the hospital. He sat down on a bench not far from the entrance, and started to cry. My emotions broke free the second I saw the tears streaming down his face.

  We sat there, holding hands and crying together. It was heartbreaking to know that Natalie was sicker than we thought. It was heartbreaking to know that we couldn’t see her or talk to her. It was heartbreaking for someone as vibrant and lively as Natalie to be brought down by something as awful as a tumor.

  “She’s really bad, Becca,” Morgan finally spoke as the tears started to subside.

  “How bad?” How bad was really bad? I thought a brain tumor was really bad. Could it really be any worse? They said that they got everything. They said she was recovering. Natalie has always had a fighting spirit. She had to make it through this.

  “The doctors say that her body is not functioning properly on its own. She had to be put back on her breathing machine, and they are monitoring her heart rate. Apparently, it’s erratic. At first, they thought it was from the surgery, that her body was stressed or something. Now, they’re really not sure what’s going on. They put her in a coma to help her body relax.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew that no matter what I said or did, nothing was going to change the situation. Nothing was going to help Natalie heal any faster. Nothing was going to help any of us heal any faster. We had to wait and see what the doctors said, to see how Natalie’s body reacts. We have to wait until she wakes up.

  The hours passed, and slowly, family and friends left the hospital in search of food and prayer. I knew that if I left, something would happen, Natalie’s status would change. I was afraid to breathe, afraid to speak, afraid to move an inch, thinking that if I did, she might not make it.

  The doctors came down and talked with Natalie’s parents a little after dinnertime. Judging by the body language of the doctors, I knew that nothing had changed. They were void of emotion when speaking. Both of them were standing up straight and looking Natalie’s dad in the eyes. They exuded confidence from head to toe, but they didn’t have me fooled. If they were as confident as they looked, Natalie would be getting better, not staying the same.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I left the hospital as it got dark. Even Natalie’s parents were going home for the night. There was nothing we could do for her, and we all knew it.

  I promised to meet Morgan and Brad back up at the hospital in the morning. Brad wanted to come over, but I told him I was going to go straight to bed and that it was pointless. I wanted to go straight to bed. I wanted to sleep, I needed to sleep. What I didn’t want or need was to dream.

  I knew the dreams would come, and I knew that I would remember them vividly when I woke up the next morning. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to handle that. I wasn’t sure that my emotions would be able to handle that. I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle that. All I could think about as I crawled in bed that night was how I didn’t want to dream. How I didn’t want to think about Ethan. How I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he controlled my world in my dreams the way he sometimes controls my world when I’m awake.

  That was the last thing I remember thinking as I passe
d out cold.

  Chapter 14

  Present Day

  It was four very long days before Natalie woke up from her coma. As soon as she was able to see visitors, her room filled up quickly. There were family members coming and going. Friends were popping in to see her. She got at least five deliveries of flowers that first day that the nurses brought in for her. Her room was like a revolving door that never stopped moving.

  The only constants in the room were her parents, Morgan and me. I barely left the hospital for what ended up being almost a week from beginning to end. I slept in my own bed at night and eventually started leaving to get food, but otherwise I was stationed as close to Natalie as I could be.

  The day after she woke up is when things started to go wrong. I was the first to arrive that morning. The doctors and nurses were outside her room and there was a lot of commotion coming from behind her closed door. I knew better than to try and go inside since I wasn’t family, so I headed back downstairs toward the cafeteria instead to get some stale coffee.

  I sent Morgan a text, letting him know that something was up and to meet me in the cafeteria when he got to the hospital. It took almost ten minutes for him to reply. He was already here, upstairs in Natalie’s room. I figured that meant that things had settled down, and that everything was okay to head back up. Boy, was I wrong on both accounts.

  Another text immediately followed.

  Morgan: Stay there. I will be down soon

  That was a bad sign if I ever saw one.

  I waited for what felt like forever. When I finally spotted Morgan walking down the hall, I realized that something was wrong immediately. If he was trying to mask how he was feeling, he was doing a horrible job. The pain was evident in the way he walked, his posture. Mainly, it was evident by the solemn look on his face.

  The doctors had warned us that Natalie may never be the same as she was. Once she woke up, they would know more about her “condition,” they kept saying. Either I was in the dark or her “condition” was supposed to be apparent to those around her. I knew that there was a reason she was in the hospital. I knew that they had removed a very large tumor from her brain. I knew a lot about what was going on, or so I thought.

  Morgan took a seat next to me, crashing into the chair with a loud thud. I knew it was bad even before he opened his mouth. I knew that her situation, her “condition” had worsened. I knew that whatever was going on, whatever he was about to tell me, was not good news.

  “The doctors don’t think that they got everything. Her behavior is erratic, and her moods have been fluctuating like crazy since you left last night. I knew something was wrong when she woke up this morning and didn’t know who I was.”

  Crap! Crap! Crap!

  It was worse than I thought. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that everything was going to be fine, but I knew deep down that it wasn’t. I knew that we were losing her, that we have possibly lost her already. So instead of talking, we sat in silence and let it all sink in. The pain, the sadness, the reality of the situation. We let it sink in so deep that the tears started to come before either of us knew that we were crying. That’s how we spent the morning.

  The days began to blur together. Days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into a month. Before I knew it, it was July, and there was still no change in Natalie’s status. She was awake. She was coherent. She was still not herself.

  Between work and school and visiting Natalie every day, I was completely exhausted. Morgan was as close to having a mental breakdown as I was. I think he was taking all of this the hardest. The woman he loved was no longer here. The vibrant, happy, fun-loving woman he fell in love with, was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a bitter, angry introvert.

  We were all still asking why? Why did this happen? The doctors didn’t have any answers for us. They couldn’t explain her change in mood. They couldn’t explain much actually. They checked and rechecked her scans to make sure they got the entire tumor. Everything was coming back clear. The only reason they have been keeping her for observation is because she is showing signs of heart failure on the monitors.

  They’ve done tests and blood work and everything has come back normal. If you watch the machines she’s hooked up to, you would think she was normal. Her body is acting completely normal, except the random beeping of the heart monitor every few minutes.

  I’m not an expert, far from it, but it sounds like her heart stops for a few seconds and then starts again. The really weird part is that when it starts again, it’s working really hard and pumping really fast. The doctors can’t seem to figure it out. They say all they can do is monitor her and see what happens.

  I don’t like playing the wait and see game. I actually hate it. I just left the hospital. I stopped in to check on Natalie after work and was greeted with a plastic cup to the face. Natalie was throwing a tantrum, again. This was a huge part of the “New Natalie” that I was not a fan of. Either she was in a rage, or she had no clue who I was. It was a toss-up as to what I would walk in to on any given day.

  I need to shake it off and go to bed. I have a test in the morning, and I work again tomorrow. I was planning on visiting Natalie in-between the two, but I wasn’t sure if I was welcome or not. I’ll go anyway. Her tantrums normally only last a few hours. She won’t even remember tomorrow.

  Fireworks are starting to go off as I pull in the driveway. I forgot what day it was for a minute. I can see a red starburst blast throughout the night sky over the neighboring house. It reminds me of last year’s festivities. I spent the day with Natalie and Morgan and Ethan. Now, here I am, alone. Well, not totally alone. Brad is waiting inside for me.

  Without even speaking, he grabs my hand the second I’m through the door and pulls me into the backyard. The show is amazing. I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful the fireworks look with the mountains as a backdrop. Every time one goes off, the landscape behind it is illuminated. It’s the most wonderful sight.

  I rest my head back against Brad’s chest as he wraps his arms around me. This is my solitude. He is my rock; he always has been, and I have no idea how I would make it through this without him. I don’t know how I would have made it through most of my life’s “downs” without his support, without him by my side, holding my hand, telling me everything is going to be okay.

  The show lasted about twenty minutes. The finale was amazing. So many fireworks, so many colors. For a moment I got lost in the sight, forgot about my day and let my mind rest. It was perfect, until it ended.

  Inside, waiting for me, was dinner. Brad had a way of softly attacking me. If he thought that I needed to eat, he would surprise me by cooking. If he thought that I needed to relax, he would surprise me with a bath. Most of the time, his surprises were spot on, like he knew what I needed before I knew. Sometimes, it felt like an attack. Today, he was spot on, and as I caught the faintest aroma coming from the kitchen, my stomach made a very loud, very approving noise.

  We talked casually over dinner. We never talked about anything important anymore. We tried to keep things light by talking about the things that mattered the least in life. Today’s topic was gas prices. Like I said, in comparison to what was really going on, gas prices didn’t matter one bit to either of us.

  Brad had stopped going to the hospital a few weeks ago. He never said anything about it, he just stopped. It had been bugging me for a while as to why he stopped, but I never found the right time to bring it up. That’s not true. There had been plenty of available opportunities to ask. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “So, not to change the subject of our very important conversation, but I need to ask you something.” I was hesitant and I knew that he could tell. There was no real easy way to ask this. The entire situation was incredibly sensitive.

  “Okay. I think I know what you’re going to ask me and before you do, I want to say something.”

  Crap! This conversation is not going to be a good one. Maybe I can
still back out of it? Nope! I can see the determination in his eyes.

  “I need you to know that I love you, more than I will ever be able to put into words. I need you to know that no matter what happens to Natalie, no matter the outcome, that I will still be there for you. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, of course. But, Brad...”

  “No. I need you to just listen for a minute. Natalie and I agreed to never talk about this with you, but I think that you need to know. I think that Natalie would want to be the one to tell you, but I’m not even sure she remembers any of it. So, I need you to listen, without interrupting me, without asking questions, without jumping to conclusions. I need you to understand that everything that was said and done, was done out of love, from the bottom of our hearts. Can you do that for me? Can you just listen for a few minutes?”

  I shake my head because my heart is in my throat preventing me from saying anything. This is going to be really bad. I’m not going to like what he has to say, and he knows it. The fact that he’s avoiding eye contact with me should have been my first clue, but what I was focused on right now had nothing to do with Brad. The only thing I can feel is the pounding of my heart, and the fear that he’s about to break it.

  “Becca, I...”

  My cell starts ringing, and at the same time, his does. I jump, startled out of my current state and reach for my phone. I look down to see Morgan’s face and before I can bring myself to answer it, Brad grabs my phone.

  “He can wait. I really need to get this off my chest.”

  “Fine, but who was calling you?”

  “Morgan. He must have put us on three way.”

  “Brad. Why would he put us on a three-way call when we are always together? Something has to be going on, something important. I’m gonna call him back and then we can finish our conversation.”

  I think he knew what I was thinking. It was all I ever thought about. The phone call that I never wanted to get, the one I feared would come. I didn’t want this call to be that call. I wasn’t ready for that call, but I knew this was it, and I think Brad did too.