by Unknown
“Chase, I’m back, and I brought food. Are you hungry? Do you feel like eating?” I call as I set our food on the counter and go into his room. He’s not there, but I hear the shower running so I knock on the bathroom door and repeat myself but there’s no answer. I wonder if he heard me. I race up the stairs to take Mike his food.
“Thanks,” he smiles as he comes down from the second floor in fresh clothes, his hair still wet from a shower himself. “Chase is in the shower.”
“I heard it going. I’m going to go back down and make sure he’s OK,” I say, as I turn to go back to the door.
“Is everything alright at home?” I stiffen, frozen.
“Yeah, why?” I ask evasively, not turning to look him in the face.
“Well, you left in a hurry; I just wanted to make sure everything is OK.” I hear Mike unwrap his sandwich and take a big bite of it.
“It’s been a really stressful weekend,” I sigh before I go back down the stairs. The shower is still running, so I go to Chase’s room and pick up the dishes from earlier and spread his duvet, smoothing it delicately. Then I go to the bathroom door and knock. “Are you OK?” I ask. He still doesn’t answer. I go back to the kitchenette and put our food on plates. I take them into his room and set them on his desk. I go to the bathroom door again. I turn the knob. “I got us Steak and Shake, are you hung—” I stop as I open the door, and for the second time today, I scream. This can’t be real. I have a sudden flashback to finding Lana lying on the floor with blood surrounding her, as I stare at Chase. In his gym shorts, blood trickling from his nose, he lies on the floor, eyes closed, lifeless beside the running shower. I race to his side and touch his neck with shaking hands. His pulse is strong. Then I turn his head and hold his face in my hands. “Chase? Chase? Baby,” I plead. His head is limp in my hands. I pat his cheek gently. This is not happening. What’s wrong? Mike appears in the doorway and looks at us.
“What happened?” he asks, but he must already know that I don’t know. He clutches his stomach, and I watch all the color drain from his face as I answer.
“I found him like this.” My voice trembles. “Chase, please, come on, wake up.” Mike takes his phone out of his pocket and dials a number as he rushes in beside me. My tears fall onto Chase’s cheek and stream to his tiled floor. “Is he br-breathing?” he asks breathily. He checks his neck for a pulse too, as I rise and wet a washcloth.
“Yes, what’s going on?” I ask, though I know he’s as clueless as I am. I delicately wipe the blood from his face. “Chase, wake up,” I beg. I expect him to open his eyes and begin to rise shaking his head, giving me his crooked smile, and saying something like, “I didn’t see that puddle of water, I’m such a klutz.” But there’s no puddle of water on the floor. There’s nothing that he could have slipped on.
“Yes, I have an emergency, my son is unconscious . . . yes I’m sure he’s breathing. No, no drug use. No! No alcohol abuse . . . I understand . . . We found him in the bathroom. There was blood coming from his nose; he might have hit his head.” Mike rises and begins to pace as he gives the 911 operator their address. My tears continue to fall. I delicately push Chase’s messy hair away from his face.
“You promised me you wouldn’t leave me. Don’t leave me,” I whisper desperately in his ear. I feel as though I’m dying. Our life together flashes before my eyes, him leaning on the post by my front door on a spring day, our first kiss, playing video games, sitting on the trunk of his car at our spot looking at the stars in the sky, drinking coffee in his car as we talked, riding on the back of his bike, sitting in a secluded corner of a quiet restaurant, all those nights together. I see his face, happy, sad, laughing, angry, content, wistful, sexy, and finally blank. Two paramedics arrive, and Mike pulls me away by my shoulders so that they can look at him. He answers their questions as we leave the bathroom, and I collapse on my knees on the floor by the bed. I think I’m having a heart attack because this aching in my heart, in my chest, in my stomach feels as though my insides are being ripped away from me.
“Lacey, I’m going to ride in the ambulance. Are you OK to follow us to the hospital?” Mike asks me hastily as he follows the paramedics out of the bedroom. I try to stand, but I fall again on my knees. He rushes back to my side. “I need you to be strong for Chase and for me,” he says in a low, shaking voice. I wipe my eyes. I try to speak, but I don’t have words. “Lacey?” he asks again almost in desperation, while rising and pulling me to my feet at the same time. “Can you follow us?” I nod, grab my purse from the counter as we pass it, and follow him out of thet basement. I follow him all the way to the ambulance. He climbs in, and I stand there staring at Chase as the paramedics hook machines up to his fingers, put tabs onto his chest with wires leading to other machines, and place an oxygen tube under his nose. “Lacey, we’ll meet you at the hospital,” Mike commands. The doors close in my face, and I’m startled. The ambulance pulls away, and I blink wildly. He’s leaving. Chase is leaving me. I stumble to my car and start it. I go to follow them, but they are racing down the country road by the time I exit the housing addition. I floor it and drive erratically. With rolling stops at stop signs, and cutting off other drivers, I travel at speeds I’ve never attempted before. I have to be with him; I have to know he’s safe, that he’s going to be alright. When I reach the hospital, I race inside to the emergency room. I advance straight to the reception desk and ask about Chase. The woman behind the desk tries to smile a comforting smile as she tell me she’ll see what she can find out, but it only heightens my fear. She tells me to have a seat, but I don’t want to sit. Instead, I reach in my purse and grab my phone to go outside. I turn it on and find a multitude of text messages from my parents, Lana, Tasha, and Jade. None from Chase; it’s silly to focus on that, but I always have messages from Chase. I grip my phone as I dial the house number. I don’t want to talk to anyone; I want to get the voicemail.
“Hello?” Lana answers on the second ring.
“Lana, something happened to Chase. I’m at the hospital with Mike and him. I don’t know what’s going on because we just got here. But I wanted you guys to know where I am if you didn’t hear from me for a while.”
“Lacey, what do you mean?” I hear panic in her voice. I don’t want to hear that because I’ll panic too.
“When I got back to his house, he was passed out on the floor. He’s with the doctors now. I guess when I know something, I’ll call you and let you know. OK?” I have to get off the phone. My head is starting to hurt from all the crying, and I need to take out these contacts.
“OK,” she says softly.
“I’m turning my phone back off now,” I say as I hang up over her objections. I go back into the waiting room and take care of myself in the bathroom, splashing cool water on my face, holding cupped hands of water to each eye for soothing, pulling my hair up into a pony tail, and putting on my glasses. Back in the waiting room, I settle into an uncomfortable bench seat near the receptionist’s desk. I pull my feet up and hug my knees, watching the door that leads to the ER, willing it to open and produce Mike with Chase strutting out beside him, rolling his eyes at our overreaction.
Time passes. Seconds turn into minutes; minutes turn into hours. Mike appears, and says Chase is in a coma and something about surgery to relieve pressure from swelling. Then he disappears again, back into the ER. I watch the shadows slowly move across the floor in front of me. The lights come on, and I can no longer see the traffic through the large plate-glass windows in my peripheral vision; I only see the waiting room reflected. I stare at the empty chair across the walkway from me. I’m not sure how long I’ve sat like this, hugging my knees. The only comfort comes from memories because if I don’t think about them, my mind will wander to many horrible scenarios.
“Hey,” I hear Byron’s voice, but I don’t acknowledge it. He sits beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder, pulling me to him. I hear him hiss softly when my head reaches his shoulder. Tears slide heavily down my cheeks, and
everything looks abstract through them as they refill my eyes. “He’s going to be all right.” He lets me lean on him. I look up at him. His cheek is swollen, his left eye is bloodshot and blackened, and his bottom lip is swollen with a large gash. I finally look around. Mike, my mom, my dad, Lana, Tomas, Jade, Evan, Stain, A.J., Thax, Tasha, Paul, Byron, Bea, Stacey, and Henry all sit around me. When did they all get here? I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
“Mr. Livingston?” a Hispanic doctor in green scrubs asks. He looks familiar, but before I can even think, Tomas leaps from his chair.
“Dad, how is he?” he asks the doctor. His dad looks around the group, resting briefly on my parents.
“Mr. Livingston?” he asks again. He must want to speak to him in private. This can’t be good. Mike rises and runs his hands through his hair as he and Tomas’ dad step to an isolated part of the waiting room. The doctor talks with small, concise hand gestures, and even draws something on the paper he’s holding as Mike, watches, listens, nods, and narrows his eyes every so often like he’s digesting the information. My heart pounds in my ears. Finally, Mike comes back over, and I can’t look at him.
“He’s out of surgery. He’s going to be in recovery for a couple hours. But then we can go see him.” I look up at him, and he’s looking right at me. “He’ll be in the ICU at least overnight before they transfer him to the neuro-unit. He’s still in a coma and will be until they are sure he’s OK. I have to make some phone calls.” Mike turns and crosses the waiting room to go outside.
“He’s going to be OK,” Mom says, relieved. I stare at her.
“Why are you here?” I ask, surprised at the acidity in my voice while Mom blanches.
“Lacey,” my dad warns.
“For that matter, why are you here?” I turn my gaze on him. Everyone is in shocked silence, eyes wide, just staring at me, as I glare through glassy eyes at my parents. “I need some air,” I say, rising and crossing the waiting room to the main lobby where I exit through the main entrance, completely on other side from where Mike went to make his calls. Once I’m outside, a crisp spring breeze assaults my face. The fallen wisps of hair dance around my cheeks. All I feel is numb. All I want to do is disappear. I step off the sidewalk and collapse onto my knees in the grass, burying my face in my hands.
It’s two a.m. Mom and Dad have gone home. All of Chase’s bandmates are crashing at his house. All of my other friends have gone home while Chase’s mom arrives in a whirlwind of messy hair and mascara-streaked cheeks. I sit outside of the ICU while Mike and Melissa are sitting with Chase. I’m scared. Finally Melissa comes out, wiping her eyes and nose with a tissue. I stand to meet them, and she embraces me in a tight hug and begins to sob. I hold her until she’s only sniffling. She releases me and sits in the chair.
“Come on, sweetie,” Mike encourages. We go through a door and down the hall. I pass rows of windows that show men and women hooked up to wires, tubes, and breathing machines, and walls of flat-panel screens showing stats and graphs. “Don’t be scared by what you see,” Mike soothes as we pause by a door. I look through the glass first. Chase, my Chase lies there, swollen, bruised face, with tubes coming from everywhere. A machine helps him breath, and my stomach turns.
“His hair,” I gasp. His head is bandaged, but I don’t see any of his wavy locks peeking out from underneath.
“They were just going to shave where they needed to for the surgery, but I know Chase would want all or nothing so I asked them to just shave it all.
“Can I go in?” I ask, fingers trembling at my side.
“Of course,” Mike answers. I go in and sit on the stool by his bed. I delicately take his hand in mine.
“Hey, love,” I whisper hoarsely. The only response is the monitor beeping and the whooshing sound coming from the breathing machine.
“I’m here; I’m not leaving you. Thank you. . . for keeping your promise. I’d like for you to wake up soon.” I inhale a jagged breath. “You really scared me,” I breathe.
Days pass. I miss a lot of school that first week of his hospital stay. I cover my work schedule so that I can stay at the hospital as much as possible. They move Chase to the neuro-unit. It looks a lot like the ICU only with more monitors. His grandparents arrive on Monday, and we take turns sitting beside him to ensure that he’s not alone. By the second week, he’s off the breathing machine and most of the tubes are gone. His wounds from the fight are mostly healed and he’s beginning to look like himself again as the swelling goes down. The nurses even look the other way when they turn him, and I climb into bed with him, cuddling up to him or just holding his hand.
“He can still hear everything; he knows you’re here,” a large, older nurse told me as she lowered the gate to his bed when I asked if I could get closer. Now they make sure to turn him to give me room to be beside him.
I climb up beside him after the nurse on duty leaves the room. It’s not like we have privacy with the wall of windows, but if I close my eyes, we’re alone, just us. I take his calloused hand and kiss the inside of his palm before leaning my head against it.
“Do you know what today is?” I ask, watching his chest rise and fall. I take a slow, deep breath before I answer to make sure my voice doesn’t waiver or shake. “This is the day that a year ago you said your first words to me. Do you remember what they were?” I pause, as if giving him an opportunity to wake up and tell me. “Yeah, I thought you hated me, the way you always looked at me like you couldn’t stand me. But it wasn’t true.” I smile into his hand and kiss it once more as a large tear drops from my cheek. “I need you to wake up,” I whisper, but he doesn’t as I lean up and kiss his cheek.
Lana
Lacey is a zombie. She’s withdrawn from everyone and has dark circles under her eyes continually. Her only focus is getting to the hospital after school. Now that school has ended, she goes straight there in the morning like it’s her job. Her actual work has been really accommodating these past two months, but I’m not sure if she even cares if she has a job right now. At first everyone wanted to be there for her, be with her, but she closed up so much that the only person she talks to is Byron. They have bonded further because of their own guilt over Chase. When he fell during that fight, he suffered a major concussion. When he fell the second time in the bathroom it became worse. The stitches have come out of the incision, and he’s not bandaged up anymore. A straight line up the back of his head, and his hair has grown into a burr haircut. He looks so different without his mop of hair. I sit with her at the hospital as much as I can. Even though she’s not talking to me, I’m still here for her. Well, as much as I can be. Mom is still moving to Cincinnati. Mom is still dragging me with her. When I told Tomas, he just stared at me in disbelief. I began to cry, and he wrapped his arms around me, promising we’d make it work. What should be a time to engross ourselves in each other has been spent worrying and wondering what the future holds for all of us. I went to my last group session yesterday. Dr. Mase is referring me to a colleague of his in Ohio. It was weird when they went around the circle and told something about me that inspired them, or a favorite memory of me. The hour ended in a cry-fest, group hug. I gave them hats I made and told them not to forget me. I feel like I’m going to be starting all over again with everything. Maybe Mom is right; this is a fresh start we both need. I just can’t help but feel like she’s running away from her problems though. I think Britt took the news the hardest of all of us. For a few weeks she was even talking about moving to Cincinnati and getting a job there. I talked her down from that ledge. She really can’t leave her mom now, especially since she’s finally getting the attention she needs. Dr. Mase has really taken an interest in both of them, and they seem healthier the whole way around because of it.
I sit on my window seat in my room and watch the sun set over the houses and trees. Boxes sit by my bedroom door. I’m just taking my clothes, some of my knick-knacks, Tomas’s art station, and photos. Everything in our house is staying. I’ll still be visi
ting my dad and sister for holidays and during summer vacations. Mom wants a fresh start. She’s ordered all new furniture for our condo. We will live blocks from the beauty institute in a posh part of downtown. I’m terrified of our new beginning. I want to stay, but part of me doesn’t want my mom to be alone either. She’s always looked out for and taken care of us. Maybe it’s time someone looked out for her for a while. Tomas’ dad told us that if our relationship was meant to be, we would survive this separation. He seems to have warmed up to me lately, though that could just be because I’m leaving. I’m not really sure. Tomas’ truck pulls up in front of the house, and I race downs the stairs. I pause at the door and look up. This will be the last night that I race down the stairs like this, calling this my home. Shaking the sadness off my shoulders, I barrel through the door and jump into his truck.
