They took turns talking to her, and reading her passages from her favorite books, praying that she could somehow hear them, praying that they were somehow getting through to her. Each dreaded the one fearful day when she would finally let go, when the life-preserving machines that she was connected to could do no more.
But that day would never come.
It was a cold October night, nearly a month after Mike's tragic suicide, when the miracle happened.
Without warning, Karen slowly opened her eyes, and in the darkness of the tiny hospital room saw the blurred outline of a person sitting beside her.
“Mike?” she asked weakly. She felt as though her mouth were full of sand.
The figure sitting beside her moved closer.
“Mike?” she asked again.
“No,” a gentle voice told her. “It's Lou.”
“Lou,” she said, smiling druggedly. She tried to reach her hand out to him, but was too weak to command movement. Her arm slid off the side of the narrow bed, hanging limply. “Where's Mike?”
Suddenly, Lou began to cry into the blankets. He didn't answer her question. For all the emotion that rocked him, he was unable to do so.
Nor did he have to.
Hot tears began to seep from Karen's eyes because somehow, some way, she sensed that Mike was no longer with her. Later, when she thought about that night (and she would think about it often), she would tell herself that she must have heard one of her friends talking about Mike's suicide while she was in her coma, and that her subconscious mind had somehow retained that information. But there was a part of her that would always disagree, a part of her that would whisper the truth, with a thin little voice in the back of her mind: You knew he was gone. Somehow, you already knew.
“It's okay, Lou,” she whispered soothingly. She could feel him trembling against her.
“Nooooo...” he cried.
“It's okay,” she repeated, her eyes burning with tears.
In the darkness, her trembling hand found his.
~EPILOGUE~
Only Rick Hunter and Stacey Mackinnon remained in close contact in the years that followed that tragic summer. Eventually, they moved in together and attended college at Stonehill. After some hard times, they were married in a small church in Middleboro, Massachusetts, and later had a son.
Little by little the remaining friends went their separate ways, and in time, the memories of their stay at Uncle Jack's cabin became cracked and blurry, like photographs slowly consumed by the heat of the summer sun. Faded, but not forgotten.
Once in a while, but not too often, the friends bumped into each other unexpectedly, either at the cabin, or at the Pleasant Pines Cemetery, where their loved ones had been buried. Soon even those meetings became scarce, for the friends now frolicked in a different river, a river whose inescapable current shoved them violently away from the past, leading them far, far away from Hevven, pulling them onward towards that golden distant shore known as The Future. A river that was often calm and peaceful, and sometimes as jarring as a rollercoaster ride—the inevitable river of Time.
But no matter how many years divided those brief encounters, no matter how many miles came between them, or how much their lives would change, they would never forget those special days spent together at the cabin, walking barefoot through the meadow, going down to the river. Nor would they ever forget the lives that were lost, the horrors they endured, or the many precious memories that would forever wander through the passageways of their minds, like the ghosts of long-lost friends, waiting to guide them back to yesterday.
The magic, the innocence, the dreams of childhood were gone, but the scars they had suffered, both physically and mentally, would remain with them for a lifetime. They would never heal, never go away.
As for the giants...
They never spoke again.
About the Author
James Michael Rice lives in New England and is the author of A Tough Act to Follow. He can be contacted via his website at www.jamesmichaelrice.com.
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