Where We Left Off

by J. Alex Blane

  Sydney cleared her throat, cutting him off from asking her again, “Yes. Yes sir, I am.”

  The officer moved away from the scene to a more quiet area. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but your husband was involved in an accident.”

  “Oh my God! Is he okay?”

  There was no easy way for him to explain the accident, and although he tried to soften the shock of it, there weren’t too many ways to answer her question.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “it doesn’t look good. His motorcycle collided with an oncoming vehicle and he was thrown from it quite some distance.”

  He knew that was more information than he should have shared, but he didn’t want to give her a false sense of hope. He’d seen many accidents like this before, all of them ending the same way. From the looks of it, this would be no different.

  Sydney’s face drew a blank, pale stare looking through her bedroom window watching the rain from afar. It felt like someone had pulled the very breath out of her.

  “Ma’am?” the officer tried to get her attention, “…Ma’am?”

  He could hear her breathing into the phone so he knew she hadn’t hung up, and she could hear him as well but couldn’t form her mouth to say anything.

  A noise was added to the commotion in the background, one that pulled her slightly back into the conversation out of curiosity.

  “Is that the medevac?” she heard the officer yell out.

  She wondered what they would need a helicopter for. Medical evacuations were only needed in case of severe emergencies, in case of chance. In case of–

  “Wait… sir…hello….is he–” she began to ask.

  “Alive? Yes ma’am, but critical. They are taking him to the hospital now,” he added, speaking over the noise of the propeller.

  She jumped from her bed, pushing the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Where are they taking him?”

  “Christiana Memorial Hospital,” he answered, and then the call ended.

  She didn’t remember hanging up the phone, walking out of her house, or getting in the car. As she walked into the hospital, though, each step she took was one she was sure she would never forget. The deathly chill that fell on her as she watched nurses move about from room to room was unnerving. She wondered if one of them would notice her discomfort, maybe say something to her or comfort her. Instead they walked aimlessly, seeming to be without a care in the world from the lack of expression on their faces. People were coming in, some barely able to walk, others with cuts and bruises wrapped in homemade bandages. The nurses, who sat devoid of emotion or immediate concern, seemed as if it was normal to them no different than any other day. That’s how they may have felt, but not Sydney. She had never been so afraid or so uncertain about anything before.

  She walked towards the registration counter where three nurses sat, hoping one of them would tell her they had it all wrong, that it was all a big mistake and Mason hadn’t been in an accident. She squeezed her eyes and clenched her hands into fists as tight as she could, praying that when she opened them she would wake from a bad dream.

  “Miss?” she heard one of the ladies call out to her. “Miss, can I help you?”

  “Um yes –I’m looking for-”

  “Patient’s name?” the nurse cut in, typing into the computer.

  “His name is Mason,” she stuttered. “Mason Everett–”

  Sydney was startled by the sound of a slamming door to the right of her. She turned to see what it was, but was nowhere near prepared for what she saw. The few nurses that were behind the counter rushed towards the elevator doors as they slowly opened. Sydney’s eyes, fixed on their every movement, followed them as they ran in what felt like slow motion to her. Her heartbeat blocked out the sound of clipboards falling to the ground, doors banging against the wall, and the urgency of the paramedic calling for a crash cart. It was Mason.

  They were rushing him into the trauma unit, his body lying lifeless and unresponsive on the stretcher. She had never seen so much blood in her entire life. His torn clothes draped his body, stained as if they had been dipped into the dye of roses.

  Maybe it’s not him, she tried to convince herself, glancing through the movements of the doctors and nurses that surrounded him. She told herself over and over that it wasn’t him, finding a false sense of comfort in hope. She recognized his shoes but, like everything else, she convinced herself that it was mere coincidence; just because they were the same kind of shoes he would wear didn’t mean it was him. Within a single blink, her hope dwindled. She could no longer pray that the officer she had spoken to on the phone had gotten it wrong, and she could no longer convince herself that it wasn’t Mason. In between the flowing white coats of the doctors around him, she saw him - not all of him, but a part. Enough of him. His eyes were closed behind the shattered face shield on the helmet that hadn’t yet been removed from his head. She gasped in what felt like her last breath. Open your eyes, Mason, please open your eyes, she pleaded, watching his body jolt from the paddles they placed on his chest.

  She wanted to run to him, grab him, and tell him to wake up, to just get up, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t have moved her legs even if she wanted to. Within those few minutes, that section of the emergency room had filled with a multitude of people. Nurses were holding side conversations, some in regard to the accident, and others were discussing the odds of whether he would live or die. They had seen this far too many times to show an ounce of optimism. Their faces were full of anticipated death, but Sydney couldn’t, she wouldn’t accept that. She stood, antsy and frantic in her every movement. She didn’t know what to do. She watched nervously as they removed the paddles again and handed them to the doctor standing over Mason. “Clear!” he yelled, sending an endless chill through her entire body. Her eyes closed as a tear fell down her cheek. The piercing sound of life slipping away flooded every conversation, ringing phone, and noise that surrounded her. The once prolonged monotonous beep was content, silencing life itself. She was watching him die right in front of her, watching whatever life he had left slip through the monotone of that beep.

  She found herself gasping on tears that she couldn’t control. “Please… No… God please, don’t let him go,” she prayed.

  The area around Mason was silent in the hope of what would have been nothing less than a miracle. The doctor pressed into his chest immediately after the shock jolted his body, trying to get the rhythm of his heartbeat to start again. Sydney hadn’t opened her eyes or stopped praying. She didn’t know if he would make it, and neither did anyone that stood around him, but she wouldn’t stop praying.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep ….beep …beep …beep.

  A miracle was exactly what it seemed like - a small window of hope, a chance, and at the very least, time. His straight line began to peak. Although his eyes hadn’t opened he was still here, fighting to hold on.

  Chapter 34

  They quickly rushed him into surgery. Sydney fell into the chair behind her, happy but still very afraid. She was young, but seasoned enough to understand loss and uncertainty. She’d seen her share of grief and, at the rarest times, miracles. She wasn’t ready for this, though. She wasn’t sure which way it would turn.

  The uncertainty she felt not only rested with her, but also with others who had witnessed the event. One of the nurses who assisted the doctors in reviving Mason stood off to the side, shy of being noticed. She gradually inched towards Sydney, turning away and towards her again, wanting to say something but not sure how to begin. Maybe this wasn’t the time or place. Maybe she should just leave Sydney sobbing in her own solitary sadness, but she couldn’t. Seeing tears fall from Sydney’s eyes caused her to wipe away her own. The warmth of her hand lightly grazed Sydney’s shoulder as she lifted her head to see the nurse taking a seat on the edge of the chair beside her.

  Speechless as she sat, the nurse still didn’t know what to say, but she wasn’t going to let that be an excuse for her to stay silent, or appear any more insensitive than she ha
d when Sydney walked up to the registration counter. “Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked.

  Sydney glanced at the nurse and then fixed her eyes back to the carpet between her feet, watching her tears saturate the as pattern they fell. “No,” she whispered. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  The nurse nodded and stood up from the chair. Sydney wanted to ask if he was okay, if he was going to be okay, but she had only seen him as long as the nurse had. He had been there one moment and gone the next, and then he was back again. As badly as Sydney hoped her response would have been, oh yes, of course he’ll be fine; he had a few minor scrapes and bruises but nothing major, she knew that was far from being the case. She also knew he was far from being okay.

  Her eyes were swollen, reddened by the tears that seemed to come and go as they pleased. “How bad is it?” she asked, hesitantly dragging out her words.

  “It’s pretty bad,” the nurse answered, as honestly as she could.

  She didn’t want to frighten Sydney, but she didn’t want to lie to her either. Most, if not all, of the patients she had seen in a motorcycle accident that bad never made it out of surgery. Knowing how critical he was, how much blood he had already lost, she feared he wouldn’t survive either.

  “He has a number of injuries that will require more than one surgery.”

  “What about his helmet? Why didn’t they remove his helmet before they brought him in?”

  She cleared her throat and dropped her head frantically, searching for the right way to answer. “They didn’t remove it in the ambulance because they didn’t want to expose his spinal cord to any additional trauma.”

  The nurse could see the added fear that had just overshadowed her but Sydney didn’t say anything. She placed a tight fist to the tip of her nose, trying to hold back an outpouring of tears; even then, some still fell slowly down her cheeks.

  “Is he your husband?” the nurse asked

  “No, we’re just dating,” she answered, sniffling into a tissue. “Stupid, right? I’m here bawling my eyes out for my boyfriend.”

  “It’s not stupid at all. It’s pretty obvious you two are close. Whether he’s a boyfriend or husband doesn’t matter, he’s lucky to have you.”

  Sydney looked up at the nurse, glancing at her nametag as she held the tissue tightly in her hand. “I need him to be okay. Meghan,” she said her name, “I need him to be okay.”

  “Listen, we have a team of some of the best surgeons-”

  “Then that also means you have a team of some of the worst too, doesn’t it?” she lightly joked.

  Meghan gently placed both of her hands to the sides of Sydney’s arms, squatting down in front of her as she stared into the tattered pieces of napkin in the palms of her hands.

  “I know you are scared, and I know you have no idea how this is going to turn out, but all you can do right now all we can do right now is stay strong for him and have a little faith that he’ll come through this. Okay?”

  Sydney was hesitant, but she understood and ultimately agreed. “Okay,” she nodded, the corner of her mouth turning to a slight smile.

  “You’re as much our patient as he is right now. So if you need anything, let one of us know. I’ll check in on you and keep you posted as I find out more.”

  Over the next few hours Meghan kept her promise. Although most of the updates didn’t change from hour to hour, Sydney found comfort in knowing he was still in surgery. At the very least that meant he was still alive, still breathing, still fighting.

  Jackson was the first to arrive shortly after she had spoken to the nurse, followed by Reign, a friend of both Jackson and Mason, and then Keri, Jackson’s wife. Keri wasn’t too happy to see Reign there, especially not before she had arrived, but given the situation they didn’t get into any altercations. She and Jackson had a few choice words but they were brief and by the end neither one of them said much else to the other. Their focus was on Mason, or at least Jackson’s was. Keri spent most of the time on her cell phone or browsing her email, making it obvious that she wasn’t there really for Jackson or Mason, but rather to say she was, there.

  The nurse moved them all into a smaller, more private waiting room just outside of ICU. There were a few others in the room, but after a while it was just the four of them. The lights weren’t as bright as the ones downstairs in the main waiting room had been, and the chairs were a lot more comfortable. It was almost as if the doctors knew they would be there a while and were trying to accommodate them. They watched the clock move second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.

  The nurse should have been in here by now. Sydney grew increasingly worried. It had been over two hours since she had last heard anything. Was there something she wasn’t being told –some reason the nurse had stopped coming in all of a sudden? She promised she’d be checking in from time to time, but it had been far too long without an update of some kind. Something is wrong. Something has to be wrong, Sydney thought.

  She glanced over to Jackson, whose eyes had been fixed to the window for the last hour watching the rain move along the street like a shallow stream. He tried hard not to show his emotions, but she could see tears that he couldn’t hold back. He was just as afraid as she was.

  Moments later the door finally opened. It wasn’t the nurse, or anyone she recognized. The man was tall and very thin with specs of grey in his hair and mustache. Behind his glasses his eyes looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  He walked in staring into a blue folder, but closed it before he spoke. “Mrs. Everett?” he asked, looking to each of the ladies, not knowing who was who.

  Sydney stood up cautiously, both out of fear and remembering that she had previously mentioned to the officer on the phone that she was Mason’s wife.

  Keri, on the other hand, looked extremely confused. “Why is she standing up?” she whispered.

  With so few people in the room, her whisper was much louder than she intended. The doctor, now equally confused, took a small step back looking into his chart again. “Are you Mrs. Everett?” he asked Sydney.

  “No. I’m not but…”

  “Ma’am,” he interrupted, “I’m sorry, but if you’re not family I can’t speak with you,” he insisted.

  Jackson immediately stood from his chair. “I’m his brother, Jackson. How is he?” he presumed to ask as if he could direct the outcome of the conversation.

  The doctor closed the folder and took a deep breath before speaking. His demeanor was unreadable, but enough to be unsettling for everyone around him. “Mr. Everett, your brother –”

  “Mason…his name is Mason,” Jackson insisted.

  “I’m sorry, Mason,” he corrected himself. “Mason suffered a number of serious injuries. There was massive internal bleeding, along with fractures in his legs. A few of his ribs punctured one of his lungs. While we were able to stop the bleeding-”

  “Sir, I’m sorry. I get everything you are saying. I mean, I know the accident was bad, but I need to know right now, is he okay?”

  “He’s not in the best shape, but he’s fighting,” the doctor said adamantly.

  Neither Jackson nor Sydney noticed the uncertainty in his tone.

  “Can we see him?” Sydney asked, pushing the tears from her face as she made her way to the door.

  The doctor moved in front of her, putting both of his hands out to slow her down. “Everyone, please!” he got their attention. “Mason is fighting, but like I said, his injures are very severe.”

  “What exactly are you saying?” Jackson asked.

  “I’m saying you can see him, but right now he may not know you are there. And I’m not sure if he ever will.”

  Chapter 35

  We’re not saying he’ll never wake up, we’re just saying you have to be patient.

  Over and over those words replayed her mind, as they had for the past few weeks. Still in disbelief, and still in denial, Sydney was angry: angry at Mason for buying that stupid motorcycle, angry at the doctors for not
doing enough, and angry at herself for somehow feeling like it was all her fault. If she hadn’t asked him what had happened to him growing up, he would be here sitting next to her, laughing and joking. He definitely would not be in the hospital lying on a bed, asleep. The doctor’s raspy, unapologetic voice lingered in her head like a bad migraine.

  Mason suffered a head injury that caused cerebral edema, or severe swelling on his brain. The surgeon performed an emergency craniotomy. That’s when we removed a small piece of his skull to release the pressure on his brain. We’ve placed him under general anesthesia, but….

  There’s always a but and at the end of the doctor’s was Mason never woke up. They had expected him to come to an hour or so after surgery, but one hour had turned into to two, then three, and then days and weeks.

  Lying across Mason’s bed, still a mess from when he had left the night of the accident, nothing was quite the same. It was cold, it was empty, and it was sad. Sydney hadn’t been back to work or to visit him in the hospital since the accident. More than seeing him, she was afraid that if she went back she would be saying goodbye. That thought, weighing like lead, was unbearable. That thought kept her from going much of anywhere.

  She heard the front door open downstairs, but she didn’t from the bed to see who was coming in. She hadn’t been in the mood to speak to anyone, let entertain company. The only other person who had a copy of Mason’s key, aside from the spare he hid beneath a rock by the front door, was Jackson. The two of them hadn’t spoken since the accident. In a way, she was avoiding him as much as the thought of seeing Mason. She just needed time to process everything.

  Jackson’s footsteps dragged heavier and fell louder than usual with each step he took up the stairs. While he kept up his appearance with creased slacks and a heavily starched button up shirt, his eyes, the tightness of his mouth, and the weight of his breathing made it obvious. He just wasn’t in the same frame of mind as he had been before.