Liam was gone. My best friend, my captain, my soon-to-be roommate, my brother was just…gone.
Overcome with emotion, I didn’t listen or understand the next moments after I could stand from her grasp. Mom led me into a room where a girl slept hooked to tubes, wires, and machines.
Her beautiful, peaceful face was marred with cuts, blackening bruises and a line of stitches peeking past her hairline that swelled. Her damaged face was framed with those blonde curls coiling around her.
Mom and the other nurses that took care of the sleeping girl told me she suffered the least number of injuries, but the head trauma she received kept her asleep. The doctors believed she would wake up in the next day or two, but she didn’t. She slept for a week, then she slept through the funeral, and she continued to sleep, showing no signs of waking up anytime soon.
Now, I spent all my spare time by her side, feeling hopeless, broken, but I refused to leave her all alone. I planned to spend every day of my summer there in the dingy hospital room until I had to move down to the dorms at college.
A stranger already replaced my best friend’s place as my dormmate.
In the last few weeks, I started a routine: wake up whenever, eat at some point, stay with the sleeping girl, go home, maybe eat, and go to bed. Repeat.
When I came to visit her, I didn’t sit in the chair that was always pulled up to the side of her bed. I couldn’t bear to look at her tangled in tubes with her face still healing. So, I dragged the chair to the opposite side of the room and looked out the little square window that peered over the city and ocean.
I started that day the same way as I watched the world continue on through the small window while what felt like my world hibernated, stuck in a deep sleep I dreadedwould last a lifetime.
But something was different about today. Maybe it was because I could see the swelling in her face had gone down significantly. The cuts were less harsh and the weight of loneliness a little too heavy.
Whatever it was, it had me sliding my chair back to Maybelle’s side to watch her sleep, desperately hoping for those lashes to flutter, that perfect nose to scrunch, and those blue-green eyes that never could decide which color to be, to open and stare out at me. I continued to watch when the unbearable sob of defeat choked me.
If I could, I would take it back.
The flirting, the touching. I would never have encouraged Maybelle to go to that stupid party, because if she hadn’t come, she might still be awake, and Liam would still be alive.
Liam would be packing and getting ready for college with me. Maybelle would be back to ignoring me, an alternative I would gladly replace with the current reality we’d been dealt. I wouldn’t have been so dumb if I could do it over. I would’ve talked to Liam before wandering off with his sister. I would’ve been smarter, better.
For the first time since the accident, the back of my eyes ached, making my vision blur with tears. I scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand before any droplets could escape down my cheeks.
I looked back to Maybelle, acknowledging that unlike most patients, she wasn’t surrounded with balloons, or get-well cards. She didn’t have any family other than her mom and brother. So besides me, there was no one waiting for her to wake up.
Maybelle Mason was alone, and it was all my fault.
There was one item in her room that wasn’t hospital equipment. It was that small, black, leather-bound journal I’d seen on her nightstand.
Now it rested on the side table next to her hospital bed. I noticed the book before but was too numb to careabout investigating until now.
Leaning forward, I plucked the book up. I opened to page one.
Hi,
My name is Maybelle Mason. My mom named me Maybelle. She said it was a happy name that meant “lovable”, so she calls me “Lovebug”. Little bit of background knowledge is I am a twin, I am fourteen years old, my birthday is November 3rd. I am in middle school; I am a basketball player. My hobbies are sports, reading, and I love school.
I love to smile; it is my favorite thing to do because it helps me stay positive in the lowest times. My favorite color is green, and my greatest wish is for you to love me as much as I love you.
Love,
Maybelle Mason
I sat back in my chair, trying to understand the adorable letter I read. I knew this was a journal which made me respectfully close it. It was a breech in privacy for me to go reading something like this. I knew it when I found it in her room, and I knew it now. But I couldn’t ignore the curiosity—a feeling other than pain and guilt that fluttered to life under my skin.
I wanted to know about who she spoke to when she wrote, “My greatest wish is for you to love me as much as I love you”.
I gazed up at Maybelle.
God, I wanted to know her, all of her.
I mean… I promised her I would do just that, hadn’t I? Yeah, this felt a bit like cheating, taking the easy road, but, in reality, nothing about this situation was easy.
