21
I rushed to the nurse's station, screaming and hollering like a babbling idiot, not even sure what I was trying to say.
"Just slow down," the cheery nurse said, as she leaned forward.
"Edward, Edward Curtis Lohan-White," I said to her, "My husband, is he all right?"
The nurse typed his name into the computer, and as she did her face slowly changed from the cheery expression, she had been wearing to one much more dour. "No, darling. Edward is… he had an accident."
"What?" I felt like I was going to be sick.
"A car accident. No one told you?" she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
"No, no one told me. Where is he?"
"Critical Care room 437. But you can't—" she barely got the words out before I was racing down the hall.
My mind was going a million miles a second. My world was spinning. I barely even remember how I found the Critical Care Unit. I was just suddenly there.
As I tried to rush into the unit a security guard stopped me. If it wasn’t for my state of mind, I might have hit him.
"I gotta go in there!" I screamed.
"Just calm down, sir."
Another security guard joined him and then another. It took three of them to calm me down and pin me to the ground before I could be contained.
"Edward!" I screamed.
I was lucky they didn't kick me out of the hospital then and there.
Instead, they led me into the waiting room until someone could come and see me. I stared at the ugly rug, drinking some hot tea while I waited in the lobby. The tick of the clock magnified in my mind as every second felt like an hour.
I wanted to believe the whole thing was some horrible nightmare. That I would wake up any second.
I'd only been able to get a little bit out of them. It was a head-on collision, with a semi. Some careless drunk driver had swerved in his direction and in order to avoid traffic, Edward had swerved the other way. That's when he was hit.
The waiting room is possibly the worst place in the entire world to be when you’re waiting for bad news. With nothing to do to occupy you but your thoughts, you are left alone to swim in misery until you find out what is wrong. As it was, all I could do was think about what I'd do without him. What my world would be like? By the time I was finally able to see him, I was more of a wreck than when I had entered.
It was a good three days before Edward had stabilized enough for them to let me see him. One look at him, and it was obvious he wasn't ever going to be the same Edward I knew and loved.
Wires were coming in and out of his body like he was some sort of a machine. There was a tube running from his nose to his stomach and a whole host of other machinery surrounding him, keeping him alive.
He looked like a fallen angel that had crashed from the heavens.
"Can I… Can he understand me?" I asked the nurse in the room as she led me inside.
"He's brain-dead, sweetheart."
I didn't heed the nurse's words. I didn’t want to. In my mind, Edward could feel me. In my mind, he could understand every word I said.
"I'll leave you alone," she told me as she stepped out.
The metal bed frame was as cold as ice as I traced my finger along it until I reached Edward's, gripping it in mine. It was so cold and clammy. It didn’t belong to the man that I loved.
Listening to the rasping sound of his breathing tube, the monotonous beep of his heart monitor, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing.
I didn't know how to talk to this being that was in front of me. I didn’t even know if I could. Would my words be heard? Would they be understood?
I only knew how to speak to my husband, the man I loved. So that’s what I did.
"I guess this means you won't be joining me for dinner tonight," I told him, cracking a smile. "Oh, and you left your underwear on the shower again. I haven't taken them off there since you left." I breathed out my frustration, trying to pretend that the situation wasn’t as dire as it was. "What did you do to yourself, baby? Why didn't you just stay home? I could have flown to you. I could have been there with you in Connecticut. We could have been having lobster and clam sauce. We could have been—" I stopped myself, being angry at him wasn't going to help things.
"Aaron says we're almost ready for the tour, but… I'm almost inclined to tell them to just go on without me. I know you wouldn't want that, but… the truth is, I don't want to leave your side. They say all hospital guests have to leave by eight every day, but I talked to the nurse, flirted with her…"
I chuckled to myself, imagining him elbowing me in the stomach.
"You stay strong, and you wake up Edward, soon. We've got a family to start. You hear me?"
It all became too much as I stepped away, needing a breath of fresh air before I dived in for another session below the depths of a sadness I'd never experienced before.
And as I dived back in, feeling myself submerge into the icy lake that was my pain and defeat, I wondered if I would ever emerge again.
~~~
I might as well have paid rent for how much I stayed at the hospital.
The only reason I went home was to water the plants because if Edward woke up, strike that, when he woke up, I convinced myself, he'd kill me if Sasha were dead.
Finding out about Edward had been hard. Telling my mother and his grandma what had happened was even harder.
I didn't want to tell his grandmother especially. I had promised her that I would let nothing bad happen to him and in that, I had failed. But there was no other way around it.
She told me she had faith that somehow Edward would wake up and things would go back to normal. I told her I did too. Although hearing her say that really did help. I knew that in reality, even if by some miracle he did wake up, nothing would be the same.
"Any news?" Aaron asked, clutching a bouquet of flowers as he approached me in the hospital lobby one day. His attitude toward Edward had really turned around since the accident, and for that, I was immensely grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to handle being mad at him with Edward being the way he was.
"Oh, no… thanks for coming. Take a seat in my office," I joked, sitting back down on the cold chairs.
"How are you holding up?"
"You know, I love eating hospital food, haven't showered in days."
"I can tell," he said, cracking a smile. "Hey so… I don't mean to bring this up now, but…"
"What is it?" I asked, dreading more bad news.
"It's the Rolling Stones man. They know what happened, but they say if we don't leave this weekend, they're going to have to pick someone else."
"Then, you should go without me."
"Wait, what?" He blinked incredulously at me.
"You don't think I'm going to leave him, do you?" I couldn't believe he'd even ask me something like that. I knew he loved the band and he knew I did too. But he also knew that Edward came first.
"Dude, this is your career, our careers you're talking about." He leaned forward, being more serious than I'd ever seen him before. It wasn’t him being spiteful or mean, but him trying to make sure that I understood the gravity of what he was saying.
"Believe it or not, there are things more important than a career, Aaron."
"Cody, listen to me. Listen to yourself. We've been waiting for this since we were five-years-old."
"No, I'm not going. You don't know what it's like to be in love. You don't know what it's like to—"
He rose from his chair. "I don't know what it's like?"
I looked at him strangely. "What are you saying?"
"Edward was right," he sighed, looking away from me for a moment?
"What?"
"You told me last year when we had our falling out that Edward said I was in love with you and truth is, I am. I've been in love with you since we were little. It's just... I was too scared to tell you."
He was shaking now. I'd never seen him that nervous before, and I think more than anything was what shocked me.
I didn't know what to say either. What do you say when your best friend in the world tells you he's in love with you?
"Aaron—"
"No, hear me out. You left me when you left our band and ever since you met that—that guy it's like you were missing. The Cody I know, the one I grew up with, he's gone and it tears me up every time knowing that he may never return. Every time you say you're happy, every time you say you are with Edward, I'm dying inside."
"Aaron, I love you, I do. But—" I tried to explain without hurting his feelings. I was an emotional wreck, and I didn’t need this added to the pile.
"But not like that, I know. I've always known, but it doesn't have to be that way. Edward is gone now. You can love me too like you love him. We could be happy together. I just don't want to live without you."
"Aaron—I—if things were different, if I were …" But he wasn't hearing me.
"Into me?" he said, finishing my sentence.
"Yeah. You'll find someone. You will, I promise."
"I don't want someone, Cody. All I've ever wanted was you."
His eyes were watering, and he grabbed me by my wrist. At that moment, he was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen him. I looked down at his hand, holding onto my wrist and before I knew what I was doing, I pulled away. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
He was a good-looking guy, which was why so many women liked him and, I guess dudes, but I wasn't interested. I had never seen him that way. He was like a brother to me, and I couldn’t be in love with my brother.
Besides, I had room in my heart only for one person, my Edward. "I'm sorry, man. I can't give you what you're looking for."
He walked right up to me, holding my stare as he spoke through gritted teeth so that only I could hear. "I killed your fucking drunk bastard dad."
"I know that, man."
"It was me that protected you. It was me that made it look like it was an accident. I took the risk. I could have gone to juvie. They could have tried me as an adult if I'd gotten caught."
"Don't you think I know that? And I'll be forever grateful to you for that."
"You owe me," he said, his eyes tortured, his voice in pain.
"Not forever. Not for all eternity. I won't let you hold that over me for the rest of my life. You're my best friend, but—"
"But you won't love me?" His lips quivered, and tears welled in his eyes.
"Not like you want me to."
"He's not going to wake up, man! Why don't you see that? Edward is going to die in here, and you're going to be left alone with nothing and no one."
The words hurt. They struck me hard. Maybe it was because they were the truth? Maybe because they were coming from the one person who was meant to be on my side? But either way, I didn't let them knock me down.
"It's worth the risk," I told him, looking him straight in the eye.
His lips quivered. "You don't want me, that's cool, but in exactly thirty seconds I'm walking out that door, and if I walk out that door, you're out of the band forever, and this opportunity is gone. Think about it."
"Aaron, there's nothing to think about. Nothing's more important to me than Edward."
It was awful seeing my best friend walk away. It wasn’t just him walking away, but all of our history and everything we had been through together. But in a way, it was also a relief. Ever since I met Edward. I had told myself to stop living in the past and start looking toward the future.
We'd never really discussed what happened when we were kids or how Aaron had kept my dad from beating us again. It'd been on my shoulders forever, and now, in some small way, it was lifted. I was able to look forward to the future now… with Edward.