Gemini

Tears ran down my cheeks and I began to shake uncontrollably as I recalled the night of the accident.

***

Amanda had taken her father’s car to drive to my dorm in the middle of the night after I hadn’t returned any of her calls that day. It was the first time I had ever done something like that. The truth was, I had been having second thoughts lately about being in such a serious relationship at my age. Things were moving really fast and Amanda was starting to talk about a future with me. I love her…I do…but I was scared, being only twenty-two. She’s only eighteen. I was her first and she wanted me to be her last? That was a lot of pressure.

My mind was spiraling out of control that day and I was scared that if I talked to her, that she would be able to sense it or that I would impulsively break up with her, so I ignored her all day. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I ended up doing worse.

It had all just become too much for me. I had myself convinced that I needed to test the waters…see how I really felt about her…by distancing myself…even if Amanda wasn’t aware why.

Sarah was a girl who lived on my floor across the hall on the girl’s side. She was tall, blonde and on the girl’s basketball team. Sarah had been flirting with me since the beginning of the year and I had always ignored her because I had a girlfriend.

That night, my door was open and Sarah happened to walk by and stop in my room. At first, it was innocent. We were just talking about music and jobs after graduation. At one point, she put her hand on my leg and gave me a look. I wasn’t even as attracted to her as I was to Amanda, but like I said, I wanted to test the waters, test myself. I pulled her into me and started kissing her. That moment was the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it.

My door slammed open and I threw Sarah off of me. There stood Amanda, in her sweatpants and Beatles t-shirt she slept in often. Her hair was in two pigtails. She looked angelic, but furious, like she had dragged herself out of bed in the middle of the night to come here.

“Cedric? Oh my God. Oh my God,” she seethed as she covered her mouth in shock.

I was mute, completely speechless and breathless. This was not what I wanted. I never ever would have chosen to hurt her like this. I finally found the strength to speak.

Panicked, I said, “Amanda, it’s not what it looks like. We…just kissed. Nothing more would have happened.”

On that note, Sarah jumped off my bed and ran out the door, without saying a word. She knew I had a girlfriend, so was just as guilty as I was and certainly not shocked by this scene.

Amanda stood in the doorway, just staring at me. “I’m gonna be sick. I’m going to throw up,” she said, before suddenly turning around and bolting down the hall.

By the time I tried to reach her, the elevator doors had closed. I pushed the button frantically, hoping to catch her, but it was too late. When I made it to the parking lot, I could see her father’s black Honda Accord speeding off onto the road, before it disappeared.

That was the last time I saw her. Her last words to me that night had been ‘I’m going to throw up.’

I raced back up to my room, dialing her number over and over, maybe a hundred times. Pick up. Pick up. She never picked up. After an hour of calling her repeatedly, I had enough.

Running back downstairs, I got in my Volkswagon Golf and sped down the road and onto the highway to head to her parents house in Naperville. I was going to explain everything to her when I got there…let her know that I still wanted her in my life, but that we should slow down. I didn’t want to lose her. The kiss was a mistake, one big mistake that meant nothing.

On my way to her parent’s house, I passed an accident on the highway with multiple police vehicles responding. I didn’t bother to look too closely to see what had happened because I was driving so fast to get to her. It looked like the accident was just clearing anyway.

I just needed to get to her.

When I got to Amanda’s house, I noticed that her father’s car wasn’t there. Amanda never came home. Her mother’s car was gone too. I knocked on the front door loudly, because I could see from inside Amanda’s room in the converted garage that she definitely wasn’t inside her bedroom because she slept with a night light and it was pitch black in there. As no one answered the front door, I felt nauseous and knew something was wrong.

I decided to wait in front of the house, hoping that she or someone would come home. With each passing minute, I worried more and more that something bad had happened.

Then, about an hour later, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Cedric, it’s Mrs. Thompson. Amanda’s been in an accident. You need to come to the hospital. She’s at Chicago Memorial.”

“Wha…Is she okay?” I asked frantically.

She hung up and the phone went dead.

It wasn’t until I got to the hospital that I realized the accident I passed on the highway was Amanda’s car. I fell to my knees in the waiting room as her mother’s brother Todd told me what he had heard.

She was in a coma and fighting for her life.

She had hit a guardrail.

No one else was hurt.

Crying hysterically, I prayed to God to take me, not her.

Please, God, save her. I’ll do anything.

I would never forgive myself for causing her to storm off, probably driving erratically and crashing her car. She was so upset. I kept hearing her voice.

‘I’m going to throw up.’

The look on her face would be etched in my memory.

Weeping and shaking my head, holding a hand to my trembling mouth in disbelief, I kept replaying the sound of her voice.

‘I’m going to throw up.’

‘I’m going to throw up.’

Begging my mind to stop replaying those words, I couldn’t stop crying.

***

Looking down at her now, three days later, I made a decision that if she pulls through, I would do everything in my power to be a better person. She needs to know that she mattered…matters…to me.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…

Ed and Elaine walk into the room as I said the Our Father to myself silently, closing my eyes. Elaine looks white and Ed faces the back wall away from me. My heart drops as I realize that the doctor had pulled Elaine aside in private. What had he told her? Was Amanda going to die? Oh, Jesus, no.

Ed left the room and I looked at Elaine, still sitting at Amanda’s bedside.

“Elaine, please tell me…what’s going on? What did the doctor say?”

Elaine shook her head in silence and buried her face in her hands.

“Elaine…please.” My voice shook in fear.

“Cedric…nothing has changed with Amanda’s condition, but the doctor just gave us some news, that I am afraid I wasn’t expecting to hear.”

“What…what news?”

“Cedric…”

“Elaine…what happened?” I yelled.

Elaine was too shaken up to speak and started to cry, burying her face in her hands.

Ed reappeared, took one look at his wife and walked over to where I was sitting, pulling up a chair.

“Cedric…the doctor said that…routine tests they performed on Amanda revealed… that she was pregnant at the time of the accident.”

I stared at Ed in disbelief, trying to process it, looking over at Amanda sleeping and back at Ed in disbelief.

“Was…was…pregnant?” I asked.

Ed’s eyes burned into me and I couldn’t tell if he was in shock, upset or wanted to downright kill me.

“That’s right…was. The doctors think she lost the baby on impact.”

I nodded slowly, got up and walked out of the room.

The hospital hallway seemed to be swaying and the walls closing in. A blast of air hit me as I made my way out of the revolving doors in the front of the building. Running down the busy sidewalk, I couldn’t catch my breath.

I kneeled down on someone’s stoop about two blocks from the hospital, letting my heart rate slowly normalize. My head in my hands, I started to weep like a baby again. The unimaginable situation of the past few days had just gotten so much worse with that news. I had blamed myself for Amanda’s accident, kept what happened in my dorm room from her parents and now, the realization that I was also responsible for the death of my unborn child was too much to bear.

As I looked up, I noticed a church across the street. I walked across the busy road in a haze, nearly getting run down. The front door of the gray stone structure was open. ‘Welcome to St. Mary’s’ a sign said in the entryway. In the distance, down the long aisle, dozens of candles in red votives flickered.

I slowly made my way down toward them at the front of the church near the desolate altar. I reached in my pocket and grabbed a five-dollar bill stuffing it in the donation slot in front of the candles, then lit one of the candles with a long matchstick.

I made the sign of the cross.

“Dear Jesus, please forgive me for the pain and suffering my actions have caused.” Walking over to the front of the altar, I knelt down, closing my eyes tightly. Tears began to fall again and I covered my face, grateful that there was no one in the church as my sobs turned to wailing that echoed throughout the vast cathedral.

***

After another night of sleeping poorly in Amanda’s hospital room, my body was beginning to ache.

Ed and Elaine had gotten a room at the hotel around the corner and even though you could literally make it here in three minutes, I refused to leave the room. They couldn’t make me leave if they tried. I think my being here made it easier for them to sleep at the hotel. There was only space for one cot in the room anyway.

Amanda’s parents arrived at the crack of dawn and soon after, Dr. Tripathi walked into the room and told them that Amanda’s vitals were looking a little better and that they were going to try and end the medically induced coma, later that morning.

My heart raced with a number of emotions: fear, anticipation, relief, anguish. What if she didn’t wake up on her own? What if the sight of me upsets her when she comes to?

A few hours later, we were asked to the leave the room, while the doctors worked to bring Amanda out of the coma. Dr. Tripathi said it would be a while before we would be able to see her.

When the doctor emerged, we stood up in synch in the waiting room.

“You can go in now, but one at a time, please,” he said.

Elaine gasped. “Is she awake?”

“She seems to be trying to wake up. Please go very easy on her. She is still not stable, but she should be able to hear what you are saying,” he said.

Elaine walked in first and Ed and I waited impatiently outside.

Twenty minutes later, Elaine emerged crying and said, “I was talking to her and she was blinking rapidly. I hope she could hear me. Oh, God…Ed…this is just too much. Why our little girl…why?”

Ed comforted his wife and then released her to enter Amanda’s room.

The waiting for my turn was killing me.

Amanda’s parents were being amazing about letting me stay here. If they only knew that I was responsible. But I couldn’t think about how they would feel if they knew. I needed to be here for her and I couldn’t risk them keeping me away. That’s why I played dumb when they asked me if I knew why Amanda might have been driving poorly the night of the accident. I think they believed that she fell asleep at the wheel. Toxicology reports already showed she wasn’t drunk. I knew in my heart that she was upset at me and lost control of her car, although they could never prove it.

Ed emerged from Amanda’s room, just as upset as Elaine had been. I don’t know if they were expecting her to start talking or something, but the doctor made it clear that wouldn’t happen right away.

“You can go in now, Cedric,” he said, wiping his eyes.

I swallowed hard and walked into the room. Amanda was lying there just as peacefully as I last saw her.

“Hey, baby…it’s me. You look so beautiful. I hope you can hear me,” I whispered.

“Amanda, baby? You know what I heard on the radio today in the cafeteria? It was our favorite dumb song by Hootie and the Blowfish. You know the one that goes, ‘I only wanna be with you?’ The one that was playing the night we met? That one. I smiled, baby, thinking of you. It’s the first time I smiled since we ended up here.”

I bent down and kissed her cheek and could see her eyelids flicker. Grabbing her hand, I placed it in mine. It was cold and clammy and I wished I could warm it up, but I needed to be gentle with her.

“I love you, baby. You’re gonna be okay. Can you hear me?”

Amanda continued to lie still, her eyelids flickering again.

Suddenly, I felt pressure on my hand that was holding hers and realized she had squeezed it.

“Baby! You can hear me. You can hear me.” My heart jumped for joy that Amanda responded to my voice and a single tear fell down my cheek.

She stayed still, just breathing, for another twenty minutes and hadn’t squeezed my hand again but I kept talking to her gently.

“Amanda…I don’t know how much you can understand…but baby, I want you to know that when you get out of here…I want us to take a trip somewhere. Maybe Cancun…somewhere warm. You think your parents will let us go?” I smiled to myself. I knew her parents would probably let her do just about anything if she made it out of here okay.

“And baby—”

I was interrupted by an intense hand squeeze and lots of rapid eyelid movement.

Suddenly, her eyes opened.

Shocked and elated, I said, “Amanda, Amanda…it’s me…Cedric. I’m here, baby. I’m here. You’re okay…everything is fine.”