Chapter 7
Lily could hear the gentle patter of rain drops. She thought she could also hear the hum of an air conditioning unit close by, but it could have easily been something else. About every half hour the nurses poked their noses in her room to check on her. They talked to her as if she would respond, but she couldn’t. She had tried, but for some reason it was like she was encased in stone. Lily was a statue, and a pathetic one at that. No one wanted to see such a pitiful sculpture. No one had come to see her. Not even Malaya. At least not since her thoughts came back to the real world.
“They must have come when I first had my accident,” she thought to herself for the hundredth time. “How long ago was that anyway? I wish I knew the date and time.” With all the blabbering the nurses were doing you would think they would at least fill her in on what day it was. She knew it was daytime and that she must be facing the window with the curtains open. The inside of her eyelids were that grey-red color when she sat outside on a cloudy day to think. She had liked to close her eyes and imagine. With her eyes closed, she could imagine anyone with her. She could be anywhere or anyone. When her eyes were closed, her possibilities opened. Now with her eyes shut indefinitely, she wished more than anything to be able to open them. Even if she couldn’t talk, if she could just open her eyes to show everyone that she was going to come out of this, and that she would get better. At least she would be able to see the clock. It might be the middle of a school day. That would explain why no one was there. Maybe someone would come in a few hours when school let out.
“I guess it’s not like I would be much company anyway. It would just be nice to know someone cared.”
An hour later the heavy door to her room creaked open. The nurse was back for a quick chat. She would check her vital signs and then leave as briskly as she came. The room’s newest occupant slowly shuffled into the room, but in the opposite direction a nurse would have gone. It wasn’t a nurse. It couldn’t be. Then the footsteps stopped. A chair squeaked as the mystery guest sat down. Lily knew it wasn’t her aunt or Malaya because the walk was all wrong. Her aunt Jenny walked with a deliberate, leisurely step. Malaya marched more than she walked. Her steps were always very strong and crisp. Each one could be heard separately and definitively. These anonymous steps belonged to someone else. Not someone she knew very well, that was for sure. Lily’s curiosity was growing more and more as every second ticked by. Silence reigned in the little room. There were no audible clues as to who might be sitting across the room. It occurred to her that this person might be a complete stranger. With that prowling walk, this person could be some creep off the street. It was starting to make her skin crawl. The stranger was probably watching her. What kind of hospital lets in a bum straight out of the gutter? This was just too much for Lily. She had to know who it was. She tried once again to open her eyes. Nothing moved, not even a twitch of the eyelid. She finally had a visitor, and she couldn’t even crack an eyelid. Even if it was a hobo off the street, he had come to visit her, and that said something about his character, so this person must not be all bad. Lily was determined to find out the identity of this person. If she could just have a glimpse to know who it was. She tried again, and put her whole soul into forcing her eyes to open.
“Open, open, open,” she chanted in her head. “Please open just for a moment!”
Then it happened, she saw a sliver of light shine though her eyelids like two crescent moons. Muted daylight danced through her short, delicate strands of eyelashes. Lily forced another jolt of energy towards her eyes and opened them even farther. The Little Engine that Could, a favorite book her mother read to her years ago, came to her mind.
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” she recited in her head.
Lily pushed her eyes the rest of the way open and blinked a few times looking towards where the wall and ceiling join together to create the cold room she was now laying in.
“I did it,” she mumbled. Lily realized she had said it out loud. Relieved that she could see at last, she breathed a sigh of relief. Then she remembered the stranger. She tried lifting her head to see, but was unsuccessful, so she flopped her head to the side and down hoping to catch a glimpse. In the corner of the room in a worn chair sat her stranger. Lily gazed at her visitor, not knowing what to say, or even what to think. He sat hunched forward looking at her with red, bloodshot eyes opened wide with shock. It was the person she detested most on the entire planet. It was Slade.
***
Slade Turner was known by the entire student body as one of the biggest bullies of the school. His days at school were spent tormenting younger and weaker classmates. If someone in the hallway whispered his name, the sea of students would automatically part like the Red Sea. Everyone watched out for him and his gang at school to avoid becoming the next object of their persecution. No one ever saw him outside the school grounds. His “friends”, if you could call them that, liked to hang out at the local mall. Slade never went with them. He didn’t really want to. Contrary to popular belief, “The guys” as he called them, were not really the kind of people he wanted to spend his time with. Sure he was with them at school, but if he could change that he would. He had joined their group at the beginning of freshman year right after moving to Allendale, Texas. In high school once you picked your friends it seemed like there might as well be a thick web of chains welding you to each other. There was no getting out. Not unless you wanted to be shunned and abused by them until graduation. The group of boys hadn’t been all that bad at first, but as time went on one prank led to another and they had gained the reputation of being jokesters and bullies. It wasn’t that they liked watching their peers suffer, it wasn’t like that. They just liked how they felt afterward. It made them feel strong and powerful. Even Slade would admit this was how he had felt at first, but if he had the choice to do high school all over again and choose different friends to begin with, he would in a heartbeat. He was a bit of a prankster, but to him the best pranks were when everyone was laughing in the end. He really only kept up the jerk act to spare himself the ridicule of the guys. He might not have ever met them if it hadn’t been for his father. At the end of middle school, Slade’s father decided to quit the police force so he could pursue his dream of becoming a government agent. Slade never really knew what that meant exactly, but in his teenage mind it meant spy. His father was a black-suit wearing, bombs exploding in the background, top secret spy. It was probably the coolest job ever, at least to a teenage boy. His father moved the family from San Francisco, California to small town Allendale as soon as school let out, and then left two weeks later for training. He didn’t return for an entire year. No letters or phone calls. There were checks in the mail for the bills and other expenses, but no contact from him whatsoever. The next summer he showed up and spent a week at home, but left very abruptly after an odd call on his cell phone. This pattern went on for a couple years, but then he never showed up last summer. Slade tried not to worry about it, but when the house was dark and silent at night he did. He worried about his mother the most. She seemed very lonely. She kept busy with various projects and also worked at a craft store in the city just south of Allendale, but he could tell she missed him and was worried about him as well. The checks were still coming, so they knew he was alive, but for some reason he was unable to come home. Their home was small, but perfect for the two of them. Home was not somewhere Slade had spent much time lately. Not since the accident. He was haunted by it every night in his dreams. Every time he closed his eyes he could see her long, rich brown hair swish to the side as she turned to look at him. Fear filled her beautiful round face. The fear turned to agony because she knew what was to come. Her head would turn back to face her doom. He was running, always running trying to keep up with her. Out of the corner of his eye he would see sticky, blackened hands grabbing him, pulling him back further away from her. The hands stuck to him like super glue, unwilling to release him. He watched helplessly as she flew from her wheelchair into the air. For a brief moment she seemed like an angel, and he always hoped she would grow wings and fly to safety. Every time he had this dream, they never came, but he always hoped. This dream girl was falling. Falling possibly to her death, and there was nothing he could do. He was trying to stop her. He always did, but he always failed. He wished every day that this dream were only that, a dream; but it wasn’t, it was real. This really happened. That girl fell down the stairs, and it was all his fault. He was so sure he had her wheel chair under control. Now she is in a coma.
“I put her in a coma,” Slade thought to himself miserably. “No one knows if she will ever come out of it. What if she never wakes up? What if she dies? That can’t happen. She can’t die; she just can’t. I want her to live. I never even got to know her. She didn’t seem to like me much, but who could blame her? Maybe if she gave me the chance, if she would just talk with me for an hour or two, she might like me. Probably not. How could she possibly like me? I’m a cruel, unfeeling person to her. I could tell by the look on her face when she first saw me pushing her. She was terrified of me. She didn’t even want to be in the hall with me. It doesn’t really matter if she likes me or not. I still want her to get better. If she would just wake up, that would be enough for me. I just want to know she will be okay. Please wake up, please.”
Every day since the accident, he brooded this way. He tried over and over to wake her with his mental pleading. These same thoughts were continually flowing through his head the Saturday morning she woke up.