How Do I Love Thee

Ten

Shayla had been found unconscious, drifting out to the sea in the open boat, in the hot summer afternoon. Three fishermen from a passing cabin cruiser had captured the dinghy, taken Shayla onboard, and radioed for an ambulance. Back onshore, an emergency medical team had pumped her dehydrated body full of fluids and rushed her to the area's community hospital, where she was flown to Boston Children's by a Life Force helicopter. She lay in the intensive care area of the burn unit with third degree burns over eighty percent of her body.

Brett drove like a madman through rush-hour traffic to get there. Her parents were pacing the waiting room, distraught but subdued. Shayla's mother surprised Brett by hugging him, holding on as if for dear life. "She asked to see you," Cynthia Brighton said.

"Is she--? Will she--?" He couldn't say the words.

"Her doctors hold no hope," Shayla's father said. "She had no defense against the sun."

Refusing to believe what he'd has been told, brett followed her parents to the bed that helD Shayla. He didn't recognize her. She was swathed on wet compresses and lying on an air mattress that lifted her burned body off the surface of the bed. Thick pads covered her eyes. She was blind.

He bent down and smelled the sharp aroma of medication. "Hi baby," he whispered into her ear.

"Brett?"

"I'm here." He wanted to touch her but knew he couldn't.

"They've given me morphine," she said. "I feel like I'm floating. It doesn't hurt now."

Emotion clogged his throat. He'd had morphine a few times during his cancer treatment, so he knew the sensation of painless weightlessness. "Why'd to go out there without me? You know I would have gone with you."

"I got an email. Kimberly died. I only went out because I hurt so bad." Her voice dropped to a whisper as the pain of her loss overcame her. He knew that morphine couldn't touch that kind of pain

"You went to the place with the rocks, didn't you?"

"I cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, the tide had gone out. I was scared, Brett."

He couldn't speak, imagining her agony as the sun crawled over the horizon and began to sear her skin. She'd been helpless.

"Will you stay with me?"

"I'll stay," he managed to say.

"You rest now, honey," her mother said over Brett's shoulder. "We'll all stay."

*************************************

Brett's mother rented a car to drive into Boston. As soon as she appeared in the family waiting room in the hospital, he remembered that'd he left her stranded. "Mom, I'm sorry" was all he said.

Her eyes were red rimmed from exhaustion but she didn't upbraid him. "I rented the car for a week," she said. "After that--"

"After that I may still be here," Brett said.

"You should think about coming home, at least to shower and change."

"There's a sleeping room and shower here for patient's families. Shayla's parents said I could use it whenever I wanted."

His mother tried again. "The pressure of waiting can be crushing, Brett. You should take breaks."

He saw the pain in her eyes and knew she was telling him how it had been for her all the times she'd waited through his long hospitalizations and treatments. She had waited alone, miles from home, with no one by her side. At least the Brightons had each other. Brett put his arms around her. "Real men don't leave, Mom. No matter how bad it is, real men stay."

She started to cry but eventually pulled away and picked up her purse. "I'll be home I you need me," she said. She slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. "For whatever you need."

He watched her walk away, seeing her life's pattern for the first time. He was now the watcher, not the victim. Regardless, he wanted neither role.

*********************************

Dooley came, and so did the others. They saw Shayla, one by one, to say goodbye.

"I had no idea they cared about me," she told Brett.

"I told you they did."

"They never would have if it hadn't have been for you."

"I love you, Shayla."

The night she died, he was beside her bed. Across the room, moonlight trickled through slats in the blinds. He watched the light shift, saw a shadow pass, heard her take a breath, stop, take another breath, then no more. He tangled his fingers in her hair, kissed her forehead, and walked out of her room, leaving her parents to mourn without him.

The drive home was quick because there was no traffic. He followed the coastal highway under the light of a full August moon. He slowed as he passed her house, stopping just long enough to stare out the car window at the brightly lit widow's walk far above the bluff. Then he saw something move. In the pale bisque-colored light, there were two figures, a woman with a long dress and a girl with long hair. They hovered at the rail like pale white smoke, forms without substance, gazing out at sea. Brett rubbed his eyes, looked again. The apparitions were gone. He was alone in the moonlight