Second Chances for Tyler Landry

The Reason Why

"Mack, I can get my own food and stuff...." Tyler reasoned.

"No. You almost died. You really think I'm going to make you get up and get your own stuff? I'm not taking any risks." Mackenzie said from the kitchen.

Tyler sighed and looked around. Mackenzie wouldn't let him get up off the couch without her letting him lean on her. And she clearly got winded from trying to carry more than half of herself up the stairs.

So, he was bed ridden, well more like couch ridden, until she decided that he wasn't going to have any trouble or heart issues. The doctor said that Tyler would have to rest for a little while to make sure he didn't have any problems remembering things because he nearly escaped a coma.

He also had to carry an inhaler around and use it all the time. Mackenzie had asked for another one for her so she could keep it in her purse.

In case he forgot his heart still had to beat.

Mackenzie walked back into the living room and glanced out the window. It was raining. Again.

The rain seemed to match the mood that she was so often in. She felt responsible for Tyler's attack that almost cost him his life.

"Tyler." she said as sh sat down on the couch next to him.

He looked up at her from the soup she had given him, "Hm?"

"Do you think...do you think I'm the reason that you had that attack?" she asked, self hatred clear in her voice.

Tyler's mind told him the truth. Yes. he thought to himself.

But, looking into her eyes, seeing that she was mortified with herself, he couldn't bring himself to the answer.

Tyler himself didn't think that it was an attack. He didn't think that he lost air or some other medical reason. He thought, he knew, it was because his heart flew into shatters and nearly pierced his lungs.

That even his physical being couldn't bear Mackenzie every leaving his life.

And for the first time, he felt selfish for it. He felt like he was making her stay by somehow always having something for her to fix. Tyler knew that she was too good of a person to ever not help someone who needed or even wanted it.

"I don't know. What did the doctor say?" he asked, trying to bring her off the subject of her causing the rare and random attack.

"He said that your heart skipped a beat and then your lungs lost oxygen. He said it was almost as if you forgot how to breathe. Like your brain went into such shock, that it forgot." she repeated.

"Oh." Tyler said.

He left it at that. Because in all honesty, he had nothing else to say. How could it be that after all the girls he had been with, all the girls he had loved, that never happened when they broke up with him?

Maybe because you really didn't love them. a voice whispered in his hollow head.