A Summer to Remember

Chapter 9

     I stand in line at the cafeteria waiting to get a snack and I look at the clock it’s 11:49pm, as I order a fruit salad and a vanilla milkshake. As a gather my midnight snack and head back to Liam’s hospital room, I haven’t seen him yet and it’s been about 2 weeks. I finish the milkshake on the way to his room while thinking about my plan; once the last doctor of the night leaves at 12:00pm I will sneak in. The doctors have said that he can hear everything that is going on around him but they still haven’t let me in to see him. Only his parents have seen him but separately and in three minute visits because the doctors say they don’t want any diseases or common colds spreading to Liam because his body is so sensitive that a small cold transferred to him could kill him in his coma.

            As I approached his room I sat in the chair and watched the last doctor exit his room and look at me funny. I stare down at the floor as if I were about to have a mental break down and from the corner of my eyes I see him nod slightly toward me as he turns to leave. Wow, such a great and sensitive doctor, thanks dude! I yell in my head after him.

            I push open the door, but before I look out for any doctors or anyone who could have seen me. I gently close the door behind me as I peer over at Liam in the hospital bed, as I move over toward him and sit on the bed. His bruised face and broken arm and leg looked limp, but his whole body looked like it was limp. I wouldn’t be a very good doctor because I would think every patient that is unconscious is dead, well now I know I’m not going to medical school. I tiptoe over to the chair beside his bed and pick up his hand in mine.

 I wish he could hold my hand back. Damn, I wish he would wake up and everything be alright again. God, if you can hear me right now please make Liam alright, I don’t want this relationship to end, I need him; I need him because he has been there for me through thick and thin, I need him because he is one of my closest friends I have, and most of all I need him because I love him and I don’t know what I’d do without him. I squeeze his hand as tears roll down my face, I’m all choked up and I have yet to say anything to him.

“Liam?” I say in a whisper, even though I know he can’t answer.

“I know you can hear me. I’m no supposed to be here but I had to see you. It’s been two weeks since the crash… and we are all waiting for you. I’m waiting for you to wake up. I miss you” saying it out loud is hard, to have him not be able to say it back is worse.

                                                            ***

Weeks passed, and the doctors had less and less hope for Liam’s return into our world. They said that the impact to his brain has most likely altered his brain and therefore put into a permanent sleep. That day I lost my hope for Liam’s return; I saw James a few times after that and he tried so hard to still have hope in Liam but no, I couldn’t what proof did we have that he was going to wake up. He is still breathing, and I guess that is still good but it’s like he is already dead because he hasn’t moved or done anything but breathe. He might as well be dead because he isn’t doing anything but just lay in a bed that most likely (doctor’s words) he won’t wake up from. What’s the point in having hope for something you have already lost?

                                                            ***

I went home that day, feeling utterly hopeless and helpless. I lay down on the couch a blanket draped over my shoulders as Colby sat in my lap, snoring fast asleep. I didn’t move for hours and hours, I didn’t eat nor drink; it felt like time has stopped. Laura and Rob called me and told me that if he didn’t wake up in the next few weeks there would be no hope and they were going to end Liam’s suffering. I didn’t think it was quite fair that they decided whether he should be put to rest or not, not that it is my responsibility but that I think it should be the patient’s but in this situation that option wasn’t available to us.