Forever Yours

Secrets [8]

8. Secrets

Maureen

The days started to fly by.

I began looking forward to the early morning drives with Ryan, to the long, increasingly riveting conversations we'd have, to the laughter he never failed to evoke out of me. Work wasn't so tedious because I had the drive home to anticipate. I even found myself looking for excuses to go places: I found a new interest in taking tennis lessons simply because it meant more time in Ryan's company.

I'd never had many friends growing up, considering how shy and quiet I'd been. Socializing was more of a chore than a pleasure and whereas Cara thrived in those sorts of scenes, I faded. I preferred my books to people and my family to friends. I couldn't reconcile one to another so I got to the point where I stopped trying. I'd decided that I was a loner and nothing could change that.

But...Ryan. I didn't understand it. For one of the first times in my life, I felt like I had a friend outside of my siblings. He put me at ease. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed so often with one person- probably because I never had. And of course, I couldn't deny the thrills that ran the length of me every time his hand brushed mine or when he turned his electric eyes on me. It's just because he's a guy and I'm a girl, I told myself. Obviously, he was a very good looking guy and I was a teenage girl so that was really the only explanation... I refused to believe it was anything more.

I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of my blaring alarm clock.

There were only two reasons that could drive me out of bed on a Sunday morning, and the first was church, the second was the children's hospital.

I usually went every other week. I'd visit the children and bring them presents. Sometimes I'd stay an hour; sometimes several. I had my reasons for going and neither of my parents nor my siblings questioned it. It was the one outing my parents never monitored, the one day where I had free reign of my car, of my time, and of my space.

They say twins are like two halves of the same person. In many ways, that was true... at least it was for Michael and me.

We were born two minutes apart and they say that from the first moment we were laid side by side after our birth, our hands entwined and we were like conjoined twins. We did everything growing up together... everything. I can't recall a single moment in my childhood where he wasn't there, where we weren't side by side.

He died when we were nine. The doctors say it was heart failure. My Michael had been born with a heart defect and though they tested me several times, it was the only time Michael had something I didn't, went through something I wouldn't, and passed on to a place that to follow, I couldn't.

It felt like a part of me had died when they told me he'd passed. I'd tried to understand. I tried to foresee a world in which Michael, my twin Michael, didn't exist and they'd had to sedate me afterwards, because apparently, I'd had some sort of epileptic like seizure. Hours later, after I'd slept the day away, I woke up in my father's arms and he was carrying me out to the car, tears silently rolling down his face and splashing onto my cheek.

It wasn't until after we moved to California that I started volunteering at children's hospitals. Michael was admitted into the hospital three months before he died and Mom and I visited him almost every day... I'd never forgotten how lonely he became, how despondent and hopeless the whole thing made him. I remembered once seeing an older woman come in, with a little basket of gifts for the children, and Michael had gotten so excited. That was what stayed with me, after everything that happened... the look on his face when the lady gave him the little gift bag and how he picked through the small assortment of goodies, his pale skin glowing with happiness.