Gone

Chapter 25: One Late Night

I held her quietly in my arms trying not take wake her sleeping eyes. She was sweet and peaceful like a serein lake. I couldn't help but smile when I looked her. Harry was sleep on the small pull out bed in the corner of the room. I can understand why, it was almost two o'clock in the morning. I sat up a little more in the hospital bed and her eyes swung open.

They were so pure and big. I had recognized them as the eyes I saw all my life. The ones my mother had. Even though they weren't a warm green like my mother, more like a hazel. My mother was definitely in there though. Everything else about those eyes were her's, the way that they had the perfect lighting even when it was dark, the way that they showed peacefulness and safety, the way that they held onto love and radiated it. I smiled and agreed that I was never going to let my baby go.

She quickly closed her eyes again but I didn't want to put her down. I didn't want to sleep no matter how late or early it was. Missing a moment with her would feel like an eternity without her. I kissed her forehead. Just then my nurse came into the room. "Ms. Walker you are supposed to be getting some rest," she said checking the machines that were still attached to me by their tubes.

"I know but I don't want to let her go," I whispered back.

"Here I'm going to take her back to the nursery and you can have her once you wake up, I promise," she said and I nodded. I handed her my baby and watched her leave the room. I laid back and remembered my mother.

I thought about how on Christmas mornings we would wake up extra early and make hot cider even though it was rarely cold enough in California. She'd sit down in my grandmother's chair and I sit on top of her sipping the cider. She'd read me the play A Christmas Carol and act out all the voices. When AJ was born she made me sit on the floor that Christmas because she was still pregnant. I was so envious of him getting to be where I was supposed to be. Then my dad would wake up and my mom would start preparing dinner and breakfast all at the same time. I'd watch dad help her and sneak kisses and I love you's privately.

I had admired their love so much I couldn't wait until I got older and got to have my own. I had dreamed they were in a fairytale and I wanted my own. My own love and family, my own Christmases with secret morning hot cider and dinners. After my mother died that dream washed away with the rest of them. I soon stopped celebrating Christmas altogether saying it was time for family that I clearly didn't have anymore.

I looked down at my ring and realized that I had a family again. I had Harry who I was madly in love with. Who I could never leave because he never wanted to leave me and now I have our baby girl. The most important thing in my world. I gave birth to my own sun.

I looked out at the warm August night. The window in my room had a great view of the lake that the hospital was built next to. The lake was still and quiet. It was so peaceful. I looked over at Harry and wished he wasn't sleeping anymore I wanted him to wake up and kiss me. I wanted to talk to him all night like we would do for countless nights on his tour bus.

Those days seem so long ago, almost like a lifetime ago. We would stay up all night, me in my old nirvana t-shirt and him in only pajama pants and sometimes just his boxers. We would stay up in his bunk cuddled close together, our legs would be intertwined and he would play with my hair on my shoulders. We would talk about growing old together, or about his next show, or about the carpet we would have in our bedroom. "Red velvet cotton with patterns of spirals in them. In the middle there would lay a giant white patch that would attract every line towards it," I say to myself.

"So it looked like the whole room was racing towards the center," Harry's voice said sleepily. I looked over at him and smiled. He was sitting up awake and looking at me. "Is that what you've been thinking about this whole time? Our dream carpet?"

"No, I was thinking about us. How we would stay up all night and talk," I say back. He smiled at the memories. He got up and laid down with me.

"Did you think about that night we stayed up and all I did was sing you old Jimi Hendrix songs? Or about the night you told me the whole Christmas carol by heart. Or the night when you wore my shirt, my old worn out teenage killer shirt, a band that of course no one knew about. I never let anyone wear that shirt, I don't even wear it, but when you put it on I couldn't imagine seeing it on any other body. That night I held you in my arms as we sat on the couch in the main section of the tour bus. I kissed your forehead and tried with all my will to convince you I would never leave you, that I was always there."

"Then I told you people always leave, it's just a matter of when and where."

"I felt so far away from you that night. You were so far off dreaming about a day when had the right to believe everything was perfect. I couldn't understand why you didn't see everything was perfect right then. It was perfect for me. I had fallen in love with the most beautiful girl that could ever be produced and she was with me."

"I was with my mom that night. Sometimes it's so hard to let her go. It's like all I want to do is pick up the phone and call her, ask her how her day going. Then I remember her number has been... disconnected. Thank you Harry," I say and look into his eyes. I see them again. I see him and everything that we've grown to be.

I see the love that has held me threw everything and I see everything that I want to be for Harry. In just a flash of a second I can see who he wants to be also for me and him and our daughter. "For what?" he asked.

I kissed his lips and feel that heat that rises in me. I enjoyed it. I took Harry's hands and began to warm them up, like I used to. "For coming back to me."