The Mason List (43 page)

“Please,”
I muttered, staring down at him.  “Don’t leave me.  You can’t leave me like this. 
You promised.  Remember.  You…pro…promised.”  I choked on the last words. 
Everything in my life felt irrelevant and just plain stupid as his life dripped
away onto Sprayberry’s dirt. 

Shifting
my fingers, I pressed even harder against his skin.  He wasn’t dead.  He
couldn’t be dead.  I would feel it in my bones.  My tears dropped onto his
shirt and dissolved into the bloody fabric.   “Stay with me.  I have to tell
you something and it’s not gonna be like this.”

In the
stillness, I felt a small flutter.  I sucked in a gulp of air with an
involuntary laugh.  Leaning over, I was careful not put my weight against his
broken body.  I kissed the place on his neck, tasting the blood on my lips.  I
kissed the side of his face that remained unscathed.  With every piece of my
soul, I willed his heart to keep beating.

 “Listen
to me, Jess,” I whispered in his ear.  “It’s you and me.  Remember that.  I’m
here.  Keep holding on.  You will be all right.”

Pressing
my lips to his blue ones, I felt the soft trickle of air from his mouth.  I
blew hard, pulling from the pit of my stomach.  The air returned smooth from
his lips.  I choked back a sob and tried it again.  My limited experience with
CPR came from the summer at Rochellas.  The few puffs into his lungs wouldn’t
make a difference, but the act gave me solace.  I pushed out another gulp so
deep I choked.  I should press on his chest but I was afraid.  That stupid
horse may have crushed him. 

I ran my
fingertips over the mangled fabric just to let his body know I was still here. 
“I love you so much.  Don’t give up.  I will not let you go.  You can’t go. 
Please…please… Jess.”  The words turned into an incoherent babble.  A pair of
arms pulled me away from him. 

“Let me
go.  Stop.  No, please.  He needs me.  Let…me…go.” I fought the person with
every piece of strength left in me.  He would live if I touched him.  My
fingers made the raw, biting pain disappear.  I screamed as they hauled me back
up the side of the ravine.  At the top of the landing, people paced and stood
in confused horror all around us. 

“Alex. 
Stop fighting.”

I
collapsed on the meadow grass as my father wrapped himself around my body. 
“But Daddy.  I have…I have to stay with…him.  He needs me.  I have to stay.”

“You need
to let the paramedics get down there.  Look.  Can you see it?”  He pointed off
to a strange looking sled-like thing.  “They will put him in the basket and get
him out of there.”

“He’s
breathing.  I could feel it.  He will be ok, right Daddy?”

His face
twisted up as he nodded.  I fell against his arms, knowing my father lied. 
Just like all the times I looked him straight in the eye and said what I knew
felt comforting to the broken man.  The lack of honesty ripped my heart right
out of my skin.  He lied because I couldn’t handle the truth no more than he
could all those days we struggled. 

Jess
would not live.  He was crushed from the inside out.  People don’t survive this
sort of accident.  Panic spun around in my mind, cutting off the flow of oxygen
to my brain.  I couldn’t breathe.  My world just got swallowed up into the
belly of Sprayberry as madness attacked all rationality.  I scratched and
kicked my father.  He held on with a vice grip as I twisted around, crying in
the grass.  I broke.  Every emotion crashed and splattered in ugly pieces for
everyone to see.  I didn’t give a damn anymore.

They say
your life flashes before your eyes right before you die.  In that moment, my
whole world spun around in rapid motion.  The thought of Jess being dead tore a
deep hole through my heart and my body crumbled into dust.  I couldn’t live
without him.  The air would stop flowing in my lungs; I would cease to exist. 
He was my other half.  He was
me
.  We breathed the same or not at all.

Slowly
the strength left my limbs.  I stopped fighting and collapsed in my father’s
embrace.  We watched the basket lift over the side in slow motion.  Jess had a
mask covering his blue lips.  I grasped to that small hope.  For a moment
longer, my blue-eyed boy lived

Chapter 51

Today,
7:05 a.m.

The smell
of disinfectant mixes with the crisp, sterile air.  I scrub my hands in the
sink; the soap burns my raw skin.  The black stains are gone from my cuticles,
like they never existed except for the remaining cuts in my flesh.  Sharlene
wraps me in a blue, protective gown and points toward the glassed room.

There’s
an eerie silence under the room’s dim lighting.  I step across the cold floor
amidst the faint hiss of the machines.  The frigid temperature activates
painful goose bumps on my skin.  Approaching the edge, I see a large tube
running from his mouth while most of his body is coated in white, much like the
time I dressed him as a mummy.  I smiled at the memory.  We had stolen rolls
and rolls of gauze from the hospital.  Jess had walked up and down the halls,
growling in a zombie’s voice while I followed behind, laughing to the point of
tears. 

I look at
his broken body as those kids drift away in a distant memory.  With the shock
of the accident gone, I see him clearly.  Bandages cover most of his face and
scalp.  He seems better, and yet he seems worse than expected.  I think
anything shy of his usual smile would feel unacceptable.  

For the
first time in his life, Jess's head gleams shiny and sleek, absent of his
floppy, dark hair.  He would hate it more than the scars, I think.  My gut
lurches, knowing the damage underneath the gauze would change him forever.  But
I would love him no matter how he looked to the rest of the world.  He was,
is
my Jess.

I reach
forward to touch the bruised skin on his cheek.  His body feels warm.  I trace
over his remaining eye and dip down over his jaw.  Leaning close, I whisper
next to his ear.  “Hey.” 

I wait
for his response.  Nothing but the sound of the hospital answers back.  His
silent lips remain still.  I touch them with my thumb, thankful they are a dry,
light pink instead of the oxygen-deprived blue.  “I’m here, Jess.  I’m sorry
for not being here sooner.  I got sick but I’m better now.  Ashley washed my
hair.  She saw me naked too.”

He should
laugh.  He should tease something awful about Ashley holding me hostage in
restraints like Kathy Bates in the movie
Misery
.  Instead, he answers
with the confines of stillness.  This is the part that feels like a raw, open
wound.  The part where I feel alone, absent from my other half.  I reach down
to take his free hand.  The other arm is swaddled in a brick of white, just
like both of his legs. 

“I need
to tell you something.”  I hold tight to the familiar hand with a slew of
calluses on the palm.  “This was supposed to be a happy time you know.  I was
going to tell you when I got back yesterday and we would get excited or freaked
out or I don’t know.  Now I wish I just told you on the phone so you would
know.  I wish I hadn’t waited.” 

Taking his
hand, I place it across my stomach.  “We’re having a baby, Jess.” 

A tear
slips down and I smile at his unmoving face.  Maybe I thought hearing those
words would flicker some form of recognition, an emotion or just a sign that
says he could hear me babbling in the room.  “I wish you could talk to me right
now.  I’m scared.  I’m scared I won’t ever hear your voice again.  I’m scared
to do this by myself.  I’m just scared right now and I need you.”

Letting
out a deep breath, I swallow back the burning in my throat.  “You deserve to
see him grow up.  He deserves to have you with him.  I don’t know if it’s a
boy.  He just feels like one.  He’ll look like you with those big, blue eyes
and silly smile.  Just like you did when we met.  I’ll never forget it, you
know.  Seeing you leaning back against the wall with your hair falling down in
your eyes.  You were something else back then…my crazy boy.  You became the
love of my life that day.”

Leaning
over, I touch my lips against his mouth.  I hover in place, next to the tube,
waiting for them to move.  I wait for Jess to respond in that familiar
push-pull of our lips and tongues.  Giving up, I lean back, feeling a wet tear
drop from my eye and splatter on his neck.  The tear rolls off his skin and
soaks into the hospital mattress.  I cling to his fingers again, pulling them
up to my lips and kissing each one.

“I love
you, Jessup Mason.  You hear me.  You are the best thing that ever happened to
me.  So that means you can’t die.  It’s not the way this ends.  You pro…promised. 
You promised me…so don’t go and break it.”

I choke
back an ugly sob.  My tongue balls into a thick clump on the roof of my mouth. 
The pain sears like broken glass through my skin and through my bones.  He
would always be my boy.  My happiness.  My sunshine.  My forever. 

Curling
up in the chair next to his bed, I would wait.  I would not leave.  No one
could pry me from this very spot.  Fatigue slams into my body; after the night
of restless and drug-induced fits, I drift off in a peaceful sleep absent of
dreams.  I sleep through the faint images of nurses coming and going.  I feel
the soft folds of a blanket drape over my skin. 

My eyes
open to see Dr. Mason, looking down at me.  His ever-present boyish looks seem
old and fragile.   A bearded shadow graces his jaw, showing off a mix of black
and gray.

“How is
he?”

“Holdin’
in there.”

“He…he’s
going to die, isn’t he?”  I whispered the haunting words I had avoided since
the accident.

“He
could, Alex.  He should already be gone.  But I don’t know.  He might not wake
up for a few days or he might not wake up at all.  But I’m not givin’ up hope. 
You shouldn’t either.  Jess got hurt real bad, but he’s made it this far.” 

Pulling
up a seat beside me, his hands shake as he tries to relax against the plastic. 
I reach over and take his fingers between mine.  “How bad are the injuries?”

“They’re
about as bad as they can get.  We got Jess to the hospital in Arlis to wait for
the helicopter to bring him here.  He was drug by that horse.  They both went
down the side of that hole.  She fell on him.  We know that because they had to
pull him out from under her.  They had him on a ventilator all the way here. 
His chest and pelvis are crushed, and he wasn’t really breathin’ on his own.  I
wasn’t sure he’d even make it to Dallas, you know.  He should’ve died out there
on the meadow.”

He
stifles back a cry.  The strong doctor clutches my hand as he continues.  “They
did surgery and tried to fix him up as much as possible.  He’s got a lot of
internal injuries and some swellin’ in the brain.   I thought he’d die on the
table.  That’s what usually happens.  The body can’t handle that much trauma. 
But he didn’t.  He’s holdin’ on.  He’s alive.  It’s like a…a…”

“Miracle,”
I mutter, feeling the tears fall down on our clasped hands.

“Yeah,” a
nervous laugh comes from his lips.  “I’m a doctor.  But I’ve never seen
anythin’ like it before in my life.  It’s like a damn miracle is holdin’ Jess
together.”

That
absurd word echoes like a pulse in my life.  My father believed in one side of
it and Dr. Mason believed in the other.  They both embraced the idea with a
full heart and equal trust; a miracle for my mother with the arrival of the
Masons and another that beat in the literal heart of Jess.   

My
thoughts flood in twisted confusion.  “You really believe that?”

“I have
to, Alex.  He’s my son.  I have to believe it until there’s not a reason to
anymore.  And right now, he’s here.  He’s breathin’.  Every time he does, I
know he shouldn’t be.”

“That’s…that’s…”
The wave of emotions overtakes my words.  “It’s just hard for me to think
about.”

“It’s
hard.  But you have to hope, Alex.  You have to believe in the impossible.”

I
swallowed hard nodding my head.  “I…I know.”

He grips
my fingers tighter.  “I think he already knows you’re here.”

“You do?”

“I do. 
Everythin’ just seems better now that you’re with him.” 

I glance
over the side of the rail.  His chest moves up and down under the white sheet. 
His overall presence seems more relaxed, despite all the tubes and monitors. 
“You’re right.  I think he does.”

“I’ll see
about gettin’ you somethin’ better than this chair.”

“Ok.”

Dr. Mason
returns with a small cot.  It fits snuggly in the corner amidst the equipment
and his bed.  Lying on my back next to the railing, I watch the tiles on the
ceiling.  Once again, all the same players scatter across the same, terrible
board of life, sitting in a hospital: Dr. Mason, a mother, a father, and a
child.  We all hang in limbo, waiting for the verdict in a plan much bigger
than all of us. 

I reach
up and touch his hand through the bars.  I need reassurance that his heart
still pumps life through that ripped up body.  I need reassurance he is still
breathing.  I need the facts but those just are not possible.

Sometimes
all we have is faith and hope and you just have to trust it.

I
understand that now.  Closing my eyes, I clutch his warm fingers and whisper in
the darkness, asking for the impossible.  I ask for a miracle.  I ask for Jess
to come back to me.