"somewhere other than inside the out there." -- part forty one.
the thing that gets me now, when i think about all that, is that i was dead set on ignoring reality. i refused to let in anything that resembled losing faith in my boy, whether it had anything to do with him or not. all i wanted was for him to smile at me or talk to me or respond. it just couldn't be the way they told me. it couldn't be.
i didn't sleep that night, but i closed my eyes and let the whole day replay in my head, over and over and over again.
i can give you a hint.
it's still playing. it doesn't stop. it hasn't stopped since. i wouldn't be surprised if it never stops.
every single fucking time i close my eyes, i die a little bit more.
at about four in the morning, i think, i'm not sure what time it was. the sun was still sleeping, and that fresh morning air hadn't come through yet. his dad's phone rang, and i could hear it in the guest room.
they came in and told me that he was going in for surgery again. it was dark in the room, and my body was tired.
i felt around in my bag, and i grabbed a shirt and some pants. i pulled on my boots and got into the back of the car.
where they had taken out the tumor, blood had filled the cavity, and after the first eight or nine hour surgery, he was about to go for another six hours or so. he hadn't woken up when he was supposed to.
it was wednesday, and it was the day before halloween.
he loved halloween. it was just one of those things that he couldn't get cynical about. the clever costumes and indentity theft and debauchery.
we did the only thing we could. we waited. i tried to do anything but wait. we had a camp in the recovery waiting room. the only thing i could concentrate on was the color of the walls, and i don't even remember what it was.
i talked on the phone a lot that day.
i'm a control freak, and i accept that. when there's a situation that i cannot control, i seek out those little tiny things, and i control them. even if it is only the route i would take to the cafeteria, i could decide what it was.
more than anything, i held onto my responsibility to tell our friends how things were, and what was going on, and what we knew. i called everyone that i had the number for, and i told the story over and over again.
they were good, our closest friends, they told me that they would call other people and that i didn't have to worry about it. i told them that it was the only thing keeping me sane.
that night was almost as bad as it got. they got him out of surgery and put him in a room in the icu. the nurses were helpful and stretched the rules whenever they could. and that night, after talk after talk after talk with the doctors, and his dad just kind of looked at me, and his mom quietly left the room, and his stepmom began to cry ... his body was failing, organ by organ. his lungs had filled with fluid, and they didn't quite know why. and his heart was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.
and i went outside, and i just knew that they had to be wrong. if anything was right, his heart couldn't be weak, not him.
they let the four of us stay with him that night, and we all knew that you don't do that and they thought he was going to be gone by morning. in the icu, no one stays overnight. so with one chair and a window bench, the four of us lightly dozed from exhaustion.
late in the night, i woke up and stood near his bed. i talked soft things to him.
the nurse came in and said i had a call. i took her phone, and i heard the only voice besides his own that could make things right.
i went out into the darkened waiting room, and i let his best friend into the icu.
