AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I understand your disappointment, Mr. Lake.”
The doctor. One of a squad. The quarterback.
“On the positive end, your progress in every other area is nothing short of astounding. You should consider yourself lucky. Eventually, you will walk out of this facility and speak with perfect elocution. Given the severity of your accident…well, frankly, that’s a miracle.”
You told me there was a chance. I’m busting my balls in PT every goddamn day because you gave me hope…
My mother’s hand on top of mine. “Is there anything we can do for you, honey? Anything you need right now?”
What I need? What I needed was for the doctors to fix my goddamn brain so that I could see again.
I sat in my wheelchair, my jaw working. So many words and I couldn’t spit them out. They crowded in my mouth, gummed it shut, as reality sunk its sharp, poisonous teeth into me.
This is it. This is final. This is how I’ll be for the rest of my life. No light, no color. I’ll never see another sky. I’ll never see another sunset. I’ll never see…anything. Ever again.
My hands gripped the arms of my wheelchair more tightly than I’d ever been able to achieve during PT.
“Noah? Please talk to me, honey.”
No! I can’t be like this! I can’t be like this forever. My job…Planet X…my photography, my car…I can’t drive it anymore. The coral reef in Cairns I was supposed to photograph this summer. The Carlsbad Caverns I had plans to visit in September…
And on and on.
They piled on me, one after another, all the things I would never do or see or experience ever again. One after another, until their weight pressed me down into my wheelchair and I could hardly breathe.
And then the future unspooled before me and it was all black. What would I do? Where would I work? Or live? And how? I had no plans to get married any time soon, but it was out there, someday. And now…I’d never see my wife on our wedding day. I’d never see her walk down the aisle toward me in her dress. I’d never see her face the first time I told her I loved her. I’d never see the faces of any children we might have. My own kids would be mysteries to me.
Christmas lights strung on a tree; candles flickering in a darkened restaurant; snow brushed over deep green pines…
All of it. Gone.
I clenched the armrests until my tendons ached. Doctors and parents flitted nervously around me, asking me if I was okay, begging me to answer. But they were on the other side of the black curtain, and it was never going to lift.
I felt tears sting my eyes. Tears. No fucking way. I wasn’t going to mourn. I wasn’t going to give in. Fuck this. Fuck them all. I wasn’t this person they were trying to make me be. This person who couldn’t do what I’d been doing for twenty-three years. I would never accept that.
Never.
The Vesuvius eruption arrived.
I lay awake all night replaying that moment in the hospital, over and over again—like prodding a sleeping monster. When I finally slept, I had the usual nightmare. I awoke choking so badly on nothing, I thought I might actually die. How ridiculous if, after all the hell of the accident, it was a fucking dream that did me in. I was finally able to suck in air instead of imaginary water, and the tightness in my chest loosened and then fell away. The blackness, of course, did not.
Neither did the outrageous sense of injustice. The unfairness of it all. I felt it every second of my life. It was the fuel to my rage and bitterness, lurking behind the scenes. Some days it took center stage, demanding attention, and this day was going to be one of those days.
I hated everything and everyone. I hated the bed I lay on, the walls around me, and the floor beneath me because I knew it was wood but not the color. I hated the house, my parents for letting me live in it, Lucien for trying to take care of me, and Charlotte for not quitting weeks ago when I raged at her for opening the goddamn drapes on a beautiful day over a city I couldn’t see.
I hated her prick of an ex-boyfriend for touching her and sleeping with her and then abandoning her. I hated her brother for dying, for branding her with that loss for the rest of her life. I hated myself for stoking her pain with my stupid, blundering questions.
I hated Mexico, I hated the magazine for sending me there, I hated the way the danger tempted me. I hated the local divers who dove too and remerged alive and whole while I broke myself on the rocks below.
I hated, hated, hated.
I lay in bed feeling the hate wash over me like waves on a beach, surging and ebbing, eroding me bit by bit. Someday there wouldn’t be anything left.
Charlotte came up sometime in the morning hours, saying she’d made breakfast, and would I like some or would I prefer my usual takeout? I barked at her to get the hell out and not come back all day.
I hated how I spoke to her.
I hated that she left.
