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The chaotic ringing of Trey’s phone had him sitting up in his Jeep with a jerk. He glanced down at his phone to see his mom was calling. Trey was filled with anxiety that he was late to pick her up, but the sun was just barely turning the sky purple with morning and his clock proved that he still had a couple hours before her shift was done.
So, he answered the call curiously, “Hey mom, what’s up?” There was a hesitation on the other line, maybe she couldn’t hear him due to the poor service at the beach?
Trey repeated, “Hey mom, can you hear me alright?”This time he was answered with what sounded to be a choked sob and sniffling.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Trey asked, panic gripping his gut as he waited. Hearing his mom cry always brought on a sense of frantic urgency.
There was a deep breath fuzzing through the phone speaker before his mom finally said, “I’m alright, hun, where are you at?”
Trey knew something was wrong, but he answered, “At the beach still, I fell asleep in my car.”
His mom sniffed a few more times then responded, “Ok, you didn’t drink during the party last night, did you?”
Trey shook his head without thinking and then replied aloud, “No, I didn’t drink mom, I was just tired.”
He hesitated a beat before asking again, “Mom, what’s wrong? What happened?” His mom let out a relieved sigh and then her next words shattered Trey’s whole world.
“Your friend Liam Mason and his family are here… there was an accident.”
9 Dear Future Husband
Trey used to love hospitals.
Visiting his mom, the clean smell, the nurses always bribing him with candy but now it was a hell hole drenched in his own heartache. The walls were now colorless, it was always eerily cold, and death polluted the air making him ill.
Three weeks ago, Trey was at the beach when his mom called him to break the news that the Mason family had been hit by a drunk driver and brought to the hospital, she worked the night shift at.
He didn’t say goodbye to his mom before he hung up and raced to the hospital. When he entered the main doors, his mom was there, her eyes rimmed with heartbreak. Trey stumbled into his mother’s embrace as she led him away from prying eyes, informing him that Stephanie Mason had died on impact, and Liam…
Liam had died on the table in the middle of emergency surgery only minutes before Trey arrived.
Trey collapsed to his knees, his mom still grappling him to her in a private hallway, while grief overtook him.Trey didn’t cry, he couldn’t, as his limbs shook and stomach roiled. He could only free fall into an abyss of depressing mind numb.
Liam was gone, his best friend, his captain, his roommate, his brother was just—gone.
So overcome with emotion and devastation Trey didn’t listen or understand the next moments after he was able to standfrom his mom’s grasp. His mom, Chelsea Turner, slowly led him into a room where a girl slept hooked to tubes, wires, and machines.
Her beautiful, peaceful, face was marred with cuts, blackening bruises and a line of stitches barely peaking passed her hairline that swelled. Her damaged face was framed with those aureate curls, coiling all around her.
Trey’s mom and the other nurses that took care of the precious sleeping beauty told him that she suffered the least number of injuries but the head trauma she received kept her asleep. The doctors had believed she would wake up in the next day or two, but she didn't. She slept for a week, then she slept through the funeral, and she continued to sleep showing no signs of waking up anytime soon.
Now, Trey spent all his spare time by her side, feeling hopeless, broken but refused to leave her all alone. He planned to spend everyday of his summer there in the dingy hospital room with her until he had to move down to the dorms at college. His best friend's place, as his roommate, in their dorm, was already replaced by a stranger.
The last few weeks Trey had started a routine, wake up whenever, eat at some point, stay with the sleeping girl, go home, maybe eat, and go to bed.
Then repeat.
When he came to visit her, he didn’t sit in the chair that was always pulled up to the side of her bed, he would take the chair, drag it to the opposite side of the room, and look out the little square window that peered out over the city and to the ocean.
He couldn’t bear to look at her tangled in tubes with her face still healing, it made his stomach churn. Trey had started that day the same way as he watched the world continue onthrough the small window whilehis worldhibernated, stuck in a suspended animation that he dreaded would last a lifetime.
But something was different about that day, maybe it was because when he first peeked at her he could acknowledge the swelling in her face had gone down significantly, the cuts were less harsh and the weight of loneliness a little too heavy.
So, Trey moved his chair back to Maybelle’s side and watched her sleep, desperately praying for those lashes to flutter, that perfect nose to scrunch, and those beautiful blue, green eyes that never could decide which color to be, to open and stare out at him. Trey continued to watch when the unbearable sob of defeat choked him.
If he could, he would take it back.
The flirting, the touching, he would never have encouraged Maybelle to go to that stupid party, because if she hadn't come, she might still be awake, and Liam would still be alive.
