Categories > Celebrities > Panic! At The Disco > What a Wonderful Caricature of Intimacy
Time felt as if it had stopped as I ran towards the ER. The halls were deserted because of the late hour, and no one came to investigate as my hip collided with a cart and I sent its contents flying across the hall. There were no sounds save my breath and feet against the linoleum floors. I followed the blue stripe on the floor for what seemed like ages, and I was growing restless. My lungs burned as I sprinted towards the bright blue doors of the Emergency Room waiting room that finally came in to view.
I burst through the doors and yelled her name above all the commotion. There were dozens of other people, crying and yelling for information. There were police officers trying to calm a few hysterical people in the corner while others helped in any way they could. Doctors were rushing about, filling out forms and gathering any information they could about their patients. I stood for a moment, feeling helpless and unsure of what I should do, and after I yelled her name again, a young nurse, who looked a little too much like Valarie with her dark hair and unique features, asked me if she could help me.
I looked at her for a moment, seeing only Valarie, before I answered. “My girlfriend, she was in the accident. Where is she?” My eyes were wild with desperation as fought away all the bad thoughts.
“What’s her name?” She looked down at the clipboard she held in her small hands, and I began to shake.
“Valarie Lawrence.”
Her eyes traveled down the list until they stopped mid way down the page. Her brows furrowed and jaw tightened, and she lifted her eyes to look at me.
“She hasn’t arrived yet. She’s on her way now. I’m sorry but it says here that she is under age so we have to wait until her parents arrive to give you any more information.”
“What!?” I yelled at her, making her cringe. “That’s fucking bullshit! They won’t be here for hours! What the fuck am I supposed to do!? Just wait until then? Just tell me! Is she fucking dead or is she doing alright!?” I began to feel hysterical myself, my fists clenched at my sides and my eyes darting everywhere. I could feel tears begin to fall down my cheeks but I was so angry, I ignored them. “She is the love of my life, do you understand me? If she is dying, I need to know. I have to know what is going on and I won’t leave you alone till you tell me what the fucking is going on!”
She looked at me, her eyes conflicted. Finally, she said quietly “All I can tell you is that she is was alive when they called her in. She is in critical condition and they are going to take her into surgery right away. I’m so sorry.” She hurried off, probably to avoid more yelling, and I had to find myself somewhere to sit because I was suddenly light headed again.
I heard sirens outside and got up again, ignoring the dizziness, and ran towards the sound. I arrived at the ER doors just at the ambulance did, and the EMT’s began unloaded their patient.
“Valarie Lawrence, age 14, picked up from the accident. Took a while to find her, she was pinned under one of the cars, she’s not doing so well. Pupils are blown, she’s showing signs of a brain bleed” one of them told the waiting doctor. He rambled on but I didn’t hear a word because the sight of Valarie overwhelmed me. She was strapped to a board, something around her neck. Half of her face was covered in blood and her shirt was torn in too many places to count. I moved toward the gurney they had moved her to, and that’s when one of the doctors noticed me.
“You can’t be here,” he said.
“That’s my girlfriend!” I rushed along, following them inside and down the hallway.
“You can’t be here! We have to get her into surgery if we’re going to save her” the doctor yelled at me again as they ran along another corridor and reached another pair of swinging doors. “Go back to the waiting room.”
“Valarie!” I cried, leaning down and whispering in her ears. “Don’t die! Don’t leave me here alone without you. Come back to me Valley. I’m nothing without you.”
“We have to go!” Someone pulled me back and they began to wheel her away.
“I love you Valley!” I yelled after them. “Don’t ever forget that.” I collapsed on the floor, crying like a child as I rocked myself back and forth. “I love you,” I kept whispering. “I love you.” The nurse who I had yelled at earlier appeared in the hall and helped me up, taking my back to the waiting room as I leaned against her and cried.
“I can’t lose her,” I whispered as I clutched her scrubs. Her eyes were sad as they looked back at me. “She’s my life. Make sure they save her. They need to save her.”
“I wish I could help you,” she said, and I saw a tear slip from her cheek. “She’s so young. You’re both so young.”
Hours passed as I sat in that chair, but my mind seemed to stop working, because I literally couldn’t think about anything. I had cried myself out, and my brain was just like white noise. I stared at my feet, or the people around me, many of whom had received news of their loved ones. Perhaps it was some type of defense mechanism my brain was implementing. It probably knew that if I thought about it, I would think of the worst. My mind always went to the worst places. Probably because of the lifetime of bad things I has been through.
It was just before 3 am when I heard a loud commotion in the waiting room. There was yelling, and I made out the words “Where is HE?” I knew right away that it was Valarie’s mother, and the ‘he’ that she was talking about was most definitely me. I stood, body exhausted, and she found my head over the others in the waiting room.
“YOU!” She yelled, charging towards me with a tear stained face. “Haven’t you done ENOUGH to my daughter?” Her voice was shrill as she came closer, pushing people aside to get to me. “You treat her like shit and then play around with her feelings and then you get her to run away from home to be with YOU!? You had no right! She was with Brendon who is ten times then man who will ever be!”
“Honey,” her husband whispered softly at her side.
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me Christian! He did this to our daughter! He is the reason that she might never wake up! I ought to charge him with kidnapping!”
“Jo, calm down. This is not his fault. He did not take her, she went to him willingly.”
She turned to her husband, eyes wide. “Are you saying this is her fault!?”
“Of course not. It’s no one’s fault. She went to see him because that is what she wanted. We cannot protect her from everything anymore. She is growing up, she is going to do what she wants whether we like it or not.” He pulled her into his arms where she started to sob, and he waved a hand at me as if to say go away, but I would not.
“I love Valarie,” I said quietly as I started crying all over again, grabbing her mother’s attention. “I never planned on falling in love with her, it just happened. I will not apologize for that. But I will apologize for the way I treated her. I have already apologized to her and she has forgiven me, because she loves me to and-”
“She does not love you! She is 14, she doesn’t even know what love is! You just want her so that you have someone to adore you!”
“With all due respect Mrs. Lawrence, you do not know anything about this. I know she loves me, and you have to believe that I love her. Us standing here arguing about it is not going to do any good. I don’t want to argue about this when I don’t even know if she is going to live! How am I supposed to be here without her?”
“He’s right,” her husband replied, rubbing her shoulders, and nodding towards me. He sat her in the chair that I had vacated and walked towards me. “I do not blame you for this Ryan. Please know that. You are a good kid, and I know that you care about my daughter.”
I nodded and tried to compose myself, to no avail. “Thank you sir,” I managed between tears. “Have you talked to the doctors? How is she doing?”
His tired eyes looked down on me, and I could see how hard he was trying to hold himself together for his wife. “She’s not doing well Ryan. She has several brain bleeds, her pelvis is broken, and so is her collar bone. Her broken bones will heal, but they don’t know about her brain. If she ever wakes up after surgery, there is a high chance that she will suffer permanent brain damage or remem-”
“What do you mean ‘if she wakes up’?”
He sighed heavily and a tear slipped down his cheek. “The doctors think there is a high chance that she’ll never wake up after this surgery.”
“No,” I whispered, my head becoming heavy as everything around me started to sway and my hand searched for something to steady myself with. “This can’t be happening. No, no. I can’t-“ My mouth shut as I fell forwards into Mr. Lawrence and fainted. When I awoke sometime later, I was lying on a cot inside a small room. I was shivering and momentarily disorientated until I heard a sole sound: the steady beeping of a heart monitor. I bolted up right and looked around the room. I saw a coat and a purse on a chair beside the hospital bed, but no one else was in there except me, and the occupant of the bed. I was scared to look at the unmoving body, but I knew I had to. I stood slowly, and finally looked over at her. My breath caught in my throat at the heart wrenching sight: her head was wrapped in thick white gauze, her face as pale as the white linen sheets she slept on. The skin around her eyes was dark, a mix between purple and black, and she had tubes protruding from her nose and throat. I choked on a sob and fell back down on my cot, holding my head in my hands and cried heavily.
I spent a lot of time crying in the days that followed. All day I was at her bedside, much to the chagrin of her mother, and at night I would go home for a few hours of sleep and then go back right when visiting hours started. I had quit my job because there was no way I was spending more time away from Valarie than I needed to. Nothing was more important to me than her. I talked to her, told her jokes, held her hand and rubbed her forehead, but despite everything, she never improved. Her condition was steady, as steady as that damned heart beat that gave me the slightest bit of hope.
Her parents wanted to take her back to Nevada, and I would have followed, but her doctors didn’t think it was a good idea to move her. If she was going to have any chance of waking up, then they said it was better to keep her stable and where she was. Her parents took turns going back and forth to Nevada, and it was always a little awkward and uncomfortable when it was just her mother and I. She tried to ignore me, but every once in awhile, her maternal instincts would kick in and she would try to get me to rest or eat something.
One afternoon, three weeks to the day that Valarie had been admitted to the hospital and been in a coma, my phone rang, disrupting the silence. It was Brendon.
"Hey dude," he said sheepishly.
"Uh, hi?"
"Listen, Val's parents called me, they told me what's going on. How are you doing?"
"Fine," I replied shortly. I didn't want to discuss what was happening with him. I still hated him for taking Val.
"Ryan. Come on, talk to me. I'm your my best friend."
"No, I was your best friend. Before you stabbed me in the back you asshole."
He was quiet on the other end for a moment. "Yea, I know Ryan. I knew how she felt about you all along, and I knew that even if you weren't ready to admit it, you liked her too. I'm sorry. I just figured that maybe once she started dating someone else, you'd move on or something, and I was really into her. It was fucking stupid."
"Yea, no kidding."
"When she broke up with me, she told me everything. About how you two slept together and that you told her you loved her, and how she loved you too. I wasn't angry though, because I sort of saw it coming. You two are meant to be together, I can see that now. I really am sorry, Ryan. And I really hope that everything works out with you two. She's going to make it."
"I know she is." The call was interrupted by Val's mother, who tapped me on the shoulder. "Bren, I have to go." I hung up before he could say anything. His apology didn't mean anything to me, because if it weren't for him, I wouldn't be waiting day and night for Valarie to wake up.
“We need to talk Ryan.” Her mother sat down in a chair next to mine and took my hands in hers. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I was scared and terrified and I needed someone to blame. You are just a child; I should not have taken it out on you. I understand that you love my daughter, and I believe that she loves you too, or else she wouldn’t have been so hurt by the things you said to her in the summer.” She squeezed my hands and smiled gently. “I’ve just spoken with her doctors. The area of her brain that stores memories was severely damaged by her brain bleed. They said that if she is to wake up, it is highly unlikely that she will remember anything. Not just you and me, but anything about her 14 years of life. My husband and I have discussed this possibility, and if it is true, if she wakes up with no memory at all, then we ask that you do us this favour.” She dropped my hands but remained looking me straight in the eyes. “We need you to leave. We want to protect our daughter in any way we can, and if you stay and try and make her remember things that she never will, then we’re afraid she’s only going to hurt even more.”
“No!” I said, beginning to panic. I could not, correction, would not leave her side. I didn’t care if she wouldn’t be able to remember me. I would be there until she would. I would help her remember. Even if she didn’t, we could start over again. We could start all over without any of the issues that had happened before-
“Ryan.” She seemed to know what I was thinking. “It is not a hundred percent that she is going to wake up. And if she does, I’m telling you, if she does not remember you, she never will. And it’s not a new start either. Who’s to say that she will feel the same? She’s might not even be the same person. We have to be prepared for everything, but we cannot have you complicating things. There’s the tiniest chance that she will remember, and if she does, then you can stay, but if she doesn’t, then we need you to no longer be part of her life.”
“I’m not going to do that!” I yelled.
She sighed, knowing I would never agree to such a thing. “If you do not agree to this, Ryan, then Christian and I are going to hire a lawyer and do whatever we can to keep you away from her. I am truly sorry but this is what’s best for our daughter.”
I clenched my jaw, knowing that there was no way around this. I had to agree, or else I could face legal trouble. The only hope I had was that she Valarie would wake up with her memory, and she and I could be together.
“She’s going to wake up, she’s going to remember me.” I looked down to hide my tears, and she whispered, “For your sake and mine, Ryan, I pray that she does.”
The moment we were all waiting for came five days after that. It was around ten in the morning, and her parents had just gone to the hospital cafeteria to get some coffee. I was reading the latest edition of SPIN magazine when I heard a strange choking noise. My head snapped up to see Valarie’s eyes wide open as her body shook and the choking noise continued. I launched myself towards the call button and stood by her side.
“Valley! Everything is okay. You’re going to be fine! The nurse is coming!” I held her head still as she continued to thrash.
A nurse walked in casually, certainly not expecting to walk into the scene in front of her. She rushed to her side once she realized what was happening and started pulling on the tubes. She picked up the phone, paged Val’s doctor, and hurried about muttering to herself. She suddenly turned to me. “Go get her parents!”
“What!? No, I’m-“
“Her parents should be here!” She said sharply. “Go get them.”
I squeezed Val’s hand, looking down her as her eyes moved wildly around the room, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be back.”
I ran out of the room, and around the corner, colliding with Val’s father, spilling coffee down my white t-shirt.
“Shit! Sorry about that Ryan. You okay?”
“She’s awake!” I panted, trying hard to ignore the stinging of the burning coffee against my skin. “She just woke up.” Her mother, who was digging in her bag for a napkin, dropped her own coffee and pushed past me. Christian stood, his eyes glazed over as he gulped.
“I can’t go in there,” he whispered. “What if she’s not the same girl I’ve raised for 14 years? I haven’t had enough time to prepare myself for this.”
“Mr. Lawrence,” I replied, wanting so much to be with Valarie, but I would feel like a dick if I just abandoned him there in the hall. “Even if that happens, she’s still going to be your daughter. She’s still your flesh and blood. Somewhere inside, she will always be there.”
“You’re a good kid, Ryan.” He smiled and cupped my shoulder. He led me into the room, where he took his spot by his wife. Valarie was finally unhooked from her tubes, but the doctor was hovering over her, shining a small flashlight in her eye.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked, and we all held our breath.
"It's okay baby," her mom squeaked, grabbing her other hand. "We're here for you. Take your time."
Val's mouth opened and she let out a hoarse sound. The nurse pressed a straw to her dry, cracked lips and she sucked until she began to suck in air. She pulled away and looked at us, her eyes showing neither recognition nor lack thereof, rather, she looked scared.
"Where am I?" She croaked.
"You’re in the hospital. You were in the accident. Do you remember what happened?" Dr. Yang asked.
Her brows furrowed and she looked deep in thought. Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears.
"No," she cried, shaking her head. I squeezed her hands and she looked up at me, and then pulled her hand away from me. "I don't know who you are. Any of you."
The words that I had feared more than anything in the world shattered me in an instant. I lost my breath, and hunched over, gasping for air. Her father cried, but her mother had remained calm. She had seemed to accept that this was going to happen to her daughter. She looked at me with sad eyes and said quietly, "I think it's time you leave Mr. Ross."
I was crying too hard to answer. Valarie wouldn't even look at me, she only cried into her palms. I reached out towards her but her mother stopped me.
"Please leave now or else I will have to call Security."
I sobbed even harder, falling back into the chair I had been sitting in for 3 weeks. My body was like dead weight as the security guard tried to pick me up and pull me out of the room. I grappled at the door frame, holding on for dear life, but to no avail. I was deposited, along with my backpack of belongings, outside the main entrance of the hospital.
"I'm so sorry," the man said sincerely before walking away. I knew better than to try and get back in, but I did it anyway, only to have him take me out again and threaten me with a phone call to the police.
I collapsed onto the nearest bench, my body so over taken by stress and heart break that I cried for an hour. Nobody bothered me, or even asked if I was okay as I sat there wailing. I was really broken this time, and nothing was going to fix me, I was worthless and useless. I cried, clutching my now empty chest. The thought of living without her while she moved on to a new life without me was a gutting feeling. This feeling was too intense to even be comparable to the last time she had left me. I could not do anything about this.
My new reality set it. I would never get to hold the love of my life again. I would never get to kiss her perfect, pouty lips, or wake up next to her. Or marry her. Or have children with her. Or tell her that I loved her. And she would never whisper the words back to me.
I burst through the doors and yelled her name above all the commotion. There were dozens of other people, crying and yelling for information. There were police officers trying to calm a few hysterical people in the corner while others helped in any way they could. Doctors were rushing about, filling out forms and gathering any information they could about their patients. I stood for a moment, feeling helpless and unsure of what I should do, and after I yelled her name again, a young nurse, who looked a little too much like Valarie with her dark hair and unique features, asked me if she could help me.
I looked at her for a moment, seeing only Valarie, before I answered. “My girlfriend, she was in the accident. Where is she?” My eyes were wild with desperation as fought away all the bad thoughts.
“What’s her name?” She looked down at the clipboard she held in her small hands, and I began to shake.
“Valarie Lawrence.”
Her eyes traveled down the list until they stopped mid way down the page. Her brows furrowed and jaw tightened, and she lifted her eyes to look at me.
“She hasn’t arrived yet. She’s on her way now. I’m sorry but it says here that she is under age so we have to wait until her parents arrive to give you any more information.”
“What!?” I yelled at her, making her cringe. “That’s fucking bullshit! They won’t be here for hours! What the fuck am I supposed to do!? Just wait until then? Just tell me! Is she fucking dead or is she doing alright!?” I began to feel hysterical myself, my fists clenched at my sides and my eyes darting everywhere. I could feel tears begin to fall down my cheeks but I was so angry, I ignored them. “She is the love of my life, do you understand me? If she is dying, I need to know. I have to know what is going on and I won’t leave you alone till you tell me what the fucking is going on!”
She looked at me, her eyes conflicted. Finally, she said quietly “All I can tell you is that she is was alive when they called her in. She is in critical condition and they are going to take her into surgery right away. I’m so sorry.” She hurried off, probably to avoid more yelling, and I had to find myself somewhere to sit because I was suddenly light headed again.
I heard sirens outside and got up again, ignoring the dizziness, and ran towards the sound. I arrived at the ER doors just at the ambulance did, and the EMT’s began unloaded their patient.
“Valarie Lawrence, age 14, picked up from the accident. Took a while to find her, she was pinned under one of the cars, she’s not doing so well. Pupils are blown, she’s showing signs of a brain bleed” one of them told the waiting doctor. He rambled on but I didn’t hear a word because the sight of Valarie overwhelmed me. She was strapped to a board, something around her neck. Half of her face was covered in blood and her shirt was torn in too many places to count. I moved toward the gurney they had moved her to, and that’s when one of the doctors noticed me.
“You can’t be here,” he said.
“That’s my girlfriend!” I rushed along, following them inside and down the hallway.
“You can’t be here! We have to get her into surgery if we’re going to save her” the doctor yelled at me again as they ran along another corridor and reached another pair of swinging doors. “Go back to the waiting room.”
“Valarie!” I cried, leaning down and whispering in her ears. “Don’t die! Don’t leave me here alone without you. Come back to me Valley. I’m nothing without you.”
“We have to go!” Someone pulled me back and they began to wheel her away.
“I love you Valley!” I yelled after them. “Don’t ever forget that.” I collapsed on the floor, crying like a child as I rocked myself back and forth. “I love you,” I kept whispering. “I love you.” The nurse who I had yelled at earlier appeared in the hall and helped me up, taking my back to the waiting room as I leaned against her and cried.
“I can’t lose her,” I whispered as I clutched her scrubs. Her eyes were sad as they looked back at me. “She’s my life. Make sure they save her. They need to save her.”
“I wish I could help you,” she said, and I saw a tear slip from her cheek. “She’s so young. You’re both so young.”
Hours passed as I sat in that chair, but my mind seemed to stop working, because I literally couldn’t think about anything. I had cried myself out, and my brain was just like white noise. I stared at my feet, or the people around me, many of whom had received news of their loved ones. Perhaps it was some type of defense mechanism my brain was implementing. It probably knew that if I thought about it, I would think of the worst. My mind always went to the worst places. Probably because of the lifetime of bad things I has been through.
It was just before 3 am when I heard a loud commotion in the waiting room. There was yelling, and I made out the words “Where is HE?” I knew right away that it was Valarie’s mother, and the ‘he’ that she was talking about was most definitely me. I stood, body exhausted, and she found my head over the others in the waiting room.
“YOU!” She yelled, charging towards me with a tear stained face. “Haven’t you done ENOUGH to my daughter?” Her voice was shrill as she came closer, pushing people aside to get to me. “You treat her like shit and then play around with her feelings and then you get her to run away from home to be with YOU!? You had no right! She was with Brendon who is ten times then man who will ever be!”
“Honey,” her husband whispered softly at her side.
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me Christian! He did this to our daughter! He is the reason that she might never wake up! I ought to charge him with kidnapping!”
“Jo, calm down. This is not his fault. He did not take her, she went to him willingly.”
She turned to her husband, eyes wide. “Are you saying this is her fault!?”
“Of course not. It’s no one’s fault. She went to see him because that is what she wanted. We cannot protect her from everything anymore. She is growing up, she is going to do what she wants whether we like it or not.” He pulled her into his arms where she started to sob, and he waved a hand at me as if to say go away, but I would not.
“I love Valarie,” I said quietly as I started crying all over again, grabbing her mother’s attention. “I never planned on falling in love with her, it just happened. I will not apologize for that. But I will apologize for the way I treated her. I have already apologized to her and she has forgiven me, because she loves me to and-”
“She does not love you! She is 14, she doesn’t even know what love is! You just want her so that you have someone to adore you!”
“With all due respect Mrs. Lawrence, you do not know anything about this. I know she loves me, and you have to believe that I love her. Us standing here arguing about it is not going to do any good. I don’t want to argue about this when I don’t even know if she is going to live! How am I supposed to be here without her?”
“He’s right,” her husband replied, rubbing her shoulders, and nodding towards me. He sat her in the chair that I had vacated and walked towards me. “I do not blame you for this Ryan. Please know that. You are a good kid, and I know that you care about my daughter.”
I nodded and tried to compose myself, to no avail. “Thank you sir,” I managed between tears. “Have you talked to the doctors? How is she doing?”
His tired eyes looked down on me, and I could see how hard he was trying to hold himself together for his wife. “She’s not doing well Ryan. She has several brain bleeds, her pelvis is broken, and so is her collar bone. Her broken bones will heal, but they don’t know about her brain. If she ever wakes up after surgery, there is a high chance that she will suffer permanent brain damage or remem-”
“What do you mean ‘if she wakes up’?”
He sighed heavily and a tear slipped down his cheek. “The doctors think there is a high chance that she’ll never wake up after this surgery.”
“No,” I whispered, my head becoming heavy as everything around me started to sway and my hand searched for something to steady myself with. “This can’t be happening. No, no. I can’t-“ My mouth shut as I fell forwards into Mr. Lawrence and fainted. When I awoke sometime later, I was lying on a cot inside a small room. I was shivering and momentarily disorientated until I heard a sole sound: the steady beeping of a heart monitor. I bolted up right and looked around the room. I saw a coat and a purse on a chair beside the hospital bed, but no one else was in there except me, and the occupant of the bed. I was scared to look at the unmoving body, but I knew I had to. I stood slowly, and finally looked over at her. My breath caught in my throat at the heart wrenching sight: her head was wrapped in thick white gauze, her face as pale as the white linen sheets she slept on. The skin around her eyes was dark, a mix between purple and black, and she had tubes protruding from her nose and throat. I choked on a sob and fell back down on my cot, holding my head in my hands and cried heavily.
I spent a lot of time crying in the days that followed. All day I was at her bedside, much to the chagrin of her mother, and at night I would go home for a few hours of sleep and then go back right when visiting hours started. I had quit my job because there was no way I was spending more time away from Valarie than I needed to. Nothing was more important to me than her. I talked to her, told her jokes, held her hand and rubbed her forehead, but despite everything, she never improved. Her condition was steady, as steady as that damned heart beat that gave me the slightest bit of hope.
Her parents wanted to take her back to Nevada, and I would have followed, but her doctors didn’t think it was a good idea to move her. If she was going to have any chance of waking up, then they said it was better to keep her stable and where she was. Her parents took turns going back and forth to Nevada, and it was always a little awkward and uncomfortable when it was just her mother and I. She tried to ignore me, but every once in awhile, her maternal instincts would kick in and she would try to get me to rest or eat something.
One afternoon, three weeks to the day that Valarie had been admitted to the hospital and been in a coma, my phone rang, disrupting the silence. It was Brendon.
"Hey dude," he said sheepishly.
"Uh, hi?"
"Listen, Val's parents called me, they told me what's going on. How are you doing?"
"Fine," I replied shortly. I didn't want to discuss what was happening with him. I still hated him for taking Val.
"Ryan. Come on, talk to me. I'm your my best friend."
"No, I was your best friend. Before you stabbed me in the back you asshole."
He was quiet on the other end for a moment. "Yea, I know Ryan. I knew how she felt about you all along, and I knew that even if you weren't ready to admit it, you liked her too. I'm sorry. I just figured that maybe once she started dating someone else, you'd move on or something, and I was really into her. It was fucking stupid."
"Yea, no kidding."
"When she broke up with me, she told me everything. About how you two slept together and that you told her you loved her, and how she loved you too. I wasn't angry though, because I sort of saw it coming. You two are meant to be together, I can see that now. I really am sorry, Ryan. And I really hope that everything works out with you two. She's going to make it."
"I know she is." The call was interrupted by Val's mother, who tapped me on the shoulder. "Bren, I have to go." I hung up before he could say anything. His apology didn't mean anything to me, because if it weren't for him, I wouldn't be waiting day and night for Valarie to wake up.
“We need to talk Ryan.” Her mother sat down in a chair next to mine and took my hands in hers. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I was scared and terrified and I needed someone to blame. You are just a child; I should not have taken it out on you. I understand that you love my daughter, and I believe that she loves you too, or else she wouldn’t have been so hurt by the things you said to her in the summer.” She squeezed my hands and smiled gently. “I’ve just spoken with her doctors. The area of her brain that stores memories was severely damaged by her brain bleed. They said that if she is to wake up, it is highly unlikely that she will remember anything. Not just you and me, but anything about her 14 years of life. My husband and I have discussed this possibility, and if it is true, if she wakes up with no memory at all, then we ask that you do us this favour.” She dropped my hands but remained looking me straight in the eyes. “We need you to leave. We want to protect our daughter in any way we can, and if you stay and try and make her remember things that she never will, then we’re afraid she’s only going to hurt even more.”
“No!” I said, beginning to panic. I could not, correction, would not leave her side. I didn’t care if she wouldn’t be able to remember me. I would be there until she would. I would help her remember. Even if she didn’t, we could start over again. We could start all over without any of the issues that had happened before-
“Ryan.” She seemed to know what I was thinking. “It is not a hundred percent that she is going to wake up. And if she does, I’m telling you, if she does not remember you, she never will. And it’s not a new start either. Who’s to say that she will feel the same? She’s might not even be the same person. We have to be prepared for everything, but we cannot have you complicating things. There’s the tiniest chance that she will remember, and if she does, then you can stay, but if she doesn’t, then we need you to no longer be part of her life.”
“I’m not going to do that!” I yelled.
She sighed, knowing I would never agree to such a thing. “If you do not agree to this, Ryan, then Christian and I are going to hire a lawyer and do whatever we can to keep you away from her. I am truly sorry but this is what’s best for our daughter.”
I clenched my jaw, knowing that there was no way around this. I had to agree, or else I could face legal trouble. The only hope I had was that she Valarie would wake up with her memory, and she and I could be together.
“She’s going to wake up, she’s going to remember me.” I looked down to hide my tears, and she whispered, “For your sake and mine, Ryan, I pray that she does.”
The moment we were all waiting for came five days after that. It was around ten in the morning, and her parents had just gone to the hospital cafeteria to get some coffee. I was reading the latest edition of SPIN magazine when I heard a strange choking noise. My head snapped up to see Valarie’s eyes wide open as her body shook and the choking noise continued. I launched myself towards the call button and stood by her side.
“Valley! Everything is okay. You’re going to be fine! The nurse is coming!” I held her head still as she continued to thrash.
A nurse walked in casually, certainly not expecting to walk into the scene in front of her. She rushed to her side once she realized what was happening and started pulling on the tubes. She picked up the phone, paged Val’s doctor, and hurried about muttering to herself. She suddenly turned to me. “Go get her parents!”
“What!? No, I’m-“
“Her parents should be here!” She said sharply. “Go get them.”
I squeezed Val’s hand, looking down her as her eyes moved wildly around the room, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be back.”
I ran out of the room, and around the corner, colliding with Val’s father, spilling coffee down my white t-shirt.
“Shit! Sorry about that Ryan. You okay?”
“She’s awake!” I panted, trying hard to ignore the stinging of the burning coffee against my skin. “She just woke up.” Her mother, who was digging in her bag for a napkin, dropped her own coffee and pushed past me. Christian stood, his eyes glazed over as he gulped.
“I can’t go in there,” he whispered. “What if she’s not the same girl I’ve raised for 14 years? I haven’t had enough time to prepare myself for this.”
“Mr. Lawrence,” I replied, wanting so much to be with Valarie, but I would feel like a dick if I just abandoned him there in the hall. “Even if that happens, she’s still going to be your daughter. She’s still your flesh and blood. Somewhere inside, she will always be there.”
“You’re a good kid, Ryan.” He smiled and cupped my shoulder. He led me into the room, where he took his spot by his wife. Valarie was finally unhooked from her tubes, but the doctor was hovering over her, shining a small flashlight in her eye.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked, and we all held our breath.
"It's okay baby," her mom squeaked, grabbing her other hand. "We're here for you. Take your time."
Val's mouth opened and she let out a hoarse sound. The nurse pressed a straw to her dry, cracked lips and she sucked until she began to suck in air. She pulled away and looked at us, her eyes showing neither recognition nor lack thereof, rather, she looked scared.
"Where am I?" She croaked.
"You’re in the hospital. You were in the accident. Do you remember what happened?" Dr. Yang asked.
Her brows furrowed and she looked deep in thought. Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears.
"No," she cried, shaking her head. I squeezed her hands and she looked up at me, and then pulled her hand away from me. "I don't know who you are. Any of you."
The words that I had feared more than anything in the world shattered me in an instant. I lost my breath, and hunched over, gasping for air. Her father cried, but her mother had remained calm. She had seemed to accept that this was going to happen to her daughter. She looked at me with sad eyes and said quietly, "I think it's time you leave Mr. Ross."
I was crying too hard to answer. Valarie wouldn't even look at me, she only cried into her palms. I reached out towards her but her mother stopped me.
"Please leave now or else I will have to call Security."
I sobbed even harder, falling back into the chair I had been sitting in for 3 weeks. My body was like dead weight as the security guard tried to pick me up and pull me out of the room. I grappled at the door frame, holding on for dear life, but to no avail. I was deposited, along with my backpack of belongings, outside the main entrance of the hospital.
"I'm so sorry," the man said sincerely before walking away. I knew better than to try and get back in, but I did it anyway, only to have him take me out again and threaten me with a phone call to the police.
I collapsed onto the nearest bench, my body so over taken by stress and heart break that I cried for an hour. Nobody bothered me, or even asked if I was okay as I sat there wailing. I was really broken this time, and nothing was going to fix me, I was worthless and useless. I cried, clutching my now empty chest. The thought of living without her while she moved on to a new life without me was a gutting feeling. This feeling was too intense to even be comparable to the last time she had left me. I could not do anything about this.
My new reality set it. I would never get to hold the love of my life again. I would never get to kiss her perfect, pouty lips, or wake up next to her. Or marry her. Or have children with her. Or tell her that I loved her. And she would never whisper the words back to me.
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