Intuitions Nightmare

  ~

  On my usual daily visit with Alexa, I came to a room of pain and tears. Alexa sat on the hospital bed with Ryder, who was cradling her and whispering something in her ear. Mandy sat alone in the corner looking blank and completely shut down. It didn’t take more than a second to figure out what had happened.

  A doctor came in and dragged me out of the room. I was just standing in there, frozen, and no one had even noticed me. I didn’t need someone with a PHD to tell me but he did anyways. I stared at him blankly as he explained. They had checked on the baby after she had some unusual bleeding and they determined she had a miscarriage.. She was only 12 weeks along and honestly, I was surprised it had made it as long as it did.

  I could hear a slight buzz in my ears and the rapid beat of my heart. I felt pretty numb at the moment. The doctor wasn’t saying anything anymore and he was shining a small light in my eyes. I began to regain my mind and realized he was checking me.

  “Aidriana,” he said to me slightly worried.

  “Sorry doc, I wasn’t ready for this,” I replied softly.

  “Aidriana, you were unresponsive for almost five minutes.”

  “I saw you checking me. It was only a second,” I argued.

  “No, I had been calling to you and checking your pupils for almost five minutes,” he said.

  I stared at him blankly again. I was worried now. I was blacking out or something. Either way, I was losing chunks of time. After the doctor voiced his worry about my most recent blackout, I went back to Alexa. She cried and I just sat there in silence with them. After hours of silence and tears, I went home and slept.

  ~

  Ethan called me the next morning to tell me he was coming home and wasn’t moving anymore. His mother had told him that she couldn’t be the reason he wasn’t home with his friends. No job was worth her taking away the short amount of time Alexa had left from her son. She knew we were all very close.

  I was starting to think there might be a short calm to this storm but we were really just in the eye of it all. The calm was very deceiving. Shortly after Ethan let me know they were heading home, I got another call. My phone rang softly and buzzed against the counter. I picked it up and saw Ryder’s name on the screen.

  “Ryder? What’s wrong,” I said before giving him the chance to even say hello. He had never called me. Never.

  “Aidriana, don’t panic. You need to get down here now,” he said quietly

  “What’s going on?” I asked fearfully.

  “Just come. I will explain when you get here. They’ve moved her to the fifth floor, room 514. Hurry,” he calmly explained.

  “Okay, I’m leaving now. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said and quickly hung up.

  I grabbed my purse and ran out the front door. My mom yelled at me as I ran out, but I didn’t stop. I jumped in my car and drove, fast. Maybe a little too fast, but I didn’t care. I made it there in twenty minutes, which was almost twice as fast as usual. Things were beginning to blur by and I was worried she had already died before I could make it.

  “Aid?”

  I was standing on the fifth floor, just staring, “Hmm?” I answered completely out of it.

  “Aidriana, are you alright?” both Ryder and Mandy asked. Both were standing in front of me, worry clearly running across their faces.

  I didn’t really know how to answer that question, but I lied. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just worried.”

  “She’s in critical condition. They don’t know if she’ll make it through the night,” Mandy sobbed.

  I didn’t say much more than okay and walked past them. She was lying alone in her room, tears streaming down her cheeks, skin pail as chalk. Her hair was dull and her face looked sunken but her eyes, on the other hand, were sparkling. Other than the red rim from crying, they were full of happiness or peace maybe. She looked up at me blankly.

  “So you heard then,” she began quietly.

  “Yeah, I heard,” I choked out.

  She didn’t cry anymore, she just watched me intently. I was losing my composure quickly. The tears were beginning to fill my eyes and the burn in my throat and chest were becoming unbearable.

  “Aidriana?”

  “Yeah Alexa,” I sniffled.

  “I know you’re scared for me,” she observed. “Don’t be,” she finished softly.

  “How can you even say that?” I said angrily.

  “I’m not scared anymore. I feel ready. I feel at peace, Aid.” She didn’t smile but her eyes showed no fear. “I will be okay. I’ll be waiting for you at the pearly gates,” she smiled then and let out a small laugh. I got up and hugged her softly.

  “I know you’ll be okay. I’ll be looking for you when I get there,” I smiled back. I didn’t laugh but I did feel a little lighter.

  Chapter 4

  Alexa died two days later. Ethan made it home and got to see her in her final days. We all got to say goodbye to her but I was the last to talk to her. She held my hand softly. After I told her I loved her and she said she loved me, we didn’t say anything else. I just sat next to her and watched her.

  Her breathing was beginning to falter, and I could see her heart was beating awkwardly on the machine above. I looked back at her and she smiled at me. I thought at that moment I saw something in her eyes. Maybe it was God welcoming her to his kingdom, or maybe it was an angel taking her there. I wasn’t sure what I saw, but it was something. Just like that, she drew in her last breath and she was gone.

  I sat alone with her body, holding her limp hand in mine. I wasn’t sure how I felt about things. She was ready to go and I knew that, but I wasn’t ready to let her. I finally worked my body up to move. I set her hand on the bed so it didn’t hang where I sat. My eyes began to tear up now and it was starting to become real to me. My best friend was gone and I was just realizing it.

  I walked slowly to the door and fumbled with the handle. I opened it slowly and made my way down the hall to everyone. They all saw me coming and my knees were slowly getting weaker.

  “Aidriana!” Mandy yelled as she sprung from her seat.

  I didn’t make any sound, nor did I make it many more steps either. My legs gave out just as Mandy made it close enough to keep me from face planting. Everyone else filed out of the waiting room to see what all of the commotion was about.

  “She’s gone, Mandy,” I managed to cry out. I finally let out the tears I had been holding in.

  It was a relief to let go of such a heavy burden. Ethan came over to help steady me. Mandy and Ryder ran passed to the room. I could hear them both lose it. Mandy started breathing fast and was hyperventilating. This was followed by a loud thud and then Ryder saying ‘oh shit’.

  Seconds later, a pile of nurses came to the room. It was amazing what could happen in about a minute, even when it felt like a lifetime. The rest of the day was a blur. Ethan, Ryder and I stayed with Mandy at her house. We all needed support that night so we all camped out in the living room and watched reruns until we fell asleep.

  ~

  The funeral came fast, mostly because I don’t remember three days of my life. I remembered falling asleep at Mandy’s, laying next to Ethan and the next thing I know, I’m in the backseat of Ryder’s car. Ethan was squeezing my hand and from the sounds of it, I was in a deep conversation with him. I looked at him and felt confused and truly terrified.

  “Babe, what’s wrong?” He said softly.

  “Ethan, what were we just talking about?” I asked in a panic.

  “The funeral? Babe, are you okay?” Ethan asked.

  “I don’t remember anything. Were we talking and I was responding to you?”

  “Uh, yes, we’ve been talking since we got in the car.”

  “What day is it?” I demanded.

  “It’s the 5th.”

  “December 5th?” I asked

  “Yes Aidriana,” Ethan said.

  “I don’t remember after falling asleep the day Alexa died,” I admitted.

>   “What?” Ryder jumped into the conversation and looked at me through the mirror.

  “I don’t have any idea what has been happening for the last three days.”

  “You’re starting to scare me,” Ethan said.

  “It’s getting worse, Aid,” Ryder pointed out.

  “What do you mean it’s getting worse?” Ethan questioned.

  “This isn’t the first time this has happened,” I answered softly.

  “What do you mean?” Ethan asked. He sounded irritated.

  “She did this the other day too, but she was just blank,” Ryder explained. He looked worried too.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this,” Ethan exclaimed.

  “I didn’t think it was a problem before,” I said honestly.

  The car stayed silent after that. We pulled up to the funeral home and the area felt sullen and grim. The sky was a painful grey and it was lightly sprinkling. We got out of the car and saw people talking and crying. I didn’t know any of them and quite obviously neither did Ryder or Ethan. We walked past all of them and into the glass doors.

  Mandy stood just past the doorway. Her eyes said it all. She was clearly distraught and even with those around her, she looked truly alone. We stopped over to talk to her and she said very little to us. I couldn’t even take the depressed tone of this place and then the rest blurred by.

  Before my mind could catch back up, the funeral was over. I realized I never gave my speech about her and felt like a huge asshole.

  “That was a beautiful story, Aidriana. You truly captured who my little girl was,” Mandy said softly as the tears flowed down her face.

  I smiled and said thank you to her, but now I was horribly worried and confused. I blacked out and somehow managed to tell a beautiful story about her. I didn’t mention this to anyone and we went on to the burial. She had a beautiful spot right next to her dad.

  Her dad had passed away five years ago from stomach cancer. I cried frantically as they lowered her into the ground. She was truly gone and my head was finally wrapping around the fact. I stood there in the rain and said my final goodbye to her.

  ~

  That Friday, our school had an assembly for Alexa. Our school was small so none of us had ever experienced the death of a classmate. A lot more people cried than I thought would. She wasn’t popular but that didn’t matter anymore. She touched a lot of people’s lives and her life was cut short.

  We had counseling available for anyone who needed to talk about the situation. I didn’t take advantage of it, nor did I plan to. I was in a spot where I felt like I was being buried alive. I found myself having more blackouts. It was like jumping in and out of my life and only noticing things that were important or dramatic.

  Ethan and I checked on Ryder regularly. After the funeral, he really just lost it. It was like his body was here, but his mind was drifting off somewhere else. He said little to nothing when we saw him. He sat alone most of the day and still wasn’t ready to go back to school. I couldn’t blame him though; he was so young and he had already been through a miscarriage of his child and lost his lover. We decided we should visit him every day to try to support him so he could live his life again. So far nothing was getting better for him though. I had to believe that he was going to come back out of this. Alexa wouldn’t have wanted this for him.

  I also went to visit her mom the day of the assembly. She had really let herself go in a week’s time. It was pretty obvious that she hadn’t showered in days. She was sitting on Alexa’s bedroom floor, tears running down her face and dripping onto her dark blue sweatpants. She was also holding a cigarette in her left hand and an ashtray sat next to her. It was completely full and it looked like she had probably gone through maybe six or seven packs since the funeral. The cigarette butts filled the tray to the brim and many more were scattered around it on the hardwood floor. She had quit smoking after Alexa’s dad passed away, but from the looks of it, she had picked it back up after the funeral.

  “Mandy,” I said to her softly.

  She turned her head slowly toward me and tried to smile. “Hello sweetie.”

  “Mandy, how long have you been sitting here?” I asked her.

  “What day is it?” She murmured.

  “Friday, the funeral was four days ago.”

  “I’m not sure how long. Maybe three days,” she said emotionless.

  I decided she needed to get up and out of her daughters room. She didn’t fight me, nor did she argue. She didn’t say anything at all. She just followed me, face blank, her mind drifting elsewhere. I sat her on the bathroom floor while I grabbed a change of clothes. I made her take a shower, and she argued with me this time. I didn’t listen; I just forced her in with her clothes on and sat on the counter until she was done. When she finally shut the water off, I threw her a towel.

  “Alexa did this with me when Jack died,” she said as she stepped out.

  “I know,” I smiled at her. I had been there and remembered how much more alert she was after the shower even back then.

  “Thank you, Aidriana.”

  “Mandy, you’re like my mother. I don’t want to see you like this anymore than Alexa would’ve.”

  I stayed there for a few more hours, though the conversation was hazing in and out. I didn’t remember getting into my car or driving halfway home. My cell phone rang and I looked down at the screen to see Ethan’s name on it.

  “Hello,” I said happily.

  “Hey baby, are you on your way home yet?”

  “Yeah, I’m about five minutes from home.”

  “Okay, well I’m gonna head over finally then.” I didn’t remember talking to him about coming over but I was happy anyways.

  “Alright! I’ll see you soon!”

  “I love you, Aid,” he said tenderly.

  “I love you too.”

  I pulled into my driveway at 9:15. It seemed darker out than usual and the air was like ice but the usual Michigan snow hadn’t hit us yet. I went down to my room and sat on my bed. My mind drifted away from me as my head hit my pillow.

  ~

  I woke to my phone blaring in my ear. It was 11 pm and Ethan hadn’t come yet. The phone number was not a number I knew but I had a feeling I should answer it anyways.

  “Hello?” I said cautiously.

  “Aidriana, you need to get into your car and drive to the hospital as fast as possible.” It was Ethan’s mom and she sounded frantic.

  “Cindy? What happened?”

  “There’s no time to explain. Just get in your car and go, now!” She yelled.

  So I did and I did fast. Somehow I was going almost 110 mph the entire way and I never got pulled over. I got there in 15 minutes and ran in like a bat out of hell. I asked where he was to the receptionist at the front desk but Cindy ran right into me and grabbed my arm. We ran all the way to the ER side of the hospital and I got out what I could on our way.

  Cindy explained that Ethan was T-boned by a logging truck. The man driving had been on some medication and he was far from functioning enough to drive. The truck didn’t have lights on and Ethan was hit going through a four way stop. The truck hit him on the passenger’s side but he was going 45 miles per hour or maybe faster so there was no saying what would happen.

  We got up to the room and he was being worked on. We couldn’t go in but the room had big windows that Cindy and I could look through. There was blood everywhere and he was completely unconscious. My worst nightmare was playing out right in front of me. He was going to die, and I was here to watch and have no control.

  The next thing I knew he was flat lining. Cindy and I were screaming at the window, completely helpless. They went for the defibrillator and put it to his chest. Everything around me was blurring and slowing down. They charged it three more times and I watched as his chest contracted up toward the paddles.

  The endless beep of his unbeating heart was blaring in the background. My ears were ringing, the doctors moved around the room in a
chaotic slow motion, and the sting of my tears blurred my vision. This couldn’t be real. Then everything stopped; everything but the deafening, never ending beep. My world came crashing down before my eyes. He was gone. My best friend and now the love of my life were both gone in the blink of an eye.

  The doctor came out to tell us what we already knew, he was dead. He explained that the internal bleeding was so severe; they couldn’t even begin to get it to stop. The words the doctor was saying started to slur together and the light in the room began to fade. The blackout came to stake its claim on me yet again.

  Chapter 5

  When I came to again, I was lying in a bed I had never seen before, in a room that was also unfamiliar. I felt disoriented, confused, and a little horrified. I put my hand to my face to rub my eyes, when I saw a shimmer from my finger. To my surprise, there was a wedding ring on it. I went to roll to the middle of the bed and realized I was unbelievably uncomfortable. I touched my stomach and felt the large bump that was present. That is when I lost it. I started to hyperventilate. The tears were beginning to well up and then I felt my stomach move.

  “Holy shit,” I screamed.

  I tried to pull myself up to sit and felt the bed moving next to me. I froze.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  The voice was unmistakably familiar. I looked over to see Ryder staring over at me. He was in his boxers and he looked utterly confused. “You have got to be shitting me,” I exclaimed.

  “Aid, what’s wrong? Is the baby okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?”

  “Baby? I stuttered. I touched my stomach again and felt the baby inside slide its foot across my abdomen. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Are you…” he stopped and his eyes suddenly widened. He looked at me with heartbroken and bewildered eyes. “Aidriana, be honest with me please. What is the last thing you remember?”

  “I… don’t know,” I began to weep.

  “You blacked out again. I thought this hadn’t happened in almost ten years.”

  “What did you just say?” I managed to choke out.

  “Oh God,” he looked stunned. “Do you remember finding out you were pregnant? Or our wedding? Our first date?” he asked frantically.

  Ten years. I had skipped past almost ten years of my life. The tears rolled down my face and I began to feel numb and cold. “The last thing I remember, is watching Ethan die,” I finally admitted.