The Time Until (2 page)

Nothing.

My head starts to cloud and my heart-wrenches.

I don’t get to see what happens next, except for a
loud, “CLEAR,” and Sam’s body jumping again, before I’m pushed into the
ambulance and driven away from the scene.
 
The pain medication starts to kick in on the drive and I’m certain I’m
mumbling something about not leaving.
 
I
pass out as I think about Sam lying on the ground, limp and lifeless.
 
I can still hear her last words right before
getting hit by the truck.

“
You know,
Al, I’m so happy right now I could die with no regrets.”

12 Years Ago (Age 8):
 
March

“Get up you pansy!” I look up through my tears
at the blurry image of Samantha Cohn — a tomboy with overalls and a short ponytail.
She’s always getting on me for something, and though I find it annoying at
times, I don’t really mind it much.
 
It
started in Kindergarten. Whenever I would fall, she was there with a laugh and
a helping hand.
 
Of course, she was the
cause of most of those falls.

There isn’t much Sam can do that I would ever
mind. But right now, I’m sitting on the hard ground in the middle of the
playground, holding my leg as blood leaks steadily from the gash on my knee. It
hurts a lot and she’s telling me to get up like it’s so easy. I just keep
staring at her through the moisture in my eyes.

“It’s just a scratch,” she says as she grabs my
hand and starts pulling. “Now get up.”
 
My body — especially my hurt knee — protests immediately, and I struggle
to remain seated.

“Stop it, Sam. It hurts!” She ignores my plea
and continues to tug relentlessly on my arm. I’m gradually losing the Tug-O-War
match, my butt rising slowly off the ground. I always forget just how strong
she is.

“Stop complaining and get up, you pansy.” She
grunts as she exerts more power into her mission. “And stop crying,” she adds.
“It’s not manly.”

One final tug and I’m fully standing.

I’m limping, moving slowly as Sam drags me with
her toward the school building.
 
She’s
pulling me faster than I’d like to go right now, but this is a snail’s pace
compared to her usual speed. She’s even holding me on the side that hurts, like
she’s trying to take some of the pressure off my injured knee.

A little smile plays on my lips. She might be
tough, but Sam can be sweet when she wants to be.

Depositing me on a bench in the nurse’s office,
she immediately starts rummaging through drawers. I think I hear her mumble
something about crybabies as I watch her with amusement. Sam always mumbles
when she’s worried.

Finishing with her rampage, she drops to her
knees in front of me, arms full of first aid supplies. They clatter to the
floor as she moves to inspect my wound.

“It’s pretty deep.”

“And you were calling me a pansy?” I ask. She
shoots me her “I’m not amused” look.

“That’s because you are. You always cry
whenever something happens. My dad told me only girls and pansies cry. So you
must be a pansy, since you’re not a girl.”

Sam’s dad spent years in the Marines. He’s big
and strong. I remember the time he told me that a man is only allowed to cry on
two occasions — the birth of his child and the death of a loved one. That’s it.
All other reasons to cry were moot and would be immediately rejected.

He scared the crap out of me the first time I
met him, even with the warm smile on his face.

“That doesn’t make me a pansy,” I puff out my
chest a little in defiance. “I’m just sensitive.”

Sam bursts out laughing and I can’t help
joining her.
 
She has a great laugh. One
who makes you
want
to laugh right along with her. My
mom always says it’s more contagious than the chicken pox. I have to agree with
her.

“Men aren’t supposed to be sensitive, Alan,”
she comments after finally calming down. She reaches for the Hydrogen Peroxide
bottle and pours a massive amount over my knee. Pain shoots through my leg,
causing a shiver to scurry along my spine. I shudder, trying to shake it off,
and hope she doesn’t notice.

Sam holds my leg in place with both hands and
gently blows on my knee. It’s cool and soothing on my leg – and I can’t stop staring
at her.
 
The hairs on my arms start to
stand on end and goose bumps pop up all over my body starting at my leg.

Sam’s tender touch fills me from head to toe
with warmth. I can feel my cheeks start to redden. Most people don’t think an
eight-year-old knows what love is. And they’re right, for the most part. My
knowledge on the subject hasn’t gone much further than what I feel for my mom
and dad. But if falling in love is anything like what’s happening to me right
now, I’d gladly spend my whole life figuring it out.

There’s a flutter in my stomach as I watch Sam
dab at my knee with a cloth. I don’t even feel the pain anymore. I want to
touch her auburn hair, but I force my hands to stay still. I don’t want to
scare her.

After placing a Band-Aid over the cut, she
slowly rubs her thumb in a circle over it, making it stick. Pins and needles
run from her soft movement all the way up to my head. She stands up quickly,
placing her hands on her hips.

“There you go, pansy,” she says. “All better.”
Then she flashes a huge smile, shaking me to my core. She’s so pretty.

This is the moment I know I’m going to love
this girl for the rest of my life.

Present Day

The whispering is really starting to get on my
nerves.
 
They woke me up from a really good
dream.
 
I groan loudly and a hand slides
into mine. For a second, I think it might be Sam’s and my heart skips.

I strain to open my eyes. The first thing I notice
is that I can only see out of one side of my face and it’s blurry.
 
I blink a few times and the images
clear.
 
My parents are standing by my bed
with a doctor.
 
Mary and Nate – Sam’s
parents, Mary is actually her adoptive mother —
are
at
the foot of my bed.

My entire body feels heavy and groggy, so when I
turn my head a little it makes my brain feel like
it’s
being flushed down a toilet.
 
The room
spins for a time and the black spots make
a reappearance
,
but I manage to stay awake.
 
As I try to
sit up, I let out another groan.
 
My
mother rushes up to help me.
 
This is
when I notice that my right arm is in a cast and wrapped in a sling close to my
body.

I reach up to find out why I can’t see out of my
left side, but I have a fairly good guess.
 
My arm feels like it’s tied to lead weights and someone replaced it with
someone else’s limb, feeling like it’s detached and foreign.
 
The IV tugs as I move and a small prick of
pain warns me to stop.
 
I adjust my arm
slightly, and I can now reach my left side.
 
A quick physical inspection reveals that my entire head, and most of the
left side of my face, is wrapped in bandages.

Images of the crash start flashing though my head
and I remember my legs having no feeling.
 
I try wiggling my toes and the bedding starts to move in response.
 
A wave of relief washes through me.
 
Images of Sam from the crash make the relief
short lived.
 
I look up at her parents.

“How’s Sam?” I ask with my scratchy throat and
accidently harsh voice.
 
I go into a
coughing fit from those two words, but not before I catch the look that crosses
their faces.
 
Pain and
uncertainty.
 
A large mug of water
with a straw appears in front of me and I use it to soothe the sand paper in
the back of my throat.

“Please, tell me Sam is okay.” No one can look me
in the eyes. Even the doctor tries to find something to do to avoid me. A large
lump forms in the pit of my stomach.
 
I
remember seeing a lot of blood and the paramedics were doing CPR.
 
Did it
not work?
 
Were they too late?
I
think I feel my eyes – eye — start to water.
 
A soft sob escapes my throat before I can bite it down and my mother wraps
me in a big hug.
 
Her comforting voice
only makes it harder to keep from crying.
 
A few deep breathes later and I have it all under control.

For the most part.

“She’s still in surgery, but they seemed hopeful a
few hours ago,” Nate informs me, his voice low and strained. It must take all
his training to hold in the sobs I can hear behind his voice.

Sam is in
surgery?
 

There is something else, but I can’t place
it.
 
There is a simmering, fiery feeling
in my chest.

I’m alarmed that I don’t feel anything — except
where Sam is concerned — about what’s happening.
 
A crazy person hit me, Sam is in surgery
fighting for her life, I’m laid up in a hospital bed bandaged, and all I feel
is detached.
 
I’m positive I should be
feeling more about this. I search inside myself for it, but I can’t find
anything more than a slight tug in my heart.

That scares me a bit.

 
“She’s not
out of the woods yet, Son,” Nate notes, snapping me out of my thoughts. “She
still has to survive the surgery.”

His voice catches a little and I think I’m the
only one who catches it.
“If she can.”

I don’t know what to say to them.
 
I’m sorry comes to mind fairly quickly.
 
No… It’s not my fault that asshole in the
truck wasn’t paying attention and ran the red light.
 
It may have been my idea to go to that park
so late, but I didn’t exactly plan to get creamed by a moron on the way
home.
 
This was supposed to be our
night.
 
Just thinking about that guy and
what happened causes that fire ball in my chest to flare. Now I’m feeling
something.
Rage.

I start to ball my fists, though the right hand is
still very weak it can move.
 
I have to
get myself under control, I realize, unclenching my fists slowly.
 
It’s a little harder to do than I remember it
being in the past.

Calm down
.
 
Sam is still in surgery and they were hopeful
a few hours ago.

I’m better than this.
 
I’m the calm and collected one.

A
few
hours?

“Wait… How long have I been out?”

“Eight hours.” It’s the doctor’s turn to
speak.
 

That number surprises me.

How long has
Sam been in surgery?

“How bad is it?” I fall back in to the bed, out of
my mom’s embrace, but she remains by my side with a hand on my shoulder.
 
The doctor takes a moment to look at the
chart.

“You’re very lucky to be alive,” he begins, but I
don’t want to hear about me.
 
I want to
hear about Sam.

“You suffered a severe concussion and cracked
skull.
 
Unfortunately, you lost the use
of your left eye–”

“What do you mean I lost the use of my left eye?!”
I interrupt a little louder than I intended.
 
My mom’s hand grips my shoulder tighter at my outburst.

“You had embedded glass in your eye,” he explains,
cocking an eyebrow.

I have no
left eye?
 
I absent-mindedly reach up
and touch the bandage over my eye.
 
My missing eye.
 
I
can’t even think about that right now.
 
It’s too much.
 
I can feel that
fireball in my chest growing. That bastard took my eye from me as well as
everything else.
 
Wait a minute!
 
Shit.
 
My scholarship.

I need both my eyes to play soccer.
 
If I can’t play soccer, then my scholarship
gets revoked.
 
No scholarship, no
college.
 
No college, no degree.
 
What am
I going to do?!
 
I decide to cross
that bridge when I get to it.
 
For now, I
want to focus on more immediate concerns.
 
I look around and notice that everyone is watching me.

“Sorry.” I gesture to the doctor to continue.
 
He nods his head.

“Right.
 
Besides your eye and concussion, you have a
compound fracture in your right arm. Your forearm was broken in multiple
places.
 
We believe the airbag may have
forced your arm into your head.” He doesn’t really have to try to explain what
happened, I don’t really care.

I don’t
care?

“We set the bone and placed some pins to hold them
in place.
 
Unfortunately, we can’t do
anything about the tendons yet.
 
With
time and physical therapy you should be able to hold a pencil again.”
Unfortunately
must be his favorite
word.
 
Great, so now I can’t use my hand
either.
 
I’m right handed too.
 
The only way this could get any worse is if
they come in and tell us that Sam died during surgery.

Idiot! You just
cursed it!
Sam yells in my head.
 
I
mentally slap my forehead.

I
am
an
idiot because right then a nurse knocks on the door and calls Nate and
Mary.
 
They get up and go into the
hallway. I squeeze my eyes shut at my stupidity.
 
How many times has something happened when I
mentioned it?
 
Too
numerous to count.

Nate and Mary return after what feels like hours
of waiting.
 
I’m practically sitting on
the edge of my bed hoping for good news about Sam.
 
The expression on their faces is not at all
encouraging and I feel my heart sink.

“Sam… survived the surgery,” Mary starts, but
breaks down before she can say more. Definitely not a good sign, but at least
the first part of the information is good.
 
She’s alive!
 
Anything after that
is just an obstacle that we can overcome.
 
Nate pulls her into his chest and holds her while he finishes.

“They repaired her lung and kidney.
 
Her arm and legs are crushed.
 
She’s being moved to a private room at the
moment. She…” He swallows a lump in his throat and squeezes Mary a little
tighter.
 
She offers no complaint as she
returns his embrace.

“She didn’t wake up from the anesthesia.
 
Apparently, there was a lot of pressure on
her brain.
 
She’s not
waking up
.” I’m shocked and can’t really
comprehend this information.
 
I place this
news and all appropriate responses into a ball and add it to my chest.
 
I’m sure I should be emotional about this,
but I don’t feel anything at the moment.
 
It’s like I’m a blank slate.

Nothing.

“Does that mean what I think that means, Sir?” I
ask.
 
Mary nods into Nate’s chest, but
Nate is the one who answers.

“She’s in a coma, Son.” The silence that follows
is dark, heavy, and completely fills the room.