Where We Left Off (23 page)

“To forgive you,” he answered.

Mason turned around and looked up to the top of the stairs. 

“You too, mom.”

The breeze blew beneath him, light as if he carried no weight at all walking down the hill of the driveway.  Carrying with it the scent of a coming rain, he watched the clouds overhead fill the darkened sky to wash away today from tomorrow.  His heart raced anxiously, beating through his chest with each step he took towards Sydney, who was standing outside of the car waiting for him.  He stood face to face with her just as the rain began to fall from the sky blending with the tears that fell down the sides of his face.

“Everything is going to be okay now,” she assured him, wiping the tears from his face with her thumb.  “Let’s go home.” She turned to get back into the car.

Mason couldn’t move.  Not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t.  He tried to move his legs to walk and couldn’t feel them.  As they gave out and his knees slammed into the ground beneath him, he tried to reach out for the door handle, for Sydney, but he was unable to.  He called out to her, his voice barely able to reach above the sound of the rain beating against the car.  By the time he saw her turn to him, it was too late. 

Chapter 39

“Nothing about this is normal.  Quite frankly, it shouldn’t have happened,” Dr. Larson nervously exclaimed, meeting Sydney as she rushed through the front doors of the hospital. 

Dr. Larson was the physician assigned to Mason’s case two months after he fell into the coma.  He was a bit friendlier than Dr. Melson, but he stammered a lot, especially when he was nervous.

The rain was coming down ferociously and, having run in without an umbrella, Sydney looked as if she had been standing outside for hours.  Her wet hair dripped continuously as it draped against her glistening shoulders, and her dress stuck to her skin as if it had been tailored to her frame.  None of that mattered.  She brushed past the nurses in the hall and headed straight for the elevators, Dr. Larson following skittishly behind.  He hadn’t stopped talking since she’d gotten there.  She had grown used to his pessimism, but in that moment she didn’t want to hear it.

“Dr. Larson, please!” she yelled.

Until then he hadn’t noticed his onset of babbling.

She turned back towards the elevator door with him behind her, wiping the rain from her face.  “You’ve given me a million reasons why it shouldn’t have happened.”  She paused, turning to face him, “but it did; it did happen.”

The elevator door opened at the nurses’ station on the third floor.  From the way it looked, it had recently been vacated; a cup of coffee sat beside the computer monitor with steam still coming from it.  She had never gotten used to that blue paint on the walls and when she looked at it, she still felt sick to her stomach.  Sydney walked down the long corridor, passing the other rooms; some were empty, some occupied, some filled with families smiling and laughing, and still others with sad expressions. She reached the very last room all the way at the end of the long hallway.  She slowed down as she neared.  The door was open and the lights were dim.  She felt a light breeze brush past her, carrying with it the smell of the rain from outside.

“You opened the window,” she noted, clenching her purse, clearly afraid to walk into the room.

Dr. Larson placed his hand on hers. “It’s okay,” he said, comforting her.  “Go ahead.”

It was the first time he had ever made a genuine caring gesture towards her, and, given everything that was happening, a caring gesture was exactly what she needed. 

Sydney took one step into the room, slow and isolated, not knowing what to expect; not knowing if she was ready to see, to feel…to know. 
What’s going to happen now?
  Her thoughts consumed the very emotions that danced along the rim of her eyelids.  She should turn back around and pretend it wasn’t happening, but she couldn’t.  She wouldn’t. 

She took another step then, one more, closer than before.  The breeze from the open window blew against her face, causing her to blink a tear that she quickly wiped away with her hands trembling, shaking almost uncontrollably. 

She took another step, unable to turn back.  The smell of stale white sheets that she had grown used to was drowned out by the scent of solace, drops of rain she could hear tapping against the leaves on a tree outside the window.  Her eyes moved from the bland painted walls as they passed by the window to the linoleum floor that reflected the glow of the light above Mason’s bed and, with it, the shadow of him.  The shadow of
her
Mason. No one there, not even the nurses that hovered around him could understand what Sydney felt at that moment.  A moment she had waited for so long as she recalled those few words that changed her life over twelve years ago. 

We’re not saying he’ll never wake up, we’re just saying you have to be patient.

She took a deep breath and against everything that felt like lead holding her back she took the next few steps, swallowing her fears, her uncertainty, her doubts…swallowing the
what ifs
that once plagued her.  In a moment that she thought would never come, she couldn’t hold back the tears that had been held in for the last twelve years he’d laid in that very same bed in a coma, asleep, absent from the world around him.  Absent from the days and nights she had laid beside him holding his hands praying for him to flinch, to blink, to whisper just one word to do something to let her know he was still there.  In a moment she thought would only come in her dreams, her heart skipped the beat that she had so longed for, the very breath of her snatched by a gasp of surprise as Mason’s eyes, now open, moved from left to right trying to focus on something, someone her and the whisper of his voice called her by name. She stood only a few feet in front of him, unsure if she was dreaming or awake, but under the sound of his soft, raspy voice, she knew; she knew it was far from a dream. It was every bit of that day, that hope that she’d held onto.  She ran to him and fell into his chest, feeling his heartbeat against the side of her face, knowing for the first time in twelve years when she looked up at him that he would be looking right back.

“I’ve missed you…so much,” she cried, her words lingering on uncontrolled emotions. 

There was very little he could say, not knowing why, not understanding why.  His eyes filled with tears and confusion as they focused on a Sydney he didn’t fully recognize.  The Sydney he remembered was younger, slightly more petite, and always smiling.  She had aged, her eyes swollen with tears and her hair longer than he remembered.  She was still remarkably beautiful, but he could tell she wasn’t the same.  The day wasn’t the same;
he
wasn’t the same. 

Remarkably, even after having not used his voice for so long, Mason was able to speak. His words were soft and scratchy, but Sydney heard him.

“Sydney, what’s going on?” his voice quivered.

She tried her hardest to make sense of it for him, but she was too emotional to speak in complete sentences and he was too confused and too afraid of a day he’d never seen before. 
Something isn’t right,
he thought. He had just seen her, they had just been together.  He looked out of the open window and saw that it was raining, and then he remembered. 
Yes, it was raining and we were outside.  No, wait, I was outside.  I saw her and I…I.
  Mason remembered the feeling of what he thought had happened the feeling of him dying and there he was in a hospital room, again, and Sydney was with him but she was not the same as before. 

“Sydney,” he cried, “please tell me what’s going on.   Where are we?  Why am I am the hospital?”

She looked up at him, wiping her eyes again and again.  It took her a few minutes to stop crying long enough to talk to him, but when she did a part of Mason felt like he hadn’t heard her voice in a long time.

“Baby, just calm down, the doctors here are really good, they’ll explain everything.”

“Sydney,” he tried to reach for her hand but couldn’t. He strained just to move his hand, but yielded no more than a single isolated twitch of his fingers.  “Please tell me why I am here again.  What’s happened? What’s going on?”

Sydney backed away as the doctors tried to calm Mason down.

“What is he talking about? ‘Again’?” Sydney turned to the doctor in fear.  “What does he mean ‘again’?”

Dr. Larson looked at Mason, whose eyes widened in fear, and then Sydney’s, whose resembled the same if not more.  “They dream,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘they dream’?” Sydney asked.

“They dream,” he uttered again. “At some point Mason must have thought he’d woken up.  Somewhere in his mind his life started again.  It’s uncommon.  Rare even, but not –”

“Oh my God!” Sydney exclaimed.  “He’s not prepared for all of this.  It’s been twelve years, he’s not –” Sydney rushed to Mason’s side and tried to calm him down, “Mason, it’s going to be okay,” she cried. 

“I don’t –” he began.

“You’ve been here, in a coma, since your motorcycle accident.  I promise, everything is going to be okay.” Sydney’s voice rushed to calm the anxiety that welled his eyes.

Fear, shock, and confusion set in. 
This has to be a practical joke.  That’s not possible.
  He was just with her, outside, in the rain, in front of his childhood home. 
What do you mean I’ve been here since the accident? I woke up! 
The thought forced even more tears from his eyes. 
I woke up. 

“Mason, my name is Dr. Larson.  I need you to try and calm down: you’ve been in a coma for some time.  I know all of this is a lot right now, but I need you to calm down. We are here to help you.”

Mason’s eyes moved frantically from one nurse to the other, one doctor to the other, until they fell upon the TV screen mounted to the wall in the corner of the room.  He didn’t recognize the news caster but it wasn’t the new faces that nearly caused him to pass out.  It was the writing that scrolled the bottom of the screen. 
Sunday, January 20, 2013 4:27a.m.

Oh my God …what was …it wasn’t real.  None of it was real. 
He started to hyperventilate. He was going into shock and everyone tried to calm him down as best as they could.  One of the nurses laid him fully back onto the bed and placed an oxygen mask on his face.  He moved his head slowly from left to right trying to fight them, but a voice, a familiar yet strange voice calmed him to the point of stillness.

“Mom! Where’s my mom? I’m looking for my mother,” a young boy brushed past the nurses that crowded the doorway.  “Mom, what’s going …on–” He couldn’t finish, as he stood in awe of Mason. 

Mason turned his head, moving his face from beneath the oxygen mask.  His eyes were red and swollen, but he saw him – a young boy, not yet in high-school, a few inches shorter than himself, the same complexion. 
Those are my eyes…those are my ears… that’s my nose.

The young boy looked at him with a shocked expression as if he had been waiting, to see him, to meet him for the very first time.  Sydney placed her hand on his back and walked him to the side of the bed as Mason’s eyes followed the boy, nervously moving closer and closer.

“James…this is your dad.  Mason Everett.  Mason,” she cried, “this is your son James.”

My son?
He remembered James.  He didn’t remember how or why. He didn’t remember when. 
James.
He remembered Erika. 
But how? Sydney. 
He lay still, unable to move by will and by his condition.  His eyes filled with so many questions, but no more in fear.  He just stared at the two of them, listening without saying a word to interrupt or ask a single question…he just lay there, awake for the first time in twelve years.

Epilogue

“We pick up where we left off,” Mason answered, pulling James’ attention from the window.
We pick up where we left off.

Mason smiled, feeling a sudden rush of unexpected emotion form wells of tears in his eyes as they pulled up to the church.  There were so many faces walking past the limousine trying to peek inside beyond the tinted windows, but none of them could see. Even as Mason smiled as if they could, there wasn’t one face he recognized until he saw one woman, frail and old, walking slowly as she hung on the arm of one of the ushers.  She was barely able to lift her legs onto the steps in front of the church.  Her hair was pure white, reflecting the sun like she had been crowned with a halo.  Mason gasped, trying to catch his breath.
Mom,
he whispered to himself.  The last time he’d actually seen her was at Jackson’s wedding, and his words to her had been far from pleasant.  Sydney told him she’d visited a lot while he was in the hospital, but in the last year during his rehabilitation he hadn’t seen or spoken to her once.  He watched her walk in, realizing that in all these years all she ever really wanted to do was say, ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘I love you’, and ‘it wasn’t your fault’.  He leaned back into the seat, turning away from the window, and covered his mouth with his hands to keep the tears at bay.  Even though now he realized that everything he imagined while he was in a coma never happened, he still felt like it was real.  Because of that, Mason wasn’t angry anymore.  He didn’t hate anymore; he didn’t hurt anymore.  He looked at his mom and felt nothing but love - something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“I think we should go in before Mom loses it,” James insisted.

They were a few minutes late, but Mason was still holding onto every minute as if he feared falling asleep and waking up to find out it had all been a dream again.

“She hasn’t lost it yet. I’m sure she’ll be fine if I wait here for a few more minutes,” he uttered.

James shook his head.  “You don’t know Mom,” he joked.

Mason laughed under his breath, but a part of him realized James was right.  There was so much about her now that he didn’t know.  Twelve years of life had passed him by while she lived without him, waiting for him as he lay in a hospital bed asleep, dreaming that she’d been right there the entire time.

“You go ahead,” he said to James.  “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Are you sure?” James asked.

“Yes, I’m sure. Tell her I’ll be right in.”

He watched as James stepped out of the limo and adjusted his tie the same way Mason did, checking his reflection in the window the same way he would have as well.  Mason shook his head in light laughter. 
I have a son,
he said to himself. 
A son. 
Bittersweet, he thought back to Sydney telling him what had happened.  How it happened.  How she came to know James as her own, and how he came to know Mason as his father long before Mason knew he existed.

Erika had gone into labor as planned.  She and Chris rushed to the hospital on a beautiful spring morning after her water broke while she was asleep.  Mason had been in a coma for two months by then.  Neither Erika nor Chris knew about the accident or the coma. 

She couldn’t have been more excited that morning, and Chris couldn’t have been any happier.  They rushed through traffic on pins and needles.  Erika was nervous and Chris was scared and excited all at the same time. 
They were having a baby
.  She breathed the way she was taught in the Lamaze class, and Chris held her hand as tightly as he could without her yelling at him to not tear it off. At 9:36pm, after nearly eleven hours in labor, Erika delivered a healthy, beautiful baby boy at 7lbs 6oz.  Chris, near tears, clipped the umbilical cord and the doctors wrapped him in a white blanket with a teal strip and handed him to Erika.  She was so happy as she lightly kissed him on the forehead.  She looked up at Chris, who couldn’t hold back his tears if he had tried, and smiled. 
Ja –
she began to say the baby’s name, but as soft as the words left her lips, Erika’s arms loosened from holding James and her eyes fell to the covering of her eyelids.  No one knew what was going on, but something was wrong.  She had stopped breathing.  The doctors rushed her into surgery, but not long after they told Chris she hadn’t made it.  As much as they tried, there was nothing they could do.  Erika died that night of a massive pulmonary embolism.  They didn’t see it coming. 

The next few days and months were spent in a depression that almost made Chris forget he had a son he needed to be a father to.  He’d avoided clearing the desk she kept in the house, or her clothes from the closet, for quite some time.  One day he had to do something to keep his mind at ease, so he tried.  He stared at the desk with her unopened mail, files, and papers.  In the pile were a few letters and envelopes from the hospital: the first was a bill, the second another and the same for the third.  But the fourth was one of James’s birth records.  He pulled it from the envelope and read it.  Before tossing it aside he noticed in the slot where they listed his blood type that it was different from both his and Erika’s.  He thought, like with Erika, the hospital had made another mistake; that they had filled it out wrong.  Either way it was another reason for him to call and yell at someone, blame someone.  But they hadn’t made a mistake.  After a number of phone calls he was just about certain of that.  There was only one other reason it could be different, only one other reason that made sense.  He didn’t want to believe it, but he knew.  He fought himself all of the way, but he went to the doctor and had a paternity test done.  It was then that he realized that James, the only connection he had left with Erika, wasn’t his.   He didn’t think twice about how, when, or why.  The fact was, he knew.  He loved Erika, more than she knew.  He loved her enough to pretend he didn’t know how she really felt about Mason, who she always said was just a friend.    He’d known about Mason the entire time, but he loved her too much to let her go.  She was gone, though, and the son he thought was his, the son she told him was his …wasn’t.

Sydney didn’t remember what time it was, but she remembered the rest of that night as clear as a blue sky.  The night a quiet knock came at the door. Chris was expecting Mason as it opened, but instead got her.  She’d been staying there from time to time since the accident.  This time, however, was a night she’d rather have been alone as she answered the door with her eyes red and swollen with tears still waiting to fall. 

“Are you okay?” Chris noticed she had been crying as she opened the door.

She leaned against the frame with her arms folded.  “Yes. I’m sorry, are you –”

“Looking for a Mason Everett. He does live here doesn’t he?”

Chris’s voice took on a sudden discomfort in his tone.  Sydney stood straight from leaning on the doorway, recognizing him but unable to place his face.  She was reluctant to answer but started to tell him Mason was there when she noticed his hand nervously clenching a car seat with a beautiful little boy wrapped in a blue blanket inside.  She still couldn’t place Chris’s face, but when she looked at James sitting in that car seat - his eyes, his smile as he looked up at her- Chris didn’t have to say a single word. 
Mason,
she said to herself as she felt her heat beat deep inside of her. When he finally told her who he was and who his wife was, it was then she remembered. She’d never met Erika, but she remembered seeing her at the wedding when Chris showed her the photo he kept in his wallet.  She remembered seeing the note she left for Mason that night she stayed over.  She never told Mason about it.  She never had a reason to.  Since they had started talking they were practically inseparable, so there was never a thought of anyone else before or after.   

They talked for a long while, though it was mostly Chris. Sydney just listened, staring at this little baby nestled in a car seat sitting on her sofa.  She could hear the grief in Chris’s voice from the pain of losing his wife.  The more he talked the more afraid she became, thinking one day soon this would be her.  She hadn’t lost Mason, but she didn’t have him either, and according to the doctor Mason was at the end of his road.  The only recommendation from there was hospice, so as much as she was angry and upset, she sympathized with him.

Chris didn’t talk much about James or the relationship between Mason and Erika.  Every time Sydney tried to bring it up he quickly changed the subject and ultimately came back to how much he loved and missed Erika.  Sydney looked up at the clock that hung from the wall and noticed the hour had grown even later than she thought.  When the baby started to get fidgety and cry, Chris left to get the diaper bag from the car.  Sydney, not knowing if she should let him keep crying until Chris came back in or pick him up, found herself reaching beyond any ill feelings she may have felt and unbuckled the car seat straps and rested James in her arms.  She held him close and rocked him to a lullaby she hummed until his cry faded.

Chris had never seen him so peaceful as he stood outside of the house with the diaper bag in his hand watching the two of them through the window.  At what didn’t even look like a second thought, Sydney looked up and saw his headlights pulling out of the driveway, passing the diaper back he’d left sitting on the front step.  Within days he’d disconnected his phone and moved out of his apartment.  It took a few more days before she finally told Jackson what had happened, and it was at that time he’d told her about the conversation he and Mason had the day he called her.  Now left in the middle was this little boy Mason’s little boy and neither she nor Jackson were going to let anything happen to him. 

Sydney wasn’t like most women, and as her days with James turned into weeks and months, so her relationship with him turned from stranger to mother.  From that day forward she raised James as her son, taking him to see his father every chance she could and making sure that despite the loss of his mother that he was loved.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” James whispered into Mason’s ear, standing beside him.

Mason cleared his throat, embodying the pure white gown that clothed her in his glossy eyes.  “More than ever,” he responded.

His smile was unwavering watching Sydney walk down the aisle as tears formed in his eyes.  Each of her footsteps grazed the path laid in African violet petals, with the train of her dress pulling all of them closer as she walked past.  As she took each step towards him he saw the years she’d stayed by his bedside holding his hand, telling him how her day went. He saw her telling him what James had done in school or how many times he had fallen when trying to teach him to ride a bike for the first time.  Mason pictured her telling him about his first crush, his first kiss, and his first heartbreak.  Then he saw the many nights she cried alone, praying that one day he would wake up and be able to share these stories with her.   With each step she took he was reminded that it wasn’t a dream.  He was actually there, and so was she.  Her hand reached out and fell into his as he turned to face the minister.   Held tightly, their eyes fell on each other like love-struck teenagers. 

“Do you, Mason Everett, take Sydney McCail to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and promise to be faithful until death parts you.”

His eyes melted into hers. “With all my heart, I do.”

“And do you, Sydney McCail, take Mason Everett, to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and promise to be faithful until death parts you.”

Her eyes beholding his, Sydney smiled. “I already have.”