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After: The Moment That Changed This Story


Ashley

It was after twelve hours of waiting that my cell phone rang.

I almost killed poor Chris launching myself out of the seat and yanking the phone out of my pocket. We'd somehow managed to fall asleep sitting up in those God-awful chairs, Chris' arm around my shoulders and my face pressed against his chest. He blinked up at me blurrily as I withdrew the phone from my pocket, standing in front of him, my hands shaking so much I could barely hold the thing still enough to see the display screen.

Nick's face was grinning up at me from the screen.

"Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," I wailed out my praises, "It's him, it's him, it's Nick!"

Chris looked torn between relief and something else, but I couldn't quite put a name to the emotion. "Answer it," he urged.

I swipe my thumb across the screen. "NICK!" I yelled into the phone. Several people glanced my way, awakened or disgruntled by my volume. "Oh my God Nick, I'm so relieved you're calling me, I've been worried sick about you, I saw the news on TV and --"

"Hello?" the voice coming across the phone was a woman's.

I stopped mid-sentence. "Hello?" I said back.

"Is this Ashley?" the woman questioned.

"Yes, yes, this is Ashley," I said, my stomach dropping into the very pit of my guts. I looked at Chris. His eyes were trained on mine, wide and anticipating, waiting. He sat on the edge of his seat and I could see every muscle in his body was ready to spring into action, wherever duty might call. I swallowed nervously. "Who's this? Where's Nick? Is he okay?"

"My name is Cynthia, I'm a nurse. I have Nick here and he is asking for you."

"Oh my God," I gasped.

"What?" Chris asked, his muscles tensing even more.

"It's a nurse," I answered him quickly. Then, "I'm at the hospital where they said the victims of the crash were being taken! Where is he? Where can I go to see him?"

"Room 6732 in the Chapman-Olson wing," the reply came. "Come quickly, he's waiting for you."

I hung up the phone, "6732! Chapman-Olson. C'mon Chris, c'mon." I grabbed his hand and yanked him to his feet, barely waiting for him to be standing upright before bolting across the waiting room to the receptionist's desk. I banged against the counter with my palm to get her attention. She waved at me to wait while she finished her phone call, but I cried, "Please, the Chapman-Olson wing! Please!"

She waved at a sign on the wall, irritated. Chris jogged to catch up with me as I ran to the sign, my heart rate elevating with every step I took. The sign was a map of the entire hospital campus, and the Chapman-Olson wing was clear on the other side of it. I pointed at it on the map, then took off down the hallway. Chris ran to keep up with me.

"Did - she - say - how - he - is?" Chris panted as we rushed down the hall.

I dodged a hospital bed that was sitting out in the hallway. "No," I said, "Only that he was asking for me. Chris, he was asking for me." I felt tears spring to my eyes.

Chris didn't reply.

I felt like I couldn't run fast enough. I pictured bursting through the door and seeing Nick there again, wrapping my arms around that big stupid neck of his and telling him I was sorry for everything, that I hadn't meant a word of the things I'd said.

I couldn't wait to tell him that I'd lied.

The campus of the hospital seemed to stretch on and on and on and on forever. We passed people walking through a galleria, past a food court, through an atrium with a fountain, down hallways lined with beds. We took an elevator up when our hallway ended and rushed along to a stairwell that promised to bring us to the sixth floor reception area in the Chapman-Olson wing and, at long last, my chest bumped against the counter of the nurse's station.

Chris trod beside me, clutching a stitch in his chest. "Je - sus," he groaned. He bent forward, panting.

I looked at the nurse who was staring up at me with surprise in her eyes. "Cynthia - Cynthia called me -" I gaspd the words out.

"Ashley!" the voice was to my right and I turned to see the woman whose voice I'd heard over the phone. She looked sick, her brow stitched tightly in the center, her hands wringing.

"Is he okay? Where is he?" I begged, "Can I see him?"

She hesitated. "Well..." she said, "I'm ... I'm afraid there's been a mistake."

"A mistake?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "Nick has, um, changed his mind."

"Changed his mind?"

"Yes," Cynthia nodded, frowning severely, "You cannot see him tonight. You may come back tomorrow and possibly see him then."

"What?"

"Good day," Cynthia said.

Chris stood up, "But we just - literally - ran across this entire hospital," he said, "We just waited twelve hours to see him."

Cynthia sighed, "He's - he's decided he does not wish to see you at this time. You may come back tomorrow," she reiterated, and with that, despite the cries of dismay and argumets that Chris and I were shouting at her back, she walked away.

I looked at Chris. My heart had gone from beating so fast I could feel it in my throat to nearly stopping in just a moment's time. My eyes were filled afresh with tears - thick, huge tears that I could barely see around. "He doesn't wanna see me," I cried.

Chris stepped up to me and pulled me into him, again, and took a deep breath, "I'm sure that's not what she meant."

"Yes it is," I cried. I pressed my face into Chris' chest and let my tears spill into his shirt. His chin was on the top of my head. I grabbed hold of the shirt, balling my fists around the fabric. "What have I done?"

"C'mon," Chris said thickly, "Let's get you home. You need to lie down."

"I don't want to go home," I cried.

Chris sighed, "C'mon. We need to go somewhere else at least, then," he said. "C'mon." I let Chris guide me away.




Nick

In retrospect, the moment that really changed this entire story may not have been the one when the plane's engine cut. It may have been when I decided to brush my teeth.

I'd fallen asleep when one of the nurse's, a kind, older woman with bright eyes and grey hair, named Cynthia, had come in and awoken me. She said that she'd found my phone in my jacket pocket and she'd called Ashley as I'd been requesting since I woke up. She said Ashley was in the hospital and was on her way to see me. She said it would only be a couple minutes before she got there. And then someone had called her from the other room and she'd excused herself and promised to bring Ashley in the moment she got there.

"You wait there now," she said, "I'm going to get you fresh bandages and I'll be right back."

I'd laid there nervously in the bed, my heart beating wildly, imagining the moment when Ashley walked through the door, imagining Ashley's face - her eyes and her hair and her mouth. And as I laid there, I'd thought of a conversation I'd had with her. About brushing my teeth. I ran my tongue over my teeth and, when I found the plaque building up there, I felt sick. I couldn't tell Ashley how I felt with plaque all over my teeth. All I could picture was her noticing it, and one day telling our kids and our kids kids about the moment when I told her I loved her and how there was plaque all over my teeth.

I rang the nurse's bell three times, in my defense, before giving up and deciding to do it myself.

I struggled out of the covers, my legs were shaking, my hands pooling with sweat. It took several moments to untangle myself from the knot of blankets and IV wire that I'd become wrapped in. I sat on the edge of the bed, queasy and unsure of myself. I launched myself off the bed and landed on my feet and immediately lurched forward, clutching the bedside table in an attempt to steady myself.

"Fuck," I groaned. I closed my eyes, willing every ounce of my strength to move. I shuffled a couple steps toward the door that I only knew was a bathroom because a scrub nurse had come in and used it to throw away the doohickey she'd used to cap the thermometer she stuck in my ear. Luckily, I had a lot of practice walking unsteadily from my wild days of drinking and drugs. I could stagger with swagger. I held onto various objects to keep what little balance I was in posession of. When I reached the door, I leaned on the handle and stepped inside the bathroom.

I may as well have crossed the Sahara desert without a water source.

I staggered to the sink basin and bent forward. It wasn't until this point that I realized I had no tooth brush. I turned on the tap and, with a shaking hand, I wet my finger and did the best that I could do, scraping my teeth with my fingernail. I looked up at the mirror hanging over the sink.

I couldn't breathe. I stood there, horrorstruck, staring at a face that I couldn't for the life of me recognize. It was like I was paralyzed by shock.

The left side of my face was stuck in a sneer, a horrible gash ran from the corner of my nose to the corner of my mouth and back to my jaw line. My entire left cheek was a jarring, garishly bright red, like it was on fire, like it wasn't covered by skin.

I stepped back, too quickly, and I hit the wall behind me and I slid. I landed on my ass, my legs sprawled before me. Pain rushed through my body. The IV ripped from my wrist. I felt my heart rate shoot through the roof, and I started yelling. Screaming, even.

A barrage of nurses rushed into the room. It took them a moment to realize where I was and to regroup, one of them climbed over me, and I recognized Cynthia's voice trying to speak words of sense to me, trying to calm me down, but an unspeakable blast of horror had filled me. My face. My face.

"Nick, Ashley's on her way, we need to get you back to bed," Cynthia begged, "You need to cooperate with us. Please. Calm down, please calm down."

"Fix it," I begged, "Fix it, make it go away!"

Cynthia gripped my arm, struggling to get me to my feet. "Shhh, come on, Nick," she begged.

I struggled to a standing position, the nurses working together to help lift me up. I felt like I wanted to throw up. I caught a glimpse of the mirror once more as they hoisted me, and I yelled out, "No! No, no, no! No that's not me, this is a joke. Tell me you can fix it! Please tell me!"

Cynthia took hold of my hands, "Come with me. Come on, Nick. We're gonna get you back into bed..."

"No," I said. Then I realized that Ashley was coming, that worse than any amount of plaque, she wouldn't be able to help but see this. She would tell our kids and our kids kids how I looked like I'd peeled my skin off my face before I told her I loved her. She'd tell them how I looked like a freak, like a monster, how I was terrifying. "Ashley can't come in here," I begged, grabbing Cynthia's wrist, "She can't see me like this."

In retrospect, the moment that changed this story was the moment when I turned Ashley away.