The Holding Place

Chapter Nineteen

Reggie...





He looks at the world around him in a way I have not seen in a long time, like he is painting the picture in mind before ever putting it to canvas. He never once displays the medicated expression of emptiness like all of the others around us. He looks at me as if he sees who I really am even though we have barely exchanged any words. Something about him makes me want to come back alive. When was the last time that a living and breathing human being reminded me that somewhere inside of me there is a life still to be lived?


There used to be the days that I would be riding on the back of a motorcycle going down a long country highway and my wheat-colored hair flying wildly behind me. Every once and a while sure hands would come to pat my bottom, securely but playfully, to make sure that I was still holding on tight. While I was sitting on the back of that motorcycle with him nothing else mattered but how tightly my arms were wrapped around him and how close I was to him. I could almost forget the problems that were only a few miles away.


“You doing alright back there, baby?” Blaine would yell at me into the roaring wind. I would answer by pressing myself more tightly against him


But those days are gone now and they have been for years. Everyone tells me that I need to move on and realize that all I shared with that boy was just summer love. I try to tell everyone around me, my parents and family, that summer love was is so far from what I shared with him on those days spent of the back of his motorcycle or the shore of a crystal clear lake.


Sometimes I convince myself that I’m crazy, those moments when the air in the room in still but I feel a gentle rush of air upon a bare shoulder, telling myself that he is standing there right beside me. Since the accident it seems as if I have gotten to know him better than I did when he was still with me. The dreams I have of him are so real they feel like we are making new memories.


At his funeral his mother was kind enough to give me the ring he was found with on his last day on earth. She ran a thin gold chain through it so that I could wear it around my neck. His mother adored me and she shared no secret about how impatient she was for her son to make me a part of the family. The day that he had gotten into an accident I had no idea that he had been back from his deployment. The ring he was going to give me had been in his family for generations.


There was nothing special about it except the sentimental value that he put to it. The gold was almost worn to a silver color and the diamond could easily be overlooked if one wasn’t looking hard enough at it but that was the ring he was going to put on my finger when he asked me to be his wife.


He never forgot that there was six years of age between us and at my tender age of eighteen that was a big gap. He was a sailor and I was just a child but I knew that the flutter he sent my heart into was nothing short of a love that promised a lifetime of happiness and commitment. When he was overseas we spoke everyday about how he would make me his wife the day he stepped ashore.


It was supposed to be a surprise that he was back two months early. He called his mother to meet him at the airport and not let a soul know that he was in town. He didn’t want to take any chances of me finding out that he was back. He had his mother and brothers set up the perfect place to propose, a large oak tree too tall for its roots that hung over the side of a small spring a few miles north of time. They set up a few candles and sprinkled the area with white rose petal. His mother was so proud she took a picture of the display to make sure that if the wind ruined it before we were able to get there that I would be able to see just how beautiful it was.


His motorcycle was the only one like it in town, painted with bright blue, red and yellow. It was impossible to not see him driving down the road either in the down pouring rain or clear sunshine. A friend was driving me home from a college class I was taking that summer and out if instinct we slowed down as we rolled past the wreckage on our way home. As soon as I saw the colors of his mangled bike I shrieked for her to stop the car.


I remember that the sun shined brightly above me as I left the car and made my way to the wreckage. My memory plays everything back to me in slow motion every time I recall it. A firefighter comes near me first and as it is a small town he recognizes who I am. He bodily lifts me into his arms and turns my field of vision away from the wreckage. I don’t even have to ask him who they are loading up on a stretcher. I am clawing and screaming at the firefighter to let me go but he has a grip on iron around my small frame.


I am going through the motions of shock but as soon as my eyes are off of his mangled bike all I can think about is how beautiful the sun is on this late summer day. My friend and I should be at my house already and getting ready to sunbathe in the backyard, the opportunities for a golden tan getting slimmer by the day. I think of the brand new bikini I just bought a few days ago and how excited I am to show Blaine pictures of myself in it. This will be the first summer of my life that I have invested the time to get a beautiful tan.


It is such a beautiful day outside. Blaine must have had not a care in the world as he cruised down the highway for the last time. I don’t even think about why he is home in the first place. My entire mind entertains in the thought of how much he enjoyed riding in the warm sunshine. That is when he was at his absolute best. Just him and the rumble of the engine right below it. Sometimes he would tell me that he loved his bike more than I. If I never caught the love-hungry expression that lit up his eyes every time he only looked at me that I might have believed him.


The firefighter holding me places me into the back of a police cruiser and tells the young officer to take me who immediately. I numbly tell him that I need to be here, that Blaine needs me. I don’t miss the look of anguish flashing through the firefighter’s tired face. I break into a deep sob and no words that either the firefighter or officer can provide to me will offer me any solace.


At this point in my life I have never lost anyone before and have never known what true grief really was. I let the officer take me home without any further protest. He lets me stay in the car as he knocks on the door. He tells my father, who answers the door, what I have just witnessed. I barely remember him pulling me out of the car and carrying me into the house.


My father, who is a big man who towers well over six feet and has lived a life of hard labor, shrinks at his loss of what to do with a slight daughter he is clinging to him for dear life. He hasn’t held me like this since I was a young child but he sits with me on the couch and tucks my head into his shoulder. He encourages me to cry, whispering that God is watching over us all as he smooth’s my hair away from my tear-streaked face. 


My mother left before I turned thirteen so there is no woman around that can offer me comfort. The next step is up to my father as I am incoherent with shock. The phone rings and he answers it. From the frantic voice on the other end it can only be Blaine’s mother. She is telling my father to bring me to the hospital and quickly as there is not much time left to say good-bye.


I don’t remember the car ride to the hospital. I have lost all concept of time and am unsure if it has only been minutes or hours since seeing Blaine’s mangled bike in pieces on the highway. All I remember is his mother rushing towards me and bringing me back to where Blaine is hanging on for dear life. I don’t even recognize him, the parts of him that are not covered in bandages or crisscrossed with wires. I didn’t know that the body could swell and contort into such a fashion.


At first I gasp in shock at the sight and turn my face away from him. Nobody tells me to try to look at him. All around me there are doctors around, flurrying in a mad hurry. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m standing in the middle of the emergency room bay and I am about 15 feet from where the love of my life in laying. Someone, I think it is a nurse, is pulling at my hand and saying that I need to be out in the waiting area. I am rooted to the spot where I am standing.


Again everything is in flow motion and everyone but Blaine is just a blur and the shouting voices sound as if they are a hundred miles away. Blaine is pale and there is a bluish tinge to his lips. I know from my first aid class during my senior year of high school that he must have lost vast amounts of blood. Someone is performing CPR on him and another is attempting to push something down his throat. I don’t know if I am watching them do it at the same time of it my mind is processing things at a much slower rate than reality.


A bright light catches the corner of my eye and for a split second my concentration is taken away from the awful scene playing out in front of me. I see the back of him. It is unmistakable. It is Blaine walking away from him.


Before I can call out to him the pace of reality has caught up to me and I hear a doctor call in an exasperated tone, “Time of death is two fifty-eight P.M.”


I allow myself of brief sleep back into insanity to see if the outline of Blaine is still in the corner of my eye. All I see now are the nurses scurrying about in all different frantic directions. The nurse who was trying to pull me away has loosened her grip on my arm as she comes to understand who I am. She must be saying something to me but I don’t comprehend anything that is coming out of her mouth. To be honest with myself, I don’t believe that I am able to comprehend anything at all.


Everything is swirling inside my head at a million miles per hour. I haven’t stopped once since this horrible nightmare began to take a moment to breathe. It is too much to take in all at once. Once again the persistent tug of the nurse is at me again and absently I allow her to lead me out to the emergency room bay. She murmurs something to my father about my witnessing something tragic and it is best if he take me home.


I don’t remember saying anything to my father or anybody else for that matter in the days that followed. The only thing I could do was replay over and over again the anguish in my head. I let the tears flow freely and allowed my father to gently push them from my cheeks when we stood under an appropriately gray sky when the priest gave his blessing as they lowered his casket into the ground.


Since then I haven’t even bothered to count how many years it has been, the pain remains as fresh as the day that it happened. I keep his ring around my neck to allow Blaine to be with me always. My father believes that I have grown delusional with grief.


I choose not to speak because even though it has been a long time I still cannot bring myself to believe that Blaine is completely gone. I saw him there with me in the middle of the emergency room bay as the doctor called out his final breath. He was watching everything alongside with me. It wasn’t his time to let me go.


My attention goes back to Michael who is sitting across from me. Blaine and he have nothing in the slightest in comment, especially in physical attributes, yet when I am around him I feel as if I am meeting Blaine for the first time all over again, that is how familiar and comforting his nearness is to me.


Though I have tried I cannot explain away the feeling that I am connected to Michael in some way. I have always believed that everything happens for a reason and that every action is connected to a reaction. Before Michael arrived I had forgotten the sound of my own voice. I could feel the shock in everyone’s eyes when we were sitting in group and I finally uttered words to him. I have been in this place for two years and nothing or no one has ever moved me quite the way Michael does. He is special for some reason and I cannot quite put my finger on it. I want to know more of his story but I sense that Michael is not a man who gives without expecting something in return.


“It has been two years since I have been here,” I begin unsteadily. The floodgates unleash and I bring Michael back to where everything began. During the moments that I am telling him everything he is suddenly everything that I never had before. He is the listener who for once isn’t trying to get into my head. He is listening intently and that is all that he wants to do. He doesn’t want to go any deeper than that. He doesn’t want to try to figure out how to fix me unlike everyone else for the past two years.


He is taking my small hands into his much larger ones and my heart gives a lurch forward. I am unfamiliar with such a soft and genuine touch. In the beginning of my stay in this place the only touch I received from another when was orderlies were strapping me down while a nurse injected a sedative. My arms itch to put my arms around him in a way that I have not felt in a long time. So long that I have forgotten the name for such an emotion.  Saltiness stings at my eyes as an unfamiliar wetness gently runs down one of my cheeks.


Michael reaches for what it running down my cheek and with a gentle smile he wipes it away. My story is done at this point and I return his smile.  The hour that we have allotted to us for dinner is long over and we both look around to see that we are the only ones left in the cafeteria. I look to the clock to see that we are thirty minutes past when dinner was supposed to have ended. A lone nurse is standing by the door and she is giving Michael and I a knowing glance.


“I think we should get our trays and head back to the common area.” Michael gives a small nod of his head.