To Be

Chapter Fifty

They say that when someone is dying their life flashes before their eyes. A movie or more like a recording playing back their life for them. Showing them their happy moments and their sad moments. Their best moments and their worst moments. A spiraling loop spinning from scene to scene to scene...

That is exactly what is happening to me at this moment.

First, I see myself playing in my crib, my parents leaning over me cooing. My pudgy little hand is reaching out to them, 5 fingers opened, grasping. But instead of them reaching back to me, they begin to fade...

Now I am a toddler clad only in a saggy diaper running in and out of the sprinkler. Giggling as water sprays me. A golden-haired boy with big evergreen eyes chases me. But he never catches up to me since the scene begins to fade again...

Me as a young girl, playing Barbies with my friends...

I once more, a young girl running through the woods, laughing with a bright smile on my face. The golden-haired boy is right on my tail, calling out my name. Me coming to a stop when I notice the clearing. Adrian coming to a stop beside me, huffing and puffing. Both looking at each other smiling. We have discovered our new hideout.

I watch my childhood play out before me and then my teenage years.

Adrian and I sharing our first kiss.

Adrian and I dancing in the moonlight under the stars.

Adrian and I eating ice cream.

Adrian and I singing at the top of our lungs to country music as we zip down the highway.

Adrian saying for the very first time that he loves me.

And me saying for the very first time that I love him.

Adrian leaving me.

Adrian being gone forever.

Adrian, Adrian, Adrian.

And then...

Levi.

***

So yes, this is it. This is the moment that led me to be lying here in a hospital bed, hooked up to many machines... In my arm, in my leg, blue circular objects on my chest making sure my heart is beating, and wires down my throat and up my nostrils ensuring that my lungs are expanding with each weak breath. Then last but not least, there's the heart monitor beeping softly in the distance.

At the brink of death. That's what I heard the doctors say when I was wheeled in.

I noticed that I can hear. I can hear. I can hear. Even though my world is dark and slowly dimming. I can hear.

I can hear the doctors discussing my condition. I can hear my parents wrenched sobs as they cry my name. I can hear Josh begging me to stay strong and to hold on. And loud and clear I can hear the heart monitor that's showing I am still anchored to this world.

But I don't want to be anchored here anymore. The second that the motorcycle crashed into the tree, I thought that finally--- finally it's all over. Finally, I can stop pretending that all is alright. Finally, I can be reunited with Adrian. But the world can be cruel. And here I am on the brink of death, still alive.

If only they will give up on me already.

Since Shelby Morganstein died a long, long time ago.