When I Die [Wattys 2016]

Chapter 40: In Limbo

I laid in a state between sleep and awake. The OxyContin brought my dreams to life. I used oxygen and had fluids connected to me. I couldn't move.
Myra sat at attention beside my bed. I feared for her.
What would it do to a seventeen year old girl to lose her boyfriend? Should she be watching this downfall? Would I wander in this limbo between well and dead forever? How long would I hurt her? For every moment I kept sucking oxygen, she could have been moving on. Maybe she missed meeting her new boyfriend because she's sitting beside me and not walking down the bread aisle at the supermarket where their hands would sweep one another's and they'd fall in love.
But then Myra would be alone forever, in a limbo between me and her life after me. She would never make it to the second part. What if it messes her fate up? What if I was all an accident, a detour in what was supposed to be her straight path.
I wish we'd had kids together.
I open my mouth, and tell her this.
She looked surprised but happy and sad altogether.
"They would have been beautiful." She whispers, and I nod in agreement.
"Your eyes. My hair. Your nose. My..."
"Smile," she finished for me, and touched a hand to my cheek. I grinned a little.
"There it is," she sang. Myra was a bird, fluttering and gentle and a songstress that made your heart content. All my life I'd known her, in all her roughness, wrapped up in Ramones t-shirts and busted knees of jeans. I'd never cared to dig below the surface to find what was underneath. She was a kind heart, the kind of young woman that would turn into a phenomenal and gracious woman. She would have been my wife. I pinched myself because I could have spent a small eternity knowing her this way and instead we wasted that time being "just friends". Maybe it wasn't a waste. Maybe those days were what set us up for these days, the last days, and everything happened as it was supposed to.
I would never stop being angry at what I was missing out on, a life with her, a curly headed troop of children with her as their mother.

She kissed my battered cheek and squeezed beside me. We fell asleep together.

I slept mostly. Being awake was hard, it wasn't something that came effortlessly as it had before- it took work, focus, energy, all things I didn't have to spare. So instead I resigned to
Sleep around 16 hours out of the day. In the time I wasn't sleeping, I sat awake mindlessly aiming my eyes at the television or reading. Sam came home from school every day and told me about his day, it was a small reprieve from the mundane nothingness I experienced day in and day out.
Hattie sat on the foot of my bed often and colored. She didn't have to say anything, and she usually didn't. I wasn't sure if she understood what was happening, but she definitely knew it was wrong.
I liked Hattie in her childish innocence. She had nothing to say, and so she said nothing. She didn't mess about with pleasantries, she had no reason to say anything she didn't mean.

Many days after my return from the hospital, I'd started to make improvements. My breathing improved along with my focus. I was staying awake longer, at first an hour, then a few hours and then I was awake during the day. A hospice nurse came by and helped me with getting up and trying to move again. I was fine in my lower region with the exception of the popping hip which we'd discovered was just more cancer. Well, thank God it's nothing serious, I'd thought.

Prom was that weekend. They'd normally had it around the last week of April but the entire pavilion which normally held it was flooded. They moved all of the decorations and tables and things to the gymnasium of the school. Cramped quarters, but prom nonetheless. I knew Myra wanted to go, but she would never say it to me. I also knew that I would be hard-pressed to talk my mom into letting me go. It was the second week of May. Graduation was next. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to graduate or not. Maybe my mother would pity me.

I waited to breach the subject until she was in a good mood and I'd had a decent day.
I was sitting on the couch with her, Aaron, Lara and dad.
"Mom, I wanna go to prom," I said, interrupting the natural flow of conversation.
She looked at me with an open mouthed expression, I was worried what she might say.
Everyone waited, too.
Just when I thought she'd shut me down, her eyes sparkled.
"Oh my God, Leo! I didn't think you'd want to go!" Immediately she and Lara ran to the kitchen and started searching the computer and phone books, looking for a suit ready for a man who was 6 feet tall but whose waist was the size of a twelve year old's. Aaron looked at me, his eyes full of humor.
"They've just been waiting on you to say that," he laughed, sticking a tongue out at Little Leo. My dad reclined back in his seat.
"Do you think you'll be up to that?" He yawned.
I shrugged.
"I hope so. I'd really like to be able to see everyone... even if I don't stay the whole time," I said.
He nodded, looking as though he understood, he reached into his wallet and pulled out a fifty dollar bill.
"Buy your tickets, bud," he handed the cash over to me.
"Wow, thank you, Dad," I said, standing up to hug him. I was less dizzy upon standing than I had been. Good sign, I thought.

The next day, Aaron sat down with me and tried to develop a plan for asking Myra to prom. I'd assumed all I needed was to ask her, because I doubted she would go with anyone else. Apparently "Promposals" were a thing, and I needed to make a big deal out of it, according to my mom and Lara.
So Aaron and I brainstormed at the kitchen table. He had a notepad out in front of him and wrote down one worded messages that wouldn't make sense unless you knew about the idea.
For example, for the idea that I buy her a cake and print the words on it, he simply wrote down "icing". Next to that, "rose" for a bouquet of roses I'd hand her.
None of it made sense to a passerby, in fact, it hardly made sense to me.
Lara walked up behind Aaron and wrapped her arms around him.
"Remember how you asked me to prom, baby?" She kissed his cheek.
"Of course I do," he answered.
"Leo, he took a laser pointer and used a long-exposure camera to write out PROM," she reminisced.
"Yeah, and when Chad took the picture the word prom was above us with a question mark," he smiled.
"I was so happy," Lara smiled, kissing his head. She heard the baby crying upstairs and released Aaron from her hug, heading upstairs.
"Still am," she added over her shoulder.

He blushed a bit.
So maybe promposals are a big deal. I didn't know if Myra was that kind of girl or not, but I didn't want to be wrong.

We sat at the table for several more hours until I had a breakthrough. After I told Aaron, he agreed immediately. He closed up pens and notepads. It was perfect.